One of the true laments from management today is that employees cannot express themselves with the written word. Owners and stockholders have the same complaints about management. Today in the age of the paperless office the importance of the written word is increasing especially as direct live voice contact becomes more and more problematic.

If you want to communicate, you have to write. The written word, whether digital or etched into stone, remains the primary means of relaying data, information, thoughts and ideas.

Many businesses lack the ability to generate a well written business letter or well scripted marketing collateral. Not having this ability puts these businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

Who wants to consider a business proposal that is awkward and full of errors? What impression does a homepage with spelling errors project? Good business writing is not just a nice frill — it is a necessity.

Every text that is written by your business is a reflection on your business. Misspellings, poor grammar, awkward syntax and weak logic project a negative image. These weaknesses can relay the impression that you are uneducated, unsophisticated, lack personal pride, are lazy, ill or all of the above.

Since the consequences of poor writing are surprisingly severe, it is better to not write anything than to write poorly. No writing leaves the issue up in the air; poor writing tells the world just where you establish your standards.

Pick up three or four pieces of written material from your company. How does your company rate? Do you require employees use spelling and grammar checks before sending out important letters or email? A spell and grammar checker can act as an editor and prevent simple typos and oversights; a first line of defense against poor writing.

Or do you or your people have difficulty clearly expressing themselves? If so, take a step back and look at your capabilities. You can either send everybody to Adult Ed and Junior College to learn how to write or hire someone that already can.

For your people that can write having their own writing style is fine as long as it is correct and in good business taste. You don’t have to go to military speak but neither is this the time to wax poetic and verbose.

Using slang in a memo to a company CEO may look cool at first but be perceived as ‘low rent’ when the CEO reads it. Always think first, what impression do you want to give?

If you are hiring for a position that requires writing skills, ask the applicant to write several paragraphs about what attributes they will bring to the company. For assessing writing skills what they write about is not as important as how they write it.

For managers this is more important since written reports are part of a manager’s job description. Never hire a manager before you clearly know their writing skills.

To write well it helps to read. Read whatever interests you and read as much as you can every day. If you read a newspaper; look how style and syntax relay the message.

By reading well written material the rules of grammar and syntax become more formalized in your brain. Simply put, the more you read, the better you write.

Clearly writing practice makes for improvement if not perfection. Good writers write everyday and take pride in each piece they write. Good writers make sure the intended meaning is the meaning expressed. It is not only challenging to write well but fun if one develops positive attitudes about writing. Besides, what’s not to like about writing well?

Only basic common sense should tell you that anything that is written or in text, such as a webpage or a handout brochure needs to be reviewed thoroughly before posting or printing. If you dare put out ‘junk’ that is full of holes, you will be shooting down your efforts before you start. So don’t even try.

Review all of your written materials to see if they need to be improved or rewritten. Be your own editor first and then have some “outside eyes” look at it. Take all criticism constructively and use that criticism to improve.

Look in the mirror when you come up with excuses for poor writing. Excuses such as lack of formal education do not count in the marketplace. Some with little or no education have excellent writing skills while many university graduates cannot write a simple sentence correctly.

If you write poorly your message will be muted and not accomplish what you intend it to do. Good writing is a challenge and not something one can fudge or postpone.

If you can’t do it, hire someone that can. Always remember that for better or worse you and your company are what you write.

Whether you are working for a small business, large corporation, or are a student, there are numerous sources that you can turn to for help with writing. Businesses need to be able to effectively communicate with their customers, their employees and their potential customers. Effective verbal communication is equally important, but nonverbal communication in the form of copy writing, article writing, press release writing, and more requires a certain level of expertise and experience. The typical small business wants to focus their efforts on their core business activities without spending too much time on projects that can easily be outsourced to consultants or freelance professionals. Many small businesses turn to freelancers to help them save time and money. For example, a certified public accountant opened his own accounting practice after working in another accounting firm for the last ten years. One of the ways he decided to search for new clients was to embark on an advertising and promotional campaign. Although some of his previous clients followed him to his new practice, he wanted to increase the number of accounts he currently handled. These accounts included various individuals and small businesses from around the town. Rather than hire new employees or handle the projects himself, he decided to hire a consultant through a freelance web site to work on copy writing for a local newspaper ad campaign as well as to help with press releases and company news distribution. By outsourcing these non-core business activities to an independent consultant, he is able to save himself time and money and also gets the expertise of an established professional who specializes in the types of writing that he needs assistance with. He decides to list his writing projects in a freelance marketplace and receives bids from independent consultants and freelance writers. He was able to choose a service provider based on factors related to cost, the service provider’s experience, references, and previous feedback from clients. All small businesses have a decision to make about whether to outsource certain projects or to complete the work in house. Using economics as a deciding factor, it makes sense economically for businesses to outsource writing projects when the projects are non-core business activities that do not contribute to the company’s bottom line.

