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THIS WEEK
What makes a great business letter?
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
| What makes a great business letter? |
Writing letters and running a business go hand in hand. Letters can be anything from welcoming new clients, promoting your goods and services, chasing up unpaid bills or dealing with your employees as well as the never ending answering of emails. But what makes a great business letter?
Fantastic business letters are clear, understandable and inspire people into action. They create a feeling of what it is like to work with your business as well as leave a lasting impression in the minds of the readers.
No matter the reason for your letter, here are twenty things to help you create a great business letter.
- Plan your communication. Dashing off a letter in just a few minutes is generally a bad idea. You need to think through your communication before you commit pen to paper in order to get the best possible results. Remember professional writers can spend weeks on just one letter to get it right. Letters done in a rush don't get results. There is a saying amongst writers – you can have it great or you can have it fast – pick one.
- Work out the intended audience or reader. Think about the people reading your letters. What is their likely literacy level? When in doubt, keep your language simple and jargon free. Think about what is important to them and what makes them tick before you start writing.
- Think about the impression you want to make. Do you want to be seen as warm and welcoming, stern and in control, or professional and to the point? The words you choose will help convey the feeling you want to give out. Start with working on the feeling and the words will then follow.
- Gather your facts together. You need to make sure you have all of the facts, information and key ideas gathered together before you start to write. Jot them down in dot point form on a notebook so you don't forget to include all of the points.
- Check names and details. A person's name is very important to them, so make sure you have spelt it correctly. Also double check any place names, street addresses, phone numbers, websites or business names you refer to in your letter. It is very easy to mix up letters or numbers and cause lots of frustration for readers.
- Keep your design simple. Business letters need a simple, easy to read design. Using lots of different fonts increases the reading difficulty and can overload the message.
Keep your different font styles and sizes to a maximum of two. Make sure you use the same font style and sizes across all of your communication to reinforce your corporate brand.
- Date your letter. Always include a date on your letters.
- Start off on the right foot. When you meet someone for the first time, generally you don't just launch into conversation. You say hello first. The same with your letter. Traditionally we start our letters with "Dear Name". But it doesn't have to always be that way. You can use "Hi", "Hello", "Welcome" or a host of other words to start your letters off.
- What name to use? If you don't know the person's name, then you can use the person's title or a descriptor of them. For example, "Dear Colleague", "Fellow IT Geek", "Dear Scrapbooker", "Dear Editor".
- All letters need headlines. Headlines grab attention and help provide context for the rest of the communication. Make sure your headline is interesting and logical. Help people understand why you are writing to them. Headlines can be as simple as "Welcome" through to "Your feedback is priceless".
- Create a logical flow or sequence in your letter. Many letters jump around, with different ideas and thoughts scattered across the page. Clump like ideas together. Put logical sentences together. Create a flow leading the reader through your letter from one idea to the next.
- Add in sub-headlines. Break the letter up with sub-headlines to help those people who scan letters for key points. Sub-headlines also help create flow and link ideas throughout your letter.
- Short isn't always better. In sales letters, long copy outperforms short copy every time. Long letters help give all of the facts and highlight all of the important selling features of the product or service. The key here is don't ramble – keep every point relentlessly building on the previous point rather than just word padding.
- Punch up the words. Make sure the words you use are interesting, convey emotion and are powerful. Sizzling words make a huge difference in readability and getting people to take action. Once you have written your letter, go back and check if there are any words that are too soft and need spicing up.
- But watch the flower. One common error people make (particularly if English is their second language) is being too flowery in their language. Too much over the top language such as "requesting your esteemed business" can put readers off. Flowery language is not the same as powerful language. When in doubt prune back on the flowers.
- Strong call to action. This sounds simple but it is the most common mistake we see in business letters. You need to tell people loudly and clearly the action you want them to take as a result of the letter. Do you want them to call you, send you something, buy something, file the letter for future reference? Be specific and you will increase the response rate.
- Most letters could use a PS. PS's are the second most read part of a letter (after the headline). Use your PS to reiterate key points you want to make.
