Strategic Writing - Indispensable Tool
for Business Success
To achieve your goals and build your business you must
get people to understand and trust you, and to speak and act in ways that
help. Imagine people buying your product or service … people speaking or
writing favorably about you … people working for you, not just for the money
but also out of passion for your vision and your goals … people defending you
against the attacks your success inevitably will draw. Business winners get
that kind of support. But unless you have time to talk directly with every
person whose good will is important to your business, you need strategic
writing to get it.
Strategic writing is the force behind the high-impact
communication strategies of business winners. It’s about influencing people to
act in ways that advance your success, without using shortcuts that jeopardize
your reputation, your long-term goals, or your relationships with other people
whose trust and support you also need.
And it’s not all about ink and paper. Strategic writing
infuses successful vision and values statements, marketing materials, annual
reports and other printed matter, true - but also speeches, investor
presentations, webs, multimedia productions and other communication vehicles
that use sound and visual effects for added impact. All of these draw their
power to influence people from the strategic writing that transforms raw
information into communication that touches readers, listeners or viewers
personally.
The business of IdeaGenesis
is to help businesses put more strategy into the writing they use to
advance their goals. IdeaGenesis is built on the fundamental principles of
classical public relations – people are paramount, relationships are
the key to business success, and any business has not just one but many
publics or constituencies whose favor is important. IdeaGenesis focuses on
writing because it believes that writing, especially strategic writing,
is crucial to communication that helps build relationships, and thus is the
essential link between public relations and business strategy. IdeaGenesis
will take on writing projects for clients, or will provide training, coaching
or critiquing services to help clients improve their internal strategic
writing capabilities.
What makes writing strategic?
Three specific disciplines are essential to strategic
writing.
First, it is goal-oriented within an over-arching
business strategy. It seeks to achieve an immediate, defined goal, but also
anticipates future goals and shuns tactics that might undermine those goals.
Second, it addresses a defined target group, but does
not lose sight of other groups important to the business. It works to know the
target group and to communicate in ways that touch its members personally, but
would not affront other constituencies.
Third, it is conversational in both tone and intent. It
addresses the target group in the kind of language its members might use in
talking among themselves. And because it knows that relationships and trust
are built on interaction, not one-way communication, it encourages members of
the target group to respond.
These three basics require, first of all, a business
strategy. They also require disciplined thinking about the implications of the
strategy and knowledge of the target group and other constituencies. Too often
the writing that supports the communication programs of even large and
supposedly sophisticated businesses fails at one or more of these basics,
sometimes disastrously.
Strategic writing is hard work.
It is also very rewarding to the businesses that take it
seriously.
