How poor writing impacts on your business

We read recently that poor writing is costing the electronics industry a small fortune. It seems in some cases badly translated user guides are responsible for somewhere around 30% of products being returned. Which is unbelievably high.

This got us thinking. So we started looking for other instances where poor writing can be seen to impact on a businesses bottom line. And we found a few revealing facts.

In Canada, poor writing is slowing down the pace of business. According to a recent survey 85% of respondents said that disorganised, cluttered sentences, bad grammar and business jargon often got in the way of them understanding the message and simply wasted their time.

Badly written letters lose UK businesses an estimated £6 billion a year. In the United States, it has been said that an estimated 30% of all business writing is to clarify or seek clarification of something already written.

Employers are also losing out on great ideas because employees cannot articulate them in writing. In one such case an oil company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a new pesticide... only to discover that the formula had already been worked out five years earlier – by one of the same company's technicians. He’d written his report so poorly that no one had finished reading it.

Most businesses however have no idea how much time and money they spend on writing. Managers, directors, and other highly paid workers can spend up to 85 % of their time writing, yet very few have received any kind of writing training.

Most damaging of all, poorly written documents cause employees to miscommunicate with their customers. And when a business is represented poorly in its written communications then everything else is questioned; “If they don’t care about their writing, then how competent is their customer service and their products?”

Put yourself in their shoes

Almost all business writing is about persuading the reader to do something. An internal document that explains the new company strategy, the brochure that welcomes new starters to the business, even your own CV – they're all written to influence somebody’s opinion and behavior.

And persuasion is a subtle art. Make your point too strongly and all you’ll do is send alarm bells ringing in people’s minds, they might even feel you’re trying to manipulate and control them.

To write persuasive copy effectively, try putting yourself in the reader's shoes and introduce some empathy into your words. As you write, pretend that your reader is a friend or family member. Start by writing something they can relate to and agree with. Empathy also helps you convince your reader that what you write is true. 

Writing on the walls at Vodafone

Here's an example of some of the work we've been writing for the Vodafone brand. Our brief was to try and bring 'Make the Most of Now' to life and we used their office walls to tell the story.

We've produced a whole range of different ideas and there's more pictures of our work here

How to write a headline

As a copywriter, the half a dozen or so words you use to create your headline are probably the most important you will write. Why? Well, the headline is the first thing your audience will see – so the 10 seconds it takes to glance at the headline is the deciding factor whether they will read your copy or not. And nothing distinguishes a professional writer from an amateur so quickly as the quality of the headlines. So headline writing is a very important part of the job and here are some general guidelines to help you.

The News Headline. Well-written news headlines distil the essence of the story. They grab the attention and contain strong, active verbs and short, simple words. The headline needs to be constructed in such a way that the reader is intrigued by the story and wants to read on.
 
The How to Headline. The premise of this type of headline is that you are going to teach someone how to do something. You can make it even more appealing by using a structure that starts with a ‘how’ and followed by ‘that’. For example; ‘How to Choose A Copywriter That Can Write an Effective Headline’.
 
The Question Headline. For this to work it must be a question that your audience would really like to see answered. For example: ‘Ever wished you could have £1,000 worth of baby products for free?”

The Catchy headline. This is a simple technique to grab the reader’s attention. It should do so appropriately and honestly - if the headline is oversold, the reader will feel cheated.

The Benefit headline. The benefit headline is often found in advertising and will tell the reader what he will get out of buying the product. For example; become smarter, stronger, better looking, more informed?

Writing in the second person

Hi, how are you? Well, it’s good to see you. Guess you're here looking for some interesting insight into great business writing? Well, we thought today we'd have a quick chat about writing in the second person. How’s that sound?

That sentence above isn't just a warm and cuddly introduction, it's a perfect example of writing in the second person. It more informal. It's more conversational. It's also more involving because it feels like the writer is talking to you directly.

A couple of decades ago, no business writer would dream of addressing his colleagues through the second person. The approach would have been considered way too forward. Back in those days the writer would hide behind formal, stuffy third-person language such as ‘this will be implemented in June’ and use Dickensian  terms such as ‘herewith' and 'amongst'.

Thankfully things are changing and many companies are now modernising their communications by writing in the second person. 

Here at Avvio we often use an active second person voice for much of our business writing. As well as being a more powerful writing style, we’ve found that it helps the writer concentrate on what the reader needs to know rather than simply writing what we want to say.

The art of saying a great deal in as few words as possible

Why take twenty words to say what you could say in five? Like it or not, time is one of the most precious commodities for business people and finding ways to communicate to them using no more than a handful of words is an important skill.

So no matter what we are writing, we keep the message simple.

We write in ‘spoken’ rather than ‘written’ English.

We avoid any verbal gymnastics because fancy long words often obscure the communication, and we think the message should be the star, not the writer.

Lastly, we craft the copy in a way that each sentence leads onto the next so effortlessly that you’re powerless to do anything other than read to the end.

Ernest Hemingway, pictured above, once wrote a story in just six words ('For sale: baby shoes, never worn.') and is said to have called it his best work.

 

Can we do it? You bet we can!

Here at Avvio we work on all kinds of projects, from naming and tone of voice, to ads and video scripts. In fact, over the years there's very little business writing or corporate communications that we haven't been involved in.

The benefit of all this experience is you can work with very versatile writers who understand the requirements of all the different media we have today. Writers who can put the maximum into your project and help you achieve top results. This includes:

• naming.
  
• tone of voice.
  
• blogging.
  
• scriptwriting
• advertising.
  
• online.
  
• internal comms.
  
• brand books.
  
• editorial features.
  
• press releases.
  

Obviously, if you're looking for a writer for any of these kind of projects, we'd be love to be involved. Just drop a line to: john.fountain@avvio.co.uk and let's talk it over.