Defining your goal: Know what you want

Your first priority is to know exactly what you want to happen when the person you’re writing to reads what you’ve written. Determining this is far less obvious than it sounds.

Consider a cover letter for your resume. Seen as a formal but unimportant necessity toward your ultimate goal — to get a job — a cover letter can just say:

Dear Mr. Blank, here is my resume — Jack Slade

Intuitively you know that isn’t sufficient. But analyze what you want to accomplish and you can see clearly why it falls short. Your cover letter must yield the following results:

• Connect you with the recipient so that you’re a person instead of one more set of documents
• Make you stand out — in a good way
• Persuade the recipient that your resume is worth reading
• Show that you understand the job and the company
• Set up the person to review your qualifications with a favorable mind-set

You also need the cover letter to demonstrate your personal qualifications, especially the ability to communicate well.

If you see that your big goal depends on this set of more specific goals, it’s obvious why a one-line perfunctory message can’t succeed.

A cover letter for a formal business proposal has its own big goal — to help convince an individual or an institution to finance your new product. To do this, the letter’s role is to connect with the prospective buyer, entice him to actually read at least part of the document, predispose him to like what he sees, present your company as better than the competition, and show off good communication skills.

How about the proposal itself? If you break down this goal into a more specific subset, you realize the proposal must demonstrate the following:

• The financial viability of what you plan to produce
• A minimal investment risk and high profit potential
• Your own excellent qualifications and track record
• Outstanding backup by an experienced team
• Special expertise in the field
• In-depth knowledge of the marketplace, competition, business environment, and so on

Spelling out your goals is extremely useful because the process keeps you aligned with the big picture while giving you instant guidelines for content that succeeds. Because of good planning on the front end, you’re already moving toward how to accomplish what you want.

To reap the benefit of goal definition, you must take time to look past the surface. Write every message — no exceptions — with a clear set of goals. If you don’t know your goals, don’t write at all.

Invariably one of your goals is to present yourself in writing as professional, competent, knowledgeable, empathetic, and so on. Create a list of the personal and professional qualities you want other people to perceive in you. Then every time you write, remember to be that person. Ask yourself how that individual handles the tough stuff. Your answers may amaze you. This technique isn’t mystical; it’s just a way of accessing your own knowledge base and intuition. You may be able to channel this winning persona into your in-person experiences, too.

Defining your audience: Know your reader

You’ve no doubt noticed that people are genuinely different in countless ways — what they value, their motivations, how they like to spend their time, their attitude toward work and success, how they communicate, and much more. One ramification of these variables is that they read and react to your messages in different and sometimes unexpected ways.

As part of your planning, you need to anticipate people’s responses to both your content and writing style. The key to successfully predicting your reader’s response is to address everything you write to someone specific, rather than an anonymous, faceless anyone.

When you meet someone in person and want to persuade her to your viewpoint, you automatically adapt to her reactions as you go along. You respond to a host of clues. Beyond interruptions, comments, and questions, you also perceive facial expression, body language, tone of voice, nervous mannerisms, and many other indicators. (Check out Body Language For Dummies, 3rd Edition by Elizabeth Kuhnke to sharpen your ability to read people.)

Obviously a written message lacks all in-person clues. So for yours to succeed, you must play both roles — the reader’s and your own. Doing this isn’t as hard as it may sound.

Unless you’re sending a trivial message, begin by creating a profile of the person you’re writing to. If you know the person, begin with the usual suspects, the demographics. Start by determining the following:

• How old? (Generational differences can be huge! See the sidebar “Generation gaps: Understanding and leveraging them.”)
• Male or female?
• Engaged in what occupation?
• Married, family, or some other arrangement?
• Member of an ethnic or religious group?
• Educated to what degree?
• Social and economic position?

