© racorn
How many emails, letters and brochures do you receive every day? There is no count. How many of these messages do you junk? More than 90% for sure. The others get lost in the crowd. Now, when you write your own business communication, your readers would be thinking in the same lines. If your communication cannot stand apart from the crowd, it will get junked as soon as it is received.
What are some of the ways you can hold the attention of your reader? No, you don’t need to use garishly coloured paper with more garishly coloured ink. It will definitely go to the junk box. Instead, use the following 5 approaches for effective business writing that actually work.
1. Know your audience
Think of a billboard… what does it do? It has a message that gets conveyed to everyone, but it targets no one in particular. Business writing is anything but a billboard. You need to know your audience – what do they like reading about? What is their demographic spread? What are the subjects that excite them? Before you even put one line on paper, you should know who you are writing for.
2. Have the POV of a reporter
You should have a key message coming out of your communication. There could be different reasons for you to write something – to share information, to explain a concept or to inspire your readers to act. For example, if you want someone to purchase a product from your company, you may start with something like, “Here is a sure shot way to save $200 on your next purchase.”
3. Avoid jargons and clichés
We love jargons, don’t we? All businesses and companies have internal short forms that they love to use. But your audience may not even be aware of these short forms. You may know that CRM is Customer Report Management, but someone may think it is Customer Response Management. Be clear when you want to explain a short form.
Words like service-focused, win-win solutions and leverage the situation and other have become highly clichéd. Isn’t your company service focused already? Aren’t you always looking for mutually benefiting solutions? Why use such sentences to make your readers yawn. If you have to use a metaphor, why not look for alternatives to the clichéd ones?
4. Keep it to the point
You cannot beat around the bush when you have a specific message to convey. In fact, you will make your readers distrust you when they see that you are hesitant about coming straight to the point. Remember those online sales letters that go on and on for pages before they say that they want you to pay so and so rupees for buying the super training program that is being advertised?
5. Read before you send
Proofreading is a must in any business communication. You cannot afford to make silly spelling and grammatical errors. Imagine sending an error laden email to your CEO. You could be looking out for a new job soon. The same rule applies to your audience. An error laden business communication is going to pull down your brand image.
To summarize – before you write a business letter, you should have sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and jotted down all these points. Spend some time in thinking before you write and this is how your business communication can be perfect.