Due to the ever increasing technology and our fast pace today, Business Writing is changing from the old standby of Business letters and proposals with an occasional white paper, to a more diversified range of communication avenues.

Email, business letters and proposals still make up a large part of Business Writing. In addition, we now find presentations, memos, training material, promotional copy, newsletters, reports, press releases, web copy, and blogging. In this section, I will introduce and then expand on all these areas, except copywriting or promotional copy, as I have a separate section for those.

The main emphasis in the different types of Business Writing is clear communication. You can no longer jot a quick note on a sticky and call it good. Neither can you quickly type your thoughts into an email and hope your readers can take action and return the results you are looking for.

In order to communicate in a way the reader will understand, you have to focus and align your Business Writing to the reader very specifically. This takes some skills that you may not have developed in other types of writing.

You have to communicate very clearly so that the reader can understand exactly what you are saying. If you don't, you can cause a lot of misunderstandings, as well as have adverse effects to your business. Your documents will be written for both internal and external reasons. Therefore, a good knowledge of how to communicate to the public at large is crucial.

The best way to complete any business writing assignment, or what you need inside your own company, is to follow a well structured plan. By taking the following steps with each piece of business writing you create, you will help yourself and your readers arrive on the same page more often than not.

5 Steps to Good Business Writing:

Research
Organization
Draft writing
Review
Revise

I will cover each of these steps in detail in separate articles. First, though, understand that these steps build your foundation. By utilizing these steps for each of your projects, you will find that your writing time is shortened with better results.

The time you invest upfront to learn these easy steps will pay dividends for you and your clients or your company for years to come. Plus, as new technology appears giving you new avenues for business communication, you will be ahead of the learning curve.

It is easier to learn a new piece of technology and then simply add your structured writing approach to it, than it is to learn the new piece of technology and then devise a new way to communicate on it.

Take the time to learn and use the five steps above, and you will find that your business communications, no matter what form they take, will be easy to write, and easy for your readers to understand and implement.



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