Читать книгу Business Writing For Dummies - Natalie Canavor - Страница 4

IN THIS CHAPTER

❯❯ Rising above the pack with good writing

❯❯ Understanding the three imperatives of strategic writing

❯❯ Using an easy structure to plan everything you write

❯❯ Writing successfully for print, online, visual, and spoken media

Delivering your message well and being heard. What could be more important in today’s world of over-communication?

If your career ladder involves applying for jobs, you need strong résumés, letters, and face-to-face skills. To earn a promotion, your everyday communication must signal your reliability, judgment, 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.