Each time you click “send,” the e-mail being delivered says a lot about you and your organization. Are you practicing appropriate e-mail etiquette, or are your e-mails conveying messages that are hurting your reputation and credibility as well as that of your organization?

More and more businesses are discovering the importance of establishing specific corporate guidelines regarding e-mail practices. There is an assumed informality surrounding e-mail usage, but e-mail is no different than any other form of business communication.

Your contacts form opinions about you and your business based on your e-mail communications and how you use technology. Improper e-mail usage can give someone the perception that you lack education, have limited experience with technology, or lack credibility.

Mastering your e-mail skills can go a long way toward forging the most professional image you can with potential clients, existing customers, and anyone else you communicate with via e-mail.

What do your emails say about you and your organization?

Many managers feel like they are walking a tightrope in the current recession. On the outside, they try to inspire confidence in their team that they will survive yet they worry that making a serious misstep will spell doom, further shaking the confidence of an already jittery workforce.

In times like these, when the business outlook is highly unpredictable, it’s easy to make a mistake when leading your team according to Robert Hosking in a recent Talent Management Perspective. He looks at some of the most common pitfalls managers make in an uncertain economy, along with tips to avoid them:

Thinking your staff can’t handle the truth. If your company is facing unprecedented challenges, communicate them to employees. They’ll feel like they have some measure of control over the situation and may even be able to offer advice for solving problems.
Don’t just let memos and e-mails do all the talking for you, though. Interact regularly with employees in person. That way, you can solicit feedback from every team member.

Feeling people are lucky just to have a job. It’s probably true that many of your employees feel fortunate to have a stable position right now. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore staff members’ needs for positive recognition and career support. Top performers, in particular, need extra attention.

Eliminating incentives. Tight budgets shouldn’t cause you to cancel all rewards. Low-cost and no-cost incentives can have a big impact on staff morale. Recognition is especially important if you expect your employees to take on additional responsibilities or heavier workloads. Be sure to give frequent, timely and specific praise so workers can see you are paying close attention to their individual contributions and not just doling out blanket praise.

Trimming training. Professional development initiatives often are the first to go when budgets are lean but think about it: Enhancing your team members’ skills can pay off in the short and long term.

In today’s economy, you must be the coach who inspires the team, communicating, and giving praise and encouragement. What are you doing to inspire your team?

While no one is “irreplaceable”, Dr. Lawrence Shatkin has come up with six tips to weight the odds in your favor when it comes to keeping your job:

1. Focus on your employer’s core mission. Every business has a central function that is the key to its success - while you may be tempted to serve a peripheral function because it is interesting, perhaps even pioneering. Beware of getting out of the mainstream of your employer’s business; when times are hard, the company is likely to lay off the business units that do not serve its core mission.

2. Keep your skills up to date. It is your responsibility, not your employer’s, to identify the skills you need and to make sure you get the necessary training: join a professional association and check out blogs and trade publications that cover your industry.

3. Be highly productive. Your improved skills will help you turn out work that is of better quality and quantity – work smarter, not necessarily longer.

4. Be visible. It helps for your employer to know who you are and what great work you’re doing. Consider starting a newsletter, bulletin board, blog, or Twitter feed about your current project.

5. Acquire a mentor. Find someone who is knowledgeable about the business. Be helpful to this person and ask a lot of very specific questions, especially about how to improve your work. Be sure to give public recognition to the mentor for the advice you get.

6. Be pleasant. Being abrasive may make you stand out, but for the wrong reasons. Even though performance appraisals attempt to reduce job performance to hard, measurable facts, things people say about you informally still have a huge impact on your employer’s perceptions of you.

What are you doing to make yourself “irreplaceable”?

There was a very interesting post on DoshDosh this week with regard to the Twitter announcement that all Twitter users are only allowed to follow a maximum of 1000 people a day. This rule was designed to cut down on ‘follow spam’, the act of following many Twitter users in order to get them to follow you back or click on your links.

The question being raised was “do you really need a large number of followers to promote yourself successfully on Twitter?” The conclusion was no. The reasons for coming to this conclusion include:

Low-Value Followers: Automatons, Spammers and Self-Promoters - It’s not about the follower count, its about conversions. A carefully cultivated list of 1000 followers can beat a list of 10,000 twitter followers anytime when it comes to spreading content or getting traffic/sales.

