Meerkat Communications

What’s the one thing that you would spend money (that you didn’t really have to spare) on?

I think, for me, it boils down to two contenders: concerts and travel.

I love going to concerts and am still not tired of the novelty of seeing bands that I have loved forever LIVE! Having grown up waaaay down south, where very few bands, expect those with a giant budget, dare to go, I missed out on so many shows I would’ve loved to have seen, and so now I’m making up for lost time and cram in as many live shows as I possibly can, whether the budget really allows it or not )There’s something so magical about the energy of the crowd and the almost surreal quality of hearing something done live that you’ve listening to hundreds and hundreds of times on a recording.

Then there’s travel. I would never, ever say ‘no!’ to exploring new places, seeing new sights, meeting new people, savouring new foods, and experiencing different cultures. Not only does it fuel my imagination and allow me to explore one of my passions, photography, it also often changes my thinking or gives me new insights or allows me to understand someone better.

To quote Mastercard: Priceless.

Sometimes, despite careful planning, a well crafted message can be misunderstood or misinterpreted or, perhaps worst of all, ignored.

One of the issues I find these days is that people really just don’t seem to have any listening skills, nor do they actually read all of what has been written. I have experienced both of these problems many times. For example, in my classes I can repeat instructions several times and put them in writing, and students still do not listen properly and end up doing the wrong thing (to their detriment). And I’ve also written very clear, well structured business emails (after all, it’s my profession so I have to show I can practice what I preach!), and still I get a response that indicates the person has not properly read anything I have written.

Sigh…

So what can we do about it? Unfortunately we can’t control others (oh for such a power!), but we can keep ensuring we construct well organised and thought out messages, and allow for feedback and questions. Sometimes, too, all it takes is a deep breath and a lot of patience. Something I learned a long time ago, because of the torture I experienced from certain teachers, is that if someone doesn’t understand something and they ask you to explain it again, explaining it in exactly the same way will not help, because the person did not understand you the first time.

We also have to be aware that communication is a process, a cycle from sender to receiver and back again, so we have a responsiblity to others to listen to them carefully and to read things slowly and with attention. This can save us time and unwanted issues.

So, it takes practice, patience, and sometimes, a healthy sense of humour to stay sane and ensure you overcome any barriers to communication to get your message understood and get what you want.

Geraldine

I have become a bit of a podcast addict recently, and am even contemplating learning to do these myself, but I’ve been thinking a lot about something I was listening to on The Nerdist. Chris Hardwicke was interviewing his life long friend Wil Weaton AKA Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation and was talking about how he has always engaged with new technologies as soon as they come out and they were laughing about how there have been explosions of social media douchebags who talk about “how to do Twitter properly” and what a ridiculous notion this is.

It got me thinking., yes, if you want to monetize (blegh, I hate these kinds of poncey terms) or advertise or draw in clients using social media, then there are things to do and things to avoid with social media, but for someone like Wil Wheaton, is there really a wrong way to do it?

And really, who cares?

I do believe you need to be sensible when using social media – the list of stories of people getting fired or getting into trouble is now endless, but you have to be pretty careless and quite frankly, a little dumb, to get caught, but beyond that, if you are running your own social media profiles and your main intent is to connect with people, share knowledge and perhaps gain clients, is it really that complex a system? And what designates someone a “social media maven” (besides them calling themselves that)? I’m often surprised too when I read the tweets of all the so-called ‘Twitterati’ (both locally in Vancouver and elsewhere). They’re very often boring, bland, or just plain arbitrary, and I wonder – how did they make it big and become ‘the’ person to follow?

Take Guy Kawasaki. I get he’s some kind of guru or something (self proclaimed?), but very often his tweets are incredibly boring and yet there is a flurry of retweets and everyone oohs and aahs. Granted, although the same thing seems to happen with the Mashable tweets, I do actually find these very interesting and ahead of the game with tech news etc, and often the links posted are informative and point to quality articles and posts. Sometimes, however, particularly with local Vancouver tweeters, I read what they’ve posted and the interactions they have with others and I think ‘remind me why I’m following you?!’

Now of course I am by no means claiming that I am some champion tweeter or that what I have to say is brilliant or life changing, and I do get the fact that I don’t have to follow these people or even engage on Twitter, but I really feel that if I stop and think about something and realise it has no appeal to anyone, or really is just for the sake of it, I tend not to post, and rather spend some time listening instead to what others are saying (the old adage about not having something nice to say and all that….). I also have never proclaimed to be a social media guru/maven/expert or any other bold title out there. I am a social media enthusiast and advocate, but let’s put it in perspective. It’s really not rocket science.

Live long and prosper, Wesley.

Geraldine

Yes, it’s here. The new year. Doom and gloom? The end of the universe? Who knows! But here’s to making this an amazing, inspiring, creative year.

Geraldine

I came across an interesting article via Wordtracker on using the idea of what the author, Sean d’Souza, calls disconnectors to write effective, engaging copy. Using clear examples, d’Souza explains how disconnectors are just what soapies (sorry, day time dramas) like Days of Our Lives use to draw in their audience and keep them watching, and he demonstrates how this can be an effective technique in writing better copy.

The basic premise is the idea of keeping the reader paying attention by throwing in textual curve balls: seemingly incongruous stories/examples/subject changes that then eventually tie in to the main idea of the article. I agree that this can be a great way to write a more interesting article, though you have to be very careful that your disconnectors don’t go off on too far a tangent without returning to the point you’re trying to make, leaving your readers in the proverbial soapie coma…

You can read the full article, “Why disconnectors in copywriting are critical in keeping your reader awake” on the Wordtracker site. Let me know your thoughts.

