We’ve all seen them: folks with business writing skills that are breath taking. Whether it’s sales copy or writing posts for their blog. This can be intimidating. And yes, some are natural born writers
and some have been writing daily for their business for years. Most of us don’t fall into either of those buckets (yet)… but that’s ok. We start where we are and work towards being a better business writer over time.
Read more for your business
Chances are, as you have progressed through your professional career, you have encountered at least one coworker who had a great way of getting her point across in emails. And chances are, you studied her emails and incorporated something that she does into the way you write your emails. That process of
- reading others
- noticing style
- using best practices
works in corporate America and also works with entrepreneurship. Research and read other entrepreneurs; read their blogs, read their sales copy. Take note of their style, including the topics they choose and their overall content. Apply what you have learned to your own writing. You will notice a difference.
Write more for your business
Writing more is definitely a way to become a better writer. Writing is definitely a skill and skills require practice, usually a lot of practice to truly hone them. Try to write for your business as often as you can, and at least once a day. Even if you only write a paragraph a day, commit to it. What you write can vary from
- blog posts
- other content for your website
- business related forums posts as long as they are at least a paragraph
Do you think this type of commitment is too big? It’s not. For a lot of us, we have been writing every weekday for years, possibly decades. Don’t believe me? Take a look at your sent emails for work. You’ve made the commitment already. The commitment was to your career and your employer, now it’s time to make the commitment to yourself and your business.
Plan
Another
way of becoming a better business writer is to break down writing into smaller tasks because it encourages you to actually finish the work. I have seen some people break down writing into as many as 7 steps but I generally keep to four.
The first task is to choose a topic. Sometimes that’s obvious. For example, writing an about page for your website. Other times you choose from various topics. I mention this so that you remember to give yourself enough time to choose a topic; this can take up to a week or more so plan accordingly.
There also needs to be time set aside for the other three tasks as well: outline, draft and edit.
Outline and draft are pretty straightforward but the last task of editing is similar to the first one in that folks sometimes don’t reserve enough time to complete. Editing your business content is critical and takes time so we need to make sure we allow ourselves time to revise and edit our content until it’s ready to be released to our audience.
Completing these four tasks over and over again will help make you a more productive and effective writer.
Whether it’s professional or business writing, each of us can improve our writing by reading more, writing more and good planning. As transitioning entrepreneurs, one of the skills we often think we lack is writing. And sometimes we think this deficiency will prevent us from connecting with our audience and eventually prevent us from succeeding at entrepreneurship.
You have already seen yourself become a better writer during your professional career. That happened because you made a pledge to your employer. Compare your professional writing from early in your career to that of today. It’s better, you’re a better writer at work.
Just as you became a better writer in your professional career, you can become a better business writer for your business. It’s time to make a similar pledge to yourself.
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