Business Writing Basics: How To Improve Your Business Writing Skills
How to Improve Your Business Writing Skills? Refined business writing skills are crucial to the success of a business.
A well-written text allows you to convey your communication precisely and clearly.
Whether you want to communicate with coworkers, management, clients, or other business stakeholders, skillful writing is essential.
Research has found that too long sentences, excessive jargon, wordiness, passive voice, etc., are poor writing practices that hinder business writing effectiveness. According to the ResearchGate report, poorly written material causes misunderstanding, confusion and wastes time and money.
Another survey by Josh Bernoff found poor writing destroys productivity.
81% of the people surveyed, including writers, editors, managers, directors, and supervisors, agreed poor writing wastes time.
American workers spend 22% of their work time reading, most of which they waste reading poorly written communication.
This translates to losses in hundreds of billions of dollars.
In this article, we talk about practical ways of improving your business writing skills to communicate more effectively, save time and money, and support the achievement of business goals.
Areas covered include;
- What Is Business Writing?
- Types of Business Writing
- Why Are Business Writing Skills Important?
- When Do You Need Business Writing Skills?
- How to Become More Clear in Your Writing
What Is Business Writing?
Business writing is a type of communication used in a professional setting to convey information to coworkers, management, customers, and other business stakeholders.
Effective business writing should possess certain qualities such as clarity, coherence, completeness, conciseness, conversation, correctness, courtesy, and credibility.
We call these the C’s of business writing.
Types of Business Writing
The content of business communication varies depending on the purpose.
There are four types of business writing – instructional, informational, persuasive, and transactional.
- Instructional – This type of writing seeks to guide users through procedures for completing a task. For instance, user manuals, product specifications, memos, etc., fall under instructional business writing.
- Informational – Writing is used to inform the readers by conveying business information. Examples of informative business writing include financial statements, reports, minutes, etc.
- Persuasive – This form of writing aims to persuade the readers to make a decision, such as buying a product or service. For example, advertisements, proposals, lead magnets, sales emails, etc.
- Transactional – Comprises day-to-day business communications to coworkers or customers. These include invoices, forms, letters, emails, etc.
Why Are Business Writing Skills Important in Business?
Mastering business writing skills is beneficial in many ways.
As earlier mentioned, businesses lose billions of dollars due to poor communications.
For this reason, every person who requires to send business-related communication at any point should hone their writing skills to communicate effectively.
Learning how to write skillfully can;
Build Brand Reputation
Well-written communication, be it web copy, press releases, social media posts, emails, product descriptions, enhances a brand’s reputation.
Ensuring the content meets the C’s of business writing highlighted above makes it stand out and trustworthy, thereby boosting the brand image.
Drive sales
Writing a winning marketing or sales copy requires skill.
Whether you’re writing a proposal, a sales or a marketing email, you need to convey the message clearly and persuasively to captivate the readers’ interest and win their trust. This enables you to attract more leads and drive sales.
Boosts Productivity
As research has shown, poor writing wastes resources. People spend more time than they should be trying to comprehend the meaning of poorly written communication.
Conversely, circulating well-written communication that’s easy to understand helps boost productivity. It also minimizes errors that can comprise efficiency and slow productivity.
Enhances Business Relationships
When people communicate effectively through skillfully written business communication, it eliminates the potential conflict between coworkers, employees and management, business and clients, etc.
Essentially, effective communication leads to better business relationships.
When Do You Need Business Writing Skills?
Business writing skills are essential in every business activity or process that requires exchanging information.
To understand this, let us discuss various examples of communications that require business writing skills.
Emails
Emails are common communication channels in the workplace where business writing skills come in handy.
Writing proper business emails is essential for effective communication between coworkers, employees and management, business and its customers, plus other stakeholders.
From crafting a catchy subject line to personalizing the greetings, writing a clear body copy and an appropriate closing message, composing compelling emails that get read is a skill you need to hone.
Business Letters
There are different types of letters exchanged in business setups.
Whether you’re writing a sales letter or a letter of recommendation, you need to have the essential business writing skills to convey your message professionally for clarity and completeness.
Examples of common business letters that require the skills include offer letters, thank you letters, welcome letters, announcement letters, termination letters, cover letters, letters of recommendation, sales letters, etc.
Reports
Reports are essential business documents prepared for various purposes.
If your position requires writing any report (recommendation, compliance, periodic, etc.), having the basic report writing skills to write clear and understandable reports can go a long way in fostering effective communication.
Memos
Memos are business communication documents used internally.
It’s essential to learn how to write them, including the format and the type of information they should contain.
For instance, you could choose a memo over an email to communicate changes to personnel or business workflows.
Newsletters
Businesses use newsletters internally and externally for different purposes.
For instance, you could send prospects welcome series newsletters to help them learn more about the business.
You could also send your subscribers a regular newsletter informing them about a new blog post, send a customer a survey to gather information about a recent product/service they purchased, etc.