After demographics, you have psychographic considerations, the kind of factors marketing specialists spend a lot of time studying. Marketers are interested in creating customer profiles to understand and manipulate consumer buying. For your purposes, some psychographic factors that can matter follow:

• Lifestyle
• Values and beliefs
• Opinions and attitudes
• Interests
• Leisure and volunteer activities

You also need to consider factors that reflect someone’s positioning, personality, and in truth, entire life history and outlook on the world. Some factors that may directly affect how a person perceives your message include the following:

• Professional background and experience
• Position in the organization: What level? Moving up or down? Respected? How ambitious?
• Degree of authority
• Leadership style: Team-based? Dictatorial? Collaborative? Indiscernible?
• Preferred communication style: In-person? Short or long written messages? Telephone? Texting? PowerPoint?
• Approach to decision-making: Collaborative or top-down? Spontaneous or deliberative? Risk-taker or play-it-safer?
• Information preferences: Broad vision? Detailed? Statistics and numbers? Charts and graphs?
• Work priorities and pressures
• Sensitivities and hot buttons
• Interaction style and preferences: A people person or a systems and technology person?
• Type of thinking: Logical or intuitive? Statistics-based or ideas-based? Big picture or micro oriented? Looking for long-range or immediate results?
• Weaknesses, perceived by the person or not: Lack of technological savvy? People skills? Education?
• Type of people the person likes — and dislikes

Do you know, or can you figure out, what your reader worries about? What keeps him up at night? What is his biggest problem? When you know a person’s deepest concerns, you can effectively leverage this information to create messages that he finds highly compelling.

And of course, your precise relationship to the person matters — your relative positioning; the degree of mutual liking, respect and trust; the simpatico factor.

No doubt you’re wondering how you can possibly take so much into consideration, or why you want to. The good news is, when your message is truly simple, you usually don’t. More good news: Even when your goal is complex or important, only some factors matter. We’re giving you a lengthy list to draw on because every situation brings different characteristics into play. Thinking through which ones count in your specific situation is crucial.

For example, say you want authorization to buy a new computer. Perhaps your boss is a technology freak who reacts best to equipment requests when they have detailed productivity data — in writing. Or you may report to someone who values relationships, good office vibes, and in-person negotiation. Whatever the specifics, you need to frame the same story differently. Don’t manipulate the facts — both stories must be true and fair.

You succeed when you take the time to look at things through the other person’s eyes rather than solely your own. Doing so doesn’t compromise your principles. It shows that you’re sensible and sensitive to the differences between people and helps your relationships. It shows you how to frame what you’re asking for. See the section “Framing messages with you, not I’” later in this chapter for more on these techniques.

Brainstorming the best content for your purpose

Perhaps defining your goal and audience so thoroughly sounds like unnecessary busywork. But doing so helps immeasurably when you’re approaching someone with an idea, a product, or a service that you need her to buy into.

Suppose your department is planning to launch a major project that you want to lead. You could write a memo explaining how important the opportunity is to you, how much you can use the extra money, or how much you’ll appreciate being chosen for the new role. But unless your boss, Jane, is a totally selfless person without ambition or priorities of her own, why would she care about any of that?

You’re much better off highlighting your relevant skills and accomplishments. Your competitors for the leadership position may equal or even better such a rundown, so you must make your best case. Think beyond yourself to what Jane herself most values.

A quick profile (see the preceding section) of Jane reveals a few characteristics to work with:

• She likes to see good teamwork in people reporting to her.
• She’s a workaholic who is usually overcommitted.
• She likes to launch projects and then basically forget about them until results are due.
• She’s ambitious and always angling for her next step up.

Considering what you know about Jane, the content of your message can correspond to these traits by including the following:

• Your good record as both a team player and team leader
• Your dedication to the new project and willingness to work over and beyond normal hours to do it right
• Your ability to work independently and use good judgment with minimal supervision
• Your enthusiasm for this particular project, which, if successful, will be highly valued by the department and company

Again, all your claims must be true, and you need to provide evidence that they are: a reminder of another project you successfully directed, for example, and handled independently.

