Electronic communication has become one of our primary forms of communication. It’s quick, convenient, fairly reliable, and great for connecting YWAMers across the globe. However, there are still right ways—and a wrong ways—to use this medium.

Remember that since there is no visual component to email, it’s important to choose words that are clear and concise. 93 percent of communication is non-verbal, and since the recipient can’t see your face or body language or hear your tone of voice, choose your words carefully to make sure your meaning is communicated clearly. This is especially important when communicating across a language gap.

Email

Let’s go through each aspect of emailing and learn how to correctly use them.

Address Lines
To: The primary recipient’s email address goes here.
Cc: Everyone can see everyone else’s email addresses. Don’t use this option if there are people you’re sending to who would not want others to see their address.
Bcc: This option prevents others from seeing the list of email addresses. Use this if some of the people you’re emailing need their security protected.

Subject Line
Your subject line should be short but accurately descriptive of the email’s contents. Emails with these kind of subject lines are more likely to be read.

Priority
Don’t mark your email as high priority unless it is truly urgent. If this option is used unnecessarily, recipients may not take you or your correspondence as seriously in the future.

Replying
One of the most important aspects of any type of correspondence is to reply in a timely fashion. Standard practice is to reply to all emails within five business days. If it’s going to take longer to get the information the person requested, email them within the five-day window to let them know that you’re working on their request and will get back to them as soon as possible.

It is very helpful to include the original message in your reply so the recipient can refer to what was originally written.

Be very careful not to confuse “reply” and “reply all.” You don’t want to accidentally send a reply to all the recipients of the email that is meant only for the sender!

Greeting
Always use a greeting at the top of your email. This is standard practice in correspondence and necessary to keep your email from sounding to casual or unprofessional. The standard greeting is “Dear _____.”

Body
Be concise and don’t ramble; busy people may not take the time to read overly long emails. In most cases, the body of an email should be kept to two paragraphs. Longer documents should be sent as an attachment.

Avoid using all capital letters since it can make your email appear “angry.”
Almost all email programs contain spelling and grammar check options so be sure and use them, especially if the email is business-related (i.e. to another YWAM location, a business, school, or is basically anything other than a personal email to friends or family). It’s a common fallacy that email correspondence doesn’t need to composed carefully. Just because it’s email doesn’t mean it should be sloppy. Your email is a reflection of your professionalism and that of YWAM.

Closing
For any business email (per above), include your first and last name, title, who you’re with, and your contact information. In most email programs you can design a signature line that will be included at the bottom of all your emails so you don’t have to write it out every time.

It's wise to remember how easily this wonderful technology can be misused, sometimes unintentionally, with serious consequences.

Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in warm, sunny Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it from memory.

Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

Dearest Wife,

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

PS. Sure is hot down here.

Skype and Internet Telephony

Skype is a free, downloadable program available at www.skype.com. It’s is easy to use, and all you need is a broadband internet connection, a headset/microphone unit, and the free Skype software. Its capabilities include internet telephony, instant messaging, and chat. Many YWAMers use Skype because it enables users to make computer-to-computer “phone” calls free of charge. For a small fee dependent on the country to which the call is being placed, computer-to-telephone calling is also available through Skype at very reasonable rates.

Another great feature is Skype’s easy-to-use conference call feature that enables you to set up a free conference call with up to ten people. Skype is also webcam-ready, so you can see the person on the other end of the call as well as talk with them. It also has private and group chat capabilities, SMS, and a bunch of other great features.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is a quick, fun, and free real-time way to communicate with friends. It’s not, however, a good medium for business communication because of all the shorthand, symbols, and abbreviations used that can sometimes be misunderstood. And again, unless you’re using a webcam, it is non-verbal and therefore open for confusion.

There are several free and widely used IM systems (almost all of them webcam-compatible), including the three most popular: MSN, Yahoo, and AOL AIM. It’s easy to open a free account with any of these IM programs by visiting their websites:
MSN: http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
MSN Web Messenger: MSN Web Messenger lets you talk online and in real-time using just a web browser. Use it on any shared computer - at school, at work, at a friend's house or anywhere you can't install the MSN Messenger software. http://webmessenger.msn.com/
Yahoo: http://messenger.yahoo.com/
AOL AIM: http://dashboard.aim.com/aim

Better yet, you may want to try Trillian. Trillian is a free, fully-featured chat program that supports AOL AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and IRC. With Trillian you only need to download one chat program that will give you access to all your IM contacts on all five of these IM clients. You can download it for free at www.ceruleanstudios.com.

Blogging

A blog, short for weblog, is a type of internet diary. Weblogs enable users to publish comments, thoughts, photos, videos, and ideas instantly for other people to read and comment on. Blogs are an effective communication tool for small groups of people to keep in touch with each other and a great way to stay in touch with friends, supporters, and other YWAMers in different locations.

People use blogs for a number of purposes but primarily to express ideas, share thoughts with friends, and create community. For YWAMers, they’re an easy, free, and powerful tool for communicating with supporters. You can post regular updates, photos, prayer needs—just about anything you want—and your readers can respond by posting comments to your blog.

Two of most popular providers of free blogs are found at www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.

Social Networking Sites

MySpace and other sites such as Facebook are free online communities that allow friends to keep in touch and meet new people as well. MySpace, for example, started out as a website that bands could use to promote their music, but it has since grown into a more general community of friends. Anyone who is at least 14 years old can sign up for a MySpace account at no cost. Once you sign up, you can customize your profile by adding information about yourself, listing your interests, hobbies, and educational background, and your friends. You can also create your own blog for others to read and post photos, music and video to your MySpace page.

Once you’ve created a profile on MySpace, you can search or browse other users' profiles. If you want to add someone as a friend, just click the "Add to Friends" link on that person's profile page. If the person approves your friend request, he or she will be added to your list of friends. Some users have only a few friends, while others have several thousand. You can send a private message to a user by clicking the "Send Message" link or post a comment on his or her page by clicking "Add Comment." Comments can be seen by all visitors to that person's profile, so be careful what you post!

The "friends" concept is the heart and soul of MySpace. By building a list of friends, you have your own network of people readily accessible from your profile page. When you click on a friend's image, you can view their profile and all their friends. This makes it easy to meet friends of friends, their friends, and so on. The number of people you can meet on MySpace is practically endless, which may be a part of the reason there are so many "MySpace addicts" out there.

In order to create a MySpace account, you need to choose a username and password, which are used for logging in to your account. This gives you control over what appears on your profile page. The only way others can add content to your page is through comments, which you can choose to delete once you have logged in to your account.

If you go to MySpace and type “YWAM” in the search line, you’ll get about 63,200 hits. Many YWAMers and YWAM locations have pages on my space because it’s such a great way to communicate with the world.

To get started on MySpace, visit www.myspace.com.

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
Anyone can join Facebook. All that's needed is a valid email address. To connect with coworkers or classmates, use your school or work email address to register. Once you register, you can join a regional network to connect with the people in your area.

Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a company, region, or school. Join the networks that reflect your real-life communities to learn more about the people around you.

On Facebook you have control over how you share your information and who can see it. People can only see the profiles of confirmed friends and the people in their networks. You can use their privacy settings at any time to control who can see what on Facebook.

To get started on Facebook, visit www.facebook.com.