Twitter Marketing is More Than Just Getting Followers - The most important thing you should remember: It’s not about the number of Twitter followers you have, its about who follows you and the responsiveness of your audience.

Responsiveness of Your Audience: Are They Engaged? - You want a responsive group of followers. People who are genuinely interested in you and people who will click on your links, retweet you or respond to your queries. Ultimately this group of Twitter followers can help you popularize your website or grow your business.

Do you judge your Twitter success by the number of followers? I would recommend that you check out the entire article.

A word of caution to job seekers - you should be very careful what you say and post online.  Four out of five recruiters regularly run web searches to screen job applicants.  Potential employers and colleges may find your online profile and make judgment calls based on what they discover.  With all of the innovative websites popping up it’s getting easier than ever to screen students and candidates online.

A recruitment company ran a simple online Twitter search and easily found hundreds of examples of things people have said that could either get them fired or prevent them from being offered a job in the future. Here is a small sample (you can’t make up stuff like this):
• Tweet about failing your random drug test
• Tell everyone how much you hate your boss
• Ask your followers which disease you should fake to get off work early
• Admit to lying on your job application or resume
• Share that you got fired on your very first day at a new job

There is another side of the coin if you like to live on the edge. One employer did hire a candidate even after he checked out the candidate’s Facebook page and saw a picture of him at a party dressed in a bra and tutu. When it came up an interview the candidate handled it very well and eventually was hired.

So be careful what you post online, the technology to carry searches is in social media like Facebook and Twitter is getting more efficient. On the other hand some of the posts make for interesting interview discussion as long as you are prepared.

What’s in your Twitter?

A new study from a US consulting group reports some 81 percent of talent managers surveyed said in 2009 they would focus on developing talent and 76 percent said they would work on retaining talent, while nearly half of respondents cited building or maintaining organizational culture and values as a key priority this year.

“Employers today are going to be doing more with less, so they need to make sure they’re developing and retaining people so they can emerge stronger,” explained a senior partner of the group.

“What’s really particularly interesting about that is the whole area of culture,” she said. “Culture and values are often key to the success of the company — how they market themselves, how they do business, how they attract employees. It gets very rocked and unsteady during downsizing or restructuring. It’s sort of like the foundation of a house being compromised.”

Companies that are downsizing or restructuring should reinforce their cultures by maintaining core programs and values. Talent managers should ask themselves what their companies’ core values are — social responsibility, leadership or communication, for example — and make sure they continue to invest in those areas.

“If a value is that you develop your leaders and then you cut your leadership development program — never to be seen again — it doesn’t help people to trust that the old culture is still there, underneath the rubble.”

What are you talent management priorities for the coming year? What are you doing to retain and develop talent?

Using social networks to build a personal brand is a popular topic on blogs and it is also the subject of research at Wharton School of Business.

According to Jonah Berger, Wharton marketing professor, using social networking sites or a new media endeavor such as blogging can be especially useful for workers looking to reshape their career into a new kind of profile. “People will begin to see you in that role,” Berger says. “By creating these links outside of your organization, you can change your meaning to [others].”

Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, has spent several years studying self-marketing for financial services professionals.

“In these times, people need to differentiate themselves,” notes Bradlow. He believes it is critical for a worker in the financial sector — especially those who are sole practitioners or run a small business — to develop a brand identity to convince would-be clients to choose them over a large field of rivals.

He advises business people to come up with three simple words to define a personal brand — words that could describe a specialized skill set or simply community involvement. This is good advice for anyone building a personal brand.

LinkedIn is by far and away the most popular business-oriented social network — with more than 35 million registered users scattered across more than 170 industries — but it is just one of a growing number of sites. Others include Ning, which allows specific businesses to create their own social networks of clients, employees and interested parties; Ryze, which allows organizers to better organize contact lists and schedules; and Xing, which aims to connect business people with experts or potential customers.

Read the entire article. What are you doing to build your personal brand?

There is a lot of information out there about what to do if you want to use social media to get your message out.  Eric Brantner of SEOHosting points out that there are things that you ought not to do and warns that mistakes resulting from inexperience can undermine the ultimate goals of the social media campaign:

Not Listening—Social media is about having a conversation. A conversation requires 2 or more people interacting with one another. In other words, you can’t just be broadcasting one way messages and expect social media success. You have to take the time to listen to what others have to say.

