Organizations for Communication Professionals

There are many organizations available to Communication Professionals, some of which include:

1.  The Society for Technical Communication www.stc.org.  

 

STC is “the world's largest and oldest professional association dedicated to the advancement of the field of technical communication. The Society’s members span the field of the technical communication profession and reach across every industry and continent. In fact, the Society has members in almost 50 countries and is continuing to grow rapidly outside of North America and Europe” (STC.org).  The intended audience is technical communicators in various fields, as well as professionals, organizations or companies who are impacted by technical communication.

2.  The Association for Women in Communications www.womcom.org.  

 

This organization targets women in the communication field as the intended audience and provides opportunities for education, networking and building connections with other women in the communications sector.

What Makes a Good Blog?

According to media writer Simon Dumenco, “there is no such thing as blogging.  There is no such thing as a blogger.  Blogging is just writing - writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology” (Scocco, P.1).  The use of a blog is to efficiently provide ones written materials to a specific target audience in communicating a product, concept or idea with your personal branding.  To do this effectively, bloggers, or writers, must create their blogs with a specific purpose and target audience in mind, then cater the design and content to hold greatest impact for this audience.

In evaluation of blogs created by my fellow students in COM480 Communication Studies Capstone, I found all created blogs to hold many valuable components and key attributes necessary to effectively target their intended audience.  For the purpose of this class, students were to create a blog showcasing their written work to potential employers, including both assignments from the COM480 class, along with previously completed written work and assignments from past classes.  The blogs I evaluated are as follows; Communication Happens http://communicationhappensblog.blogspot.com/ by Chassity Beals, The Expert Witness Communicator blog http://the-expert-witness.blogspot.com/ by William Gulya and Communication Today blog http://lilgunny.blogspot.com/ by Dolly Burgos.

Career Fields for Communication Studies Majors

Public Relations Managers and Specialists
The 2010 median pay for this position is $57,550 for specialists and $91,810 for managers.  A Bachelors degree is required, with related work experience preferred.  This role is responsible for creating and maintaing “a favorable public image for their employer or client.  They write material for media releases, plan and direct public relations programs, and raise funds for their organizations” (BLS.gov).  There is anticipated growth in this job as driven by “the need for organizations to maintain their public image in a high-information age and with the growth of social media” (BLS.gov).

Technical Writers
The 2010 median pay for this position is $63,280.  A Bachelors degree is required along with experience in a technical field like computer science or engineering.  This role is responsible for producing “instruction manuals and other supporting documents to communicate complex and technical information more easily” (BLS.gov).  The opportunity for advancement is expected to be good for this position.

Writers and Authors
The 2010 median pay for this position is $55,420.  Writers and authors must have excellent writing skills and a degree is typically required.  In this role, individuals “develop original written content for advertisements, books, magazines, move and television scripts, songs, and online publications” (BLS.gov).  While growth is expected for this position, there is also a lot of competition for salaried jobs.

Critiquing Blogs

The first blog I reviewed is Chassity's blog, Communication Happens http://communicationhappensblog.blogspot.com/.  I really like how clean this blog looks, and it looks very professional.  I also like the drop down options under the “Sidebar” tab to customize the view to the readers’ personal taste.  Personally, I like the “Magazine” view but I found that not all of the views work (such as “Snapshot”) so that would be something to update in the future.  Also, I found the right hand menu not to be very user friendly.  I actually found it by accident when I moused over it looking for information about the author and I think if it was more visible on the page it may make the blog a bit easier to navigate.

The Expert Witness Communicator blog http://the-expert-witness.blogspot.com/ has a lot going on.  I think it is a fantastic place for William to advertise his book and found that very exciting.  He also has a lot of information on his blog, which is valuable, but I think it may be helpful to categorize them with sub-menus or something to make them a bit easier to navigate.  Also, this might just be my computer but I have to scroll from side-to-side to see the full blog page, something I don’t prefer and don’t recommend.  If the page setup was narrowed, or perhaps the margins were narrowed a bit, I think the blog could be more user friendly.  Also, I really like the intro description under the page name, but I found it hard to read when the white text overlaps with the white on the background image.  Maybe that text color could be changed to a grey or blue to be easier to read.

Dolly's blog, Communication Today blog http://lilgunny.blogspot.com/ is bright and cheerful.  Based on the color scheme, font colors and pictures I feel like I know a little bit about the author and she seems like a friendly writer.  I would recommend adding additional pages to the blog to showcase other pieces she has written and as this is a blog for professional use I think it would be ideal to use her name rather than “Travel Hound” in the “About Me” section.  If this is too personal, perhaps initials or Ms. [initial from last name] to continue the professional vibe.

To read more about my blog critiques and how classmate feedback helped me improve my own blog, see my new post What Makes A Good Blog?

Delivering Bad News Tactfully and Effectively

   Case Study: “You are a department manager in a mid-sized company that provides technology support services.  You have ten employees who are required to maintain a high level of technical expertise and deliver excellent customer service.  One of your employees, who has been with the company for two years, is performing at a substandard level and you have received numerous complaints from customers and coworkers.  In addition, this employee has displayed confrontational behavior which has created a hostile environment.  You must now meet with this employee and deliver an ultimatum regarding the need for immediate improvement or dismissal.”

