Saturday, March 8, 2014

Netiquette and Products Which Break The Rules - via Netiquette IQ


This blog offers many suggestions regarding sending and resending email. Furthermore, I discuss this topic extensively in my book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" (you can get more information below). Occasionally, I come across a product that, by its very nature, stretches or breaks the rules of Netiquette.The product reviewed below, is an example of one of these.

There is nothing wrong with sending or resending emails if done within Netiquette policies. By its very nature, the product below will keep sending emails until the user quits the process. This can perhaps achieve results in some cases, but it can also produce the opposite effect. Unless the user sets strict specific guidelines, it would not be good Netiquette to deploy this process.
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Meet Rebump, The New Worst Thing About Email
Posted Feb 28, 2014 by Alex Wilhelm (@alex), Josh Constine (@joshconstine)
Email is probably the bane of your life. There is too much of it, and there’s a special hate reserved for people who selfishly fill your inbox with balderdash.
Email is broken because it’s far easier to send someone a message that creates work for them than it is for them to do that work. So you can quickly make the lives of people worse, at little cost to yourself.
Today, not responding to email is implicitly stating that your note was not important enough to warrant a response. That’s appropriate! Not everything everyone thinks or says merits a response. What we want in life is less, not more email, right?
Yet a start-up called Rebump has found a way to make email even worse. How is that possible, you ask.? Well, Rebump is a service that automatically re-pings people — via email, of course — that haven’t answered your original message. It will keep doing so until you get a response.
Note that this implies that your initial email was both worth reading, and worth replying to. In reality most email fails both tests. So, Rebump is essentially a brilliantly passive aggressive way to force people into responding to you, or the flood of notes will not fucking stop.
In practice, this is how the company explains itself:
Yes, it made me nauseous as well.
Actually I can see this working in practice: By the 7th follow up I would reply to your note. With a congenial “**** off.” I guess if that is what you want, then great. I get that Rebump is trying to offer a service people will find useful, but if that utility comes from degrading everyone else’s life, it’s net negative for humanity.
If you are friends with someone and they don’t respond to your note, maybe they are busy. Maybe call them. Maybe let it slide, because you are not the most important thing in their life. Don’t use this. Don’t abuse their already overstuffed inbox. I don’t care if Rebump calls them “friendly follow-up messages.”
This is a friendly heads up that people will hate you if you Rebump.
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.


Netiquette for Kids - A Very Good Insight , The Netiquette IQ Quote of The Day


In my book (see below), I discuss the deterioration of today's electronic communication in our world, especially when compared to the letters of just a few years ago. This is particularly the case with our younger generation. Yet, besides offering educational services, teaching by example can have profound effects, just like any other dynamic in our society. By keeping your own Netiquette practices strong, this will have an effect on others, particularly young people!

"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."
- Fred Astaire
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.



Friday, March 7, 2014

Netiquette Core Basics For Email Maintenance - via Netiquette IQ




Mailbox maintenance is a form of proactive Netiquette. Since one of the major breaches of Netiquette is to have messages not responded to, here are some basic mailbox maintenance suggestions to reduce the risks of email loss, temporarily or permanently.

  1. Be thorough in reading messages and their threads.
  2. Deal with business email first, unless there are compelling reasons not to.
  3. If a full answer will take longer than usual to reply to because of a need to get more information, send a note to explain this.
  4. Maintain discipline and predictability in company or personal maintenance processes.
  5. Check junk mail regularly for mistakenly filtered mail. Notify the sender that some emails may have been lost. One may want to ask the sender if there are outstanding messages that have not been replied to.
  6. Keep all email lists up to date; delete old addresses. 
  7. Keep dictionaries up to date, and allow proper names to be entered.
            8.   Empty deleted and junk files regularly.
            9.   Back up on a regular basis.
           10.  Remove all references such as “Sent from my… (smartphone brand name).”
           11.  Provide off-hour schedules.
    12.  Notify forty-eight hours ahead of time when performing tasks or email services.
    13.  Keep security policies.
    14.Check all email at least twice a day.
    15.  Mark or file critical messages that cannot be immediately replied to. 
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

Netiquette Quote of the Day - Information Overload - via Netiquette IQ

The Information age has vastly empowered so many with so much. Most of us will agree this is a challenge in so many ways  . . . educationally, demographically and socially. Much of Netiquette IQ deals with this
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“distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction)” 
― Seneca
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.










Thursday, March 6, 2014

Netiquette and Too Much Information - via Netiquette IQ


Winston Churchill once said,

"This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read".


All of us have had far too many of these! Just by their very presentation or composition, any email can almost immediately become simply too tedious to read and can be glossed over or abandoned. As a sender, once a point is made, the longer you continue the email, the greater risk you may express something in the wrong manner. So it is good email not to have any lengthy introduction until the intended topic is related. The following are catagoeis where senders most often become verbose:

Apologies
Job qualifications
Complaints
Anger ( be careful here! )
Bragging
Duplication of the same statement
Rambling sentences
Multiple subjects, often unrelated
Undeleted threads
Unnecessary details, particularly personal ones
Unwanted details, often not pertaining directly to the recipient

In conclusion, if a sender is careful of avoiding the above considerations, the likelihood of a well received correspondence will greatly increase.

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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.

Netiquette Quote of The Day - Civility - via Netiquette IQ



"Civility costs nothing, and buys everything."
- Mary Wortley Montagu

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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.