and resourcefulness. If you run your own business, or work as a consultant or other professional, I bet your success depends on proposals and presentations. And today, whatever our aspirations, most of us want to create an effective online presence. We want to team successfully with others and advocate for our own needs and ideas.
The foundation for all of this, of course, is … writing! Surprisingly few people realize this. When they think about polishing their communication skills, most people jump straight to presentations. Knowing how to give a good speech may seem sexier than writing, but it leapfrogs past the reality: Even a 20-second elevator pitch needs to be written before it’s spoken. Good websites, videos, Twitter campaigns, blogs, and most other communication tools start with the written word.
There’s a simple reason for this. Human beings think in language. No matter how big a role visuals play in a communication “product,” whether print or digital, writing provides the indispensable support structure for planning. And if even a few words appear in the ultimate message, they must be just the right ones.
In this chapter, I highlight the core elements of good business writing and introduce a planning structure that enables you to figure out what to say and how to say it in just about every circumstance. This step-by-step approach to writing works for every communication platform with just a little adaptation for each one. You’ll find that improving your writing offers even more benefits than you may suspect, and that you’ve already begun to build the foundation for it. In later chapters, I show you how to apply these ideas to all your business communication.
Putting Good Writing to Work for You
Can you imagine building relationships without language? Today we initiate most relationships – especially in business – through the written word. In-person contact may follow, or it may not. When the first contact is successful, we continue to rely on writing to build the connection and collaborate.
From everyday email to reports, letters, and digital platforms, today’s working world runs on writing. Therefore, the rewards of good writing have never been more extraordinary. The Internet enables us to reach beyond our personal geographic and social reach to almost anyone we want to sell to, collaborate with, or learn from. Almost anyone with time and dedication can start a business and sell a product or service, post her artwork, publish a book, or establish his authority as an expert on a subject.
There’s just one catch. Because anyone can do this, unless you are a narrow specialist, the competition is overwhelming.
Consider these statistics:
❯❯ 112.5 billion business email messages are sent daily. (That’s 122 messages per user!)
❯❯ There are 130 million active Twitter users, and 303 million tweets per day are sent.
❯❯ The Internet holds 1 billion websites.
❯❯ There are 300 million blogs.
Of course, you’re not competing with all of these email messages, tweets, websites, and blogs, or reading more than an infinitesimal fraction of them yourself in each medium. But people today – just like you – are extremely selective about what they choose to read because so many options vie for their attention.
What is strategic writing? Planned communication that achieves a set of goals – your goals, and often the goals of your employer and clients. The good news is that you already have a solid base for knowing how to write strategically. You’re in command of the three imperatives:
❯❯ Your subject: You are invested in your field and possess in-depth knowledge of it.
❯❯ Your audience: You know who your audience is, such as prospective employers, coworkers, and target markets for your business.
❯❯ Your goal: You know what you want, now and in the bigger-picture future.
Here are some of the things you may not know yet:
❯❯ How to choose the right communication tool for the job
❯❯ How to capture and retain reader attention
❯❯ How to make people care about your message
❯❯ How to select the right content to make your case
❯❯ How to use writing techniques that make your material persuasive and convincing
❯❯ How to use every single thing you write to build relationships and advance your cause
❯❯ How to understand other people’s perspective and predict their responses
❯❯ How to sharpen your ear and eye so you can spot your own writing problems and fix them
I show you how to do all these things in this book.
Let’s start with a planning structure that will help you figure out what you want to say and how to say it. You may be surprised at how much better your messages are received, and how much more often you get a positive response, once you start applying it.
Planning and Structuring Every Message
Faced with a blank page and something to accomplish, many people freeze at the first question: Where do I start? The answer? Start with the three components of strategic writing. You already know them:
❯❯ Your subject: What you’re writing about
❯❯ Your audience: Whom you’re writing to
❯❯ Your goal: What you specifically want to accomplish
To create a good message and get the result you want from your reader, you need to think about all of these things more systematically than you ordinarily might.
