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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn how to write for the results you want every time, in every medium! Do you wish you could write better? In today's business world, good writing is key to success in just about every endeavor. Writing is how you connect with colleagues, supervisors, clients, partners, employees, and people you've never met. No wonder strong writers win the jobs, promotions and contracts. Business Writing For Dummies shows you, from the ground up, how to create persuasive messages with the right content and language every time--messages your readers will understand and act on. This friendly guide equips you with a step-by-step method for planning what to say and how to say it in writing. This sytem empowers you to handle every writing challenge with confidence, from emails to proposals, reports to resumes, presentations to video scripts, blogs to social posts, websites to books. Discover down-to-earth techniques for sharpening your language and correcting your own writing problems. Learn how to adapt content, tone and style for each medium and audience. And learn to use every message you write to build better relationships and solve problems, while getting to the "yes" you want. Whether you're aiming to land your first job or are an experienced specialist in your field, Business Writing For Dummies helps you build your communication confidence and stand out. * Present yourself with authority and credibility * Understand and use the tools of persuasion * Communicate as a remote worker, freelancer, consultant or entrepreneur * Strategize your online presence to support your goals * Bring out the best in people and foster team spirit as a leader * Prepare to ace interviews, pitches and confrontations Good communication skills, particularly writing, are in high demand across all industries. Use this book to gain the edge you need to promote your own success, now and down the line as your career goals evolve.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Business Writing For Dummies®, 3rd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952452
ISBN 978-1-119-69669-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-69670-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-69671-1 (ebk)
Business Writing For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Business Writing For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Winning with Writing
Chapter 1: Making Writing Your Weapon for Success
Putting Strategic Writing to Work for You
Planning and Structuring Every Message
Applying the Goal-Plus-Audience Strategy to More Media
Chapter 2: Planning Your Message Every Time
Adopting the Plan-Draft-Edit Principle
Fine-Tuning Your Plan: Your Goals and Audience
Making People Care
Choosing Your Written Voice: Tone
Using Relationship-Building Techniques
Chapter 3: Making Your Writing Work: The Basics
Stepping into Twenty-First-Century Writing Style
Energizing Your Language
Employing Reader-Friendly Graphic Techniques
Chapter 4: Self-Editing: Professional Ways to Improve Your Work
Changing Hats: From Writer to Editor
Reviewing the Big and Small Pictures
Moving from Passive to Active
Sidestepping Jargon, Clichés and Extra Modifiers
Energizing What You Write
Chapter 5: Fixing Common Writing Problems
Organizing Your Document
Catching Common Mistakes
Fielding Pronoun Challenges
Fixing Common Word Confusions
Reviewing and Proofreading: The Final Check
Part 2: Applying Your Skills to Business Messages and Documents
Chapter 6: Writing Email and Letters That Get Results
Fast-Forwarding Your Agenda with Email
Starting Strong
Building Content That Achieves Your Goals
Structuring Your Middle Ground
Closing Strong
Polishing Your Email
Using Email for Marketing
Composing Effective Letters
Chapter 7: Creating High-Impact Business Materials
Creating Valued Reports
Fast-Tracking Your Proposals
Writing an Executive Summary
Writing Tips for All Business Documents
Part 3: Writing to Present Yourself Effectively
Chapter 8: Building Persuasion into Your Writing
Connecting with Your Readers
Strategizing in Many Dimensions
Planning Your Persuasive Message
Using Persuasive Language
Finding Your Core Business Message
Finding, Shaping and Using Stories
Translating Words into Visuals
Chapter 9: Speaking Well for Yourself
Building Your Elevator Speech
Preparing and Giving Presentations
Composing Talking Points for Live Interaction
Chapter 10: Writing for the Job Hunt
Knowing and Expressing Your Value
Assessing All Your Skills
Writing Résumés That Win the Race
Styling Language for Résumés
Succeeding with Cover Letters
Networking with Messages
Part 4: Writing for Online Media
Chapter 11: Writing for the Digital World
Positioning Yourself Online
Understanding Visual Platforms
Choosing Your Platforms
Writing for Digital Media
Using Social Media Platforms
Networking with Twitter
Working with LinkedIn
Chapter 12: Creating Content for Your Online Life
Creating a Website from the Ground Up
Creating a Blog
Telling Your Story with Video
Part 5: Leveraging Your Writing Skills
Chapter 13: Writing for the Workplace: Managing Up, Down and Sideways
Communicating as a Manager
Writing to Manage Up
Writing to Colleagues, Collaborators and Teammates
Using Backup Memos
Language for Communicating Sideways
Using Turnaround Techniques
Communicating with a Team of Equals
Chapter 14: Writing for Entrepreneurs and Virtual Workers
Communicating as a Virtual Worker
Teaming Techniques and Practices
Using Everyday Communication Tools: Email and Group Chat
Writing as an Entrepreneur
Writing Challenges for the Entrepreneur
Part 6: The Part of Tens
Chapter 15: Ten (or So) Ways to Grow Your Personal Power with Writing
Use Writing to Problem-Solve
Write a “Pro” and “Con” List
Handwrite to Spark Creativity
Write to Take Charge of Your Emotions
Take Notes about Your Work
Take the Meeting Notes
Take Notes of Your Anytime Ideas
Prepare for Confrontation
Write a Long-Range Career Plan
Create Profiles of Your VIPs
Write Gratefully
Chapter 16: Ten Steps to Writing Your Own Book
Envision Your Finished Book
Create an Elevator Speech for Your Book
Think about Marketing — Early
Break the Writing into Pieces
Create a Folder System
Assess the Practicalities
Write a Proposal
Draft the Copy
Liven Up Your Content
Check Out Self-Publishing Options
Index
About the Author
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Begin Reading
Index
About the Author
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Introduction
Delivering your message well and being heard. What could be more important in today’s world, which demands that we connect and compete for what we want? When the second edition of this book was published just a few years ago, it didn’t seem necessary to talk about who needs to practice business writing. Business writing was assumed to mean writing for work purposes, typically in an office setting, but also encompassing independent contractors and professional specialists.
