The best way to engage in a real-world conversation is to go through the following five steps for effective communication: listen, understand value, interpret, and contribute.
Listen: Listening is like being a sponge, and the best sponges hold water indefinitely. Until you are ready to contribute—to squeeze some knowledge from your sponge—you need to be taking in a lot more that you’re putting out.
Understand: By understanding what is actually being said, apart from any biases or agendas—especially your own—you begin to value feedback. You need to ensure that you keep that value. Value the conversation, the individual, and the feedback more than you value your own opinion. If you don’t do this, when it comes time to contribute, your comments will be out of context and will hold much less value than they otherwise would.
Value: Valuing everyone’s contribution can be difficult in the best of times—some people in any large conversation don’t listen, don’t value others’ contributions, and therefore simply don’t deserve to be talking. However, when you’re a business listening to feedback about your company, products, and industry, it’s far too easy to discount certain contributions as unworthy of your attention. Don’t fall into this trap. Before you can contribute and properly respond to what’s going on in a conversation as big as the blog posting, you need to value everyone involved—after all, the one person you value one time could well be your next big customer evangelist.
Interpret: Before you take the step in becoming involved in the global conversation happening on blogs, you need to interpret and evaluate what has already been said and determine whether you actually have any valuable and unique insight to offer. After all, if the only thing you have to say in a large conversation is “Yes, I agree!”, it’s probably best to live by the adage, “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent.”
Contribute: The final step in effective communication is to contribute something of value to the group. What valuable information can you offer? When the conversation centers on your area of expertise, you can offer authority, passion, and a unique perspective. Unlike most parties, where not everyone gets a chance to talk to everyone else, thousands of blog readers and writers are waiting eagerly to hear what you and your company have to say. Once you have properly prepared to contribute to the conversation, you can be sure that you will not only be heard, but that you will get feedback.
http://www.e-articles.info/e/a/title/The-Five-Steps-of-Effective-Communication-on-Blogs/
Listen: Listening is like being a sponge, and the best sponges hold water indefinitely. Until you are ready to contribute—to squeeze some knowledge from your sponge—you need to be taking in a lot more that you’re putting out.
Understand: By understanding what is actually being said, apart from any biases or agendas—especially your own—you begin to value feedback. You need to ensure that you keep that value. Value the conversation, the individual, and the feedback more than you value your own opinion. If you don’t do this, when it comes time to contribute, your comments will be out of context and will hold much less value than they otherwise would.
Value: Valuing everyone’s contribution can be difficult in the best of times—some people in any large conversation don’t listen, don’t value others’ contributions, and therefore simply don’t deserve to be talking. However, when you’re a business listening to feedback about your company, products, and industry, it’s far too easy to discount certain contributions as unworthy of your attention. Don’t fall into this trap. Before you can contribute and properly respond to what’s going on in a conversation as big as the blog posting, you need to value everyone involved—after all, the one person you value one time could well be your next big customer evangelist.
Interpret: Before you take the step in becoming involved in the global conversation happening on blogs, you need to interpret and evaluate what has already been said and determine whether you actually have any valuable and unique insight to offer. After all, if the only thing you have to say in a large conversation is “Yes, I agree!”, it’s probably best to live by the adage, “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent.”
Contribute: The final step in effective communication is to contribute something of value to the group. What valuable information can you offer? When the conversation centers on your area of expertise, you can offer authority, passion, and a unique perspective. Unlike most parties, where not everyone gets a chance to talk to everyone else, thousands of blog readers and writers are waiting eagerly to hear what you and your company have to say. Once you have properly prepared to contribute to the conversation, you can be sure that you will not only be heard, but that you will get feedback.
http://www.e-articles.info/e/a/title/The-Five-Steps-of-Effective-Communication-on-Blogs/
