Technology Etiquette

Watch your tone

By Arden / May 31, 2011 /

“Watch your tone, Arden”, my mother would say to the teenage me when I’d speak to my brother in a certain way. Sometimes I’d answer that I was just asking him to do something. “But your tone was rude”, my mom would reply. When I work with clients on customer service skills, I talk about…

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Mass Rejection By Email

By Arden / January 31, 2011 /

The other day I received an email stating I had not been selected as a speaker for the next Ignite Seattle event. At Ignite, people apply to speak for five minutes where you can have only 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. The people who attend Ignite tend to be self-identified geeks, so…

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How to Avoid Being Defriended

By Arden / October 4, 2010 /

The new movie, Social Network, about the founding of Facebook, opened October 1st to rave reviews and box office success. Facebook went from being a social networking site for college students to the site that is searched more than Google with more than 500 million users.  When both grandparents and grandkids are on Facebook you…

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PR Blunder or Just Desserts?

By Arden / September 29, 2010 /

This is a guest post by Lisa Samuelson, founder of Samuelson Communications. Recently Steve Jobs was incredibly rude to a journalism student who was working on an assignment about iPads as a teaching tool. When the PR department at Apple didn’t respond to her many calls and emails, she found Steve Jobs’ email and reached…

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You’re Fired! Social Media Mistakes

By Arden / July 29, 2010 /

Recently, a 16 year old employee was fired from her job for writing on her Facebook wall “I’m bored at work today.” Agree with the firing or not, the reality is everything we do online is visible to the world. This young lady had to learn this the hard way. Networking online is just like…

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Email Etiquette in our 24/7 World

By Arden / May 17, 2010 /

My friend, Peggy Dolane, writer and social media expert , suggested I write a blog post about our 24/7-reachable-anytime-world. She wondered what the etiquette is about sending and responding to emails after hours. Good question Peggy.

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Say What?

By Arden / March 18, 2010 /

I got a recorded call from Americans United for Change urging us to call our senators to encourage them to pass healthcare reform. At the end of the message they stated the phone number to call. They said the number so fast I had to rewind the message three times. I thought about how much money…

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Etiquette Questions and Faux Pas

By Arden / December 12, 2009 /

When you are an etiquette consultant people love to either share with you their etiquette horror stories or ask for etiquette advice. I love that my friends and business associates want to tell me their stories and trust me for advice. I thought it would be fun to feature some of the etiquette faux pas and…

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Twittetiquette: 5 Points To Avoid Alienating Your Twitter Followers

By Arden / September 28, 2009 /

Have you heard about the little blue bird of happiness? No, this one is virtual and it’s called Twitter. This social media tool is growing by leaps and bounds and as of March 2009 had over 8 million users in the US. Is it just a passing fad? I don’t think so. As more business…

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Are You Out To Win?

By Arden / September 21, 2009 /

I subscribe to a few different blogs of people I admire or enjoy. One recent blog post surprised me as it seemed out of character for this blogger. It was a bit like a brag about how busy he was and why it was making him a better person. He outlined minute by minute what…

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