Everything that happens in business revolves around written communication, whether it’s an email, a report, or anything you can find on your desk. Mastering the art of business writing can even help you become a better leader. Here are other reasons improving your business writing can help you.
You Can Inspire Your Team
By using the right words in the right place, you can inspire your team to do amazing things. For example, instead of simply saying: ‘John, you did good work today’ your email can be so much more effective by saying: ‘John, thank you for doing [project]. You really help us out. You should be proud of your work.’ This is not only acknowledgment where it’s due, but also a touchpoint of encouragement that engages your employees and helps them to continuously improve.
You Can Define Your Authority
The better your writing skills, the more professional you will seem. Have you ever been to a website and noticed a number of spelling or grammatical errors? Chances are you lost confidence in the authority of that website. The same can happen to a leader’s personal brand as well. Writing well, therefore, is essential for any leader.
You Can Be More Creative and Persuasive
As you writing skills improve, so does your ability to use new words and expand your vocabulary. “This means you can construct more creative sentences that have more impact on their readers, such as a sales piece or even promotional content,” explains Paula Harriman, a Business Writer and a contributing expert at Huffington Post.
You Can Experience Less Risk of Confusion
If you write something poorly, the reader has to try to understand what you’re saying. Unfortunately, things can become lost in translation this way, which can lead to misinformation. Improving your business writing skills can help to minimise the risk of this happening.
You Can Build Relationships
“As a leader, you’ll be communicating with your team through IM, email, and other forms of written communication. By writing properly, you’ll be able to build even stronger relationships with your teams without even being face to face,” say Richard Beasley, a Communication Manager at Essayroo.
5 Tips for Improving Your Business Writing Skills
As you can see, it’s incredibly beneficial to improve your business writing skills as a leader, and it can dramatically help you take your team to success. Not sure how to get started? Here are six ways you can start improving your business writing skills today.
Plan & Organise Yourself
Before you start writing anything, be sure to get organised. For example, gather all the facts and figures you may need up front. This way, you don’t have to pause at any point to find more research. Additionally, create an outline for your piece of writing, so that your ideas and concepts flow easily.
Be Clear & Precise
Keep it simple. There’s no point going on and on about the same point in your writing. Always try to cut your messages down, so that they’re short and sweet and easy to read. As they say, less is more.
Master Your Tone of Voice
The way you’ll speak to your team will probably be different from the way you speak to your customers, both in person and on paper or email. Spend time perfecting your tone of voice in your writing, so it’s appropriate and professional.
Use Formatting
Be sure to spread your paragraphs with spaces and use headers and subheadings to make your content easy to read. People tend to be intimidated by huge blocks of text, so dividing your content up in this way increases the likelihood that your content will actually be read.
Use Online Writing Resources As Needed
Effective leaders know when to use the resources and tools at their disposal, especially if it means it will improve them both personally and professionally. Here are some tools you can use to start improving your business writing skills instantly.
State of Writing – a free online blog you can use to help improve your grammar.
Big Assignments – a writing community for contact with professional writers who can help you improve your business writing skills.
Easy Word Count – a tool for tracking your word count.
Cite It In – a tool for adding professionally formatted quotes, citations and references.
Do My Assignment – a website full of writing guides you can download.
Academadvisor – a writing service for improving your proofreading skills.
Via Writing – a writing blog to answer all your writing-related questions.
Elite Assignment Help – a writing service that can create written content on your behalf.
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Gloria Kopp is business consultant and a writer at Boomessays. She is a regular contributor at The Huffington Post and Paper Fellows blogs. In addition, Gloria is an author of Studydemic educational blog where she shares her writing and career advice with students.