    In response to this employee, I would initiate a one-on-one conversation immediately.   According to Cahn & Abigail, interpersonal conflict will most commonly arise with the following four main characteristics; “ (1) the conflicting parties are interdependent, (2) they have the perception that they seek incompatible goals or outcomes or they favor incompatible means to the same ends, (3) the perceived incompatibility has the potential to adversely affect the relationship leaving emotional residues if not addressed, and (4) there is a sense of urgency about the need to resolve the difference” (Cahn & Abigail, 2007, p.4).  In this situation, all four characteristics are present as; he is an employee dependent upon me for income and I am dependent on him to provide high level services to our clients; we both want him to complete his work however his methods are causing unrest with clients and other employees; hostile work environments harm people emotionally and the issues must be resolved quickly so as not to cause further harm.  Since the situation has already gotten to the point of creating a hostile work environment and negative impact on our clients, I should have spoken with this employee much earlier to diffuse the situation and there is no more time to procrastinate in handling the situation.

Ten Commandments of Intercultural Communication

As a cross-cultural trainer for a foreign language translation company, I find application for the guidelines from the “Ten Commandments of Intercultural Communication” on a daily basis.  At work, I am constantly interacting with people from other cultures; whether based on ethnicity, age, gender or life experiences.

I find these guidelines are beneficial when attempting to interact with someone on their level.  I don’t mean that one level is higher or lower, but different.  When attempting to “walk in their shoes” or connect on a deeper level “seeing things from their perspective” it is vital to take into account cultural differences.

Conflict Resolution

A situation in which I was an observer during the escalation of a verbal conflict was a department meeting at work.  The conflict was between the department head and the supervisor from another department, and the point of contention was a differing perspective on how some internal logistics should be handled.  The conflict escalated because neither party was willing to concede on their perspective and emotions became involved because the situation was personal to each on of them as they took great pride and ownership of their departments.  At its peak, one of the supervisors was yelling at the other and stormed out of the conference room.

I was not in the position to de-escalate the conflict, but if I had been I would have employed the STLC (stop, think, listen, communicate) approach by breaking the meeting for 5-10 minutes to allow each party to calm down.  I would then help facilitate the discussion to reiterate the purpose behind the meeting and allow each supervisor time to voice their perspective without interruption, asking the other party to listen to find common ground.

In this instance, the VP of the company de-escalated the conflict by mediating for both sides.  He spoke with each supervisor individually and then made a decision.  While this was effective, I think it mitigated some of the potential by-in had the supervisors come to an agreement on their own.  When possible, I think it is best to aid the involved parties in coming to their own resolution, rather than simply removing the matter of conflict.

Media Technologies

Radio Summary

    Radio is a common public media technology as many radio stations are available for free.  Radio has been around for a long time, offering new reports, entertaining stories and musical entertainment.  In today’s society in America, radio is most commonly used for music or radio talk shows dialoguing about social, political or religious views. 

    Radio stations are available in two different frequencies; AM and FM.  Most FM stations are music oriented and stations select music to target specific preferences of their target audience.  Common genres for FM stations include; country, soft rock, hard rock, Top 40’s, Hip Hop, Oldies and music for alternate languages (such as Spanish).  On the other hand, most AM stations are “talk” stations, offering monologues and listener participation on politics, news and religious perspectives. 

    One widely accepted talk station is NPR, which stands for National Public Radio and offers news and educational programing in the United States.  According to the NPR website “NPR is the #1 provider of public radio content and programming but not all public radio programs are produced or distributed by NPR” and “about 93 percent of the U.S. population can hear at least one station that carries NPR programming” (NPR.org). 

    Generally speaking, many AM  station listeners tend to be of older generations.  This is likely due to the familiarity of radio listening for many years, along with the availability of free radio programing.  Conversely, FM stations are frequented by listeners of all ages seeking to be entertained by their preferred music genres.

Establishing A Blog

As part of an assignment at Ashford Univeristy, we were asked to set up a blog showcasing our written work.  My blog is entitled Communication: A Two Way Street, and the URL is http://communication2waystreet.blogspot.com/

I had a hard time completing this assignment because I am a "finish what you start" type of person.  For me, a blog is an ongoing project, and I felt torn at the idea of starting a real true online blog only for the purpose of this assignment, knowing that I may not continue it after the course completed.

As far as actually creating the blog, I found this process to be quite easy as I have set up blogs in the past and have some moderate experience in website creation.  I think that pictures are vital to make a blog engaging and enjoyable to read, otherwise viewers can get lost in pages of text.  I also think it's important to select background colors that won't compete with your font color.  For example a black background with grey text is not very user friendly and makes it difficult for viewers to read your content.

Essential Principles of Communication

Many principles of communication center around the basic tenant of knowing one’s audience.  Both the speaker and the recipient are responsible for ensuring that the message is communicated, however this responsibility starts with the speaker as he/she must cater the message to hold greatest impact/benefit for the intended audience while taking into consideration their background knowledge, interests, age, education level and demographics.

An example of this is a parent trying to communicate the importance of their child eating their vegetables.  In most instances, it would be pointless for the parent to try and explain the nutritional benefits of vegetables over fast food, and why this occurs and what it means for the health of the child.  The more appropriate explanation meets the child at their level, with information such as “Eating your vegetables will help you grow big and strong like daddy”.  In this explanation additional communication principles such as voice intonation and body language may be used to communicate excitement or favorable feelings towards the situation.

Networking on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a free social networking site for professionals, with higher service levels and additional perks available for paid memberships.  “LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals” (Linkedin.com).  Furthermore, “as of March 31, 2012, LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with 161 million members in over 200 countries and territories” (LinkedIn.com/about).

The purpose is to provide opportunities for “connections” with other professionals and online collaboration through job postings, group discussions and the sharing of information.