5 Rules Of Business Messaging
Today, business correspondence is one of the most important channels of communication. On this basis, the skill of writing effective letters has enormous value. Let’s talk about the rules that will help make letters to colleagues and clients more persuasive, more powerful, and more effective.
Rules of Business Messaging
Good structure
Even if you break all the rules of business correspondence, an abundance of emojis and a letter composed in a way to is useful for the recipient will be effective. That is why the rule “send a text when it’s useful” is the most important and is the first on the list.
The usefulness of a letter consists of these elements:
- The purpose of communication is clear;
- There is a call to action/summary conclusion;
- there are answers to all questions;
- a clear, clear structure;
- a relevant, informative subject
The classic structure of a business email:
- A brief introductory section (reason and purpose of the letter)
- A short introduction (the reason for and purpose of the email); – A summary of the subject (the main message of the email)
- A concluding part (a call to action/summary conclusion)
- Competently executed theme
Formulation and execution of the subject of the letter are worth special attention. Every day we receive and write about 130 business letters and correctly formulated subjects of letters help to get oriented in this flow of information quickly.
When formulating the subject of a letter:
- Express the subject line clearly;
- Do not exceed 50 characters;
- Refer to the chain of letters if it is a response.
Taking care in presenting information
Taking care of business correspondence comes down to the principle: keep the information as simple as possible.
Carefully design your letter:
- Break up the text into paragraphs;
- adhere to the rule of business correspondence: one letter = 1 screen of scrolling;
- include the most important idea in the first paragraph;
- get rid of redundant words (clerical, introductory, epithets);
- use bulleted lists;
- avoid fussy layout (just a couple of words in bold for the whole letter);
- use a concise, informative signature.
Neutral tone
A letter is no place for an emotional negotiation. No matter how hard you try to convey or hide your emotions, the recipient will understand them in their way, and more often than not will understand the tone you tried to put in the letter. Or, even worse, they will understand your (negative) tone, and experience their own emotions, and it will affect your business relationship later on.
A quick and clear response
Any task requires clarity, precision, and certainty. So, if business correspondence is communication to solve a certain task, then one of the principles of business writing is to be clear (that is, clear, precise, and definite) in communications.
Properly formatted attachments
Another important, simple, and undeservedly neglected way to increase the effectiveness of an email is to carefully check all the properties of attachments attached to a message.
Keep all the tips in mind and your work correspondence will be an example of effective business communication!