Small businesses also need to be able to effectively communicate with their current customers. Some of the more effective ways to get help writing effective communication for current customers involve using tools such as newsletters, email lists, and articles written by outsourced consultants. Newsletters are very effective ways to keep customers informed of current events and happenings within the company. They also offer you the opportunity to gain new clients as the newsletter gets passed around and is often seen by more than one person during its life cycle. It makes sense and is a smart move to outsource corporate communications instead of keeping it in-house. Hiring a separate professional will save your business money and time. For less than the cost of hiring a full time employee, and because it will contribute to allowing more concentration on the activities that will earn your business money, contracting with a consultant or freelancer for your corporate communications (writing of press releases to distribute company news, getting publicity through pieces in newspapers and magazines, and getting help writing newsletters or articles) simply makes sense. An expert in the field who has amassed many years of experience with business writing, persuasive writing, and copy writing in addition to having experience writing press releases, articles, essays, and possibly academic or technical research and term papers will have a lot to offer you and your business.

Large corporations use writing to effectively communicate on all levels of business. Business writing and corporate communications are essential elements that keep the public informed and give companies their corporate image. A company’s image or its publicly perceived notion of credibility and reliability is extremely important to its bottom line. For example, upon its introduction many years ago an American car company introduced a car known as the “Nova”. After some time, it was discovered that the car was not selling well in many Spanish speaking countries. Because in Spanish, “No van” translates to “doesn’t go”, the car sales in these countries were dismal. Effective corporate communication can have far reaching effect. Ineffective corporate communication can result in lower sales as shown in the car sales example. Large corporations also need to be effective communicators with their current employees. Internal corporate communications are equally important and keep your employees abreast of company accomplishments, events and human resource issues.

Finally, students also need to be able to write effectively as well. Writing assignments can include writing essays, writing term papers, report writing, and thesis writing not to mention having to demonstrate writing ability in other subjects outside of English class. For example, law students need to be able to write not only persuasive but argumentative writing as well. Foreign language students need to be able to translate into their native language and then back again. Science and technology students need to be able to demonstrate scientific writing ability. Taking writing tips from college professors that teach correct formatting and usage, including APA style, and improving you’re proofreading and editing skills will result in quality writing assignments. For the student that is looking for writing help and homework assistance for their assignments, freelance marketplaces that allow you to hire a consultant or tutor could be a productive and time saving solution.

From a freelance or independent consultant’s standpoint, marketing writing skills to potential service buyers is important to keeping any consulting business thriving. Registering with freelance marketplaces will enable you to showcase your writing skills, talents and abilities. Previous experience with all kinds of writing ranging from grant writing, fiction writing and interactive writing to writing short stories, articles and eBooks or even technical pieces, in addition to all forms of business writing will enable you to prove your varied background and skills. All of which can be showcased in your freelance marketplace profile. Creating and managing a profile is important to make you stand out from the crowd of freelance writers competing for new writing projects. All in all, those looking for writing help can find a vast array of resources in the form of consultants who are more than willing to lend a helping hand.

Many metaphors have been offered up to describe or explain the Internet, but calling it “an ocean of words” is as accurate as any other. In 1998 the first Google index counted 26 million pages, by 2000 it had reached the billion mark and by 2002 it had more than tripled again to over 3 billion. In July 2008 the company’s Web Search Infrastructure Team announced that it had counted 1 trillion unique URLs on the web at once. At an average 1000 words per page, that means the web contains an astonishing 1 quadrillion words. That’s 15 zero’s.

Obviously, writing for publication on the Internet and standing out from all the rest of the verbiage presents a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Yet web professionals know from the ever-improving metrics and analytics that certain articles and specific kinds of writing do, in fact, perform better at their assigned tasks.

And make no mistake – writing for publication means setting (and hitting) targets, not crafting a follow-up to The Great Gatsby or concocting clever rhymes. In fact, fiction and poetry together account for only some 15% of web writing, which means the overwhelming majority of articles in cyberspace are non-fiction, imparting knowledge to educate the world.

Intentions and aims of writing for publication

There are many reasons to write for publication, and the reader can be served well no matter what your motivations. You may want to “get your name out there,” or that of your company, for increased exposure. You may wish to establish yourself or your firm as the leading expert in a certain field.

