Business writing 101: What does your business make happen?

Before you can write anything for your business, you need to get clear on your message. Many people leap straight in with posting content before they are clear on how to talk about how their business helps their ideal clients. In this article, I’ll guide you through how to get clear on your message so you can start to share what you do in a clear, engaging, and relevant way.

1. Clearly define what you do

Can you write it down in a few words? For instance, I help people to write effectively for their business through my membership, 1:1 coaching, writing website copy, speaking at events, and running workshops.

2. Identify who you do it for

Who do you work with? This might be a complicated question because you might have more than one audience for your work. For instance, I help service-based business owners to write about themselves and their work, but I also support larger organisations who need help with internal and external communications.

When you’re writing for your business, you need to think about which part of your audience you are writing for.

3. Write out how it helps them

You might have covered this in your what we do statement, but if you haven’t, how does it help the people you work with? How do they feel, or what are they able to achieve with your help that they couldn’t do on their own? What are the benefits?

4. Where do people buy from you?

How do they access your product or service? You might have a physical shop, or an online one. You might deliver training online, or face to face. Can people buy from you worldwide, or do you only work with people in your local area. For instance, if you’re a local Community Interest Company (CIC) or a social enterprise, you might only cater for people in a very small geographical area.

5. Put it all together

Now take what you do, who you do it for, how it helps, and where they can buy it and put it together. For instance, I run an online community for business owners who like writing but find it keeps slipping down their task list so they have a time and place to create content, publish it, and stop being invisible experts.

As I mentioned earlier, you need to tailor your messaging to who you’re talking to. This means you will need different messaging for each audience, and each product or service.

Being clear on what, who, why and where means you can then create a range of content to support your business, from introducing yourself at events, to blog posts, and video scripts.

Get clear on your message and everything else will follow.

This is the first article in a 12-part series on Business Writing 101.