I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash
Once could be an error…
As much as I advocate being careful with spelling and grammar, everybody is human and mistakes will be made. So I can excuse an error.
It is much harder to excuse a document or website that makes the same mistake more than once. I came across this sentence a little while ago:
“Informing you super fund of a change of address is just as important as informing you bank.”
Using you instead of your is one of those things done easily enough (spell check won’t pick you as wrong) but really annoys me. Seeing it twice in that sentence just tells me the writer doesn’t understand the difference between you and your or just doesn’t care about being professional or making a good impression.
Two errors in that sentence would also make me less forgiving of other mistakes in the same document so it goes further than two missing letters.
How about you – do you also cringe when you read (or hear!) about ‘you object’?
Use real keywords
Keywords are used to help search engines relate your web pages to terms people use in the search engines.
So if you sell books, you want search engines to find you when people look for a book shop they can access so you could use keywords like books, reading, store, fiction and non-fiction. Keywords like bike, engineer, beautician and plumber would be less useful (unless you specialised in books about those things!)
I think it’s really important to use real keywords, too. By that I mean words that real people will use to find your goods or services, not jargon or unusual alternatives of words.
Terms like motor insurance, pertusiss and downhaul are actually accurate but used by professionals – most people refer to car insurance, whooping cough and (sail) rope so they are the real keywords.
Worse are words used in a different context, such as benefit. Most of us think of benefit as an advantage whereas the insurance and super industries use benefit as the money you may be entitled to; would you ever type ‘super benefit’ in a search engine to find out about superannuation?
So when preparing your website copy and metadata (meaning the text you can add to a webpage for search engines to use), make sure you focus on words your customers will use rather than words people in your industry use. Sometimes, your customers do know the jargon, but don’t just assume it.
Writing office effective memos
Emails may be replacing inter-office memos overall, but the memo still has its place in many larger companies. Yet many memos (past and present) are not always treated with respect as many have been so poorly written or produced for the sake of having a memo.
So here are some tips to make your memos worth reading…
- keep it short – it is not a letter or a procedural manual. A memo is about giving some important information quickly so get to the point and leave out unnecessary information
- remember that you are writing to colleagues not customers so it’s ok to write something like “see Sue for a copy” or “in the main foyer” as everyone will understand
- be personal – you know the people you are writing to so it doesn’t have to be very formal. “Call me”, “pop into my office” or “let me know” are much friendly than “don’t hesitate to call me” or “reply by fax”
- be polite and show respect, even if the memo is pointing out something negative. Compare “we need to improve customer service so…” with “you are all really bad at customer service so…”
- use personal terms – you, me, I, we – to maintain a connection with your readers
- be specific so staff know what is needed – “the renovations start on Monday so please clear your desk by 4pm Friday” or “reports are now due by 10am Tuesday” are clear and easy to comply with
- make it clear who is getting the memo – I don’t want to waste time passing it onto my team if they already have it but I also don’t want them to miss it; if it is sensitive, it helps to know who else is reading the information
- most importantly, don’t write a memo unless there is actually a need to do so – sending out lots of memos loses their effectiveness no matter how well you write them.
Of course, these same rules apply to important internal emails, too.
Have you received any really bad memos? What made them stand out as bad?
Important information comes first…
Leading up to Christmas, we put together a sand pit for my son (and eventually his baby sister) as one of his gifts. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
I was very happy to see that all of the pieces were numbered so I didn’t have to figure out which piece went where, and the instructions (mostly in pictorial form) seemed simple enough to follow. However, it wasn’t always clear that each piece of wood had an up or down side so I had to undo and re-screw some bits.
Worst of all, though, was the fact that the kits came with screws of two lengths and it was only in step 8 of 9 that there was any mention of this. Continue reading
Sending a Christmas message
We’re heading for Christmas and most businesses are trying to be prepared for the December rush.
Many businesses send a Christmas email to their customers, supporters and suppliers so here are some tips for writing your email…
- if possible, use the person’s name so your Christmas message is personal
- even if your usual business communications are formal, make this message casual and clearly from you – you are sending the email in appreciation and to share goodwill, so don’t think of it as a business document. However, spelling, grammar and making sense are still basic elements of your email
- if you and/or your customers are not Christian or simply don’t believe in Christmas, send a “season’s greetings” message instead. Even better, make it an “end of year” message
- keep it short – this isn’t the time for a sales pitch or news, just give your best wishes and leave it at that
- still include the basics of a good email – useful subject line, unsubscribe details (if you are using a list rather than truly personal emails) and contact details
- put your message in the body of the email, not as an attachment or in a graphic
Adding some cheery graphics and/or colour is nice, but not essential; if you do add graphics, make sure the email doesn’t become too big.
Having procedures
If you have worked in the corporate world, you know that big businesses have procedure manuals and policies for how things are to be done. They may vary in effectiveness, but they have been thought out and written.
Maybe you consider this something that only belongs to big business, but small and medium businesses should also have some procedures written out.
A small business will have fewer procedures, may not call it a manual and may be more flexible in their approach, but the concept is the same.
Why have procedures?
Many small business owners, especially sole traders, know how to run their business so don’t see any reason to write down their procedures. But what happens when the owner isn’t the one trying to carry out a particular task one day?
By having procedures written down, someone else is able do the job with minimal disruption to clients and the overall business.
Here are some the main reasons to have procedures written down for your business:
- Someone is able to fill in for you if you are sick or go on holidays
- Less time is required to train new staff
- You have a system to sell, either as a franchise or if you sell the entire business
- There are less likely to be human errors because someone forgets a key step
- Clients receive consistent answers and service
For some tips on how to start getting some procedures for your business, read my article on business procedures. For a full run on why procedures are useful and how to use them as well as how to prepare procedures for your business, my preparing procedures eBook is jam-packed with information and tips.
Enough naming but not too much
Have you heard about using keywords to help search engines find you online? And considered that your business and/or product name is a critical keyword to get noticed?
I have often read about including keywords and business names in articles, newsletter and blog posts, and sometimes it even tells you how many times to include such words*.
Instead of some ‘magic’ number of times to use a word, I suggest writing it so the article is interesting and worth reading. Overuse of a keyword becomes obvious as a ploy and the writing then looses some of its credibility as a source of information.
In particular, how often can you mention a company name before someone stops reading it? Continue reading
Paying what you owe
Pay what you owe, and you’ll know what’s your own. Benjamin Franklin
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another. Marcus Tallius Cicero
Do you agree that paying your way, and staying away from debt is good business practice?
I believe it affects your reputation, credibility and self-respect. Knowing that clients will pay is what gives a business faith to continue, builds trust in a community and allows a business to plan ahead.
Personally, if I don’t have the cashflow available, I don’t order a product or service, and always pay invoices I recieve. And I believe this is how most people run their businesses; it is sad to think we need systems to force some people to pay up, though, isn’t it?
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