Be thoughtful when e-mailing to communicate

[SBDCNet]

Electronic mail occupies (some may even say "invades") conversations in most everyone's lives today. Given the invasive species, you really want to be thoughtful about how you play the game.

Relationship: With each message, look for a reason to enhance your relationship with the person to whom you are "talking." Punctuation is important — do you care enough to be professional? Greetings and closing are important — would you walk up without saying, "hello"; would you walk away with saying, "goodbye"? Do you show that you respect their time? Do you convey appreciation for asking for their time?

Be brief: Messages should be concise and to the point. Honor their time by being brief and clear. The danger in brevity is being too brusque (remember the relationship). Get to the point and don't make them read volumes to understand what you are asking/telling/communicating. Think of it as a telephone conversation.

Make your point: Think in terms of the reader. Have you told them the purpose of the e-mail and what (if anything) you would need from them? Is your message complete? Read it carefully; often we send without proofreading and simply start a chain that did not need to happen. Did you answer questions you might have raised?

Next step: If there is an action required — let them know at the beginning. And by when? Do you need confirmation that the e-mail was received? Ask for it. Do you need something? If so, what by when? If it is an FYI, tell them so.

Threads: Once you send that first e-mail, you will probably get a response. If you want to reply to that response, what should you do? The wrong thing to do is to start a new e-mail message. This breaks the link (called a "thread") between the original message and your soon-to-be-created response. Without the link, it can get difficult for the users on each end to follow the sequence of messages, especially after several exchanges.

Forward: If you are sending unrequested "forwards" without comment, stop. Be genuinely thoughtful by being selective about what you forward and to whom.

Privacy: Whenever you are sending to a group, put your email address in the To: field and everyone else's in the Bcc: field and protect their e-mail addresses from unnecessary exposure.

Stop: If it takes more than three e-mails to get the job done — pick up the telephone.

Jimmie Wilkins is the director of the Chemeketa Small Business Development Center. The Small-Business Adviser column is produced by the center and appears each Sunday. Questions can be faxed to [phone], e-mailed to [e-mail] or phoned in to [phone].