Directors News - High quality writing skills in short supply

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High quality writing skills in short supply

Your business attracts customers; agrees deals; persuades people to buy; raises its profile and performs the functions of a successful business. And it probably does most of these in writing. People are gaining their first impressions of you every day from a press release, an email or a website that you or one of your colleagues wrote.

We all do business in writing, and yet few of us are very good at it. I would like to share with you comments two of my customers made when they were explaining to me why they needed writing skills training, and then give you some tips that they found very useful (and you don’t have to pay for).

A director at a large consultancy said this:
I like to think that I review my team’s reports thoroughly. The other day I received a report I had allowed an hour for, and it took me over half of that time to correct the English.

The business development manager at a data management provider said:
Our proposals are our life-blood – winning tenders is how we get business through the door. How do they (his employees) think we are going to win them if they can’t write grammatical English?

Here are three of the tips that my customers have found particularly useful – yours just for reading Business in Berkshire.

1. Think first.
Plan what you are going to say, even for an email. Make notes on a piece of paper so that when you hit the keyboard you have got your ideas in front of you.
Why?
Because if you have sorted the content out and only have the sentences and words to think about you will make fewer mistakes. We tend to try to do it all at once and end up with unreadable sentences 54 words long.

2. Put your reader in the front of your mind.
Think about them – what words will they understand? What do they need to know? What do they care about? What is their reaction to your message likely to be?
Why?
Because most of the misunderstandings, time-wasting and anger that are caused by email correspondence would have been eliminated by the writer spending a few seconds putting themselves in the reader’s position. Think about last time you were thoroughly annoyed by an email. Did the writer pay proper attention to your needs, knowledge and sensitivities?

3. Leave time to check carefully
Allow about a third of the total time you spend on the document for checking it through. Read it for typing errors, sentence structure, missed words and spelling and then read it again to check if it does the intended job. Do you really think the reader will do or think what you want them to do or think as a result of reading this?
Why?
Because checking as you go along wastes time. It is far more efficient to write quickly, go away for a little while and then check after a break. You are much more likely to spot errors and inappropriate tone when you read it through as if you had just received it.

I hope these tips are useful. Please feel free to share them with your colleagues. There are plenty more where they came from.

All your grammar questions answered – guaranteed
Have a look around
Full access from £5.00

Contact:
Jane Penson
jane@penson.co.uk
01494 873093
07778 803338

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Jon Davey is a Social Media Director based in Windsor, Berkshire UK.

These short videos aim to both educate those interested on how to boost their social media profile, both online and offline, while at the same time helping Jon's own profile by being indexed rapidly by the search engines and YouTube.

Social Media is made up of two words ... social & ... you've got it media ! This means that it is not just about online marketing, offline is key as well. Your goal should perhaps be to recognised online by your industry and locally offline.

Please review one or two of the videos below, score them on You Tube and add your comments ... it all helps ... they are in reverse order of popularity when last checked inorder to help the lesser clicked!!

Thank you and enjoy ...

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