- Edit your letter. Writing is only one part of the puzzle. You need to go back and edit your letter. Read it back for flow, ease of understanding and readability. Read the letter out loud to see where you stumble over words or where you need to take a breath in the middle of a sentence. Take out padding words and shorten sentences.
- Check your spelling. Spelling does matter and poorly spelt letters that are full of grammatical errors send a certain impression about you and your business. If you are like me and your brain thinks faster than you type, it is very easy to miss words out in total (and swear they were there). Go back and read the letter backwards – it helps to find the missing words and misspelt words.
- Check your attachments. If you say you are attaching a document, then make sure it is attached before you seal the letter. Many people type the letters "Att" or "Enc" at the bottom of the letter after the signature to remind themselves there is an attachment mentioned in the letter.
Writing a business letter doesn't have to be hard. If you take the time to plan your thoughts, polish your words and double-check your details you will create a powerful response.
| HR Tip of the Week - Welcoming New Hires |
 You have just completed your recruitment process, you have made your verbal offer and the person has accepted. Now what?
One of the most powerful letters your business will ever write is the letter welcoming your new hires. The letter you send them sets the tone of what they can expect it to be like working for your business.
If you don't send new employee letters - and just expect the person to turn up on day one, what message are you sending the person about how valuable you think they are (less than a few pieces of paper and a stamp).
If you send a formal legal document - you are telling the person that rules and regulations are the way you do things around here.
The best option is a warm letter welcoming the person to the company. The emphasis here is on the word warm. It is not a stuffy, stilted, third person sort of letter - but one genuinely expressing your gratitude for them choosing to work with you and your hopes for the working relationship.
Yes, include the most important things in relation to employment conditions. But also include information about things like the nearest bus-stops, parking, if there are food shops in the area and who to see and what to bring on their first day.
Remember also to tell your other employees that a new person will be starting. How you do this sends a message to your team about how they are valued. So don't say "we have another new receptionist, 4th this year, hope they last".
Make it positive and make sure everyone knows and not just the handful that you mentioned it to in the lunchroom.
Share some useful information about the new hire "they used to work with Jones and Jones, and Mary loves going fishing". By doing that you help break the ice with your team and you set a positive impression of the new person before they arrive.
One of the problems of the internet is spam on blogs and talk back facilities on websites. Once your site starts to generate traffic you will suddenly become the target of every pill pushing, porn wannabe, make money quick merchant. It has been estimated that 84% of all comments these days are spam.
Instead of creating space for people to talk and connect, the space becomes so full of junk that you can't see any sensible thread of thought. Spam creates a bad impression of your business in as much the same way that graffiti on your walls causes a bad impression (spam is just internet graffiti).
Akismet is a free service (if you are running a highly commercial blog, an enterprise blog or run a not for profit organisation then paid services do a apply), that you can "plug-in" to your blog or talk back facility.
How it works is when a new comment is submitted to your site, Akismet checks it against a whole pile of tests. If it passes the scan, then you get to see the comment.
If it fails it goes into the spam folder so you can manually check it out. If Akismet has falsely identified something as spam, then you tell it so by clicking a button and then the whole system learns.
Akismet has been developed by the company Wordpress and can be used not just on blogs hosted by Wordpress, but ones hosted on your own site also.
Akismet is super simple to install and very easy to use.
Does it work? Well on my blog, Akismet has caught over 1500 spam comments in just a few months. In the past I would have manually had to go back and review and delete them - Akismet makes this job much easier.
Until last week I hadn't installed it into my newsletter comments section - and was caught with over 4000 spam comments over a 14 day period. It is now installed on my talk back script and the spam comments are now being caught and deleted with much joy before they hit the page.
The bottom line is if you want to allow web interactivity with your business (and every business should these days), you need to plan for the fringe element who will try to misuse it. Akismet is a great solution.
As I sat watching President Obama's inauguration ... the thought struck me. The US President runs the most powerful home based business in the world from an annexe and basement in his house. Makes you look at home based businesses in a whole new light!
Writing Fact Sheets for your Business
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog also included the impact of the global meltdown on online sales and continual spam vigilance.
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