How do you find the right voice for your business writing? Having a defined voice helps your writing stand apart from the competition. It helps clients or colleagues feel more connected to you. And it can contribute to a consistent brand or image.
Finding that voice means deciding two main things:
- What you are talking about?
- Who you are talking to?
For example, if you are writing about the White House or writing a political article, you may use one style. But while writing to your customers or other small business owners, you may choose another.
Here at Small Business Trends, for example, we try to talk TO small business owners instead of AT them.
Docstoc recently released a course on this subject, which offers some additional tips for creating a business writing voice. Here are a few of them:
Choose a Style Guide or Hybrid and Stay Consistent
There are a few different style guides that are popular in various industries, like Modern Language Association (MLA) for education and Associated Press (AP) style for journalism. But there isn’t one specified style guide for business writing. So you can choose or create your own. Just stay consistent with whichever one you choose.
Use Specific Terms
Be sure to specify what each of your business’s services and features should be called. Is the paid version of your service called “premium” or “white label?” You should make sure that everyone in your company is on the same page so they use the correct terms for all of your business’s offerings.
Determine an Appropriate Tone for Your Writing
Once you’ve chosen an audience for your writing, you need to decide how you should talk to them. You should also consider the type of brand you want to portray when considering your writing tone. The Docstoc video asks:
“Are you looking for something more playful and casual or are you looking for something more formal and extremely professional? This voice should extend across your marketing – customer service, email, and your website.”
The most important thing you can do is to make the decisions about your audience, style and tone as early as possible. Then be sure to stay consistent and stay true to the voice you’ve chosen.
Image: Video Still
I think being a good student of writing is essential in improving writing skill. Reading helps sparks ideas regarding how material can be introduced in an article, or how content can be treated in a fascinating manner. Ultimately a business writer will learn how to talk to the audience, and help strengthen the choices Annie outlined in this great post.
Annie Pilon
I agree – reading can help in a lot of ways. You should always continue reading and finding ways to strengthen your writing even if you’ve decided on a style and tone.
Aira Bongco
One of the best ways to write is to simply consider your audience and set the right tone for your content. While this may need some experience with your target audience, it usually becomes a good thing in the end.
Annie Pilon
Good points!
brussell
Good points. It really is important to talk TO your customers and not at them. It makes a world of difference. I think it’s easy to lose customers when they don’t feel connected to you. This can easily happen if you are talking to your customers like they are small children.
Annie Pilon
Yes! People like having conversations much more than they like being lectured to.