Top tips for Business Writing. Learn how to write reports, proposals, emails, and other types of writing used to communicate with different audiences. Business writing is a also known as business communication and professional writing.
The first question is: who are you writing this customisation guide for? As a technical writer, the skill to developing a useful guide is to keep the reader in mind. Who will be reading this customisation guide? What’s the most important thing they need to know? How can I make this more helpful to them? […]
Use this checklist to review business, medical, or technical documentation. It is recommended to review the document for start to finish for each item on this list, instead of reviewing all items as you go through the document. In other words, check that all images are correct throughout the document. Fix any errors. Then go […]
Style guides? Hmmm. A nice idea but are they really worth the effort? One of the difficulties for small companies is that the time and effort it takes to create a style guide doesn’t seem to justify the effort. There is always something more important to do. The problem is that the moment you bring someone into […]
Yesterday, before they were defeated by Leicester, the Man United manager said that he would get rid of players who stayed on the bench too long. What he meant was if they didn’t make it into the first team, he would get rid of them. At least, that was my interpretation. As a project manager, […]
Your white paper gets one attempt to make a good first impression. The title of the white paper needs to clever, witty, interesting, odd, or different enough to stand out from the competition. Last week we were writing a white paper about the mobile market in China. It just wasn’t working. We were sitting around […]
Before you put your hands on the keyboard and start typing, ask yourself: Specific – what’s the one thing I want this person to understand? Response – what’s the response I want from this person? Incentive – what incentive can I give this person to reply as fast as possible? #1 What’s the one thing […]
Here’s the problem. Imitation is in our DNA. You look at successful people, see how they dress, cut their hair, eat, travel, and try to copy them. The thinking is that if you replicate their actions – the ones that appear to have made them successful – you’re likely to be successful too. Doesn’t work, […]
‘I’d love to be a better business writer but don’t have the time.’ Ever hear yourself saying something like this? We’d all like to be better writers, but… How about if you could sharpen up your writing skills in fifteen minutes a day? Sound like a plan? Here’s how to do it. Getting started: create […]
So, you have a business blog and don’t know how to make it more interesting. What do you do? Let’s do a small experiment. The next time you’re in your local book store, go past the section where you usually hang out. Keep going. Soon, you’ll find yourself in parts of the bookstore you never knew existed. […]
