Storytelling For Business – 12 Tips For Better Business Writing

We seldom remember a press release, but we almost always remember the stories we are told. Use these 12 tips for better business writing to improve your storytelling for business.

How do we make our business writing more relatable? How do we become more reader-friendly?

One of the best ways to do this is by avoiding jargon and ‘corporate speak’. We need to learn to write and speak to our customers in an appealing manner.

12 Tips For Better Business Writing

Here are 12 storytelling techniques to that will improve your business writing:

1. Captivate your readers. Entice them with a tale. Don’t bore them with acronyms, data, and statistics.
2. Avoid jargon. You and your colleagues may understand what you are saying, but I am certain that no one else does.
3. Explore the story with your readers. Invite your customers into your world. Be careful not to tell us what you think. Rather show us what happened.
4. Create a narrative. Don’t just write down words. This means you need a plotted story with characters and a beginning, middle, and end.
5. Share anecdotes. Tell your readers about the things that make your company and its staff members human.
6. Create heroes for us to identify with. Tell us about specific people and how they won the day.
7. Entertain us. Don’t sell to us. When you are promoting your business in a story, never sell anything. The point of the story is to draw people in so that they ask about your product.
8. Don’t be dull. Elmore Leonard always said, ‘Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.’ Only keep the important bits in your story.
9. Make us uncomfortable. Add some suspense and make us want to find out how it ends.
10. Keep the story gritty. Give us texture with settings and senses, but don’t go into too much detail when you are describing.
11. Keep it real – people can tell when you’re making it up.
12. Show us the obstacles. Then reveal the solution.

Source for Infographic

Join us for our business writing course, The Plain Language Programme.

1. The Seven Points You Need To Build A Story For Your Business
2. 93 Extremely Bad Business Writing Habits to Break
3. Begin at the end – the one essential email trick every business writer should know
4. The Top Seven Tips for Writing Emails
5. Persuasive Writing Brainstormer Template