Be careful what you put in your ‘out of office’ email (it could really hurt your career)
Keep those out of office messages brief to guard against cybercrimes, advises Inc. contributor Steve Blakeman.
Eight things you hate about Gmail and how to fix them
This May column from The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern is an excellent summary of the Gmail features that should be part of your daily routine. Plus, the story is accompanied by a quick, entertaining video.
22 email-etiquette rules every professional should know
Some of the items on this solid list from Business Insider’s Rachel Gillett are probably second nature for you, seasoned email pro. But did you know you should never start an email with I?
Inbox Exposed: Simon Owens, Journalist
Email is a non-negotiable part of everyday life. For some, it’s an unruly time suck, but enlightened email users have systems to ensure they’re not a slave to the inbox. We’re asking smart thinkers to give us a peek inside their inboxes, share tips, ideas, gripes, and everything in between.
Independent tech and media journalist Simon Owens talks about flagging spammers to make the internet “a little bit of a better place.” Check out the full interview over here.
On managing his inbox:
A lot of people talk about whether you’re an Inbox Zero person. Well, if you just count the Priority Inbox, then yes, I’m an Inbox Zero person. But if you also include Everything Else, definitely not because I have thousands and thousands of unread messages because any kind of email that’s not marked as important, I don’t even bother opening it.
I’m very judicious about training Gmail to recognize what’s important to me. So I always make sure if something ends up in the Everything Else inbox [when it should be in the Priority Inbox], to mark it as important. The next time I receive an email from that address, it goes into the Priority one.
On his email pet peeve:
[A]s a marketer myself, I get annoyed by bad marketing that’s super spammy. I don’t know if you get this, but I get tons of emails from really bad marketers offering to write guest posts on my blog and they make it seem like it’s almost like they’re doing something personal for you, but you can see they’re just doing a copy and paste job — especially considering that they don’t even bother to find out what I write about, and they’re offering to write guest posts that are completely off-topic. I want to punish those people! [laughs]
So I want to train Google’s algorithm to treat those people as spam, so I’m very judicious … if somebody sends an email — especially if they get me to open up the email and it turns out it’s just one of these spammy, I want to write a guest post for your site [messages] — I make sure to [flag it] so I can train Gmail to treat these people as spam and so I can make the Internet at least a little bit of a better place.