Exclusive Teaching Resources for Business Communication Instructors

The AIDA model and similar approaches have been successful with marketing and sales messages for decades, but in the social media landscape, consumers are more apt to look for product information from other consumers, not the companies marketing those products. Consequently, today's business communicators need new skills to encourage and participate in these online conversations.

Following these guidelines will help students adapt what they're learning in the course to the new realities of promotional communication: . . .

Because of the social media revolution and electronic communication revolution, what is being taught in a typical business course should be changing. In this presentation, you'll learn the answers to these questions:

(1) What types of social media and electronic communication should be taught in a business communication course today?, (2) What should instructors be teaching about social media and electronic communication?, (3) What are the best ways to teach social media and electronic communication effectively, and (4) What resources are recommended for teaching social media and electronic communication?

Expert Speaker: Courtland Bovee, one of America's leading instructors in clear and effective communication, coauthors (with John Thill) the world's leading textbooks in business communication. Professor Bovee's specialty is social media and electronic communication.

Southwest Airlines, Walt Disney, UPS, Nike, and Johnson & Johnson: Share These Companies' Business Communication Stories with Your Classes

How? By visiting our new online business communication magazines filled with interesting stories and examples that you can share with your classes tomorrow. Best of all, the magazines are complimentary.

Offering students the ability to learn from carefully selected examples is one of the foundations of a successful business communication course. Bovée-Thill textbooks offer students dozens of annotated model documents that show how communications works—or doesn't work—in real-life scenarios.

These documents are divided between examples from real companies and examples that the authors created to demonstrate specific communication principles and practices.

Here is one of the many real-company examples, in this case a blog post from the social media marketing agency Ignite. The blue annotations point out specific steps this writer took to craft unified, coherent paragraphs, including the effective use of transitions, topic sentences, and supporting details.

By using examples from real companies, Bovée-Thill texts emphasize to students that the skills they are developing in the business communication course have direct and important relevance in the workplace, and that honing these skills will help them succeed on the job.

While some texts have few, if any, real-company examples, Bovée-Thill texts have long been the market leaders in providing a rich selection of real-life messages from a variety of interesting companies.

Here is one of the model documents created by the authors, one of the many before-and-after pairs that show students how particular problem areas in a draft message can be improved.

The "Ineffective" version contains several distinct problem areas, and the blue annotations clearly point these out so that students can understand why the message is ineffective.

The "Effective" version corrects those weak areas, and blue annotations explain specifically what was done to make the improvements.

With all Bovée-Thill model documents, the points illustrated in the example messages are tied closely to the chapter material so that students get immediate confirmation of the principles they are studying.

By studying these examples throughout the course, students can see how the concepts they are learning are put to use by professional communicators, and they have numerous models to follow for completing course activities and for writing their own important messages, such as employment cover letters.
The model documents use a variety of media that represent the tools used by professionals in the workplace. Many of the models are also linked to online activities on mybcommlab to give students practice at revising documents using these same principles addressed in the print document.

To order an examination copy of a Bovée-Thill business communication text, send an email to Pearson Education's Sampling Department at the address shown on the screen (samplingdept@pearson.com).

Extensive portfolios of model documents are just one of the many advantages that you and your students can gain from using a Bovée-Thill business communication text.

By offering them a diverse selection of models to learn from, you will help them grasp the key points of your course faster and more effectively and help prepare them for the demands of writing on the job.

Has the textbook you've been using to teach business communication become obsolete?

Most textbooks have been incredibly slow in adapting to this digital age. If your current textbook doesn't provide instruction about the types of social media and electronic communication described in the examples in this video, it doesn't support your mission to help students prepare to meet employer expectations.

Enjoy fascinating stories about recent college graduates from across the country who Bovee and Thill, authors of the leading textbooks in business communication, have met during the past few months. These stories illustrate the ways the digital age is changing business communication and the need for business communication courses to change, too.

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. It's a social networking and social publishing site based on photos and videos.

Each photo or video is called a "pin." Pins can be grouped into "boards," which are sets of pins focused on a specific topic. Pinterest can be accessed by adding the "Pin it" button to the desktop bookmark bar, "Pin it" buttons added to personal website or blog pages, and the Pinterest iPhone application.

Here's the Business Communication Pictorial Gallery on Pinterest. Each item pinned to a board can then be clicked on to open into a larger picture of the item as well which includes a comment section that allows visitors to create discussions. Each pin can also be liked and/or re-pinned to a board on the visitor's Pinterest profile.

Initially, Pinterest was used for digital scrapbooking as people shared pictures which included almost anything from recipes to cute animals. As Pinterest became more popular, the sharing became more organized ,and creativity began to reveal some amazing things you can do on this site.

The versatility of Pinterest became clear and as new features were incorporated, the platform only became more powerful. Businesses are now incorporating and distributing brand images with messages on Pinterest.

To see Pinterest, visit Bovee & Thill's Business Communication Blog, go to the Quick Links section on the left-hand column, and click on the red button with the large "P." This will take you to the Business Communication Pictorial Gallery. To find other pages of interest, use the search box in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Visit the gallery and other Pinterest pages today.

In today's modern business communication course, students should be provided an opportunity to work on exercises, described in this video, that develop a wide variety of business communication skills.