Outstanding business English

Talbot, Fiona

• Publisher: LID Editorial
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9788416624591
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Outstanding Business English gives guidance to non-native English speakers on how to communicate clearly and concisely. With case studies and real-life examples that demonstrate how English is used internationally in business, and full of ideas to help you to get your communications right first time, Outstanding Business English sets the scene for describing the benefits of good Business English, ideal for multinational companies where communication is a priority. For intermediate to advanced English speakers, it focuses on the areas that are easy to get wrong. This book draws on the author's wealth of experience, using real-life international business scenarios to develop your skills and provide you with some answers that even your boss might not know. You will learn a system to help you quickly and easily write emails, letters, CVs, social media communications and more. Featuring sections on punctuation and grammar, checklists to help you assess how you are getting on before moving on to the next stage and with a chapter dedicated to how to write effectively for social media, Outstanding Business English has been praised by both native and non-native writers of English as an indispensable resource. English is illogical, eccentric and complicated by baffling etiquette. This brilliant guide for non-native speakers decodes the world's lingua franca and makes essential reading if you form part of an international team.

Chapter Four

Telling your story through social media

There’s a new type of business writing

Just as the printing press revolutionized the way written communication could spread messages far and wide, so a new type of communication has turned the business world inside out. It’s all about harnessing the power of social media, which I’ll explain in detail in this chapter.

Step back just a few years... and who could have believed the impact social media has had, and will continue to have, on the way we write? The ‘new kid on the block’ is increasingly edging out other forms of written messages. Rather than social media’s style being affected by traditional writing, it’s the other way round, as I’ll show. Companies that side-line its importance have a lot to lose. The winners are those who acknowledge the importance of this new, ambitious front-runner.

Social media requires an integrated approach – and we need to adopt a distinctly conversational style in our writing. For some the style comes naturally; for more traditional writers it can seem rather daunting. So in this chapter, there will be some line-by-line analysis, but we’ll also immerse ourselves in the fuller picture to see how the social media ‘storyline’ fits together.

Get into the social media mindset

From the simple sharing of a message to in-depth conversation, to following the latest news, to opening transactions and closing deals, social media is an intrinsic part of our modern world. Incidentally, I’m describing ‘social media’ as a collective singular here, in the sense of the activity on social media. Grammatically, it would also be correct to write that social media ‘are’ part of our world.

If you can write, not only are you improving your career prospects generally, you can also deal with any social media, where the written word takes centre stage. What you need to write depends on your personal and company story, the points you want to make, the goals you need to achieve, and how you write to attract and maintain readers’ interaction with you, as the story evolves.

This chapter is about getting you involved. You need a mindset that can put a winning combination together. It’s very much about projecting ‘brand personality’ into this new form of conversational writing.

So, first I’ll explain what social media is; then I will immerse you in some informative case studies on how successful companies write for it. We’ll examine the techniques used, so you can choose which suit your organization. Then I’ll provide tips on how to write for the various platforms.

More about social media

Social media is all about sharing information and collaborating online, bringing the facility to enable everyone to get in touch with anyone, anywhere, anytime. In business, although the biggest players have the biggest budget, they can’t get complacent. Even the smallest voice now has a megaphone to communicate globally, be part of the conversation – and go viral.

Responsive companies of all sizes need to get serious about the fact that most online presence today is on social media – and written content is king, as even the very best visuals won’t work by themselves.

People constantly check their networks and they want to be kept posted on things such as helpful information, breaking news, innovation, events, offers etc.

Increasingly, written content needs to be suitable for the fast-growing use of mobile devices, including the new wave of smart watches. Users are increasingly ‘on the go’, maybe waiting for a train or between meetings. They need easily highlighted messages and to know at a glance where you’re leading. We’re seeing the ‘click here’ that was right for the laptop, change to ‘read more’.

We now see social media used alongside, sometimes in place of, traditional leaflets or mailing. Words even take centre stage in the fast-growing messaging via video or pictures with captions. Every message has been (or should have been) finely crafted by that business. Being social offers the opportunity (and expectation) to talk not just about brand, products and services but also to introduce personalities: the people behind the brand. There’s more opportunity for storytelling that resonates and a huge demand for customized messages to elicit buy-in or positive reaction. The Word Power Skills system shown in Chapter 2 is immensely valuable, as the challenge (and the exciting part) is how to get your words heard through the noise. How to adapt, to keep up with the trends and even create them?

English has such an advantage, being used extensively across multiple platforms. But if English is not your company’s first language or that of your social media writers, remember the points made earlier in the book. Words that are right for your home market may not work abroad, even where English is the common language.

As an example, let’s look at this wording on sportswear brand Adidas’ global website:

Go get better, share your skills, compare yourself with the best and challenge your friends.

It uses very clear wording, easily understandable on first reading. Let’s contrast this with wording used their Adidas India website:

Criticism and self-doubt can paralyze the most talented athletes. Only a rare breed converts the stones thrown at them into milestones…

The language is rather more poetic and thought-provoking. It requires a more sophisticated unde...