15 Ways to Communicate Better Online

Communicating via text is how many of us do our daily work. Whether it's by email, text, chat or social media we accept work, ask follow up questions, and provide goods that we get paid for often without ever speaking to one another. Over the years I've seen many good email etiquette guides. I'd like to add to some of the core concepts and expand them out to social media, chat and texting.

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1. Start with a direct and relevant subject line.  Some great examples are "Please proof and return to me", "Is the meeting still on for 2pm today?" or "Let me know if this is ready to go". Whatever it is that you want or need, put it right into the subject line when possible.
2. Use greetings and closings. Receiving a demanding message is made harder by the feeling of being barked at. Take a moment to add a "Hello", please and some kind of sign off like thank you. You'll get better, faster responses - especially in email.
3. Use short sentences. Your user might be on a tiny screen where a long sentence wraps making it hard to follow. Keep your ideas short and on the topic at hand.
4. Ask specific questions. This reduces wasted time in follow up emails.
5. Answer questions specifically. Re-read your message to make sure you've answered all of the questions that were sent.
6. Respond as soon as possible. If you need some research time send a brief reply to say that you're working on the full response. This cuts down on the Did-You-Get-My-Email? emails.
7. Edit. When we type we're often thinking through our answer. Take a moment to read your response and remove unnecessary words and asides so that your actual message is easy to find and understand.
8. Spelling and grammar count! Mobile devices have been around long enough that we're all familiar with their small keyboards. Asking people to pardon you because you're on a "smart phone" is just unprofessional. Take a moment to fix errors.
9. Never use all caps. As in email, all caps in texting and social media is experienced as yelling. Is that they way you want to come across?
10. Communicate Visually. Learn how to take and send screenshots and use them to illustrate your questions and ideas. You can send a screenshot of a problem you're seeing or a shot of a design you want to reference.
11. Beware of emoticons. Many of those cute tiny icons rely on the recipient being on the same system. If not, the smiley face you sent may come across as a random, odd character making it meaningless or even adding confusion.
12. Keep it short. Now more than ever this is a true gift to both your future self and your readers. When forwarding emails, delete irrelevant text and unneeded attachments and stick to the topics at hand.
13. Streamline your sig line. Most of the time we're communicating to people we already know so keep your signature line lean and mean - ideally to less than 100 characters including your phone number and social media links. This makes it much easier to follow email threads because you're not having to scroll down through meaningless, repeated text. If you have to include a legal disclaimer, make the text smaller to help the eye move past it when scrolling.
14. Acknowledge recipients who are cc'd. If you're sending a message to several people, start with a "Hello Bob and Ray".  That way Ray knows that Bob got the message even if he didn't notice Bob's email address on the cc line - which few people look at. It also helps to mitigate any perception of passive aggressive cc'ing.
15. Close with what you want. If you need an answer to a question and you sent a lengthy message, close with a reminder about your question such as "So, anyways, please do let me know about xyz when you have a chance, thanks!".

Those are just a few of my top-picks, I'm sure there are many more to add. Please let me know your ideas in the comments. Here's to our ever-evolving language with all it's richness and power - both online and off. ~ Ame Stanko, Pixel Lava Interactive

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