My favorite part of teaching the Administrative Professional course at Robertson College was the Business Communications section.  But it was also very challenging for many of my students.  So, I thought it was well worth writing about how we can keep our business writing simple when I guest posted at Simply Stated Business.

Go and check it out for yourself and you’ll find my 6 point check list for keeping business writing simple as well as two ways to improve (hint: it has to do with repetition!).

Find out how you can keep your business writing simple.

By the way, if you are interested in having me guest post on your blog or if you’re interested in doing a guest post here there’s a link at the top of the blog that says “Guest Posting”.  Go and fill it out to you and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have a chance!

If you’ve had anything to do with marketing, online or offline, you likely already know that the best way to get the word out about your business is through word of mouth.  And how do you get people to talk about you?  It’s usually through people who have used your services.

The hard part of putting word of mouth into action is that people do not always think to say something good about a business that they have had good service with.  Why?  Because they expect good service.  That’s why bad word of mouth news tends to travel faster.

But you can encourage clients to talk about you!  Ask them for five things after you have done good work for them (which should be always!).

This video from Working Writing Happy Writer (be sure to check out the newsletter) has 5 questions (or favors) that you can ask of your clients:

I’d say that #3 and #5 are my favorites.  #3 is to ask for testimonials.  Ever wonder how other freelancers have all those great testimonials on their sites?  They asked for them!  Clients do not usually think to give them out on their own, but if you’ve done good work for them they are often more than happy to give you a couple sentences.  Make sure you ask if you can use their name and a link to their website to give the testimonial more validity. #5 is to ask them to pass your name along to others that might need your writing services.  Until you ask them they might not even think of that but once they are asked the might remember someone that could use your services.

It can be hard to ask thinks of clients other than your fee but if you’ve done a good job, clients are often more than happy to help you out.  Don’t be afraid to ask – the worst they can say is no!

Did you know that there is a 3 part writing process that is suggested for business writing?  There is!  It is taught in business communication courses but it applies to most forms of writing as well.  It’s very simple and looks like this:

I think the chart itself is pretty simple and doesn’t really need a whole lot of clarification.  The part that always surprised my students though was the amount of time that should be alloted to each part.

The Planning (or Pre-writing) phase should take up about 25% of your time.

The Drafting (or Writing) phase should also take up about 25% of your time.

But the Revising phase should take up 50% of your time.  This is perhaps the most important part of the writing process!

Does your writing process look anything like this?

Some of you may already know that I work a day job.  I teach a course on being and Administrative Professional and Bookkeeper at Robertson College.  Administrative work is what I did before so it is something that is fairly easy for me.  Not the teaching, but talking about being an admin assistant.  But teaching is only part of my job.

Our school is really looking into the ways that we can make ourselves more visible online so when I suggested a blog they were very excited about the idea.  Thus, The Admin Professional was created.  This is a blog that is written and maintained by me and I write about all sorts of things that are of concern to those who are already admin assistants and to those who are interested in becoming one.  Sometimes I feature past students and other times I talk about the skills that are needed.

The other thing that we’ve been working on is article marketing.  Not every business realizes what an impact article marketing can have on their business.  But it can be very helpful in developing your business as an expert in your area.  If you look to the right you’ll see a button in the sidebar for Ezine Articles.  This is just one of the places where you can find my writing online.

So, if you want to see samples of my writing, I encourage you to check out the blog and check out some of my article marketing.  Then, if you think that my writing services could be of benefit to you, contact me and we can work together.

Most of us learned the ins and outs of writing, basic grammar, and sentence structure in high school.  But do you really think that your writing is good enough to convince someone to buy your product, to switch from the competition to you, or to effectively express the meaning of what you are trying to communicate?  It is possible, but the truth is that most business people don’t have the writing skills to do the job as effectively as a professional writer and that’s why they hire others to do the writing.

People tend to learn as much as possible at what they specialize in.  Athletes are in the business of pushing their bodies to the limits so that they can excel at their chosen sport.  But they don’t necessarily have the knowledge they need to find out how to do that.  That is why they hire nutritionists, physical trainers, coaches, and other professionals that are focused on bringing it all together.  Likewise, writers learn as much as they can about the art of written communications so that they can help business people succeed in their chosen profession.

Here are some of the things that writers can do to improve your written communications:

• Say what needs to be said in as little words as possible.  Let’s face it – people are not big readers these days so if something can be said more effectively in 5 sentences than in 10 sentences a writer will minimize extra words so that the reader will focus on what is important.
• Avoid grammar, spelling mistakes, cliches and other writing blunders that will cause the reader to lose faith in your business or get distracted from the real message.
• Project the image that you wish to portray to clients and potential clients.  A good writer can manipulate words so that the reader will get a specific message.
• Focus on the writing – the writer’s job is to just write.  They aren’t thinking about the customer that came in earlier with a complaint or the meeting that they need to get to in an hour.  They are focused on writing the text just the way you need it to be written.

Remember that one person can not be everything.  Any successful business person knows that part of the success of a business is knowing when to do it yourself and when to outsource to someone that is specialized.  So the next time you sit down to write a sales letter, write some text for a brochure, or write a press release, stop and think – are you really the best person for the job?  If you are, that’s great; but if not, consider hiring a professional writer.