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.
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When an essay isn’t an essay
This week, many Australian students have been sitting the NAPLAN tests. One of the tests is about writing and the students are given a topic to write an essay on.
For my daughter, this was her fourth NAPLAN experience. After a trial essay in class last week, she was panicking about the writing NAPLAN. Being told she’s good at writing essays didn’t give her any comfort until she finally told me she ‘had never written an essay in her life and didn’t know what one was’.
Throughout primary school and early secondary school, the kids have been taught various types of writing (I know I was never formally taught such a range as specific styles!) such as an argumentative piece, an opinion, instructions and a report. Yet no one had ever thought to tell all of them that an essay is just another term for a persuasive or argumentative piece!
Once I realised this was the issue, my daughter regained her confidence in essay writing and believes she did a good answer in her writing NAPLAN.
My children think of persuasive pieces, I think of essays – what do you call a piece of writing that covers a topic to make a case for their opinion?
Understanding jargon
Poor jargon use raises reader questions
When I went to school, we were never taught to write an argumentative or persuasive piece – we wrote essays. Technically, there is no difference but a change of terminology requires care.
If you teach kids to write persuasive pieces you can’t test them on essays unless you define and explain what an essay actually is – they have no experience of essays and figuring it out during a test is not good for their test performance.
By now, the link to business should be obvious! No matter what you are writing for a business or website, you need to be sure the intended audience will understand it.
Just because you are very familiar with jargon (technical or industry specific terms for things) and abbreviations does not mean your readers will be. So it is important to avoid jargon as much as possible.
In some contexts, using jargon is fine (for example, a doctor won’t write about an intestinal disease by saying the symptom is a sore tummy). However, it is still important to minimise the jargon use to be sure it is understood. Going back to our medical example, if a gastroenterologist is writing for a general medical audience she could use medical terms but perhaps avoid very specific terms that other doctors won’t know.
Naming and defining
Whenever you do use jargon or industry specific terms in a business context it is a good idea to define the term.
You may be able to define terms at the first use of it or perhaps have a glossary page which each use of the term can be linked to.
Adding definitions is a good idea even if you are confident your audience knows the jargon because:
- it ensures your understanding of a term is the same as your reader’s understanding
- it helps someone new to your field understand your content – a new doctor will know most of the jargon in an article but may need to check on some words for instance
- having words defined on a website can help with your SEO efforts
- it is useful for someone researching your topic. These people may not be your target audience but helping them can lead to good will – and some of those people may well enter your field later and remember who helped them learn the jargon in the first place
- if there are two or three common terms for something, don’t assume everyone knows them all. Such as my daughter not knowing ‘essay’ and ‘persuasive piece’ are essentially the same thing or someone in NSW not knowing kinder comes before Prep in Victorian schools.
Does your website include definitions of words that are potentially difficult for you audience to recognise or understand? Have you ever reviewed your website for words and terms that may be considered jargon?
Are templates cheating?
Sometimes people talk about templates as if they are cheating, inferior and inappropriate as a business tool.
A blank page can be hard to fill
I don’t agree – there are times a template is not the right answer but they can be very useful in business.
Using a template doesn’t mean everything is exactly the same – adjustments are made to suit the purpose.
Templates for letters, emails, style guides, procedures, web pages and other business materials can help your business in three key ways.
- Consistency
If every letter sent from your business has the same format, it looks professional, builds your brand and shows attention to detail - Time saving
Using a template saves a lot of time. An email or webpage template can reduce the time needed for formatting, setting meta data and remembering the necessary details (phone, ABN, disclaimer, etc), and so on. - Getting started
A template can provide a starting point and can be much easier to work from than a blank page – this saves mental energy and time. If you don’t know where to start with preparing a style for your business, a corporate style guide template can get you started and inspire you to ask the right questions
I think templates are suitable for many things (e.g. procedures and standard information) although they can be misused and abused.
What templates do you use (or have you used) in your business? What advantages do you get from them?
identifying annual report tasks
I find it interesting how little many people know about the process of writing and preparing annual reports.
Many people just accept an annual report exists, glance it and forget about it. Other people think annual reports are a good idea and that someone can just sit down for a few hours (maybe a couple of days) to write the report.
If only it was that simple!
I have already started on one client’s annual report – it won’t be released until September, so that gives you some idea of how long it can take.
So here is a list of tasks involved in producing a professional report that meets all legal, business and branding requirements professionally:
- checking what legal and regulatory requirements apply and ensuring those requirements are met. I often start with checklist of topics to include so I don’t forget any of them
- deciding on a theme, if suitable, as this will influence the exact wording and design, and possibly some of the actual content
- collating relevant information, such as major events, financial reports, directors’ details and performance data
- arranging the design and layout – this may mean finding a designer or using an in-house person, but will require time and various drafts
- writing the actual content – which may include writing the bulk of individual reports (Chair’s report, CEO Report and so on) and writing marketing material
- collating relevant images to be used in the report – or editing and approving those collected by the designer
- deciding on marketing elements and then preparing them – you can insert ads for various products/services or even accept external ads as long as you have space and it meets all relevant rules
- editing, rearranging and refining to get everything to fit nicely!
- coordinating feedback from a variety of people (for example, technical, financial, legal, marketing and company experts)
- reviewing final drafts to ensure the report meets the requirements from step 1, meets the business style guide, has all spelling and grammar correct, is readable, appears professional and somewhat attractive, has all correct numbers (check phone numbers, ABNs and addresses are perfect as typos are easily missed) and is approved by the responsible people
- arranging printing – even with digital copies available, some printed copies are usually required – and digital access (formatting and uploading the document and adjusting webpages and links to make it accessible)
There also the additional tasks of arranging distribution (so designing and printing envelopes, arranging mailing lists and stuffing envelopes) and any other materials to go with the annual report (such as member statements, renewal forms and marketing flyers) that may be part of ‘writing the annual report’ or managed by someone else.
