PROFESSIONAL

COMMUNICATION IN A DIGITAL,
SOCIAL, MOBILE WORLD
Chapter 1
 Chapter 1 Outline
◻ Understanding Why Communication Matters
◻ Communication is Important to your Career
◻ What Makes Business Communication Effective?
◻ The Basic Communication Model
◻ Understanding What Employers Expect From You
◻ Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
◻ Inside the Mind of Your Audience
◻ How Mobile Technologies are Changing Business
Communication
◻ Using Technology to Enhance Business Communication
◻ Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
 Understanding Why Communication Matters

◻ Communication is the process of transferring

information and meaning between senders and
receivers, using one or more written, oral, visual,
or electronic media.
◻ The heart of communication is sharing—
providing data, information, insights, and
inspiration in an exchange that benefits both you
and the people that you are communicating with.
 Communication is Important to your Career

◻ You can have the best ideas in the world, but they
are no good to your company or your career if you
can’t express them clearly and persuasively.
◻ Improving your communications skills may be the
single most important step you take in your career.
◻ If you learn to write well, speak well, listen well,
and recognize the right way to communicate in any
situation, you will gain a big advantage that will
serve you throughout your career.
What Makes Business Communication Effective?

◻ Effective communication enhances the connection

between a company and all of its stakeholders—
those groups affected in some way by the
company’s action.
◻ To make your communication as effective as
possible, focus on making them practical, factual,
concise, clear, persuasive.
What Makes Business Communication Effective?

◻ 1) Provide practical information: Give recipients

useful information that will help them perform a
desired action or understand a new company
policy.
◻ 2) Give facts rather than vague impressions: Use
concrete language, specific details, and information
that is clear, convincing, accurate, and ethical.
◻ Even when an opinion is called for, present
powerful evidence to support your conclusion.
What Makes Business Communication Effective?

◻ 3) Present information is a concise, efficient

manner: Concise message show respect for
people’s time, and they increase the chances of a
positive response.
◻ 4) Clarify expectations and responsibilities:
Create messages that will trigger a specific
response from a specific audience.
◻ When needed, clearly state what you expect from
audience members or what you can do for them.
 What Makes Business Communication Effective

◻ 5) Offer compelling, persuasive arguments and

recommendations: Show you readers exactly how
they will benefit by responding the way you want
them to respond to your message.
 The Basic
Communication Model

Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 1 - 9

 The Basic Communication Model
◻ By viewing the communication as a process, you can find
ways to improve the skills you need to be more successful.
◻ The eight steps in the communication process are:
◻ 1) The sender has an idea: Whether a communication
effort will be effective starts here and relies on the nature
of the idea and the motivation for sending it.
◻ For example: if your motivation is to offer a solution to a
problem, there is a better chance in creating a meaningful
message than if your motivation is simply to complain.
 The Basic Communication Model
◻ 2) The sender encodes the idea as a message: When a
person puts the idea into a message ( which you can think
of as a “container” for the idea)—he or she is encoding
the message or expressing it in words or images.
◻ 3) The sender produces the message in a transmittable
medium: With the right message to convey an idea, the
sender needs a communication medium (the form a
message takes) to present the message to the target
audience.
◻ Examples: face-to-face, written (email message, SMS,
social media).
 The Basic Communication Model
◻ 4) The sender transmits the message through a
channel: Communications channel (is the system
used to deliver the message).
◻ Examples: Internet, television, radio, mobile,
magazine.
◻ 5) The audience receives the message: If the channel
functions well, the message reaches the intended
audience.
◻ The fact that the message has arrived does not mean
the message will be noticed or understood correctly.
 The Basic Communication Model
◻ 6) The audience decodes the message: After the message is
received, the receiver has to understand the message which is
called decoding.
◻ 7) The audience responds to the message: By developing
messages in ways that show the benefits of responding, the
sender increases the odds that the receiver will respond positively.
◻ 8) The audience gives feedback to the sender: Besides
responding or not responding, audience members may give
feedback that helps the sender evaluate the effectiveness of the
communication effort.
◻ Feedback can be verbal (using written or spoken words) or
nonverbal (using gestures, facial expressions or other signals).
9. Noise is made up of anything that distorts or
disrupts a message, including marketing
communications.

• It might happen at any stage in the communication

process.

• Clutter is still the most common form of noise

affecting marketing communications.
Understanding What Employers Expect From You

◻ Today’s employers expect you to be skilled at a wide range

of communication tasks such as:
◻ 1) Possessing digital information fluency: being able to
recognize information needs, finding efficient methods to
find reliable information especially from online, and
gathering the information ethically.
◻ 2) Organizing ideas and information logically and
completely.
◻ 3) Expressing ideas and information coherently and
persuasively
◻ 4) Actively listening to others
Understanding What Employers Expect From You

◻ 5) Communicating effectively with people from

different backgrounds and experience.
◻ 6) Using communication technologies effectively and
efficiently.
◻ 7) Following accepted standards of grammar, spelling,
and other features of high-quality writing and speaking
◻ 8) Communicating in a civilized manner.
◻ 9) Communicating ethically
◻ 10) Managing time and resources wisely
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

◻ An audience-centered approach requires

understanding and respecting the members of your
audience and meeting their needs.
◻ The approach is also called the ”you” attitude in
contrast to messages about “me”.
◻ When using this approach, the sender should learn
about the education, age, status, style, and personal
and professional concerns of the receivers.
◻ For individuals that you do not know, you should use
common sense and imagination.
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

