E-mail etiquette
July 24, 2008 by Maria G. Nozza |
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Thursday’s Management Tip for Graphic Designers
E-mail has just exploded in the last decade. Everyone does it, but not everyone does it well.
It’s always been interesting to me that the subject of e-mail manners or courtesy is another of those things that is frequently overlooked and never really dealt with.
You would think that since everyone’s doing it, that everyone would be sharing how to do “correctly”. Or at least, share some simple “rules” of conduct when emailing people.
Here’s my list (which can also be considered my pet peeves)
This list to me should be given to everyone once they get an e-mail address. I’ve got a much longer list, but I thought I’d give you the basics for now:
- Never write an e-mail if you are drunk or pissed off. You’ll write something you’ll regret and it always shows!
- Never write things that you’ll later regret or shared with others. Words come and go, but emails are forever and in writing. AND, they can be instantly sent off to a whole bunch of people.
- Don’t put the e-mail address into the To: field until you are finished. You may accidentally press send (or it somehow magically happens) before it’s ready for primetime. This way, it won’t get sent until the e-mail address is in the To: field.
- When e-mailing a group of people, their e-mail address should be in the BCC field. It’s an issue of privacy and some may not want their email spread around (or worse, become spammed by being placed on others lists inadvertently).
- The e-mail subject line should make sense and reflect the content in the e-mail! Nothing generic like “hi”. I get so much email, I’d like to see at a glance what the subject of it really is (the title “subject” in this case should not be considered a misnomer! It should really be the subject of the email!)
- Keep your e-mails short and to the point. No likes to read a loooooonnnnnnng email. If it can be said in 2 sentences, don’t take 10 to do it.
- Don’t clog inboxes with large attachments: Never clog up e-mails with huge attachments and use up the person’s allotted memory. Instead use services like YouSendIt and then send the link to the file.
- Multiple attachments: If you are sending way more than 1 attachment, Zip it!
- Don’t send “Read Notification Receipts”: It’s annoying and what’s the point? You’ll go back and tell the person, “but I know you read it!” It means they opened it, not necessarily read it.
- SPELL CHECK! It always looks bad and you never know who’s going to read it.
- Remove personal information (like phone numbers or cells) if you know that many people may get the e-mail.
- Always reply to e-mails! Believe me, the person sending them is expecting to hear back from you!!!
T A K E A W A Y S :
It’s about good manners. And with all the emails we get, these things should be no brainers!
This list (to me, at least) is about courtesy and being conscious of the fact that we get so many emails, these guidelines should be a necessity!
Promote new site content via your newsletter
May 5, 2008 by Maria G. Nozza |
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Monday’s Promotion Tip for Graphic Designers
There is a fine line between promotion and content when it comes to your newsletter. You need to strike a balance between the two.
Why shouldn’t you include site changes or new blog postings in the emails you mail out regarding your newsletter? There really is no reason you shouldn’t!
After all, it hardly matters how you choose to send your audience the newsletter. An email will always be used whether to email a link to an HTML newsletter page, send out a PDF, or copy the newsletter in the body of the email.
You can take the opportunity to talk about what’s been going on and changes that you have made on your site.
It also adds some dimensions and interest in your newsletter.
C O N C L U S I O N :
Your audience may not regularly check for changes on your site. It may be worth your while to send them emails alerting them to site changes or special blog postings.
The key is to be visible at all times and make it seem as if things are constantly evolving and growing in your company.
Graphic designers should be better writers
March 20, 2008 by Maria G. Nozza |
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Thursday’s Management Tip for Graphic Designers
There are 2 schools of thought on whether or not designers should be writers.
Some believe that the design speaks for itself and therefore you don’t need to know how to write. They’re designers, after all, not writers.
Others know that in order to effectively communicate and market their services, they’ll have to know how to write better.
Top reasons that designers should be writers:
- All your material will be in your own voice: Your personality will shine through your writing — especially if you have a blog.
- Builds familiarity: Since you are writing your own content and in your own voice, this will build your rapport with clients and helps establish you as a knowledgeable person.
- Professionalism: You want to sound and write like a professional at all times.
- Blogs, books, articles, and all your promotional items: If you plan on creating reports, tip sheets, articles, and such you will need to know how to write.
- Market yourself and your business better: No one knows your business and your goals than yourself.
- Everything is in the same voice: Your writing and when a client speaks to you should always jive.
- Brands you and sets you apart from the competition: Becoming known for your ability to write well, you can set yourself apart from your competition who don’t.
- You can make money with it! You can be the new breed of writer-designer we keep hearing about.
C O N C L U S I O N :
It’s a changing world! You can’t escape it! Everybody nowadays has to write. There’s no getting around that.
We email, we blog, write articles, create e-books, and we chat on forums. We are constantly writing.
I don’t care how good you are, if you can’t communicate that, you’ll always sound like an idiot.
If you want to be professional, it’s time to spruce up your writing!
Setting up your website
January 16, 2008 by Maria G. Nozza |
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Wednesday’s Production Tip for Graphic Designers
The website you see today is actually my third version of this website. I learned A LOT along the way about setting up a website that is tailor-made and uniquely me.
Fail to plan? Plan to fail
When I undertook the task of designing my site the biggest mistake I made was definitely lack of planning. I thought that I could just start designing: no plans and armed with some basic thumbnails: I would just make it up as I went along.
The result were two websites that did not reflect me. It also did not reflect the image I wanted for myself. I forgot to apply all the principles of branding that I had talked about in my branding book. The principles I talked about in there also apply to the web. I lost far more time designing ill-suited websites than if I had spent some time thinking and analyzing what I really needed in a website.
My step-by-step plan to website success:
So here are the steps I took in creating a website that’s working for me.
1. Planning
- What are the goals for my site?
- What do I hope to achieve with it?
- Who is my audience?
- What are the wants, needs and expectations of my audience?
- What makes my website different from other designers’ websites
- How much time do I plan to devote to the site to update it?
2. Content
- What pages do I need to include in my website?
- Will it be text heavy?
- What are some of the things I can offer?
- What navigation be using for the site?
3. Designing
- What type of site do I want?
- What look am I going for?
- Do I plan on using images? Or illustrations?
- What graphics file formats should I use?
- What about download times?
- What colors will I dominantly use?
- What type will be easiest to read on the screen?
- What do I want to navigation to look like?
Plan your success
I didn’t plan very much. I basically took the first idea, ran with it and then realized, it wasn’t the route I wanted to take.
I didn’t finalize who my audience was ultimately going to be. I changed direction twice. And when I say I changed direction, I mean it was on opposite ends of the spectrum. That meant redesigning my site 3 times when I could have been adding content…
C O N C L U S I O N :
It’s so important to hash it out. Focus on who you want your audience to be and what you want them to feel when they look at your site. One of my biggest pet peeves is going to a site and then a few months later, it’s got a complete redesign. It makes me feel like they haven’t got their act together or there was some uncertainty when they first started. I certainly don’t want to project that image with my audience.
You may not be an English major, but spell check!
December 19, 2007 by Maria G. Nozza |
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Today will be a short post. Something that I’ve noticed way too much lately.
Spelling mistakes
There are so many blogs out there. You should always use a spell checker.
I know, you are a designer not a writer. But, I think everything tells a story and having spelling mistakes looks unprofessional and as if you rushed it out.
After all, do you see big companies with websites that have spelling mistakes? They too can easily say “well, I sell a product, not my English services.“
