Becoming an accomplished copywriter is a goal that many strive to attain. However, copywriting has many branches. At one end, we have content writing – a vast field that most of us are familiar with, including everything from blogs, web content and posts on social media to newsletters and TED Talks. On the opposite side, we have business writing, which consists of copywriting under professional settings, such as press releases, annual reports, proposals, business enquiry emails and so on.
For those who want to juggle a more balanced writing portfolio, it’s essential to be acquainted with the ins and outs of business writing. “But where should we start if we’re only familiar with content writing?” we hear you ask. Worry not, for we have several exercises that can help you train up those business writing muscles. Join Wordsmith as we explore the gymnastics of professional writing!
Who are you writing for?
Before writing anything, you need to be able to answer these questions:
· Who is the client?
· Who is the target audience?
Now, why is this important? It’s of utmost importance that you know who you are writing for, as it will dictate how you structure and phrase everything. There’s also the difference between writing for someone you know and writing for a faceless audience. When you know someone, you can curate content that you know they’ll like… conversely, an unspecified audience could be made up of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people with very distinct preferences.
Neil Taylor, the author of Brilliant Business Writing: How to Inspire, Engage and Persuade through Words, says “the danger with not knowing your reader is that you stop thinking of them as real people, and start thinking of them as an amorphous mass. Because amorphous masses are difficult to characterise, we tend to bland out our writing, so instead of sounding like we’re talking to lots of people, we sound like we’re talking to no-one. And then your bit of writing is guaranteed to fail.”
Although you may not have a perfect idea about who each of your audience is, it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to categorise them based on common preferences and/or backgrounds! For example, our audience of Kyle and Jim may live on two separate hemispheres of the planet, but their backgrounds of being young parents helps you to visualise the sort of people they could be – you might expect them to struggle with new parenthood. By categorising your audience together, you are able to picture them and form a direction for your writing.
For a clearer idea of who your audience are, see if you can answer these questions about an average consumer:
1. What’s their name?
2. How old are they?
3. What kind of educational background do they have?
4. What sort of news source do they primarily get their information from?
Even if you give this “average consumer” a hypothetical name, calling them Jim or Kyle helps create the illusion that they are real. For an even better idea of who they are, Taylor suggests trying to answer the following questions:
A. Where did they go last on holiday?
B. What’s their favourite TV programme?
C. If they were at a train station, what sort of sandwich would they buy?
The more you are able to answer, the more you are able to curate content for that type of audience member. You might ask what the point of knowing their favourite sandwich is, but we believe that there are indeed inferences to be made! A ham and cheese fan might be someone who is more old-fashioned and prefers the classics, whereas someone who chooses avocado and kale might be someone who is more trend savvy and health conscious.
Replacing the tedious with the familiar
As students, we often make the mistake of using big words to try to sound smarter and more confident. In business writing, conciseness is the key to getting points across as quickly as possible. Using big and “sophisticated” words not only adds unnecessary baggage to a sentence, but can also have the added effect of confusing audiences.
Industry jargon is another branch of confusing words that we recommend avoiding for the same reasons as above. Unless you’re absolutely certain your audience are fully knowledgeable of the industry, it’s generally a better idea to use plain language whenever possible.
For this exercise, we recommend looking at annual reports across various industries. Pick out a random section, then highlight and replace the words that you think are pretentious, confusing and/or jargon. This following section is a blurb from the coronavirus response section of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2020 financial report:
“Our efforts are centered, first and foremost, on the health and safety of our employees and all Americans. With this in mind, we transitioned to a full telework posture (with limited exceptions) in March 2020.
Through this period of collective, national challenge, we remain fully operational and committed to our tripartite mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”
There are a couple terms in there that we are unfamiliar with. After a quick Google search and some rewording, here’s how the same section looks:
“Our efforts are centered, first and foremost, on the health and safety of our employees and all Americans. With this in mind, we transitioned to a full work-from-home arrangement (with limited exceptions) in March 2020.
Through this period of collective, national challenge, we remain fully operational and committed to our three-part mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and foster capital growth.”
Although content and business writing are two very distinct worlds, it’s important to remember that they both fall under copywriting – the goal of which is to inform readers about a specific topic (and usually to motivate some sort of action or response afterwards). Business writing isn’t about using big words or technical talk, it’s about being smart and considerate with your word choices. If you’re having trouble writing your next business brief, give these exercises a try – otherwise, your neighbourhood wordsmiths will always be happy to lend a hand!