Geraldine

I recently came across Inbound Writer through a friend. I’ve shared my brief thoughts on it with the students in my Writing for the Web class blog, but it’s worth repeating here…

Inbound Writer bills itself as the “first social writing application”. It combines a keyword search tool, SEO prompts, a text editor and social media platforms. As a writer, I’m not sure how I feel about it. It comes across as a DIY writing with SEO tool, which is most definitely useful, but what concerns me is the impact of something like this on the quality of the writing. The number one rule of SEO, as far as I am concerned, is that you still need to write for people, not search engines, and although I’m sure this tool is useful in many ways, I don’t think it can or should replace a writer.

Maybe I just feel that way because I don’t like the idea of an app taking my job?

Geraldine

I recently got an email from BCIT administration that was sent out to all employees about the dangers of sharing and storing information via cloud computing. The email raised some interesting points that, to be honest, I hadn’t really considered.

Much cloud computing storage is based in the US and is therefore subject to the Patriot Act. Although I don’t usually share folders, I do adore Dropbox, and store my teaching and work files on there. While I am not scared of any of the information I have on there in terms of getting myself into trouble, I would like to be sure it is safe and that it won’t be taken and used without my permission, knowledge, or any compensation. The issue of online privacy and safety continues to be a huge issue, and there does not seem to be any definitive way to know your information is safe.

As I’ve heard it said, “I have read the terms and conditions” is the possibly the world’s biggest lie, so how careful are we being with our information really?

Food for thought. Or the cloud?

Geraldine

Hard to believe we’re already half way through August and heading into fall, when we haven’t even really had a summer! (I know, I know, so boring to complain about the weather but I can’t help it, I’m a sun-starved African living in the north).

With the lull over the summer coming to a close, it looks like it’s going to be a busy last few months of 2011. I’m going to be giving a seminar mid-September for SITE BC on Technical Report Writing. As described on their website,  “SITE BC (The Society of Internationally Trained Engineers of British Columbia) is an independent non- profit society founded in 2004 to represent the interests of British Columbia’s Internationally Trained Engineering community (ITEs).” I’m really looking forward to talking to their group about some of the fundamentals of writing technical reports.

I find when I talk to professionals in various industries, their complaint is the same: many people don’t know how to write or organise documents in a professional manner. Part of this issue that I have encountered is that of reader-unfriendly, jargon-loaded language and an overly formal tone. I will be addressing these issues, along with how to effectively  integrate graphics into a document, which I hope will be useful for the engineers.

Fall also promises more teaching, more writing projects (collaborating with my great graphic design partners at Spectramedia), as well as a workshop series with Dina Grskovich of DMG Strategy, so it’s going to be a busy one!

Watch this space for more details.

Geraldine

One of the challenges that we face living in a world of ever increasing information and “noise” is missing the mark when we try to communicate. You can craft a direct, focused, concise email and still get a reply that shows you the reader has not, in fact, actually read the whole email. You can use careful reader access techniques like lists and tables to highlight important information, and still you get a response that shows the person has not bothered to even glance at what you have provided.

So what do you do?

The Man in The Mirror

I’m reminded of the lyrics to the Michael Jackson song, Man in the Mirror:

“I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror

I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways

And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer

If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place….”

Perhaps what we need to do when communicating is look first at our own listening and reading skills. Do you pay careful attention to your emails, or do you skim through them? When someone is talking to you, are you really listening to them, or are you running through your To Do list in your head? If someone gives you instructions, are you already thinking about how you could do it better? Don’t be the game show contestant who gives the wrong answer because they’ve interrupted the host mid-question.

Listen carefully, read carefully, and check if you don’t understand. Ask questions, request clarification, and follow up to confirm that what you heard or read was correct.  If you have a lot of emails to get through, prioritise. Read the most important ones first, and before you respond, double check that you’ve read the whole thread and that you aren’t asking unnecessary questions. If you spend a few minutes reading and perhaps doing a bit of research, you show the reader that you care, that you can pay attention to detail, and that you want a mutually beneficial, positive result.

I’m convinced that the more we can practice our own listening and reading skills, the more we can improve our communication, and therefore command more thoughtful and careful responses from our audiences.

So… start with the (wo)man in the mirror, or rather, on the keyboard and monitor…

Geraldine

One of the exciting though sometimes frustrating aspects of language is how it is ever changing. As business, too, is shaped and changed by globalization, technology, flattened management structures, and an increasingly diverse workforce, so is how we communicate in that realm.

I came across an interesting article, via LinkedIn, about the top 10 things to ignore in career searches, including for interviews, resumes, and cover letters. I was interested (and pleased) to note that many of these items are exactly what I tell my students and my clients when talking about career packages. You can read the full article here. I’m especially please to see that the article warns against the Career Objective on the resume. It has always been a pet peeve of mine, because very few people do them correctly, and I feel that they waste valuable real estate on the resume.

I disagree somewhat with Point 9: “Your resume and cover letter [not] should be written in formal language.” While it is important to keep your tone friendly, and add your own personality, by avoiding formal language, you can err on the side of chatty, casual, slangy writing. I would suggest that you don’t try and sound overly formal by using big words that end up coming across as robotic or pompous, or that you fall into trite, cliche business language e.g. Please do not hesitate… Thank you in advance for…. Enclosed please find etc., but you do need to keep it professional and polished.

You need to remember that business is about relationships and if you hide behind jargon or cliches, then the audience will never get a sense of who you are, or feel invited to build a relationship with you, whether he or she is a prospective client or that elusive future employer.

Geraldine