We understand that being able to write in a clear and professional style is important to your business. That is why we have developed the Business Writing Institute and the Effective Business Writing seminar. This practice-driven business writing seminar will significantly improve your ability to write in English, so that your readers will receive a clear, concise, effective message. Most professionals spend at least 15-20% of their time writing for business; emails, memos, business letters, reports and other business correspondence. Our customized approach guarantees an improvement in business communication skills that will increase your productivity, success and job satisfaction.
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Benefits of business writing training seminars:
- learn how to write a business letter
- discover the skills of writing a business letter
- learn to create clear business correspondence
- understand the difference of writing for business
- improve overall business communication
Business Writing Training: 7 Steps to Better Business Writing Seminars
Sales letters. Web pages. Memos. Reports. While people and profits drive business, the written word is its road. Does your writing take you where you need to go or are you lost without a map on the wrong side of town? Follow these steps to make your business writing shine.
Consider your audience. Who will read what you're writing? Your workforce? Your prospects? The public? Different audiences call for different styles of writing. If you're writing a procedural manual for your employees, consider their education level. Line workers in production will have one vocabulary; your sales associates will have another. If you're marketing to prospects within your industry, they will understand (and expect) industry-specific terms and jargon. The general public will not. Press releases and other documents for public consumption must contain plain language or clearly define industry-specific terms.
Know your purpose. What do you want to say? What result do you want to obtain with the document you're writing? As you're making notes, state your goal for the work at hand. Type it out at the top of your document or in a header. You can remove it later, before anyone sees your work. Refer to this goal frequently as you outline and write and your writing will stay on target.
Organize your thoughts. Business writing is about producing results. Pulling a response, closing a deal, selling units of product. Organize your key points in an outline prior to drafting your document and your finished product will be stronger. Outlines don't have to be the Roman-numeral-and-capital-letter format you learned in school, though they can be. They can also be bulleted lists or just a series of notes in a given order. They can even be non-linear. If you're familiar with mind maps, these can be an effective outlining tool as well.
Write like you talk. Do you have a colleague whom you understand just fine when you talk face to face, but when she tries to communicate with you in writing you have no idea what she's saying? A lot of people have the idea that writing is a completely different form of communication than speech. They attempt to formalize their written discourse, spruce it up with gratuitous multi-syllabic words, or work around the points they want to make without ever making them. As a business writer, your first goal should be clarity, and the best way to be clear is to write like you talk, plainly and to the point. The people you wish to communicate with will thank you for it.
Re-read and revise. While writing is like speech on paper, unlike speech you have the chance to edit writing before anyone reads it. You can eliminate awkward passages, unclear statements, and tangential points. After you've drafted your document, read it over. Is what you want to say clear to you? Read it out loud if possible. Are there passages that are difficult to verbalize? They will probably be difficult to read as well.
Get feedback. It's a great idea to cultivate a writing ally, someone who can take a look at your work and give you some constructive feedback before you publish or otherwise distribute it. This can be a coworker, your boss, a friend outside your company, even your spouse. When you write about a topic you spend your days immersed in, sometimes you forget that terms or concepts that are clear to you might need additional explaining to someone else, and your ally can bring these to your attention. He or she can also flag parts of your work that are confusing or alert you to a tone of voice you didn't realize you were using.
Proofread. Check your work. Slowly. Then check it again. Then have someone else check it. It doesn't matter if you have an MBA from Harvard and a rack of salesmanship awards. Distributing work with misspelled words or other errors will harm your credibility. It's a sign of carelessness, and who wants to trust someone who is careless? Your word processor's spell check helps, but it won't catch every error. Check it yourself. There's nothing worse than spotting a mistake after your writing is distributed.
Whether you write to sell, to inform, or to manage others, your words should communicate clearly and effectively. Follow these seven steps and keep your writing on topic, on task, and on target.
Source: Stephen L. Moss link
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