More and more people are hiring others to write stuff for them. For example Thomas Power of Ecademy sometimes uses the services of David Petherick of the Edinburgh based company Claracada to blog for him.

Busy business owners must, of course, delegate tasks to others more able than themselves if their companies are to thrive. Did Richard Branson write ‘Losing My Virginity’? Come on, Branson is a self-confessed dyslexic. No doubt he supplied most of the information that went into it but I doubt he was the true author.

Recently I’ve been scouting around for business solutions for some of my students and readers. I looked at the material from a well-known American company selling customer contact and logistic solutions for SMEs. From their web site I downloaded an e-Book that when fired up in my Adobe Reader splurged an error message onto my screen saying that a certain font was unavailable. This was a pity because it was quite a good book.

I sent an e-mail to the company alerting them to the problem but instead of getting a reply I received a standard text from an auto-responder alerting me to the next stage of their sales process.

In psychology there is a concept known as ‘thin slicing’. According to Peter Marsden of New Scientist: “Thin-slicing is a neat cognitive trick that involves taking a narrow slice of data, just what you can capture in the blink of an eye, and letting your intuition do the work for you.”

My intuition told me not only that the software company didn’t write its e-Book, it also wasn’t as well integrated as the e-Book’s true author would have me believe. This was further confirmed when several pages of the Company Blog were coded in an obscure way. Here is an example:

“When others in the company walk into our room they don’t want to leave. In fact, we’re considering charging for people hanging out in our department!”

The same day I received a long e-mail signed by an International copywriter of some repute. Unfortunately I took the trouble to read its contents. Half way down the page the writer started to introduce and refer to himself in the third person!

Of course I knew all along that I was reading an auto-responder message, but I was prepared to remove my ‘reality specs’ and feel preened and cosseted by an e-mail from ‘the man’. In the event the post was clearly written by a sorcerer’s apprentice.

This is the problem with all these Web 1.0s, 2.0s and 3.0s. Even the best companies haven’t managed to wire in the basic etiquette of personal communication. When this happens I will become more excited.

BRAY