Business Writing For Dummies. Natalie Canavor

remains the dominant everyday communication medium at work for most people. In many ways, email is also the most basic, so it’s a natural starting point for improving your writing. Even if you don’t use email much, it makes a good demonstration medium. So, read the examples knowing the ideas apply to most other writing tasks.

      

Don’t underestimate the importance or overall impact of email! This workhorse offers a hard-to-beat chance to build your reputation and image, incrementally. You can actually decide how you want to be perceived: Confident? Creative? Inventive? Responsible? Steady? A source of ideas? A problem-solver? Make up your own list and write everything from inside this persona!

      

Understanding your audience pays off hugely with email. Analyzing the person who reads your message shows you how to ask for what you want, whether you’re requesting an opportunity, inviting someone to a meeting, or pitching something. Further, knowing your audience in-depth enables you to anticipate your reader’s response and build in answers to objections he’s apt to raise.

      Framing the right content at the intersection of goal and audience works equally well for a wide range of business materials (as you find in Chapter 7). You may be surprised to see how the same principles also give you the foundation for long-form materials that often feel like make-or-break opportunities: proposals, reports, and executive summaries. They also equip you to create effective marketing messages and write media releases.

Writing for the spoken word

      From a 20-second “elevator speech” to introduce yourself to hosting a webinar, the best system is: plan, write, rehearse, then deliver. Chapter 8 shows you how to strategize, write, and prepare for an oral presentation whether formal or less so. Learn how to guide yourself with talking points, an essential technique that enables politicians and CEOs to speak effectively and respond to challenges on their feet. It can work wonders for your own preparation and confidence.

      You’ll find that writing for speech purposes relies on the same structure as writing email, letters, and other business documents – Goal + Audience = Content – but the medium suggests tighter technical guidelines than print. You need to aim for simple, clear language based on short, everyday words in natural speaking patterns. Simplicity takes thought!

      The basic planning process applies to scripting your own videos and visual-style social media as well. In most cases, ideas must first be shaped in words, even if the core idea is expressed in a single sentence. And even if words end up playing a minor role on screen.

      

For business purposes, never leave your meaning to people’s imagination. Ambiguity invites the audience to make up what they don’t understand. Use language to plan, provide context, and connect your visuals, as covered in Chapter 8, along with more traditional scripting techniques.

Writing online: From websites to blogs to tweets

      People often assume that when it comes to online content, they can toss all the old writing rules out the virtual window. Big mistake! Digital media with its lightning delivery speed and infinite reach does upend many traditional ideas about communication – top-down thinking, most notably, whereby authoritative figures issue “the word.” Today anyone can market a business, entertain the world, and become a journalist or author. But this democratization makes the need to write well more imperative than ever.

      

There are simply too many websites, blogs, tweets, and all the rest to compete against if you don’t provide first-rate material people want. The wide-open pioneering days of social media are in some ways over, even though new platforms keep emerging. Any digital guru will tell you that only the very best “content” gains an audience anymore. Translated to concrete terms, that means content that is well-planned, well-worded, and well-edited. Write blogs and posts marred by poor thinking, grammar, or spelling, and you lose credibility and readers. Fail to plan your website from the audience’s perspective, and the site won’t contribute to your goals. Use Twitter or LinkedIn or Pinterest or Instagram without a business strategy, and you might damage your cause (and reputation) rather than advance it. Chapters 11 and 12 give you the writing know-how you need to communicate in today’s digital world and integrate your chosen media into a unified program.

      The online world is the great leveler. Never before has there been so much opportunity for individuals, or small enterprises, to make an impact. Equip yourself to use it effectively and the possibilities are boundless. Practice crystallizing your ideas and information into concise, zingy copy. And of course, digital media introduce new demands for interactivity – you want people to respond and share, which demands inventive thinking.

      As you read this, I’m sure new technologies are emerging to dazzle and intrigue us. But the newest technology is basically one more delivery system for your messages. You will need clear thinking and good writing to succeed. The techniques presented in this book will not go out of date! But adapt them with imagination.

Special purpose writing

      You may or may not remember, depending on your age, the days when a career job meant a nearly lifetime commitment for both employer and employee. That’s far from the norm now. In fact, the U.S. government estimates that someone entering the workplace now will hold ten different jobs by the age of 40. People in general stay in jobs an average of 4.4 years. So, for most of us, applying for jobs is an ongoing fact of life. This is especially true if you’re part of the Millennial generation, under the age of 35, and share with your cohorts a quick-exit tendency when a job doesn’t satisfy you.

      Therefore, you need be an outstanding job applicant. I devote a full chapter (Chapter 10) to writing not just résumés and cover letters, but also successful networking messages. You’ll also find a special section on how to define and explain your own value and equip yourself for interviews.

      If you ultimately hope to take a management role, I’ve got you covered in Chapter 14. Learn to establish trust, communicate with staff, share your vision, and write inspiring messages. Great leaders often have a particular skill – storytelling. Using stories as well as anecdotes, examples, and testimonials are within your reach, too. Chapter 9 shows you how to find your own story and shape it to your business needs.

Taking the global perspective

      This book is based on American business writing style and practice. North Americans are singularly lucky in that their English has become the international language of business, reflecting the United States’ economic dominance of the past century. But if you run a cross-national business or work for one, it’s a mistake to assume that your audiences in other cultures will read your writing in the way you wish.

      Someone who learned English as a second, third, or fourth language may not find your email, letters, and websites easy to understand. Spoken language skills are much easier to acquire than written ones. Further, cultural differences may be much bigger than you think.

      

It’s often remarkably hard to realize that everyone is not on the same wavelength. Every country and culture has distinct values and perspectives. For writing, this means taking into account factors that include preferred degree of formality, attitude toward business relationships, priorities such as courtesy versus efficiency, specific ways of opening a conversation, and an expectation of directness versus indirectness. In some countries, saying yes may mean no!

      

Even if cross-border communication doesn’t concern you, most workplaces are increasingly diverse. People don’t leave their cultural perspective at home when they come to