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Nov 26, 2009

Save e-mail for low-energy periods

Boost your productivity: Do high-yield activities while your energy is highest and save e-mail for low-energy periods. It is the main idea from Marsha Egan's article published on WomenEntrepreneur.com.

We can all point to specific periods of the day when we have great energy; times when we feel sharpest or are most productive. You might feel most productive in the morning--or you might be a night owl who does your best work after dark.

Studies have verified that our bodies behave in biochemical, physiological and behavioral cycles called circadian rhythms. "Circadia," literally translated from the Latin, means "around the day."

So if our bodies work in cycles, how can we make the best of them, rather than ignore or fight them? The challenge is to harness those windows of time to do and be our best. This is where self-knowledge becomes our greatest ally. The key to managing ourselves, our work and our lives is to truly know our style and understand what works for us, our strengths and our work cycles.

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Nov 19, 2009

Social networking has crept into the enterprise with little oversight

Beyond labor productivity...

(Excerpt from article by Forbes.com)

If the multibillion-dollar e-mail security industry has been built to prevent information from seeping out through personal communication, how is social networking in the workplace still going unchecked?

After all, consumer social apps such as Facebook and Twitter provide the same information-leakage threat as unsecured, personal e-mail--possibly more, thanks to the viral impact of broadcasting news tidbits to one's network of friends in real-time.

This question of enterprise social networking security has played out repeatedly in recent months as I watch Facebook and Twitter cross the digital divide from personal to business communications tools.

For the most part, social networking has crept into the workplace with very little oversight by IT because people are gradually--and often stealthily--discovering a second purpose (business) for their personal accounts.

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Nov 15, 2009

Brief essay about personal marketing through e-mail

How e-mail affect your personal image and reputation?

So, If you want to improve your chances for professional growth, you need to be more aware of the importance of your permanent marketing as an individual.

The same marketing techniques companies use to create a commercial brand, so consumers perceive it in a positive light and prefer it, can be used by professionals when they look for a job or in their work experience:

Nov 6, 2009

Email signature etiquette

(Fragment of article by Shelly Palmer)

Almost every email program lets you automatically add a signature to the emails you send. I'm sure you seen all kinds of interesting ones: flowery ones, very dense ones, and the horrifying and aesthetically offensive ones. What should yours look like? Here are a few simple guidelines:

First, every single email you send should have a signature. It should be plain text, so that it will look the same no matter what device or software is used to read it. When I say plain text, I mean just type (for geeks, ASCII text), no pictures, no logos, no html code, nothing but text.

Why? More than half the corporate world uses BlackBerrys to communicate. Depending on the vintage, they handle HTML over a wide range from, very poorly to marginally poorly.

The operating word here is "poorly," so why set up a signature that's guaranteed to torture a large number of corporate users. Overly ornate signatures will produce highly unexpected, and possibly unreadable, results on a BlackBerry.

This is also true for the body copy of the email. Tabs, bullets, any kind of alignment is all thrown out the window and HTML looks like jumbled computer code when it is displayed as text.

Another, and possibly more important, reason to use plain text is the wide range of spam filters that are currently deployed. Many of these filters look at the ratio of text to graphics as a test.

If you're email is already in HTML format, a logo or a combination of logo and your picture may kick you email into the corporate trash.

Like I said, signatures should be simple, complete and be in plain text.

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