Guide to Better Business Writing

Today, the Harvard Business Review released a new publication called Your Guide to Better Business Writing.

They say, “A survey of 120 blue-chip American companies found that a third of employees wrote poorly, a problem businesses are spending more than $3 billion a year to correct.”

The book includes essays entitled “The Best Memo You’ll Ever Write” and “Writing Well When Time Is Tight”, which focus on a time-pressed manager’s need for a streamlined process to get ideas down on paper.

Here are the top 5 mistakes I see people make in business writing:

#1 Problem: people write what they want to say, and don’t think about what the people reading actually need to know.

Solution: Good writers focus on writing for their audience. We answer questions in ways that resonate with our readers.

#2 Problem: people deflate their case before they make it by leading with something that is worrying them, or with an apologetic statement (when no apology is required).

Solution: Good writers lead with the thing that is most relevant/of interest to the reader and cut anything that detracts from their case.

#3 Problem: people overly complicate their writing by trying to use words, phrases, or sentence structures they don’t really grasp.

Solution: Good writers k.i.s.s (keep it simple stupid) and tell other writers to do the same.

#4 Problem: people don’t reread their own work or ask a colleague to reread their work before sending it out.

Solution: Good writers know to look for our usual errors (I invert letters. I write “teh” every time and have to change it to “the”) and we often work with editors to find the mistakes we can’t see.

#5 Problem: people spend way too much time agonizing over writing and ultimately work themselves into a corner, or worse they try to write by committee because no one feels comfortable running with a writing project on their own.

Solution: It’s OK. There isn’t an in-house solution to every problem. There are times when it is better for businesses to hire a writer and move on.

Professional Writers can bring more than a polished, finished product to the table. I’m happy to answer my clients’ questions about writing. I like giving people tips so that they feel more confident with daily writing tasks. I offer time-savers and provide useful tools like style sheets and lexicons so that staff can more easily maintain the voice and tone we’ve worked to create on a project.

I’ll likely buy the Harvard guide – I have a growing collection of desk references for writing.  And I’m curious to see if the Harvard publishers mention that sometimes the best way to improve your business writing is to work with Professional Writers who are skilled and passionate about the craft.

Where are you on the social media learning curve?

Quotes by Women

I’ve been collecting quotes by notable women for a few years. I started because it seemed that 9 times out of 10, when I saw an inspiring quote it was said/written by a man. Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill and Gandhi have provided the world with some enviable quotes – but I as I trolled popular web sites for quotes to use in my writing, I couldn’t help wonder where all the great quotes by women were hiding.

Because a fair amount of the writing I do is for women’s organizations, and female audiences I decided that I should start a collection of quotes by women that I could reference and feature in my work.

Since I’ve now collected over 100 quotes by women, I’m going to start posting the quotes for all to enjoy. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but I was inspired to take action today when I read this,

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank

6 easy ways to start Tweeting

Have you started Tweeting? Have you started and then stopped? No worries. Everyone needs a nudge sometimes.

The idea for this post came from a nudge I gave one of my clients. He set himself up with a Twitter account a few months ago. But instead of diving in, he started by following some people, businesses and organizations and watched their Twitter behaviour. He was trying to learn “the right way” to use Twitter.

I think learning the etiquette of a platform is really important and I even encouraged him to spend an afternoon looking at people’s feeds, finding out his likes and dislikes about how people use the tool and watching interactions between people. But eventually, you just have to give it a try and see what happens. There is no “right way”, but the more you use it, the more you know what’s right for you (more on that in another post.)

Anyway, a couple of months went by and I noticed that my client was still just watching the tweets go by. I nudged him to “get in the conversation.” He really appreciated the advice I gave him to get him going, so I’m sharing it with you.

Stop being precious – just tweet! What ever you write will disappear on people’s feeds in no time and the more you tweet the faster things disappear on your profile page too.

Painters who wait for the perfect idea never paint anything. The ones who paint every day produce enough work (good and bad) that through simple odds they are going to create a ton of great work, and the boring stuff soon fades into the background. Stop waiting for your perfect tweet!

6 Easy Ways to Start Tweeting (or End Tweeter’s Block)

1. Ask questions – Use a question to get people thinking about something, or to genuinely ask for input.
   Tweet: Who tells people they can’t make mistakes? No one. So why do we think that?
2. Offer an answer – think about the articles on your blog as answers to questions. Pose the question on Twitter with a link to the article as your answer.
   Tweet: Does exercise really boost brain power?  Yes, the research is in http://ow.ly/2k4g3
3. Make a funny quip out of a reminder – remind people about something, but make it light and fun.
   Tweet: “It’s 3:00. Do you know where your water glass is?”
4. Retweet something – it is so easy to just share something interesting you read in your feed (and promote someone else in the process).
5. Share little moments – something about your work life or your home life to give people a glimpse of what’s up with you. Don’t bother with every detail of your day, but little moments here and there help people feel connected.
   Tweet: “Daddy, Mommy is so funny. She told the neighbours she has a 40 year old baby.” Yes, my friend’s 5-year old just said that to him. Hehehe.
6. Share research – if you look something up online share the link. Why not? You’ve done the work. Share it.
   Tweet: cool picture guide to making great coffee with a French Press http://coffeegeek.com/guides/presspot

Bottom lone: JUST TWEET SOMETHING.

My client and I have since talked a fair amount about strategies he can use to make the most of his Twitter time. He uses it pretty regularly now to sign people up for his newsletter, send them to his bog and website, or just to stay connected and visible.

If you are using Twitter as part of a campaign strategy and you find yourself getting blocked, refocus on the thoughts or actions you would ideally like to spark in people. Drift happens. Re-focusing on your goals can get you through just about any campaign blocks.

If you are still stuck, use the list above. In 15 minutes or less, find a way to use each strategy to communicate something that supports your campaign goal. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have written 6 tweets and guess what, you’ll have broken your Tweeter’s block.

Tweet on.