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Decide What You Want

§ April 3rd, 2011 § Filed under communication, marketing, small business, training, writing § Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , § No Comments

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want. – Ben Stein

If you find that you are not receiving responses to your email messages, I may have discovered one of the problems.

I recently met a man who is in charge of volunteers at a local non-profit. I had been planning to volunteer with this organization for the last few months, so this meeting presented the perfect opportunity to offer my training services. I handed him my business card and wrote on the back what I wanted to provide.

Two days later, I received an email from the volunteer director. He said he was glad to have met me and appreciated my interest in the organization. He provided some details about the volunteer opportunities with this non-profit and finished his email by saying that he looked forward to discussing my involvement.

It was obviously a canned response, and although it would have been nice to have received something that responded to my particular offering of providing training, the template aspect did not bother me. What bothered me was that there was no call-to-action. There was no “next step” for me to take. He could have said, “please contact me at your earliest convenience” or “please fill in the volunteer form on our website” or “I will call you next week to set up an appointment.” Instead I was left feeling like we would have to run into each other on the street to move this relationship forward. I wonder how many volunteers are lost because of this missing request.

I shouldn’t give this guy too hard a time. He is not alone. We all send out emails all the time without thinking about what we want to accomplish.

If you want to create email messages that get a response, the most important step you can take is to decide what you want the outcome to be when the recipient reads the email. If you don’t provide your readers with the next step, the email will sit in their in-boxes, unanswered, largely because there was no question to answer.

Look back over some of the emails you have sent. Were you clear in your purpose? Did you ask for the sale? Did you move the process forward? How could you have ended the message that would have made it easy for the recipient to take action?

If you want to learn additional ways to create messages that deliver results, come to this month’s Lunchbox Workshop.

Texting and Writing

§ March 1st, 2011 § Filed under communication, small business, training, writing § Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , § No Comments

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” – Joseph Priestley

In response to my request for communication pet peeves, one of my readers emailed, “I dislike the fact that kids, with texting, are using “shortcut” language.  This definitely will not help their spelling & written skills.”

Texting! Just like my reader, I worry about the writing skills of our youth. I teach writing classes on the college level, and I see omitted punctuation, lack of capitalization, and words that I have to read aloud to decipher the meaning.

Is texting ruining the writing skills of an entire generation? To be honest, probably. But the problem may not the obvious one.

English teachers throughout history have had to help students understand the difference between formal and informal language. (Growing up in Texas, we all had to learn that “ya’ll” was not an acceptable pronoun when writing a school paper, but then neither was any second person pronoun.) Texting adds a layer to that concern, but with some training, students can move between the formal and informal writing easily. Research shows that students, especially those with some college, tend to understand the difference in requirements when writing formally.  If you are interested in how teens perceive their writing skills, the Pew Research Center has done a fascinating study on teen writing and technology.

The bigger problem may be that texting requires quick, to-the-point, no-nuanced writing.  Conversely, good writing requires supporting detail, more explanation, and additional depth.  One of the concerns pointed out in the Pew study is that most writing assignments in high school are short – a few paragraphs at the most. The combination of texting, Tweeting, and sharing short messages on Facebook, plus a lack of opportunity to learn how to write lengthier and more in-depth prose may be hurting our students’ writing skills much more than the abbreviations and shortcuts.

I have my pet peeves when it comes to spelling and grammar, but I can usually decipher those mistakes easily. The harder task is sorting out writing that is illogical and unsupported, and I seem to find a higher frequency of poorly thought-out writing these days whether in my classes or in the marketing materials of businesses. We need to teach students to think critically and write fully thought-out papers. Businesses need to learn to communicate from the reader’s viewpoint, answering questions before they are asked. I love the idea of communicating quickly through text messages or 140 character Tweets, but to be decent writers, we have to be able to provide detailed, coherent information.

As we embrace our new forms of communication, there will probably come a time when “your” will become “ur.” I can’t find a good argument against the shortening of some words, leaving out letters that serve no meaning except to confuse non-native speakers and to point obscurely to the mongrel history of our language. The only argument that I can fall back on is that we have rules for the way we have always written, and I know that is a miserable excuse. So I won’t be surprised, and I won’t fight the inevitable. I won’t completely give in just yet, either. So, instead of “thx 4 rdg,” I’ll say, “Thanks for reading all of my letters, even the unnecessary ones.”

Five Communication Resolutions

§ January 1st, 2011 § Filed under communication, small business, training, writing § Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , § 3 Comments

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.  – Brian Tracy

I guess everyone who has a newsletter, blog, or newspaper column tends to write the type of article in January that I’m about to inflict on you today. It’s the dreaded resolution column. (grin) So here it is. Here are five communication resolutions I would like you to consider as you make your plans for improvement in 2011.

First, resolve to read. Find a good book and enjoy the story. Read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Read blogs and newsletters, but be sure to balance with edited work. Reading good writing will help your writing skills.

Second, resolve to proofread. Read your written communication aloud before sending it into the world. I don’t expect text messages to be grammatically correct (yes, even this grammar maven has given up on text messages), but make sure you include all the words necessary to convey the intent. Leaving a word out can change the meaning completely, creating either confusion or damage on the other end.

Third, resolve to use resources that help with common writing problems. One of my favorites is the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. This site provides help with writing, from detailed grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure issues to writing related to a job search. If you need more detailed help, including one-on-one coaching, please contact me.

Fourth, resolve to correct your common errors. If you unsure how to use its and it’s, ensure and insure, affect and effect, list these words on a pad near your computer with their meanings. See Spelling: Common Words that Sound Alike. If you can’t figure out when to use good or well or bad or badly, you may want to print out Avoiding Common Errors.

Fifth, resolve to be kinder. Remember that while you may disagree with someone, you can nearly always find areas of common interest. You never truly know what someone else is dealing with or what causes them to view the world so differently from you. Try to pause before you respond to what someone has said, especially if he or she irritates you. Find a way to phrase what you say so that it does not insult the other person. That does not mean that you have to agree with them, but understand that a phrase such as “That’s not the way I see it” is much better than “You need to consider…” We need to find a way to heal the divisions between us. Being kind in our communication is a good first step.

Happy New Year! May your communication bring you closer to your customers, clients, coworkers, friends, and family!

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