Essential Tips to Enhance Your Business Writing Skills

No matter what business you’re in and no matter what industry, your writing skills matter. You may have thought that you left writing behind you in school but think again. Emails, invoices, website copy, letters, marketing content, reports and even letters to your boss all count as business writing so, to ensure you communicate your message effectively and make the most of your opportunities, here’s a list of essential tips for you to remember.

1. Precision is Your Best Friend

Being precise with your writing is the key to its success. If you’re writing about how successful your team was on your last project, it’s easy to get caught up in explaining every little detail to the best of your ability. However, do you think your boss is going to want to sit there and read through thousands of words that could have been summarised in a few short paragraphs? Apply the same to your customers. Keep things short, sweet and stick to the point.

2. Facts Over Fiction

It’s important when writing something that represents your business that you get things right. Research and plan out your message before you write it  and before you send it, ensure that you check your facts. Nothing is worse than having to run up to your boss’s office to correct a mistake face to face.

Business writing expert for Boomessays, Jon K. Bowser, elaborates;

“The internet is full of rehashed and recycled rubbish, and there doesn’t need to be anymore. Whoever your reader is, always aim to provide them with facts and valuable content in every single piece that you write.”

3. Format to Perfection

Sometimes, your written work may be spot on, and there’s no need to change anything. However, formatting is also an essential key to success. If you’re sending an email and you’ve made your writing really small, and you’re using a really illegible font, people are going to have a hard time reading what you’ve written. Good formatting will help avoid issues like these, and help you create writing that’s easy to scan. If you use bullet points, headings and white space well, readers can get what they need from your communications easily.

4. Use Online Tools

Not everybody is born to be a natural writer, and it can take years to hone your skills to perfection. To help you along the way, there are a lot of online tools you can use to gain high-quality content while improving your writing techniques. There are several types of tools that you can look for, depending on what you need. For example, you can look for:

• Proofreading tools, to put you in touch with a proofreader, or to automatically check your writing for you.
• Word counters, which will check how many words you’ve written. These are helpful when you need to stick to a word limit.
• Grammar tools, to help you with grammar. These can check the grammar in your writing, or give you access to grammar guides.
• Readability tools, to check how easy it is to read your writing. You can paste your writing into these tools, and they’ll check them against several readability scales. You’ll then get the average reading age needed to read your writing.

5. Ask For Help

If you want to improve as a writer, you’ll need input from those with the skills to help you. Try talking to one of the services listed above, or a trusted colleague. They can help you out by reading your work, and then going through it with you. Their fresh eyes can help you see where you need to work on your skills, and how you can improve. Pick someone who you know has excellent writing skills, and is willing to work with you and help you improve.

6. Always Proofread And Edit

No matter what you’re writing, you should always stop to proofread and edit it before you send it. Poorly written communications can make you look sloppy and unprofessional, and obviously you want to avoid this. Take a break from your writing, then come back to it and start proofreading it. You’ll see there’s quite a lot that can be improved in your writing if you do this. Take a few passes at your writing if you need to, and take your time.

7. Continuously Improve Your Skills

Just like going to a gym continuously will help you to build muscle to become fitter and stronger, the more you practise your writing skills, the better you will become. Use every opportunity you can to practice, and you’ll soon notice your skills improving. Think about what you’re going to write, before you write it, so you know what you’re looking to achieve. The more you work on the skills, the quicker you’ll improve, too.