The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Part 1 gave some examples of typical signature files and part 2 introduced the concept of psycho-social distance between sender and receiver of an email. This psycho-social distance is the "Six Degrees of Separation" and a great deal more.

Next comes level 1 correspondents. Maybe level 1 correspondents are people you have a business relationship with and with whom you're friendly. You're open and gregarious with them in emails and on the phone but you wouldn't randomly call them up and invite them to a movie, dinner, something like that. However, you might go out to dinner with them or for a drink if you met at a convention or some such.

Historically these were people not in your immediate social group, perhaps people from the same village but and for example, they were landowners and you or your family worked their land or they were from the other side of town once your village became large enough to considered a town. If your village was still a village then people in this group might have been from one or two villages away. You might see them on market days and at the fairs, you might be cordial and share the off-color joke or two. In a nutshell, even if you enjoyed their company you didn't trust them as much as you trusted the folks in level 0.

Level 2 correspondents are purely business. You're always cordial and more importantly you're always professional with level 2 correspondents. You may joke a little with them but you don't tell them jokes, you may go out to breakfast, lunch or dinner but you're both always talking business and taking notes while you're at the table. Historically only the landed people, people of political or financial status, had level 2 interactions on a regular basis. Commoners may have had occasional level 2 interactions and they always had their hands on our swordhilts when they met and during most of the transaction. These people are even further away from the Center of Trust afforded level 0 interactions.

Level 3 and beyond? Who knows.

Psychological and sociological distance applies across all these levels in the following way:

• Psychological distance plays the greater role when we're dealing with personal matters
• Sociological distance plays the greater role when we're dealing with non-personal matters

These relationships, these levels of intimacy between sender and receiver, play heavily into how people respond to what's in signature files. It doesn't matter the level of intimacy the sender assigns to the recipient (it would surprise me if people changed their signature files for each recipient. It's more likely that recipients pass from business to personal emails as they go through levels of intimacy and enter the Circle of Trust), all that matters is the level of intimacy the recipient believes they share with the sender.

That stated, the next post will offer my current business signature file as the working example for what's to follow.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• Online Anthropology blog posts
• Online Identity blog posts
• Online Privacy blog posts
• Online Trust blog posts
• The Using Your "SEND" Glands? arc