Your reader profile can tell you still more. If you wonder how long your memo needs to be, for example, consider Jane’s communication preferences. If she prefers brief memos followed by face-to-face decision-making, keep your memo brief but still cover all the points to ensure that you secure that all-important meeting. However, if she reacts best to written detail, give her more info up front.

Reader profiling offers you the chance to create a blueprint for the content of all your messages and documents. After you’ve defined what you want and analyzed your audience in relation to the request, brainstorm the points that may help you win your case with that person. Your brainstorming gives you a list of possibilities to review. Winnowing out the most convincing points is easy — and organizing can involve simple prioritizing, as you see in Chapter 2 of this minibook.

Thinking through how to profile your reader works the same way if you’re writing a major proposal, business plan, report, funding request, client letter, marketing piece, PowerPoint presentation, or networking message. Know your goal. Figure out what your audience cares about. Then think widely within that perspective.

Writing to groups and strangers

Profiling one person is easy enough, but you often write to groups rather than individuals as well as to people you haven’t met and know nothing about. The same ideas discussed in the preceding section apply with groups and strangers, but they demand a little more imagination on your part.

Here’s a good tactic for messages addressed to groups: Visualize a single individual — or a few key individuals — who epitomize that group. The financier Warren Buffet explained that when writing to stockholders he imagines he’s writing to his two sisters: intelligent but not knowledgeable about finance. He consciously aims to be understood by them. The results are admirably clear financial messages that are well received and influential.

Like Buffet, you may be able to think of a particular person to represent a larger group. If you’ve invented a new item of ski equipment, for example, think about a skier you know who’d be interested in your product and profile that person. Or create a composite profile of several such people, drawing on what they have in common plus variations. If you’re a business strategy consultant, think of your best clients and use what you know about them to profile your prospects.

Imagining your readers

Even when an audience is new to you, you can still make good generalizations about what these people are like — or, even better, their concerns. Suppose you’re a dentist who’s taking over a practice and you’re writing to introduce yourself to your predecessor’s patients. Your basic goal is to maintain that clientele. You needn’t know the people to anticipate many of their probable concerns. You can assume, for example, that your news will be unwelcome because long-standing patients probably liked the old dentist and dislike change and inconvenience, just like you probably would yourself.

You can go further. Anticipate your readers’ questions. Just put yourself in their shoes. You may wonder

• Why should I trust you, an unknown entity?
• Will I feel an interruption in my care? Will there be a learning curve?
• Will I like you and find in you what I value in a medical practitioner — aspects such as kindness, respect for my time, attentiveness, and experience?

Plan your content to answer these intrinsic questions and you can’t go wrong. Note that nearly all the questions are emotional rather than factual. Few patients are likely to ask about a new doctor’s training and specific knowledge. They’re more concerned with the kind of person he is and how they’ll be treated. This somewhat counterintuitive truth applies to many situations. The questions are essentially the same for an accountant or any other service provider.

When writing, you may need to build a somewhat indirect response to some of the questions you anticipate from readers. Writing something like “I’m a really nice person” to prospective dental patients is unlikely to convince them, but you can comfortably include any or all of the following statements in your letter:

• I will carefully review all your records so I am personally knowledgeable about your history.
• My staff and I pledge to keep your waiting time to a minimum. We use all the latest techniques to make your visits comfortable and pain-free.
• I look forward to meeting you in person and getting to know you.
• I’m part of your community and participate in its good causes such as …

Apply this strategy to job applications, business proposals, online media, and other important materials. Ask yourself, whom do I want to reach? Is the person a human resources executive? A CEO? A prospective customer for my product or service? Then jot down a profile covering what that person is probably like as well as her concerns and questions. Everyone has a problem to solve. What’s your reader’s problem? The HR person must fill open jobs in ways that satisfy other people. The CEO can be counted on to have one eye on the bottom line and the other on the big picture — that’s her role. If you’re pitching a product, you can base a prospective customer profile on the person for whom you’re producing that product.

