Electronic Communication

Electronic Communication

1. Pages 572 to 590 and 'Social media'

2. Emerging economies are quickly adopting digital and electronic communication to develop business advantage. Corporations are seeking to maximise any advantage in a global communication sphere, and the development of technologies has advanced the potential to relocate different elements of an organisation to different countries.

3. Social Media

   • Social media is based on the dynamic of a many-to-many communication model. It involves the building of communities or networks, encouraging participation and engagement.
   • As one of the largest social networking sites in the social media universe, Facebook boasted more than 750 million people actively using its service.1 If it hasn’t already, Facebook will soon grow twice as large as the population of the United States, which currently hovers at 311 million.
   • With Twitter, anyone can send a short message of 140 characters -- called a “tweet”
   • England’s Queen Elizabeth II, already with a Twitter account, added a Facebook page last year to complement her YouTube channel, Flickr account, and website.
   • “Social media” actually refers to a growing galaxy of sites that includes: personal and business blogs, news sites with interactive or comment features, group forums, wikis, social and business networking sites, online community sites, social bookmarking sites, microblogging sites, and gaming as well as virtual world sites.
   • When prospects grow to “know, like, and trust” a company, through interacting with their represen- tatives on social networking sites, they are much more likely to do business with that company.
   • most large or medium-size companies are perceived by the public as relatively “faceless,” social networking gives companies the opportunity to present a human face in the form of a social media spokesperson
   • there is something else that social networking sites offer a business that no other form of public interface does: the ability to monitor public perception of its brand, products, and services in real time.
   • Social media risks
     • Reputational - The reputational risks of social media can easily equal or exceed the reputational benefits, for one simple reason. The vast reach of social media plat- forms offer not only a vast frontier of promotional opportunity, but a vast uncharted “sinkhole” of risk. General “bad behavior” by employees, or the posting of embarrassing information, has the potential to reflect poorly on the company.
     • Legal - The legal risks associated with social media should be carefully considered prior to engaging in a social media strategy. The main risks include: employment, privacy, security, intellectual property and media risks. Seventy percent of recruiters and hiring managers in the United States have rejected an applicant based on information they found online. In total, nearly one in five companies has disciplined or fired an employee for social media misdeeds.
     • Operational - When employees access social media platforms at work -- even those employees who are designated as social media spokespersons for the organization -- they risk endangering the organization’s networked computers by unknowingly acquiring malware, viruses, and spyware. “More than six out of 10 organizations have already suffered losses averaging $2 million, for a collective loss of more than $1.1 billion in security related incidents last year [2009].
     • Five Basic Steps for Addressing Your Company’s Social Media Risks: 1. Conduct a broad assessment of its general social media activities, looking for potential risks. 2. Identify the key players who will be responsible for developing, executing, and monitoring its social media strategy. 3. Draft a simple but comprehensive social media policy or set of guidelines tuned to the company, its customers, and its industry (even if a company decides to grant “official” social media access solely to designated spokespersons, separate guidelines are still needed for employees using social media when they’re not at work.) 4. Formally address the risks of social media participation with company employees. 5. Create a social media agreement that employees review and sign annually (as a condition of continued employment, and as part of their employment contract).
     • Guidelines for Companies Wishing to Avoid Legal Action: 1) Engage the Proper Legal Team Early in the Process. 2) Identify the Laws and Legal Risks That May Apply. 3) Comply with Third-Party Sites’ Guidelines. 4) Site Monitoring. 5) Create a Response Team.

4. "Avoid using text inside images whenever possible. Text in images is invisible to search engine spiders and to visitors who may have images turned off in their browsers or who use assistive technologies like screen readers.

5. Website functions - provision of factual information about products and services; advertising with persuasive information to attract customers; supporting transactions that enable customers to select and order products; conducting business-to-business transactions; entertaining through animations, videos and games; communicating and interacting through Twitter, chats, SMS and other social media tools; increasing public awareness of and support for the organisation’s social, economic and community- based activities.

6. "The primary function of online writing is to communicate clearly and concisely. "Organisations adopt a standard web style for the content they place online for two primary reasons: (1) professional consistency; and (2) aesthetic appeal.

7. Hypertext - "The hyperlinks provide the audience with the opportunity to immediately access—and perhaps be side-tracked from your message—a variety of related or supporting information. High-quality graphics, good writing and use of outbound hypertext links increase the usability and credibility of a website. Links to other sites show that the writer has done their research and is comfortable referring users to other sites.

8. "Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of directing more visitors towards a website or web page. By including in the website content keywords and phrases related to the topic, the writer improves the website’s search engine ranking and thus the chances that people will find the website.

   • Tips for SEO: encouraging links from other sites; improving marketing and measurement of audience engagement with the site; paying search engines to ensure high rankings; displaying web addresses on brochures and other handouts to expand awareness of the site.

9. "Web 2.0 (the second generation of the Internet) provides those surfing the Web with the opportunity to provide content and interact with sites and each other.

10. "Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Del.icio.us and CiteULike are websites where users can save their favourite sites and view the favourite sites of other users. "Social bookmarking sites indicate the creator of each bookmark and allow the person searching to access other resources bookmarked by the creator and follow any future tags. The sites also allow users to see how many people have used a specific tag and to search for all resources that have been assigned to that tag.

