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Does business email writing worry you as much as public speaking? Are you one of those employees who dread writing proposals or quarterly reports? I have seen many colleagues sweat over writing emails. Some even go as far as to ask someone else to draft business emails for them.
You might get around the situation by asking someone else to help you write your emails or proposals sometimes, but not always. It’s important to develop your writing skills so you can write your own emails and reports. You may have stopped a few times to think if poor writing skills at work affect your career. Honestly, they do.
Why written communication is important at work?
Natalie Canavor, a well-known business writer, once said, “You are what you write.” It’s absolutely true of today’s collaborative world. Improving your written communication skills at the workplace can take you and your organization a long way.
Take a look at your workplace. You will find so many examples from business proposals and marketing copy to business emails and management policies where you need excellent writing and business communication skills. That’s why most employers these days prefer candidates with excellent business email writing skills.
Let’s take a look at how effective writing can benefit employers:
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Effective writing helps boost sales:
There’s no doubt that sales proposals and marketing copy play an important role in the sales process. Thus, these documents must look professional and competent. Effectively written proposals reflect on your organization’s performance and capability, which helps generate more leads and drive sales.
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Impressive writing leads to a team’s strength and retention:
High-quality written communication and well-chosen words are important for good management. Helping employees hone their skills in writing business emails helps them rise in the organizational hierarchy, in turn strengthening the internal talent of the organization.
How to improve written communication skills?
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Make things easy to read:
We receive tons of emails every day. Though checking every email is important, sometimes we don’t have the time to read all these messages. As a result, your inbox is often full of dozens of unread emails. Considering this widespread email-reading pattern, you should keep the message short, precise, and crisp by making it readable using line breaks and bulleted lists.
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Write a strong call-to-action statement:
All written business emails or communications are sent with a purpose. Decide how you want the readers to respond—do you want them to call you back, confirm their presence at a meeting, or give you more information and so on.
Don’t leave your readers confused about what to do after reading the mail; they should take an action that fulfills the objective of your mail. Be specific about what you want them to do with your information; support your call-to-action with the required information such as email ids, phone numbers, or an inquiry form.
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Use clear and appropriate email subject lines:
A short and powerful email subject line is important to ensure your emails are read. For this, keep the email headlines short, specific, and powerful. A quick but essential tip—never leave the subject line blank. This may categorize emails sent by you as spam.
You can learn to be a better writer. All you need to do is learn and keep practicing workplace communication writing skills. The more you practice writing, the better you will get at business email writing. Further, if you want more help on how to improve your writing skills at work, you should consider taking online business writing courses.
Keep practicing, be aware of your choice of words, sentence structure, and try to be specific with your messages and email headlines while writing business emails.
Explore topics such as Writing Skills, Process of Writing and How to Improve Writing Skills from our Harappa Diaries blog section to build your skills for workplace success.
