The Importance of Written Communication

Intelligent, interesting and useful written pieces are important to the marketing of your consultancy, and even more so these days where the internet age has revealed writing to be a powerful tool in driving traffic and potential customers to your company website or blog…Good written skills are priceless.

Writing is a skill, however, that will permeate every aspect of your business. Aside from marketing, you will write to suppliers, clients and in some instances, fellow consultants. You will create reports, design process implementation plans and draft specifications. In short, without effective writing skills, you may be in trouble!

Practice Makes Perfect
Despite the fact that you may not enjoy writing, or not consider it a particular talent of yours, it is critical that you develop what skill you do have, by using it as much as possible. Writing, as with many skills, takes practice, as well as natural flair, to perfect, and while you may never create beautiful prose, you will certainly develop a serviceable level of ability with time and practice!

Documents You Need to Create
There are a multitude of documents that your consulting business will need as you go along, however, the important ones, to get started are as follows:

• Marketing materials for your business. These could be service brochures, whitepapers, or research documents, but their main goal is to interest the reader in your business, and your service.
• Press releases. These should be drawn up when you launch your business, and at every newsworthy milestone that follows.
• Articles, blogs and newsletters, for off and online marketing of your company and your website. Submit the former to industry journals and trade publications, and let the latter work for you online!
• Reports and case studies. These can be for internal use, for example, when dealing with a client, or for marketing purposes, indicating the ROI a particular course of action has achieved.
• A book, which should be the last step, once you have honed your writing skills. Getting a consulting book published will add credibility, are a great publicity tool, and can be a profitable venture in their own right.

Help Is At Hand
Particularly in the case of marketing documents and even books, you do not have to go it completely alone. While it is always best to prepare these types of documentation yourself, since no one knows the subject matter better than you do, you can still hire a professional to assist.

Professional editors and proofreaders can take your rough draft, and add an element of polish to it. Alternatively, if preferred, you can create a draft, and a collection of ideas and notes, and hire a ghostwriter to create a professional document or publication.

Whichever way you choose to deal with written communication, the fact remains that in business, important information is put in writing, so you had better sharpen up your writing skills, if you want to stay competitive! Poor efforts in writing create an unprofessional and slapdash appearance, which may not be your professional approach; however, if they are your client’s first impression of you, you probably will not get the client.

The last word? Always check spelling and grammar!