11. "Mosaic form is a non- linear approach to the design of information facilitated by hyperlinks that enable navigation around and between web pages..

12. "An effective website navigation system: n is consistent throughout the website to enable visitors to learn through repetition how to get around the website n keeps the main navigation links together and requires minimal clicking for visitors to get where they want to go n is created at the website planning stage to ensure consistent overall design of the web page layout, enhance how the text looks on the screen and reduce page clutter.

    • "It is important to keep links in web documents current to avoid link rot or broken links that irritate the reader. If links are not kept current, instead of getting what they want, readers receive a 404 or ‘page not found’ error message. Severe irritation is often the consequence. Web developers should use an HTML validator and link checker to check older pages for broken links.

13. "Audiences using the Internet tend to “satisfice”: they find a vaguely relevant piece of information and stop there, rather than look further for the most relevant piece of information.’ Research conducted by Nielsen (2008b) supports these findings: ‘On the average web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.’

14. "With reading online, the reader may choose to either read from top left to right horizontally, working their way line-by-line down the digital screen, or to simply scan the initial viewable area (above the page fold) for significant information. Generally, web users are more likely to skim and scan than to read extended blocks of text line-by-line. Research conducted by Nielsen (2010) found that ‘Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.

15. "Structure: the inverted pyramid order of information - " the most relevant information should be above the page fold, with the most important information sited upfront to catch the audience’s interest and desire to read further. One way that writers can do this is to use inverted pyramid writing, which communicates the primary or main point first, followed by secondary points in decreasing order of importance.

16. "Writing for the web requires familiar, unambiguous language that moves straight to the point and is easy to understand. Long phrases, redundan- cies and fillers are difficult to understand. "Web writers should use a plain English writing style as well as half the word count (or less) of conventional writing to enable users to comprehend the message quickly as they scan and scroll down the page.Sentences should be limited to one idea and contain on average 15–20 words. Instead of burying the meaning in the passive voice use the active voice to show who or what took the action. Jargon and technical terms should be avoided unless the reader is a technical expert.

17. "Keywords highlighted by hypertext links, typeface variations and colour make a page easier to scan. Place the keywords in the headers and body of the text. The keywords should appear natural and flow with the text so as not to seem out of place.

18. "Optimise an image for the Web by cropping the image as tightly as possible to remove extraneous background and help define the subject without losing clarity and meaning. Using individual images no larger than 12 KB is a useful guideline.

19. "The purpose of callouts is to supplement and clarify the meaning of an image rather than distracting the user or cluttering the page. Effective callouts: "are as minimal as possible and appear in the visual background; keep the width of lines from the callout to a graphic or text narrow to avoid drawing too much attention to the line; maintain adequate white space between each callout utilise a soft colour, such as light black or grey, to reduce attention on the lines; avoid heavy design and background shading that draws attention to the callout at the expense of the graphic.

20. Easy to scan (see page 581)

21. "Credibility (who is behind the information on a web page and whether that information can be trusted) is important because web users seek credible sites with current information from easily identifiable sources.

    • Guidelines for building credibility:"1) Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. 2) Show that there is a real organisation behind your site. 3) Highlight the expertise in your organisation and in the content and services you provide. 4) Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. 5) Make it easy to contact you. 6) Design your site so that it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). 7) Make your site easy to use—and useful. 8) Update your site’s content often (or at least show that it has been reviewed recently). 9) Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g. ads, offers). 10) Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.
    • "privacy policies on credible websites are easy to find, are written in plain English and clearly disclose: how data collected from the site will be used; how personal data including name, address, phone number and credit card number from site customers will be used; how to obtain additional information about, or changes to, privacy policies; an easy opt-out from further contact or marketing from the organisation; whether browser-tracking mechanisms such as ‘cookies’ and other technologies including web beacons, bugs and robots are used on the site.
    • "The Australian government’s Information Management Office identifies common utility navigation elements that must be incorporated into all Australian government websites. These are: Home, About, Contact Us and Search. Government websites must also display a range of legal statements as part of their accountability and governance structure. These include a Privacy Statement, a Copyright Notice and a Disclaimer. An Accessibility Notice may also be included.

22. Blogs

    • "A blog (an abbreviation of weblog) is a website containing dated written entries from many contributors on a specific topic in reverse chronological order that can be combined with music, audio, photographs and video. "blogs comprise 15% of the global sources used regularly to access information.
    • "Successful blogs have a clearly defined scope, are well planned, use an inverted pyramid order of information, are written in a conversational style, are formatted to enhance scanning and use modes of presentation appropriate to their purpose and audience. "Keep the writing short and include features such as topic headers, subheadings, bulleted lists, hyperlinks and site search functions to enable your audience to scan and find the most relevant point(s) quickly.
    • "A blogroll is a list of links to other relevant blogs recommended by the blog’s author. "nother way to increase conversations among bloggers is the ‘pingback’ or ‘trackback’ feature. Trackback enables a blog author to inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own article.
    • "Netiquette requires you to make contact with the web manager or other contact person before linking to a site. This is usually done by email in order to provide a written record of the request and the response. Those requesting links often offer a reciprocal link.