◻ The ability to relate to needs of others is a

important part of emotional intelligence which is a
critical to being a successful leader and manager.
◻ The more you know about the people that you are
communicating with, the easier it will be to focus
on their needs and make it easier for them to hear
to hear your message, understand it, and respond
positively.
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

◻ A key part of the audience-centered communication is

etiquette, which is the expected norms of behavior in any
specific situation.
◻ The way you conduct yourself and interact with others
can have a major influence on your company’s success
and your career.
◻ When a company hires you and promotes you, they
expect your behavior to protect the company’s reputation.
◻ The more that you understand business etiquette, the
better the chance that you will avoid career-damaging
mistakes.
 Inside the Mind of Your Audience
◻ The following are some methods to get your
message noticed by your audience:
◻ 1) Consider audience expectations: You should
deliver messages using media and channels that the
audience expects.
◻ For example: If your coworkers expect to
meetings to be delivered by email, don’t suddenly
start sending messages via blogs postings, without
telling anyone
 Inside the Mind of Your Audience
◻ 2) Ensure ease of use: If your audience are actively
looking for your messages, they most likely won’t
see the messages.
◻ Do not make your messages hard to find, navigate,
or read.
◻ 3) Focus on familiarity: Use words, images, and
designs that are familiar to your audience.
◻ For example: Most visitors to company websites
expect to see information about the company on a
page called “About” or “About Us.”
 Inside the Mind of Your Audience
◻ 4) Practice empathy: Ensure that your messages speak to the
audience by clearing focusing on their wants and needs not
yours.
◻ People are more likely to notice messages that relate to their
concerns and needs.
◻ 5) Design for compatibility: For the messages that are
delivered electronically, be sure to that the message you are
sending is technologically compatible with your audience.
◻ For example: If your website requires visitors to have a
specific video capability in their browsers, you will not be able
to reach the audience members who do not have that software
installed or updated.
 How Mobile Technologies are Changing Business
Communication

◻ The following are some ways mobile technology is

changing the practice of business communication:
◻ 1) Constant connectivity is a mixed blessing: Mobile
connectivity can blur the boundaries between personal
and professional time.
◻ On one hand, mobile connectivity can stop people from
fully disengaging from work during family and personal
time.
◻ On the other hand, mobile connectivity can give
employees more flexibility to meet their personal and
professional needs.
 How Mobile Technologies are Changing Business
Communication

◻ 2) Small mobile displays and sometime-awkward

input technologies raise new challenges for
creating and consuming content:
◻ For example: email messages need to be written
and formatted differently on mobile devices to make
them easier to read.
◻ 3) Mobile users are usually multitasking: Half of
mobile usage occurs when people are walking and
therefore they can’t give their full attention to the
message on the screen.
How Mobile Technologies are Changing Business
Communication

◻ 4) Mobile communication, especially text messages has

placed great pressure on traditional standards of
grammar, punctuation, and writing in general.
◻ 5) Mobile devices can serve as sensory and cognitive
extensions:
◻ For example: Mobile devices can help people experience
more of their environment (such as augmented reality apps
that superimpose information on a live camera view).
◻ Mobile devices can also give people instant access to
information without having to rely on faulty and limited
human memory.
 Using Technology to Enhance Business
Communication

◻ The following are ways to effectively use technology

in your business communication:
1) Keep technology in perspective: Technology is
simply a tool to help you get your work done.
◻ Technology is an aid to interpersonal communication not
a substitute.
◻ 2) Guard against information overload: The overuse
or misuse of communication technology can lead to
information overload which involves people receiving
more information than they can effectively process.
 Using Technology to Enhance Business
Communication

◻ 3) Use technology tools productively: Facebook, Twitter,

YouTube, and other technologies have been refereed to as
the “information technology paradox.”
◻ They are called the information technology paradox
because these information tools can waste as much time
as they save.
◻ 4) Reconnect with people: Even the best technologies
can harm communication if they are overused.
◻ For example: many employees complain that their
managers rely too much on email communication instead
of face-to-face communication.
Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication

◻ Ethical communication includes all relevant

information, is true in every sense, and is not deceptive in
any way.
◻ Unethical communication involves distorting or
manipulating the truth in many ways such as:
◻ 1) Plagiarizing: which is presenting someone else’s
words or creative product as your own.
◻ 2) Leaving out essential information: Information is
critical if your audience needs it to make an intelligent
objective decision.
Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication

◻ 3) Selective misquoting: misrepresenting or hiding

the true intent of someone else’s words is unethical.
◻ 4) Misrepresenting numbers: Statistics and other
data can be unethically falsified by increasing or
decreasing numbers, exaggerating, modifying
statistics, or leaving out numeric data.
◻ 5) Distorting visuals: Images can be manipulated in
unethical ways, such as modifying photos to deceive
audiences or changing the scale graphs and charts to
hide differences.
Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication

◻ 6) Not respecting privacy or information

security needs: Not respecting the privacy of your
audience and others or failing to properly protect
sensitive information in your possession can be
considered unethical and sometimes illegal.
 Reference
◻ Bovee, S.L., & Thill, J.V. (2018). Business
Communication Today, 14th edition, Pearson
Education Limited.