Internally, you could circulate newsletters to employees with information on upcoming events, recent successes, etc.
No matter the purpose, learning to craft compelling newsletters is essential to trigger the expected action.
Press Releases
Press releases allow businesses to communicate an official statement such as new product launches, events, product updates, awards, etc.
Learning how to craft the pieces using the correct format, style, and wording comes in handy whenever a business needs to release news to its customers or the public.
Handbooks
There are various handbooks that a business requires from time to time.
Operation, service, policy, training, and user manuals are just a few examples that require skillful writing.
As much as there are available templates to ease the creation process, you need to familiarize yourself with the specific requirements for creating each type of handbook to communicate effectively.
How to Become More Clear in Your Writing
Ideally, there are principles of good business writing that you can employ in your communication to start writing more clearly.
Mastering them can help improve your writing over time.
While there are various writing tools, such as Grammarly, Hemingway, etc., that you can use to polish up your text to make it sound better, learning these principles can help you write more consciously and avoid making errors in the first place.
Let’s look at some of them.
Clarity of Purpose
Before you start writing, you should think about the message you want to convey and why.
This allows you to package it in an organized manner to foster better understanding.
It also helps you know the type of writing that fits the context of the message, e.g., email, memo, press release, etc.
Having clarity of purpose also lets you deliver the most critical information first.
For instance, you could start by explaining why you’re writing so that the reader understands the meaning of the text from the get-go.
Know Your Audience
Understanding your audience helps you write more effectively.
Who are they, and what information are they after? Only then can you write in a way that connects with them and addresses their specific need.
Use Active Voice
In an active sentence, the subject performs the action.
Unlike in a passive sentence, the action in the active sentence feels more engaging and brings more clarity.
Use Simple Language
Unless you’re writing to experts familiar with industry jargon, you should simplify your language as much as possible.
If you must use an unfamiliar term, ensure you explain its meaning to avoid losing the audience.
Generally, vocabulary only sounds sweet to the writer of a text.
A reader gets disoriented when they encounter an unfamiliar word, which automatically hinders effective communication.
As we mentioned earlier, poorly written texts waste a reader’s time, and this is one of the causes.
Because once a reader encounters a complex word, they tend to go over the text repeatedly to comprehend its meaning.
Write Shorter Sentences
Crafting short sentences is another effective way of bringing clarity to your writing.
Readers get lost reading through a long sentence, forcing them to reread severally to understand what you’re trying to say.
If you must use a long sentence (which is okay if you mix short and long ones), don’t forget to break it up with commas (where necessary) for better understanding.
Be Clear and Concise
Clear writing allows you to convey your message in a way that readers can’t ignore.
Easy to read and understand text captivates a reader to continue reading, which is the desire of every business writer.
For instance, you should avoid using long and complex words if you can find shorter and simpler alternatives. Because if the message is not easy to comprehend, it could be misinterpreted or poorly received.
On the same note, you should avoid unnecessary repetition, especially using different phrases that convey the same meaning within a single sentence.
Convey Relevant Information
For more clarity, avoid delivering your message in too many words. Instead, it should only convey what is valuable, accurate and most relevant to the reader regarding the particular issue.
If the text is long, break it down into smaller blocks using subheadings and bullet points for better readability. The subheadings should clearly explain what the sections are about to enable the reader quickly scan through the text.
Use Simple Formatting
Simple formatting enhances readability and improves clarity.
For instance, avoid fancy fonts and too small or too big font sizes. Instead, use professional font sizes such as Arial font size 11 or Times New Roman size 12.
For longer texts, you could break it into H2s, H3s, and H4s as appropriate and use a mix of bullets and numbers throughout the text. Again, the key is to maintain precise and uniform formatting to avoid confusing readers.
Edit and Proofread the Text
Once you finish composing the text, read through it to correct any grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.
Also, look for statements that may need rewriting to improve clarity.
After the first edit, proofread the text once more to ensure it flows well and is entirely error-free for that added clarity.
Write More
Writing is a skill that gets finer with practice. If you want to learn to write more clearly, you need to write often.
As you write and proofread your writing repeatedly, especially with the help of the writing tools, your skills will improve over time.
Leverage Writing Tools
Even if you master all the above tips and create clear and concise masterpieces, you should still run your work through writing tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway to polish up the hard-to-catch errors.
Besides, using the tools consistently enables you to master the correct style, improving your overall writing.
Conclusion
Effective business communication requires refined writing skills.
With research linking poorly written materials to low productivity and massive business losses, everyone involved in creating business content, be it employees, managers, editors, writers, etc., ought to hone their writing skills for better results.
From building a brand reputation to driving sales, boosting productivity and enhancing business relationships, good writing skills are essential for effective communication across all business facets.
Whether you need to write business letters, reports, newsletters, emails, memos, handbooks, or emails, knowing how to package the information for clarity is a handy skill that you should practise and master.
We hope the principles we have shared will help you hone your craft and become a better business writer.