Today, who needs to write? Who doesn’t? We all stand on our own for everyday messaging to get the job done, build relationships and prevent and solve problems. We may need to create traditional materials like reports, proposals and marketing copy. And we typically aim to play a role in the online world and use websites, blogs, networking sites and/or social media to our advantage.
But we also need to write well for personal purposes. Do you want to be a good advocate for a cause you believe in — or yourself? Have you needed to write an effective letter of complaint when you were dissatisfied with a purchase, or write a good message when you needed a favor from a friend or relative or stranger? Have you ever competed for something important — like buying a home that other people wanted — by writing a good letter that explained why you were a perfect match? Did you know you could do that?
We’re all making our way today through a rapidly changing culture. This affects the role of writing, who uses it and how we apply those skills. For example, the line between “work” and “life” grows blurrier every year. Our friends become our business network; we look for work schedules that accommodate our personal lives; we like recreational opportunities at the office; we bring work home if it engages us.
Let’s put that in a fuller perspective of what is changing, how that affects communication and how you can use what this book teaches for your own success.
Change #1 is how fluid our lives are becoming. Today’s executive is tomorrow’s consultant, a scientist builds a business based on his discovery, a lawyer becomes a stay-at-home mom and influential blogger. An obscure person can create a startup or build a charitable cause. A freelancer can decide to take a full-time job — or vice versa. Long-term employees may find their organizations restructured, requiring them to behave like entrepreneurs and create their own opportunities.
The future seems to offer little in the way of a straight-and-narrow career path — nor do most of us want one. We expect to bounce back and forth among a myriad of options, watching for chances and re-ordering our priorities. Beyond enabling you to make the most of your immediate opportunities, good writing is your best springboard for navigating from one opportunity to the next more successfully. It’s often the written messages, résumés and online profiles, social presence, emails and even old-fashioned letters that enable you to be seen as credible, credentialed and creative.
Change #2 is the growing predominance of remote work. This trend has been developing over the last decade, but was sped up unimaginably by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Organizations of all varieties discovered that expensive office space is a whole lot less necessary than they thought. Some studies showed that at-home workers in many spheres actually became more productive at home — wherever that might be — and that many workers decided they prefer it. A scattered workforce makes good communication — especially writing — pivotal to accomplishing everyday simple tasks and long-range goals.
An allied trend is the drift toward a gig economy. Many people, especially those new to the workforce, are piecing together short-term jobs to add up to a living sufficient for their needs. If this is where you are right now, you are forever pitching for those gigs. You need all the assets of the classic entrepreneur and must be able to carry on good written conversations by email or other channels.
Change #3 is the growing degree of informality in writing for work purposes. The Internet and fast messaging channels have already played an enormous part in promoting spontaneity and even the ability to share feelings in writing via new devices like emojis, for example. Does this mean you no longer need to write well? No! It does mean knowing how to draw the lines and strategize for your audiences.
Change #4 is the growing dominance of visual media in social platforms and of course, video. Does this mean less writing? No! A good video is scripted. Moreover, writing is the essential tool for planning. Creators of print and video advertising have always known that it’s challenging to produce high-quality material. Top users of Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok know this, too. We think in words. We think better when we write. If in the end product only a few words accompany the images, they must be exactly the right ones.
