Branding “From the Inside, Out”: Two Important Considerations

Generally, we advise clients to view their organizations, products and services from the “outside in.” In other words, they need to put themselves in the position of their desired audience and consider what is important to their audience, rather than what is important to them. Too often organizations talk about how they need to “communicate […]

                    

Teaching Business Communication: Which Texbook Should You Adopt?

Among the business communication textbooks currently on the market, Bovee and Thill lead the field. Their three textbooks are Business Communication Today, Excellence in Business Communication, and Business Communication Essentials.

Why Bovee and Thill Business Communication Textbooks Set the Standard by Which Other Textbooks Are Judged

Market-leading innovation. For more than three decades, Bovee and Thill texts have pioneered coverage of emerging trends and their implications for business communication, from the earliest days of digital communication via email and instant messaging through multiple generations of online and social media and now to the profound changes that mobile communication is bringing to the business world.

Up-to-date coverage that reflects today's business communication practices and employer expectations. Technological advances, globalization, shifts in employment models, and other forces have dramatically changed the practice of business communication in recent years, even to the point of altering how people read and how messages should be constructed. To prepare students for today's workplace, the business communication course needs to address these contemporary skills, issues, and concepts. You can count on Bovee and Thill to provide you and your students with up-to-date coverage and materials.

Practical advice informed by deep experience. Beyond the research and presentation of new ideas and tools, Bovee and Thill are among the most active and widely followed users of social media in the entire field of business communication. They don't just write about new concepts; they have years of hands-on experience with blogging, content curation, search technologies, and other important tools. They are active participants in more than 45 social media sites.

Engaging coverage of real companies and contemporary issues in business communication. From chapter-opening vignettes to model documents to student activities, Bovee and Thill texts emphasize companies and issues that students already know about or are likely to find intriguing. For example, cases in recent editions have addressed the challenges of communicating with mobile audiences, employer restrictions on social media, and the use of Twitter in the job search process.

Integrated learning. In sharp contrast to texts that tack on coverage of social media and other new topics, Bovee and Thill continually revise their coverage in order to fully integrate the skills and issues that are important in today's workplace. This integration is carried through chapter-opening vignettes, chapter content, model documents, end-of-chapter questions, communication cases, and test banks to make sure students practice the skills they'll need, not just read about them in some anecdotal fashion.

Teaching Introduction to Business Emphasizing Visual Learning

Do you struggle to get your students to read 700-page textbooks while you try to fit an ever-expanding array of topics into your limited class time?

Bovée and Thill's Business in Action offers full, 20-chapter coverage like other leading textbooks, but does so with a high-efficiency format that is 20 percent shorter.

The secret to this student-friendly approach is the concept of Exhibits That Teach. Business in Action has more than 150 unique diagrams and quick-reference tables that present vital concepts more efficiently and more effectively than long, intimidating blocks of text.

Business in Action covers all the fundamentals you expect but also continues to lead the way with unique topical coverage and new ways to address important subjects.

Mobile communication and connectivity are revolutionizing business, and Chapter 1's discussion of the technological environment explains why mobile is such a disruptive technology. Aspects of mobile are integrated throughout the 8th Edition, from job search apps to mobile commerce to security and privacy concerns.

With the spread of contingent workforces, talent markets, virtual organizations, and the “gig economy,” many of today's graduates will spend some or perhaps all their careers working outside traditional organizational structures. They will need to define their personal brands and take greater responsibility for their professional growth. Business in Action helps them understand this new world of work and how they can prepare themselves to succeed in it.

The rise of social media has redefined the relationships between companies and their stakeholders, and marketing communication is a great example of this fundamental shift. Companies that cling to the old 4P's idea of unidirectional promotion are out of sync with today's social marketplace, where consumers demand to be active participants in a free-flowing conversation about products, brands, and the companies behind them. Business in Action replaces the outdated concept of promotion with the new social communication model that reflects show today's successful companies interact with customers.
 
Each chapter is divided into six concise segments, each with its own Learning Objective. Each segment focuses on the most essential concepts and terminology to help students achieve that particular objective before moving on. The consistent structure simplifies course planning and class time allocation for instructors, and it helps students organize their reading, review, and test preparation.

Each chapter segment concludes with a comprehensive Checkpoint that helps students review and reinforce what they've learned in manageable doses, rather than reviewing an entire chapter at once. With this approach, each learning objective is addressed as a mini-chapter within the chapter, which helps students absorb new concepts in small, carefully metered segments and get confirmation before moving on to the next segment.

Some Productivity Apps to Check Out!

Lately I've been receiving multiple submissions from random bloggers requesting that I share them on my site. It's something that I've considered doing and have had a “to do” item for some time to come up with some criteria for reviewing and potentially publishing contributed content, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Today, […]

                    

Success & the Art of Developing Your Inner Coach

Brett Ledbetter is a former college basketball player and author of the book What Drives Winning. I stumbled upon his TEDx talk somehow recently and I'm glad I did because it's well worth watching. Brett's presentation showed good preparation with...