Regular visitors to our website will have seen the new look, but if you haven't, this newsletter also reflects our new look - I encourage you to click on any of the links to the left of this newsletter to revisit our site.

Also - I know it's almost Christmas (and not Easter) but we have the cutest little bunny looking for a home.  He or she (I haven't looked) is around 7 or 8 weeks old - mum is a lop eared dwarf and dad is a dwarf with grey ears, nose and tail.  If anyone is interested, please do get in touch with me. We are in Cheltenham, Victoria.

This month I have two articles that relate to your business professionalism online.

Email is not SMS

i recv reely strang email at times, in sms typ. if i typed a letr like sms and sent it off it wd’nt b well recvd so wd y do th same in email? b4 sms came along i believe ppl took more care in typing.

Perhaps it’s an old school way of thinking but I much prefer my email to be typed properly – just as I would type any other document. Yes, I am a trained typist, and that may well account for the way I think but it really does annoy me when I see people who would otherwise be considered professionals, resorting to an SMS way of typing their email.

And being a trained typist even trying to type in that format is really difficult – it doesn’t come naturally so I hope my opening paragraph at least gave you some idea.

Doesn’t look very professional, does it? And yet I constantly receive email from people who resort to this type of communication. Resorting to all CAPS is another annoyance and a ‘no-no’ in email – online it’s recognised as shouting, but perhaps it’s because they get sick of switching the caps on and off, or perhaps they don’t understand the use of the shift key. However, I know of many two-fingered typists that tap out documents very adequately, at a speed of over 40wpm (40 words per minute to the uninitiated). My husband, an electronics engineer, is one of them and he is amongst many others like him at work. Not everyone has the luxury of having administrative support these days to do the typing for them – and considering that computers, and the internet are here to stay, I think that learning to type, or at least getting familiar with the keyboard, is a good thing to do.

There are courses you can do online, or by correspondence and you can pick up books in the shops, or via Amazon.com or eBay.com about keyboarding skills or keyboarding technology. For those who like the challenge, you can even do a typing test – try http://www.typingtest.com for example.

My biggest concern is for people who expect to make a living providing services to others where the use of email is prevalent in their approach to business. Email has put us on show 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but if you’re experienced at typing, it should come naturally anyway, and shouldn’t be an issue when preparing an email to send out. In fact I struggle with SMS on my phone and usually resort to logging into telstra.com and use the Webnotes there to send an SMS to my family or friends. I’m rarely far from my computer so that’s easier and quicker for me to do – rather than fumbling through the numbered keypad and entering something incorrectly and getting a befuddled message sent. It amazes me how quickly my daughters can SMS – all with the use of one thumb it seems!

I know some of you are probably laughing at the image of my fumbling with my mobile phone to tap out a message! May I encourage you all to think carefully before sending out an email to ensure it reflects you and your business, in the way that you would want it reflected.

Domain name or free account?

Many emails are sent to me by business people, and particularly business owners, using free email accounts such as hotmail, yahoo, and others. It surprises me that they haven’t purchased a domain name to use for email – even if they don’t want to have a website. “Why would I want to do that?” I am asked. Simple:

1. A domain name reflects your business name or your particular industry – why not use it as potential for telling people who you are and what you do?

2. Because of number one above, it helps people to remember your email address.

3. Using a free email account will often mean that you can’t have just your name, but often a variation of your name with numbers because there are already 345 people with your name using that free service too. Why not separate yourself from the crowd?

4. The cost of a domain is quite cheap these days: somewhere between $49 and $66AUD for a .com.au or .net.au or similar and $7.95USD for a .com, .net and similar. In fact, there’s recently been a $1.99 sale with GoDaddy.com – so why not take advantage of that?

5. A domain name email compared to a free account email is looked upon less suspiciously in the current climate of scams, spam, phishing, viruses and others that float around via internet. I know that when someone requests our services via our job request form using a yahoo or hotmail address I tend to be wary. And I’m not usually surprised when I respond to their email if it bounces – it almost makes me wonder should I have bothered?

6. If you do set up a website later on you don’t have to notify people of a new email address – you’ve been using the domain name all along.

7. If you change service providers or free email account services you don’t have to notify people of a new email address – you just get the new service to forward any email from those accounts to your domain address.

I hope the above will convince you to get your own domain address for your business or for business purposes. If you need help, just ask!

Must Read/Must See….

Books:
Keyboarding Technology by Gladys Lehmann.  Gladys was my typing teacher in South Australia during my high school days so I was delighted to come across this book sometime ago.  It is an ideal book for someone to practice their craft of typing and editing documents.  I have a hard cover copy and a soft cover copy for anyone who is interested.  Or, I'm sure if you do a search online you'll find other copies in bookstores as well.

Website:
Top 10 Web Design Mistakes for 2005 - The oldies continue to be goodies -- or rather, baddies -- in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005 by Jakob Nielsen

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