This is similarly true of oral and in-person communication. You may be surprised to see how much this book covers spoken media and even difficult conversations. A good speech begins with writing. Today, the oral, virtual and visual dimensions of business communication are inseparable from each other, and from writing. All must work together.
As you read this book, I think you’ll be surprised by how many ways good writing can reward you. Beyond giving you the tools to handle the full range of media, building your skills will help you think strategically, solve problems and understand people — and yourself — better.
About This Book
I wrote this book to give you a high-stakes tool for accomplishing your own goals and dreams. While the ultimate aim is to sharpen your thinking, the methods I show you are totally pragmatic. Every idea and technique is ready to use and fully demonstrated. I base everything on my own decades of trial and error as a journalist, magazine editor, corporate communications director, consultant and college instructor. The methods I show you have been field-tested in hundreds of my workshops and courses for businesspeople, public relations professionals, corporate communicators and nonprofit leaders.
This book gives you a complete foundation for effective business writing as well as guidelines to instantly improve everything you write. You may wonder how a single book can teach you how to write for all media — especially since new channels materialize constantly. In fact, new communication media simply give us more ways to deliver messages. The thinking–writing process applies to all and holds steady for all, though each suggests specific adaptations.
It’s like the old story about giving a person a fish versus teaching a person to fish. I can’t be with you to meet every writing challenge you encounter, and truthfully, can’t anticipate all of them. But I can teach you how to fish — to use your brain and your tools to figure out the message that best achieves what you want.
Foolish Assumptions
Do you assume any of the following?
Writing well is a talent you’re born with — or not.
Improving poor writing is difficult.
Good writing is defined by correct grammar and spelling “rules.”
Expressing complex thought demands complex language.
Writing dense copy with long words makes you look more intelligent and educated.
“New” media like social, video, chat messaging and presentations don’t require good writing.
Reserving your best skills for “important” material makes sense.
Every one of these assumptions is false. I debunk all of them in this book. For now, the important truth is that you can write better, whether you need basic grounding or are already a good writer and want to become better yet. This book gives you down-to-earth, easy-to-use techniques. It’s not about rules — I don’t give you grammar lessons, but instead, show you practical ways to spot technical problems and fix them. Many of the ideas and thinking processes are drawn from the toolkits of professional writers who in large part learn by expensive trial and error. I want to save you that time. My mission is to show you how to figure out what to say and how to say it, whatever the challenge.
Icons Used in This Book
To help you focus on what’s most important and move it into memory, look to the icons.
These are practical ideas and techniques you can put to work immediately — and amaze yourself with good results!
This icon keys you in to guidelines and strategies to absorb and use for everything you write.
This icon signals thin ice, don’t take the risk! Observe these cautions to avoid endangering your business, image or cause.
A new special feature, this icon offers time-saving strategies that were years in the making and now yours for the taking.
You’ll also find sections that begin, “Try This:”. Why leave all the work to me? Take these opportunities to try your own hand or apply an idea. Nothing builds your skills like practice.
Beyond the Book
In addition to what you’re reading now, this book also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that gives you even more pointers on how to write effectively in the business world. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Business Writing For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
Starting at the beginning gives you a foundation that applies to everything you write. But if you prefer diving right in for help on a specific challenge, by all means do so. The advice may suggest other sections for more depth and you can follow up as you choose.
Build a personal repertoire of techniques that work for you, then take this toolkit on the road with you. Doing so brings you a more successful journey, new confidence and a lot more fun along the way.
Part 1
Winning with Writing
IN THIS PART …
Learn the core elements of good business writing that equip you to create successful everyday messages and solve your most pressing communication challenges.
Adopt the professional writer’s goal-plus-audience strategy that will never fail you, no matter how hard the writing challenge seems.
Discover how to make people care about your message by connecting with specific readers, highlighting benefits and showing them “what’s-in-it-for-me.”
Understand how to use the tools of writing — language, tone and structure — to say what you mean in a way most likely to earn respect, support and agreement.
Use everything you write to build relationships through understanding other people’s perspectives and how they will perceive your messages.
Learn how to switch into the editor’s role and fix common writing problems so that your messages accomplish what you want.
Chapter 2
Planning Your Message Every Time
IN THIS CHAPTER
Strategizing for success before you write
Understanding your goal and audience
Making people care about your message
Writing with the correct tone and degree of formality
Using writing opportunities to build relationships
Think for a minute about how you approached a recent writing task. If it was an email message, how much time did you spend considering what to write? A few minutes? Seconds? Or did you just hit the keyboard?
Now bring a more complex document to mind: a challenging letter, proposal, report, marketing piece, blog post or anything else. Did you put some time into thinking about and shaping your message before you began writing, or did you just plunge in?
