Communicating with Friends - Do I call, email, facebook, tweet, or text?

Lately I have noticed some confusion on which communications vehicle to choose when communicating amongst friends. You used to call your friends, then came email, now there are all these social sites. Below some guidelines I would like to put out there based on personal experiences.

• Texting - Don't send a text when it is longer than a sentence and don't send a text when you don't need an immediate response. Email instead. For example, if you are inviting friends to a party in 3 weeks, email is a better choice. If you want someone to meet you for lunch today, go ahead and text away.
  
  
• Voicemail - Try to resist the urge to leave a voicemail if someone doesn't pick up. Instead, just shoot a quick email or text message. People are less likely to check voicemails in the frequency they check email and texts. While we now have services available like Google Voice or PhoneTag to transcribe messages, many have yet to adopt. See this NYTimes article about the death of voicemail.
  
  
• Facebook - Consider Facebook to email your friends instead of traditional emails but don't compose private emails on Facebook walls. Use the Facebook inbox for that. Same applies to twitter and direct messages.
  
  
• Planning an event - When you know that someone is going to have to check their calendar or ask their partner about logistics, it isn't necessary to put them on the spot with a phone call or instant message. Send it as an email or better yet, a calendar notice. I use Google Calendar for personal meetings.
  
  
• Pictures- Don't attach big pictures in the body of an email. There are plenty of services including Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook that make it easy to upload, share and discuss photos free of charge. When uploading to sites, take the time to add info and tags about these pictures. Without this data, people will not be able to find the pictures.
  
  
• Social tools - Consider using a tool like FourSquare to meet up with friends. Instead of needing to call and ask where people are going for happy hour, if your friend is an active user of FourSquare, it will most likely be posted already!
  
  
• Pen and paper - A piece of physical mail every so often is a good way to get through the clutter.
  
  
• In person! - Don't forget to make a phone call every so often or better yet, an in-person meeting.

Do you agree? Disagree? Have I missed anything? I look forward to your feedback.

Introducing "Communicating With Context"

Are you?

• The accountant who sends a reminder to his team at 5pm on a Friday right as everyone is going home (or has gone home) for the weekend.
• The real estate agent  that doesn't address her real estate expertise and qualifications until the end of her bio.
• The marketing professional that submits a copy deck that in no way differentiates the client from any other company.

Most likely you aren't, or at least you think you aren't, because no one thinks that they are an ineffective communicator.

In my experience, I have found that many have the basics of communicating down. Spelling, grammar, punctuation , proofreading. Most are better at the listed items than me, a professional communicator. What is missing in many cases is a lack of awareness of surroundings, circumstances, environment, background, and settings -- context!

This applies to our personal lives too..When updating Facebook, Twitter or other sites, it is important to think about 

• Who are you writing for?
• Why should should they care?
• How are they going to "receive" your message? Delivery channel and what they will think of it.

If you don't think about these things you will become one of the people that your friends de-friend or hide on Facebook! Which could be fine,  depending on how you answered the questions above.


This blog will analyze communications I come across in my daily life and suggest ways to improve the context, relevance and clarity of the message to get more people interested in what you are trying to say.