Information on the Go by Bill Ringle Today, if you've got important business news you want to share with a lot of people fast, you're more likely to send e-mail than to call. Why? Because time is valuable and sending e-mail has three obvious advantages over phoning. 1) You can be sure to send the same information to each person accurately. Phone messages can get distorted as you get tired of saying the same thing repeatedly. Some people report leaving out key facts, wondering whether they've already covered that information in the current call, or in a previous call. 2) You are in control of the activity. On a phone call, you don't know exactly how long each person will want to share news (personal or business-related) of their own. Building relationships is crucial in business, in its own time and place. 3) E-mail can send a single message out to many individuals at once. Phone calls must be done one at a time. Parallel efforts beat serial efforts for busy professionals. Especially for those of us who get paid on commission! So, if you're going to use e-mail, what are your options? Here are four of the most important skills to use. Though you may be familiar with one or more of these techniques, you can learn a new distinction or two in this short article that can clear up any doubts about when and where to use each method. In my course on Internet Bootcamp for Business Leaders many managers report that they went from familiarity to proficiency after covering this material. Copy and Send This is the simplest method and the fastest to learn. It is commonly used when you come across an interesting article on the web and want to send it out to your colleagues as an FYI. So you highlight the text, copy, open a new e-mail document and> paste the text into the body of the message. And as easy as that, it's ready to send out to your team. Advantages: Takes very little time to learn and it is easy to do. Disadvantages: You may need "formatting help" to be intelligible to the recipients. Often web text doesn't translate well to e-mail copy. A quick review before you click the Send button can save you embarrassment later on. One time I received 32 pages of text on a topic I had only a passing interest in from a friend who thought he was being helpful. Of course I didn't get upset - that's what Delete keys are for! Avoid sending more info than is necessary. It's better to send a summary than the whole online article for size as well as ownership issues. Be careful about what you send because you may be violating copyright restrictions. Though the chances of being prosecuted are slim, you don't want to make headlines in the Wall Street Journal as the person a company chose to make into an example case. Best uses: Content from your own company web site. Excerpts from other web sites. E-mail that you've received that you want to forward in whole or part. For instance, I send out a newsletter on "Internet Solutions that Mean Business" via an e-mail listserver. (You can subscribe by sending a message to eNews-on@starcomm.com.) At the bottom of the newsletter, I encourage readers to share the newsletter by forwarding it to colleagues and clients who may benefit from the information. It's a value-added service that costs me virtually nothing in material costs to send out. You can adopt the format or language into your own FYI bulletins. Fire Off a Web Link This is a slightly more sophisticated technique, but still simple to perform. Say that you wanted to send a listing of CD rates for comparison purposes. I was just on news.com and followed this link to Net Bank that had their rates published online. Instead of copying the rates on the page, I copy the link in the web address field and paste that information into an e-mail message, like so: http://www.netbank.com/banking_cds_index.htm If I were creating a message with several sites, I'd include more than one link. But this is enough for you to get the idea of this technique. Another way to enhance the value of the message you're sending out is to add your commentary around the web link. In most modern e-mail clients (and certainly all web-based e-mail systems), your recipients can simply click on the link that you send and it will automatically launch their web browser and the web page in the link. Advantages: This takes even less time than copying the full online article, and you avoid copyright issues. Recipients get access to the full article with any accompanying graphics. If information changes between the time you send the info and when they read it, they get the updated information from the web site. Disadvantages: Recipients have to be connected to the Internet to take full advantage of the info. Some e-mail client software does not process "hot links." If information changes between the time you send the info and when they read it, they get the updated information from the web site. If the article or opportunity disappears in this time, you risk looking like you made a mistake in sending the link. For really time-sensitive information, identify people to contact directly. Best uses: Commercial web site articles, such as CNN.com, Fortune.com, theStreet.com, and any others that might have in-house legal staff. Can't Wait for the Ink to Dry What do you do when you want to send more than text or a link, such as a spreadsheet or fancy word processing document? You send a file attachment, of course. You can run into a few problems though with sending file attachments to a large group of people (that means "more than 2" when sending a file attachment). First, the recipient must have the same application (and in many cases the same version of the application - try sending an Excel 98 file to someone still using Excel 5!). Second, fonts can be a problem. Even if someone has the same version of Word, but lacks your favorite Zapf Dingbats, the document they open will look different that what you intended. Third, the size of what you send may engender ill-will rather than gratitude for your efforts to share - especially if you're on a high-speed line and a recipient is on a slow dial-up connection! Here are two quick tips to overcome these potential snags. 1) Learn and use Adobe Acrobat to create PDF documents. These files can be sent or downloaded by Windows, Macintosh, or Unix computer users, and the reader software is free. Day traders, the US Government, and organizations of all kinds in-between use this method. Go to <www.adobe.com/acrobat/> to learn more. 2) In a pinch and if it serves a large enough number of users, publish the info as a web page on your site, and then just send a web link. Advantages: You have complete control over the document content and format. You now can share, collaborate, and interact with a wider range of documents than just simple text documents. Disadvantages: You've got to be sure your recipients can use the files you send. You may have to invest in purchasing and learning additional software. File size may become an issue. Take advantage of a compression program if this becomes the case. Best uses: Documents that offer more than just text, such as a company newsletter or annual report, with multiple columns, photos, and colorful headlines. In a text-based e-mail world, this can help set your message apart from the pack. Documents that invite interaction, such as spreadsheets and executables. As companies learn to use the web to build stronger customer ties, interactivity will play a key role. Be Sure It's Secure When you send out electronic articles about the industry or new product announcements, you're less concerned with privacy. However, some items that you send out for convenience, you will also want to make sure stay private. Protect what you send out. Know how to add passwords to your word processor documents. Compression utilities such as WinZip <www.winzip.com> and Stuffit <www.aladdinsys.com> offer password protection. Adobe Acrobat documents can be password protected, or created to only be viewed and not printed. With the right add-on, you distribute Acrobat documents that "expire" after a certain date and can no longer be opened. That capability can come in handy with time-sensitive offers in this industry. Advantages: You've taken an additional step to limit the access of sensitive information appropriately. It's still faster and less expensive than using an overnight carrier. Disadvantages. You've placed an additional barrier between valuable information and the people who need to use it. Be sure to educate yourself, your staff, and your clients about the technology you're using to avoid frustrations. When everyone is well-informed and has a little bit of experience using these tools, the time savings and sensitivity to privacy issues are greatly appreciated. Best uses: Agreements, drafts of sensitive documents, limited offers, and so on. Typically, this is information sent one-to-one rather than one-to-many, as the other three methods described above. Different approaches will be appropriate depending on the circumstances. Be familiar with each of these methods so you aren't caught using the wrong one with one of your clients who has read this article. Bill Ringle works with organizations that want to use the Internet to grow their business. He is a frequent presenter at business conferences and seminars, author of Internet business books, and a founding member of the International Society for Intranet Collaboration. Call 800-654-4425, or visit the website www.StarComm.com to learn more about how to use the Internet for innovative and measurable business results. Send e-mail to eNews-On@starcomm.com to subscribe to his free newsletter on business technology.