Submitting Everything Yourself—This mistake is common among social media “newbies” Do not submit every blog post you write to Digg, Reddit, Mixx, etc. Submitting your own content gives you virtually no chance of gaining any traction on these social media sites. You have to spend the time to build relationships so that others will submit your content and help you promote it.

Helping Only Yourself—Of course, if you want others to submit your content and help you promote it, you have to do the same for them.You have to give if you want to receive. Help promote content that you genuinely feel is good. This is how you’ll truly add value to the community.

Being Too Corporate—If you’re thinking about socializing your company, you need to be prepared to loosen that necktie and expose a new side of yourself. Don’t fall into the trap of having the boring corporate blog and Twitter account that talks about internal company matters that no one cares about. Instead, offer your unique insights and showcase your personality.

Trying to Control Everything—Reputation management is an important part of any social media strategy, but be careful not to take this overboard i.e.don’t reply to every negative comment on your blog or about your company. Remember, social media is about participation, and it’s based on the idea that everyone has a say. Don’t try to control the conversation.

Which mistakes would you add to this list?

Kevin Wheeler keeps an eye on trends, new ways of doing things, or emerging practices that are changing, or at least influencing, the way we attract and hire talent and he shared his observations in a recent post on ere.net:

Simplicity in Sourcing - The first of the emerging trends is a turn to simpler and more basic ways to find talent. With a rise in applicants, many organizations are finding it less necessary to engage in complex sourcing strategies. They can focus, instead, on building their employment brand, often by using Facebook or some other social networking tool. They are also screening existing candidates better and are more focused on building a talent pool or community that can be tapped into as needed. All of this has reduced the need for in-depth Internet search and it has also lowered the need to post to job boards.

Social Networks - We are seeing the power of social networking in recruiting growing faster than any other segment. Candidates are able to substitute their social networking profile for a resume at some organizations. No need for a resume or to fill out anything. Social networks will become the ultimate sourcing and screening tools.

Internal Redeployment - Smart organizations prevent the needless loss of talent by developing barrier-free internal transfer polices, by shifting talent and skills as jobs change, and by operating development and coaching programs to help employees successfully bridge skill and experience gaps.

They are also beginning to practice sustainable talent management — sizing the workforce for sustainability through good and bad times — and filling peak needs with temporary and contract staff. This means development is continuous, internal movement common and often, and that a goal is for every employee to be able to function well in three or four different positions.

The natural result of this will be more focus on employee development, the rise of learning portals with relevant information and on-line training classes; the capturing of the knowledge of experienced employees on videos (using storytelling, talking about how projects were completed and barriers overcome, and by sharing technical knowledge that might be useful to those who follow); and connections to coaches and experts willing to answer questions or provide skill training.

What do you see as emerging trends and practices?

In today’s economy, it’s more important than ever to differentiate your company from the other guys. When you and a rival are neck and neck in pursuit of a prospect, sometimes a small personal touch can tip the balance by convincing the potential client that you’ll be more pleasant to do business with.

One such small touch is to send out thank-you cards. Although they seem trivial, they can give you an edge if the competition isn’t also sending them. An article in Canadian Business Online sales reps to send three to five thank-you cards per week. There are a number of reasons to do so, including:

• After an initial face-to-face meeting or sales call: Tell your prospect you enjoyed meeting her and learning more about her specific goals or business. Then add that you’re looking forward to working with her in the future.

• After a client has agreed to do business with you: Sending him a card after he has signed a contract or reached a verbal agreement with you will reinforce his decision and reduce the odds of buyer’s remorse.

• When someone sends you a referral: This is one occasion when it’s critical to extend your thanks.

• When a client provides a testimonial or endorsement: If she has taken the time and effort to write an endorsement, you should take the time to thank her. This will confirm that her decision to help you was a wise one.

• When a prospect declines to buy your product or service: Sending a thank-you card for having considered your offering demonstrates a high level of professionalism. It’s very rare for salespeople to do this, so this is one way for your reps to really stand out. And it might impress the prospect enough to mention your classy gesture to other potential buyers—or to consider buying from you himself in the future.

What are you doing to differentiate yourself?