This chapter demonstrates the power of taking time before you write to consider whom you’re writing to, what you truly hope to achieve and how you can generate the right content.
Adopting the Plan-Draft-Edit Principle
Here is the most important piece of advice in this book: Invest time in planning your messages and reviewing them. And that means every message. Even an everyday communication such as an email can have a profound impact on your success. Everything you write shows people who you are.
I can’t count the times I’ve received an email asking for a referral or an informational interview that was badly written and full of errors. I didn’t respond. Would you? Or a long, expensively produced document with an email cover note that’s abrupt and sloppy. A poorly written email message doesn’t help the cause — whatever the cause may be.
I’m not suggesting that prior to writing every email you lean back in your chair and let your mind wander into blue-sky mode to see what emerges. The planning I recommend is a step-by-step process that leads to good decisions about what to say and how to say it. It’s a process that will never fail you, no matter how big (or small) the writing challenge. And it’s quite simple to adopt — in fact, you may achieve surprisingly quick results. You may also find that after applying this process, you enjoy writing much more.
This strategic approach has no relation to how you learned to write in school, unless you had an atypical teacher who was attuned to writing for results. Start by tossing out any preconceived ideas about your inability to write, because in my experience, everyone can learn to write better.
When you have a message or document to produce, expect your time to be divided equally between these tasks:
Planning
Drafting
Editing
Spend one-third of your time deciding what to say (planning), one-third writing your first version (drafting) and finally, one-third sharpening what you wrote (editing).
You probably wonder if this system helps you write faster or slower. For most people it’s a time shift. When you take a write-first-then-think approach, you probably get lost in the middle, then stare at your important messages for a while with vague questions about whether they could read better or be more persuasive. Or worse, you just toss it off and click “send.” Planned messages are easy to organize, and the effectiveness is built in because you’ve already customized the content to your goal and reader.
What about the editing time at the end? If you don’t look critically at your messages before sending them, you serve yourself badly. Sloppy writing interferes with getting your message heard, believed and acted upon. A professional writer with decades of writing experience would never send a business communication — even a simple-looking email — without careful review and improvements. Nor should you. The stakes are too high. You need to be your best in everything you write.
This does not mean you are aiming for formal communications with stiffly correct grammar and elaborate wording. Actually, you want nearly everything you write to feel conversational and to read fast and easy. Editing is often about removing the barriers to speedy reading and understanding and often, supplying missing links or evidence you missed with the first draft.
The real issue is less about time and more about results. Planned messages bring you what you want much more often. Try these approaches and see what happens. My money is on more success. Happily, this approach quickly becomes a habit and more — it becomes a problem solver. Practice it every day with routine messaging, and you’ll be ready to field big challenges with confidence.
Fine-Tuning Your Plan: Your Goals and Audience
As outlined in Chapter 1, a well-crafted message is based on two key aspects: your goal and your audience. The following section shows you how to move inside of both more deeply.
Defining your goal
Your first priority is to know exactly what you want to happen when the person you’re writing to reads what you’ve written. Determining this is far less obvious than it sounds.
Consider a cover letter for your résumé. If you see it as a formal but unimportant necessity toward your ultimate goal — to get a job — a cover letter can just say:
Dear Mr. Blank, Here is my résumé. —Jack Slade
Intuitively you probably know that this isn’t sufficient. But analyze what you want to accomplish and you can see clearly why it falls short. Your cover letter must:
Connect you with the recipient so that you become a person instead of another set of documents.
Set up the person to review your qualifications with a favorable mindset.
Persuade the recipient that your résumé is worth reading.
Show that you understand the job and the company.
Make you stand out from the competition in a meaningful way.
You also need the cover letter to demonstrate your personal qualifications, especially the ability to communicate well. If you see that accomplishing your big goal, getting a shot at the job or contract, depends on this set of more specific goals, it’s obvious why a one-line perfunctory message won’t help you compete. Seen properly, a cover letter is in fact very important.
A cover letter for a formal business proposal has its own big goal: help convince an individual or an organization to finance your new product, for example. To do this, the cover letter’s role is to connect with prospective buyers, entice them to actually read at least part of the document, predispose them to like what they see, present your company as better than the competition and show off good communication skills.
How about the proposal itself? If you break down this goal into a more specific subset, you realize the proposal must ideally demonstrate:
The financial viability of what you plan to produce
A minimal investment risk and high profit potential
Your own excellent qualifications and track record
Outstanding backup by an experienced team
Special expertise in the field
In-depth knowledge of the marketplace, competition, business environment and so on
Spelling out your goals is extremely useful because the process keeps you aligned with the big picture while giving you instant guidelines for effective content. Because of good planning on the front end, you’re already moving toward how to accomplish what you want.
