We learn so many skills throughout our lives, some are considered to be optional, means we can live without them, but some others are taken as essentials. One of them improve Your Business Writing Skills, it is something that cannot be taken out of our lives as it is considered to be the most effective tool to express one’s thoughts, feelings and experiments. Sometimes it is not possible to say what exactly you meant to say in a meeting or face to face, you cannot convey the whole meaning without the help of writing.
However, we are not talking about writing skill in general, we are going to discuss the value of writing in business and how to improve your business writing skills. If a person owns a business, whether it is a small one or a giant-sized industry, he might not be good at writing due to his business responsibilities and workload. You probably keep on writing at work constantly: recommendations to customers, notices to senior officials or emails to your business partners. In any case, how might you guarantee that your writing for any purpose is impressive enough for the receiver and you are going to receive desired results? How would you make your correspondences emerge and stand distinctive?
We are composing a list of 11 most practical tips to improve your business writing skills.
Meaningful and Short text:
Regarding business writing, you must take care of your text to be meaningful and short. As we all know that it’s a fast-moving society and nobody has so much time to go through a 1000 words composition. Therefore, keep one thing in mind that you have to just Say whatever you want to say directly. No need to make a smooth plot before quoting the most meaningful part. Just start your writing, convey your message and conclude your speech.
Targeted Audience Rule:
It is very important to address the right audience whom you want to get your message and respond. It is an old saying that “If you address everyone, you will be listened by No one: So clearly mention whom you are talking to, so that the targeted people may hear you with interest and respond.
Know the Context of your Message:
Make sure that you yourself know what actually you want to say. If you are trying to convey a message about your business, try forming it like an appealing slogan to capture the attention of your audience. If you want to ask some question, address the audience you want to ask and state it clearly and if you want to pass judgment, state the discussions or views regarding the issue clearly before passing your judgment.
Jargon must be avoided:
Every field has its own specific terms which can be understood by the relevant people only. Such terms should be avoided if you are conveying any message to the audience outside that ground. The general audience will get confused about your whole message if those specific words are included in your text. If it is essential to do that, add relevant info about those terms or place a hyperlink to the article or website which explains these terms.
Make it Simple and vivid:
As we already mentioned that people don’t have time to go through a long, or monotonous text. Make it simple and effective by adding a proper subject line (conveying the soul of the message), headings, subheadings and bullets to distribute your lines according to their value. Use BOLD text to mention memorable and important information like dates, prices or names. Make sure your reader can just take an overview and skim the message from your text in the first glance.
Proofread, TWICE!
Proofreading is the most important part of business writing. Spelling mistakes, errors, typos and grammar fluctuations can spoil the whole image of your message. Proofread for mistakes and typos, and secondly, proofread to improve the tone of your message. Make sure the words are nicely used. You can alter any word or sentence if necessary to make your text even more impressive.
Five W’s are important:
Just like a news reporter, you need to add relevant information to reply to the five important queries, who? What? where? when? why? It surely makes your message go effective and complete.
Call to action:
Specifically, for business writings, call to action words and phrases are most important. You must add lines that motivate your reader to take action according to your desire. You are actually composing business texts to convey your message to your clients or colleagues and most probably, you want them to do something (buy your service or product, signup with you). Call to action phrases will let them decide quickly and they will respond.
Too many choices can Spoil the results:
In a business text, you should never give too many choices to your reader. Just take a decision and let them know. for example, if you want to conduct a meeting, just pick a time and place and email your partner or colleagues to inform. If you want to let them chose, just give them two options to choose one of them. Too many choices will leave you perplexed for taking the decision.
Use saved templates.:
As a business owner, you would be in a hurry always. So make sure to save a letter format, an email, or any other business text as a template. You can use saved templates when you are not in a mood to compose a fresh one or just to avoid typos in a hurry. Just change dates, names, places, and other specific information and dispatch it. But make sure to edit it properly not leaving any pre mentioned information behind.
Hire a Freelancer:
It is not a tip to improve your writing skill, it’s just advice. If you still feel that you cannot manage time to do business writings so often or you are still doubted about the effectiveness of your composition.
You hire a freelance writer to do the job for you. If you are super busy and you think you cannot manage all that alone, have some assistance, it is a better choice than to be unread due to uninspiring text.
Conclusion
These are some of the steps that help you to improve your business writing skills. I hope you have liked the post. Do share your thoughts with us in the comments below.