It's so easy to dismiss the realm of mobile phone texting as "just for teenagers," that it hasn't yet seen widespread use in business. As a company studying and creating business communication strategies for other businesses, Calvert Creative is finding texting to be a powerful and compelling tool worth a second look.

1. It's polite
Miss Manners would like texting, I think. Rather than having my mobile phone erupting mid-meeting with Nickleback's "I Wanna be a Rockstar," my text messages simply show up on the face of my iPhone. Unlike with a phone call, I know at a glance whether a situation is urgent or can wait until I'm out of the meeting. And because I know the level of importance of any given text, I can decide whether to tap off a response while walking down the hall to my office, or let it wait until I'm headed home for the day. It's also incredibly handy for locating people in a crowd without disturbing everyone else (i.e., "Excuse me, are you Dr. Kinnicut?"). The only thing more polite is an English butler.

2. It's concise
Brevity the best thing about texting, and in the business world, getting directly to the point is next to godliness. Text messages tend to be short either because you are on a numerical keyboard  that requires several keystrokes per letter or simply because the keyboard is so small. Texters have developed a rather extensive shorthand that can be useful in brief communications. You might use DD for "due diligence," or STD for "seal the deal." If your colleague insists on texting you about what he's having for lunch, at least you haven't wasted time on the phone with him. Glance, delete, move on.

3. It's mashable
Integrating text with other business functions is slightly advanced, but well worth the time. I use a third party, Twitter, which is famous for delivering breaking news faster than any other source, to make this work. For example, I might subscribe to the New York Times business feed (which delivers links to headlines) through Twitter, then tell Twitter to deliver those notifications by SMS (Short Message Service, i.e., a mobile phone's texting application). Alerts can also be delivered this way, so that you know instantly when someone uses your online name, for example.

4. It's not a driving hazard
Another great application to use with texting is voice-to-text. Jott.com is a free service that will turn voice messages into texts (or emails!). Simply set up your account, dial Jott, tell it who you want to text, then speak your message. It's outstanding for texting while you're in the car or if you hate tapping out messages on a tiny keyboard.

What other ways have you discovered to make texting a powerful business tool?