Here’s a great article on communication mistakes that crop up in virtually every office.  One of the common mishaps is simply not communicating at all. Workers rarely talk with their supervisors, believing they have nothing to say or that their ideas won’t make a difference. As this article points out, employers have to take the initiative to encourage employees to speak up and soliciting feedback.

Also important to keep in mind is the use – and often overuse – of e-mail. We’ve come to rely so heavily on electronic communication we have to keep in mind face-to-face conversations can result in more effective communication and fewer misunderstandings. Taking five minutes to walk down the hallway and explain what you need done can save headaches when a project isn’t executed the way you needed.

Do you find communication suffers at your workplace? What’s the cause and how do you overcome it?

First, Facebook announced its plans for a new messaging system designed to take the place of e-mail and streamline our conversations. Second, a study out in November from Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company, suggests 20 percent of employees will use social networks as their business communication hub by 2014.

The idea is an erosion of e-mail vs. instant messaging or e-mail vs. Facebook message. In a few years, it will all blend together. Yet that means businesses have to come along for the ride. Currently many companies block social networking sites from company computers – will that change? It may have to.

Here’s a comment from Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner: “In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only. Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles. However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”

Are you ready for the coming changes in the way we communicate?

So, do e-mail newsletters still have a place, a role in marketing? This interesting opinion piece on ITBusinessEdge.com takes Ben & Jerry’s to task for announcing it would eliminate its e-mail marketing in favor of social media. It points to the idea that social media isn’t a replacement for e-mail and people – 1.3 million in Ben & Jerry’s case – have selected e-mail as a way they like to receive news about the ice cream icon.

Yes, e-mail marketing can be expensive, especially if you’re sending to millions of people. But, it can be effective, giving customers specials and deals, information and simply keeping your brand top of mind. This particular piece highlights recent research from ExactTarget, an e-mail marketing firm based in Indianapolis, noting that when people are interacting with brands, 62 percent will sign up for an e-mail versus 17 percent looking to Facebook for deals.

Does your business use e-mail marketing? Have you considered giving it up and focusing only on social media? Or do you believe each form of marketing plays a role in your overall campaign?

The bottom of the barrel is an aol.com e-mail address, which made us chuckle. (No offense to our readers with aol.com addresses, but you have to admit it’s a little funny).

We bet you know someone on this list. We’d love to hear about it (no names needed).

For the majority of uses, e-mail is an effective business communication tool. We can ask a colleague or client a brief question without intruding on their time. We can share documents or photos. We can create automatic tasks and reminders based on an e-mail to-do shared from the boss.

But there are those times when e-mail gets the best of us and mired in an inbox that has well exceeded the triple-digit mark. So how do we dig out?

Here are a few tips on getting your Inbox under control:

• When at all possible, respond to an e-mail immediately and then either delete or file it.
• Schedule daily e-mail sessions. Set aside 30 minutes or an hour each day to simply respond to e-mails.
• Go offline. If you have a looming deadline or a report that needs your full concentration, close your e-mail.
•  Create a file system. Outlook and most e-mail systems – even the Web-based ones – allow you to create a folder system. Rather than letting dozens of e-mails languish in your inbox, file them away. Plus, when you need to reference a past message, you won’t spend 15 minutes searching for it.
• Manage your newsletter subscriptions. Nothing can consume an inbox like daily or weekly e-blasts. Yes, there are e-blasts you want to read, but often you don’t find the time. Unsubscribe to anything that’s not pertinent to your industry or necessary for your job.

Here are a few more good tips from David Silverman’s Words at Work Blog. Particularly, his suggestion about not keeping any e-mail for longer than a month is a good one. Hey, if you haven’t read it, completed the task or passed it on to someone else, you’re probably not going to.

Let’s hear your ideas – what has worked for you in managing the e-mail flood?