The fastest way to alienate your clients, employees and business partners is to communicate poorly. Many of us fall prey to "communications traps" that bruise business ties and stall sales. And we often don't realize the impact.

The traps appeared before my eyes when I received a monthly email newsletter...

I normally look forward to the pearls of wisdom from this well-heeled technology strategy firm. This time was different. After the first paragraph, I was ready to delete the message.

This was a perfect example of online newsletter copy gone south. And I knew we could all learn from my experience as the disenchanted reader.

As you hear the communication "crimes" the editor committed, consider whether they ring true for you, and how you come across to others.

The newsletter contained over 3,000 words and occupied 7 pages.

Name one C-level executive who has the time to read this amount of information. If you have that much to say, consider you have a multi-part article, a seminar series, or a book in the making. According to highly-acclaimed copyrighter, Ted Nicholas, "good copy starts with 10 words, then narrows to five, and to one." His opinion carries weight; his mastery of words has helped his clients generate over $1B in sales.

Your all-hands meetings, teleconferences, and sales presentations are also intended to educate, persuade, and help others take action. Ted's rules can apply in these scenarios as well.

Do your audience a favor. Re-consider what your intentions are. How many outcomes or messages do you want to deliver? Pick one call to action for now, and expand based on time or audience constraints. If you have several outcomes, divide your messages into a series of 500-700 word "chunks."

Each paragraph contained at least 250 words. Most sentences contained at least 35 words and many parenthetical phrases. Who has the time and interest to read this level of insight in a business newsletter? Even though this strategy expert offers many great insights, he lost me after the first paragraph.

The article lacked any real life stories. Movie producers and best-selling non-fiction authors follow a story formula. Stories have their roots in legends and myths. According to legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell, "writers win the hearts and minds of their audience when they share a story. We look for the heroes and success stories to suspend our disbelief."

Examine how your company uses stories to suspend disbelief. Do they inspire your audiences to relate to the main character (or message), and take action?

The expertise and knowledge of the author was undermined by the frequent use of very negative words.

The newsletter author painted doom and gloom as he described the poor execution strategies within today's IT companies. Whether I agree with him or not is inconsequential. I counted multiple uses of words such as "survival," "desperate," and "fail."

The deep impact of language cannot be denied. Consider the two decades of research conducted by Dr. Masaru Emoto, author of "The Hidden Messages in Water" Dr. Emoto photographed various water crystals in a body of water after exposing them to various words he wrote on a piece of paper, such as "love," "gratitude," and "hate." He has documented stark contrasts between the beauty of the water crystals exposed to positive words, and those exposed to negative words.

In the movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" Emoto's work made him an overnight sensation. Consider this: If our words can do that to water, what can they do to our thoughts?

Bob Scheinfeld, President of The Seven Power Centers of Life has a similar theory. "Leaders and marketers operate at two levels when they communicate: the superficial level (the face value words) and the energetic level (invisible or energetic intent). As communicators, we carve energy. When our intent is not heartfelt or truthful, we will hit speed bumps."

How do you avoid persuasive communication traps, ego-driven streams of consciousness, and energetic word vampires?

1. Close your eyes. Set your intention for the message you want to communicate. Then say it in front of a mirror. If it's a very critical message, videotape yourself. Watch the playback. On a scale of 1-10, how effectively do your words convey your intent and your truth?

2. Picture your message as water crystals. How can you make these messages symmetrical, attractive, and clean? Where can you remove your ego, excessive babble, and any unmet need to be the expert? What can you say or do in that message to invite the readers to think for themselves? Intentionally carve a message that benefits the reader more than it strokes your ego's need to be right or smarter than your intended audience.

3. Create at least one story that will resonate with your audience. When I teach seminars to successful entrepreneurs, I tell at least three stories for every 20 minutes of discussion time.