Why use a business writer? At The Content Ninja, the vast majority of writing we do is for businesses. We are business writers first and foremost. This goes beyond content marketing and SEO writing. A business copywriter that really gets to know your brand, is incredibly valuable.
What does a business writer do?
A business writer, in short, is the voice behind your business’s written word. At the most complete level a business writer can complete the full range of writing tasks which your business generates on a daily basis. These can include:
· Writing marketing emails and newsletters.
· Rewriting your emails to important clients (including those ones grovelling because you screwed up).
· Drafting advertising copy.
· Writing prospectuses, leaflets and flyers.
· Writing your SEO website content.
· Drafting blogs according to your content marketing strategy.
· Coming up with social media content.
· Rewriting business proposals with clarity and pizazz.
There’s more. A lot more. But you get the general gist.
Form a good relationship with a business copywriter and their writing will effortlessly ensure your branding and voice come out of every orifice your business has.
The result? Your clients, customers, the public and world at large see you as consistent, reputable, and professional and very much the expert in your niche.
Do I need a business writer?
All businesses, large and small, can benefit from having a business copywriter who really knows them. However, unless you’re a big chunky monkey of a business then it’s unlikely you’ll want one in house.
In-house copywriters are voraciously hungry beasts. It may take you 1 week, 3 hours and 7 painstaking minutes to draft a 500 word blog. They’ll have done it by the time you’ve read this post.
Therefore, you need to have a lot of work to justify having your own business writer in-house, on the payroll, drinking your coffee.
This doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the personalised knowledge of your brand and business offerings, or do without all together. A freelance business copywriter can easily get to know your brand, be available when you need them (yes, for that Oh Help I have just offended this client moment), and effectively be the in-house service you need (without the nasties of salaries and pensions and the like).
A business copywriter can do this whether you need 20 blogs and 60 social media posts a month, or whether you just need them to help write an email cascade as a one-off. It should be about the flexibility you need.
Why are business writing skills so important?
In this oh so fancy modern digital world of ours, written communication skills have never been more important. However, combined with that there’s this ugly horrible time pressure. Digitalisation means your customers, clients and your would-be audience have hungry appetites for new written communication NOW. However, it’s not ok to just dash anything out, it needs to sing, be brand-focused and frankly, awesome.
But, you can be an awesome business manager, lawyer, healthcare provider, shampoo shop or gnome and not actually be an awesome writer. It’s not a skill that you’ve necessarily honed on your route to superstardom. Yet you can’t get away from how important it is. Business writing is important because:
1. It’s about effective communication
All communication has a purpose. It may be to inform, explain, educate or whatever, but there’s a reason. On the phone or face-to-face you can jiggle and jostle back and forth so that your audience knows exactly what you mean. In the written form, communication isn’t so forgiving. It needs to be excellently clear first time. Not least because there’s the option to re-read the darned thing.
Knowing how to write business communications so that they effectively work for purpose is ultra-important. Your message needs to be understood the way you intended it.
2. It’s about professionalism
There’s just no escaping the fact that even the least pedant-like amongst us judge a book by its cover. If you’re trying to get a potential client to hand over £10,000 by choosing you then you need to accept that they aren’t going to be impressed if you there/their/they’re are as jumbled as a box of frogs. For a business writer accuracy is their middle name. They are the pedant so that you don’t have to be.
3. They make you stand out – for the better
This is where you can have a trick up your sleeve. Not every business owner or manager is honest enough with themselves to appreciate that they may be fabulous at their fee-earning bit but they aren’t writing pros. Therefore, if you employ a business writer to do your important writing then you’re already jumping ahead of those who don’t. You get the competitive edge.
4. It adds credibility
There’s something funny about how we interpret language. I, as a writer, may know absolutely naff all about a topic. However, I can take my research and your understanding and convey it in a way which is deemed more reliable and trustworthy than if you, the expert with not-the-best writing skills wrote it. Funny eh?!
The trick is to get a business writer who gets the importance of research, plus build a long relationship with them where they really do get to know what you do and how you do it.
5. Influencing others is a mighty good skill you need
Words can be incredibly powerful. You may have an exceptional proposal taken in its component parts, but it’s the words which convey it which will actually influence the reader to take your desired action.
There’s a reason why primary school kids today are taught persuasive writing: it’s a life skill which will serve them well whether they are complaining to a retailer about a faulty product, or trying to convince an investor to part with £10m.
6. It’s polite, and we’re British, right?
Continually showing your audience that you care enough about them to string a sentence together, repeatedly, is polite and respectful. That ‘K’ text from your teenager asking that they be home on time for dinner, please, is the perfect case in point. You’re left with the sense that you’re not worth their time. Fine with your adored teenager who was your cute chubby rosy-cheeked bundle and you’re navigating through the hormonal mire – not fine when it’s someone you’re doing business with.
Always take your time to word things carefully, re-read them, and actually write a full sentence. It’s just manners and respect innit?
7. Accuracy and records pay
As a business you need accurate records. You need to be able to look back at a proposal and check that you did actually convey X,Y,Z in your brief, so if the client is now asking for A, B, C you can renegotiate, fairly, what’s going on. It’s about being able to meet expectations.
We all know that written communication is worth its weight in gold for ‘proof’ or confirmation. We all know it provides the audit trail. Yet, we don’t necessarily put enough care in to the actual nitty-gritty.
8. Words on the page are different from words on the tongue
We’ve all been there – that email which was misconstrued entirely differently from how you intended. Oops. You read it back and, whilst you don’t want to admit it, you can kind of see how you were misinterpreted.
Now these are the ones that become such a problem you actually know about them. There will be a myriad of other miscommunications every single day. Because you’re not there with tone of voice, eye contact and body-language, the interpretation of your written word is entirely in the hands of the reader.
That means you need to have exceptional clarity and tone within your writing to prevent misunderstandings – both big and small.
Business writing really matters
So yes, business writing really matters, but it needn’t be an overhead that feels like a ball and chain. Choose to use a freelance business copywriter and you’ll zoom beyond content marketing to a holistically awesome written persona for your business.
Chrissie Brown writes for a vast number of different businesses. Just one week may see her putting together a tender proposal for a construction company, writing web content for a gardener, dishing out blogs for a firm of solicitors and crafting emails for a childcare agency.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash