Improve and Grow Your Business Writing Skills With These 8 Tips

Your business writing skills are more important now than ever before. You communicate via emails, IMs (instant messages), and texts. You’re writing all the time. To be competitive in the marketplace, your skills need to be constantly nurtured and updated.

8 Business Writing Tips

Here are eight tips you can use if you’re wondering how to improve your business writing skills.

1. Who’s your audience?

The key question in business writing is, “Who are you writing for?” You write for different people every day. The way you talk to your co-workers will be different from how you talk to customers, and different again when you’re talking to web visitors. In fact, verbiage that specifically relates to your target audience is a large part of what makes a website effective.

2. Create outlines

“Before you start writing, create an outline for yourself. It’s the same principle as writing essay plans when you’re in school. If you have an outline, you’ll remember to include everything that needs to be included, and it will cut down on editing time,” suggests outreach manager Ruby King from CiteItIn.

3. Write a first draft

Don’t just dash off an email and send it. Let it sit first, then come back and edit it. If you can give the writing some time, you’ll see that there are corrections and improvements that you can make to your writing. Make sure you really dedicate time to getting it right before you send it.

4. Check the length of your writing

Your writing shouldn’t drag on. Readers tend to lose interest quickly, so you don’t want them to abandon your message before you communicate what you really have to say. Keep it short and snappy, and outline what you want in the very first sentence. The sooner a reader knows what you want to get across, the better.

5. Proofread your writing

This is one of those business writing tips that applies to any kind of writing you do. If other people are going to see what you’ve written, you’re going to need to proofread it first. If you don’t, easily fixed typos and other errors will slip through, making you look unprofessional. If you take the time to check your work before you send it, you can avoid this.

6. Keep it simple

There’s a lot of jargon and buzzwords that you’ll use every day without thinking about it. When you’re writing, keep my first tip in mind and consider your audience. They may not share the same vocabulary as you, so they won’t know what on earth you’re talking about if your jargon isn’t appropriate. Instead, keep your writing as simple as possible. Make your point without using overly complicated or flowery language. The reader will thank you for it.

7. Be professional, not formal

Depending on who you’re writing for, you may find that your message isn’t coming across the way you planned. In effective business writing, the key is to be professional rather than formal. Imagine you sat across from the reader in a lunch meeting, rather than in the boardroom. This will help you find the exact tone that compels readers to engage with what you’re saying.

8. Get help if the writing is important

Sometimes you have to write something that’s more important than any regular communication. It could be an all-important pitch, your business plan company description, an email to a possible client, or even an advertising campaign. If you’re not confident in your business writing skills, get help. Writing services can help you get the job done. They can be hired for both one-off and ongoing jobs, so consider them if you think you need a professional on board.

If you want to develop better business writing skills, it’s not actually too difficult. All it takes is a bit of know-how, and some tinkering with your current business writing techniques. If you feel your skills could use a tune-up, give these tips for effective business writing a try. You’ll get much better results once you put them into practice.