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. Part 3 expanded on the concept of psycho-social distance as the "Six Degrees of Separation" and Part 4 introduced my business signature file as a working model going forward.

We started analyzing how the research's findings explain what's in my and others' signature files in Part 5 and Part 6 continued that analysis. Part 7 explained that gender plays a role in how signature files are laid out and Part 8 gave clues as to whether the individual at the other end of the email is a team player or not. Part 9 explained what messages the use of bold and italics convey.

Here we learn about priorities and affiliations.

We know that NextStage Evolution is the author's own company. Perhaps it comes first because of prideful elements, perhaps because it was formed first, perhaps a simple alpha-sort placed it first. Perhaps we'll never know the reason, we'll only know that it appears first in the list so in some way, shape or form we know it has a priority over NextStage Global in the author's mind.

This may seem a niggling. Let me share another anecdote about my mentors.

We were observing people in a room, one of whom, a woman, was engaged in a conversation with a very gregarious gentleman. The gentleman was actually a visiting professor in my field of study and what we were watching was when the woman would decide this open, friendly, elegantly dressed, mannerly gentleman stepped over some boundary only she knew about.

At a certain point the woman, who had a sweater draped over her shoulders, pulled the sweater tighter around her and smiled at the man but not a face on, direct smile. This was a smile in which the woman faced one direction, slightly askew to the man, and watched him from an angle, "out of the corner of her eye" as it were.

I said that whatever the man said, it was at this moment that he crossed some line with her. "She pulled her sweater tighter and smiled without facing him," I offered.

A fellow student disagreed. Perhaps she simply felt chilled.

My professor nodded and said, "It doesn't matter that she felt chilled, it matters that she felt chilled now." Remember that in Semiotics, everything is a sign, everything has meaning. All that's required is that you understand what the sign means. If you don't understand what he sign means at least be aware that the sign exists and has meaning. The actions of others familiar with the sign will help you understand what it means to them and in time you'll learn what it means to you.

So the sender creates a priority in their corporate affiliations by separating the company names onto two lines. But the sender also encloses both company names in italics and in links. This indicates they are same yet different in the sender's mind.

I won't devote a separate entry in this arc to the next two lines in this signature file

More 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