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Email Basics: What Small Businesses Want to Know
Excerpted from Email Basics by Kristin J. Arnold
 
Email can be more efficient and effective method to communicate within a small business. Watch out for those who:
  • Continuously hover/work their email
  • Use email for everything
  • Hide behind email
  • Stir up trouble
  • Don’t comply with the “ground rules” for effective email.
 
Problem is, most companies (not just small businesses) haven’t set a policy for the effective use of email. We give them a great tool, but no training nor guidance.
 
Email Basics follows a “process structure” starting with some basic ground rules that can be discussed/agreed on as “company policy.”
 
  • Write your message
  • Edit your message
  • Attach a file
  • Address your message
  • Manage your inbox
 
Some additional key ideas:
 
  • Use a meaningful subject line
  • Tell the reader what you want clearly and succinctly
  • Keep a history of what’ being said (either through a message “thread” or by saving the emails…)
  • Limit attachments (especially if you are linked on a plain old telephone service (POTS)
  • Use a signature file – different ones for different occasions!
  • Always edit
  • Always check your spelling
 
 
 
 
     
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