It is a lot of work and there is certainly some pride in the final result of your hard work, but it can be a little frustrating when you realise that many people just don’t open or read the annual reports they are given!
Impressive words don’t
Including long ‘impressive’ words in your content won’t impress many people or make everyone think you are super smart.
In fact, using lots of long words makes your writing harder to read and you appear pompous. A study in 2005 showed a negative relationships between complex writing and perception of the writer’s intelligence – in other words, overuse of big words made readers think the writer was less intelligent.
You may have developed the habit of using a bigger vocabulary at school or university – and teachers do need to see you understand a range of words and technical terms – but it’s a good habit to break when writing business materials.
Keep words and sentences short – write in the same style as you speak – be clear and concise – and your message will be understood which is the point.
An annual report by any other name…
I sometimes refer to writing annual reports for clients, but you may know those reports by another name such as:
- trustee report
- annual trustee report
- shareholders’ report
- report for members
- membership report
- AGM reports (although these are often simpler and delivered orally)
- company report
- annual credit report
Are there any other name you use or know for annual reports from a company or similar entity?
Collecting annual report content
Writing an annual report for many people is a big chore done over a stressful month or two just before it is due to be released.
I have suggested before that the process is better spread across the year by keeping notes so that the actual preparation is easier.
Another way I work on an annual report throughout the year is to copy chunks of text into an annual report document as well. This is content worked on during the year for a specific topic or use – for example, descriptions of a new service or product launched during the reporting year.
When it comes to writing about those topics in the annual report, I can pull out the existing, correct content and adjust it to need. It is much quicker than reinventing the wheel with new text or wasting time searching for that text “I know I wrote back then”.
Although a style guide often includes sections of useful text to be reused, it doesn’t always include text about specific events or external factors.
Can you imagine how organised you will feel and look when you pull out a page of pre-prepared text when you start writing your annual report content?
Learning social media rules
I have been using a lot more social media (specifically twitter) recently as part of my Love Santa project. It because abundantly clear that some people have no idea (or don’t care) about how to effectively use Twitter. 
Top most is having an understanding that twitter is for communicating and building relationships – not for blatant ads like old-fashioned media (e.g. a newspaper ad was a one way message). I saw a few businesses tweet their ad at least every couple of hours with no other messages in between. For one business, they had 3 variants of it and ran them in succession once every hour or so during their business hours. I wasn’t their audience anyway but seeing it so often bored and annoyed me, and gave me an uncomfortable feeling about them as a business.
Next is to have one honest profile. It because obvious when 3 supposedly different twitter users repeatedly sent the same tweet straight after each other – a number of times. It came across as trying to trick and con people, plus it seemed they were desperate for business rather than offering quality or showing a genuine interest in people watching their tweets.
The other behaviour that was annoying while I was on twitter a lot (I haven’t really seen it when just keeping up with people I follow on twitter) was an excessive use of hash tags*.
To me it was like reading a blog post or webpage written to show off keywords rather than actually communicate something – boring, annoying and an insult if they think I am impressed by such actions.
Adding # to key words within a message is fine, adding a keyword or two after the message is also fine, but the following wasn’t so fine:
- adding five or more hashtags after a brief message
- adding hashtags that were about advertising not the message (e.g. adding #santa after a message about a computer breaking down to get noticed for Christmas or adding #webdesign to a message about dreading a visit to the dentist)
- making the entire message hashtags with a link
Tweets are like any other content you write – make it about the message and people reading it, not about SEO and getting noticed by more people, as that is what will genuinely get your message heard and distributed.
I can’t say what results those people get from their tweets, but I know I would never retweet or follow them (and I’m sure I’m not alone). I can say that most of the retweeted Love Santa tweets were those based on replying to someone else – in other words, ‘talking’ to people was appreciated and earned greater exposure to other tweeters.
Twitter can be a great marketing tool but it needs to be thought of as a relationship tool with marketing bonuses to have the best impact on your business.
Or maybe you are happy to read tweets with some of the above characteristics? Or have found them effective for viral marketing?
* A hashtag is simply adding # at the start of a word (or group of words without a space in between) that can be used to highlight a topic and make searching for relevant information on twitter easier.
Content and message must match
Whatever your message is, your content must be consistent as well.
One of my favourite writing tasks is helping Santa write letters each Christmas at Love Santa. They are fun, positive letters and I know that each one will bring smiles and extend the Christmas joy.
Of course, sometimes people feel that they get too old for Santa and question their belief in him and the magic of Christmas.
Writing letters to Santa
Like many others, Love Santa has some information available to help people (parents in particular) to encourage people to keep their belief in Santa. The information is written with care to give tips on encouraging belief but also be read by those in doubt without any additional cause to doubt (and yes, this blog post is also being carefully written!)
Others are not so careful. I just read an article with ‘easy ways to keep your child believing in Santa’ that spends the first few paragraphs destroying any beliefs before giving the five tips. Any doubting child reading it would no longer be influenced by those useful tips so the purpose would be lost – and don’t assume kids don’t read articles aimed for parents!
This makes a clear example of how the presentation of information through choice of words, headings and images can support or contradict the intent and content of the writing. Sure it is harder to write so that the entire message is consistent and acceptable for all potential readers, but it will serve the purpose much better and will be appreciated by those looking for the information.
What examples have you seen of a message not supporting itself? Or maybe you have a Santa story to share (although personal stories are best shared at Love Santa’s blog!)?
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