You can easily load up your own domains with scores of great articles, injecting them with the authority of your knowledge of your vertical. The positive side of this is the creation and positioning of your own site as the informational go-to resource for your industry. The risk is that since you are writing for your own site, no matter how good the information is people may wonder if it is self serving, and you could be perceived as essentially “blowing your own horn.”

Another good option is placing an article on a popular blog, or in an e-zine that has attained a certain level of respect within a certain industry, or even in a popular print magazine. This third-party publishing can dramatically boost your perceived authority. You want to avoid appearing as a self-promoting windbag, and one way to do that is to have other sites and publications promote you instead.

Conversely, you will want to avoid certain venues, as well, to safeguard your reputation. Investigate the various “post your article” sites and avoid the ones that do not have excellent content up front, as people will generally not waste much time looking for something good on a mediocre site. For “good” content they will likely gravitate to sites they see as having “good” information.

How to stand out from the crowd of content

The overarching goal for writing web content is to be informative, entertaining, task-oriented, clear – and above all, useful to the demographic. Rankings in the search engines are a by-product of good, focused content, and should not be the goal. Frankly, it is entirely possible to serve a niche audience, and do it quite effectively with a high level of satisfaction, without setting any ranking records. But typically when you write an authoritative article full of information useful to your demographic, people will naturally cite it as good and link to it, thus helping your article move up the natural listings. Consistently write helpful, informative articles, and the effects of these citations will not just add up, they will multiply. But, again, this happens if your focus and goal is to reach and affect a target group, small or large, with well-written, concise and usable information.

Most people think of fiction when they hear the term “creative writing,” but writers know very well that writing for publication on non-fiction topics requires tremendous creativity. You do not simply “do research” in preparation for writing an article. Rather, you immerse yourself in the subject, study it from all possible angles, take it apart to understand how it truly works, then put it back together again and explain it to others in your own, unique way. The first step (of many) in learning to write content that reads well is “owning the topic” – knowing the subject inside and out. There is no other way to write with authority than to have, in fact, that authority.

Reaching the reader

Just as important as knowing the subject matter is knowing your audience. Not only do you have to understand the target reader’s point of view, of course, but you also need to speak in a common vocabulary. Equally as important as the content is the tone in which it is presented. A motivated reader, eager to learn, does not respond particularly well to condescension, and certainly does not want to be “talked at” or scolded.

In addition to speaking in their vocabulary, you have to choose the words that will motivate them to the goal of the article. Want them to walk away with knowledge that will help them? Choose language that will intrigue them to read more, and word your concepts so their brains soak them up like a sponge. Want them to buy something? Choose words and language that will elicit the emotional buying response. If you want to accomplish your goal, you not only have to use language they will understand, you also have to use language they will connect to.

In a sense, the reader should feel that you are working with them, approaching the material together. This is one of the most powerful ways to get the reader “invested” in the article and lead them, without seeming to, toward any possible call to action you might have at the conclusion.

You will find that you need to write various articles for various purposes, and although you may develop an identifiable style, on a practical level your writing will be meant to accomplish different things at different times. If you are writing to entertain, then keep it light and fun, and don’t lecture. If you are writing to educate, don’t bother with a “Sunday magazine feature” story introduction, but get right to the lessons. However, whether it’s for fun or for some other goal, being informative is not a side effect or a bonus – it is the very foundation of your writing.

The ultimate aims of publishing your writing

With the information you impart, you are seeking to change what readers think or how they perceive something. For the reader, it should be a journey, a process of discovery that proceeds deliberately and convincingly. Columbus did not make any side trips on the way to the New World, and you must avoid the temptation to digress, embellish or confuse matters. Do not pile on words, especially of the “10¢ variety,” in an attempt to impress (or increase arbitrary word count). Persuasive writing is lean without being mean, vigorous without being aggressive, concise without being dry and informative without being a mere list of factoids.

Yes, there is a lot to crafting a persuasive piece of writing for publication. It is both art and craft, requiring both creativity and skill. Every word must earn its place, do its job and contribute to the overall effect and meaning, or it should be deleted. If you can say a lot with a little, do so. Vigorous writing is concise. If you have done your best and still have a long article, just ensure the reader comes away with copious amounts of usable information.

Read and consider all feedback you get on your writing, as the only definition of success that counts is the reader reaction. The more you write, the better you will become, if you pay attention to what your audiences are telling you. Writing is a process, not a product, and is a tool for you as regards your business endeavors.

A note to non-writers

Even if you don’t write yourself, you should know how to assess writers who are working for you, since their output will represent you and your firm to the world. In fact, in this day and age, work-for-hire arrangements may result in your putting your name on an article you paid someone to write. This makes quality control even more important.

Next Week

Next week we’ll be releasing Part Two of the series – Writing For Search Engines.