If you’re an entrepreneur, building a detailed portrait of your ultimate buyers is especially important to your success. The more you know about your prospects, the better you can deliver what they need.

Connecting instantly with your reader

Only in rare cases these days do you have the luxury of building up to a grand conclusion, one step at a time. Your audience simply won’t stick around.

The opening paragraph of anything you write must instantly hook your readers. The best way to do this is to link directly to their central interests and concerns, within the framework of your purpose.

Say you’re informing the staff that the office will be closed on Tuesday to install new air-conditioning. You can write:

• Subject: About next Tuesday
• Dear Staff:
• As you know, the company is always interested in your comfort and well being. As part of our company improvement plan this past year, we’ve installed improved lighting in the hallways, and in response to your request that we …

Stop! No one is reading this! Instead, try this:

• Subject: Office closed Tuesday
• We’re installing new air-conditioning! Tuesday is the day, so we’re giving you a holiday.
• I’m happy the company is able to respond to your number 1 request on the staff survey and hope you are too.

One of the best ways to hook readers is also the simplest: Get to the point. The technique applies even to long documents. Start with the bottom line, such as the result you achieved, the strategy you recommend, or the action you want. In a report or proposal, the executive summary is often the way to do that, but note that even this micro version of your full message still needs to lead off with your most important point.

Note in the preceding example that the subject line of the email is part of the lead and is planned to hook readers as much as the first paragraph of the message. Chapter 5 in this minibook has more ideas of ways to optimize your emails.

Focusing on WIIFM

The marketing acronym WIIFM stands for what’s in it for me. The air-conditioning email in the preceding section first captures readers by telling them that they have a day off and then follows up by saying that they’re getting something they wanted. Figuring out what’s going to engage your readers often takes a bit of thought.

To make people care, you must first be able to answer the question yourself. Why should they care? Then put your answer right in the lead or even the headline.

If you’re selling a product or service, for example, zero in on the problem it solves. So rather than your press release headline saying

New Widget Model to Debut at Expo Magnus on Thursday

Try

Widget 175F Day-to-Night Video Recorder Ends Pilfering Instantly

If you’re raising money for a non-profit, you may be tempted to write a letter to previous donors that begins like many you probably receive:

For 75 years, Little White Lights has been helping children with learning disabilities improve their capacities, live up to their potential, and feel more confident about their educational future.

But don’t you respond better to letters that open more like this?

For his first five years of school, Lenny hated every second. He couldn’t follow the lessons, so he stopped trying and even stopped listening. But this September Lenny starts college — because the caring people and non-traditional teaching at Little White Lights showed him how to learn. He’s one of 374 children whose lives we transformed since our not-for-profit organization was established, with your help, nine years ago.

The second version works better not just because it’s more concrete but also because it takes account of two factors that all recipients probably share: a concern for children, and a need to be reassured that their donations are well used.

Highlighting benefits, not features

People care about what a product or service can do for them, not what it is.

• Features describe characteristics — a car having a 200 mph engine; an energy drink containing 500 units of caffeine; a hotel room furnished with priceless antiques.
• Benefits are what features give us — the feeling that you can be the fastest animal on earth (given an open highway without radar traps); the ability to stay up for 56 hours to make up all the work you neglected; the experience of high luxury for the price of a hotel room, at least briefly.

Benefits have more to do with feelings and experiences than data. Marketers have known the power of benefits for a long time, but neuroscientists have recently confirmed the principle, noting that most buying decisions are made emotionally rather than logically. You choose a car that speaks to your personality instead of the one with the best technical specs, and then you try to justify your decision on rational grounds.

The lesson for business writing is clear: People care about messages that are based on what matters to them. Don’t get lost in technical detail. Focus on the effect of an event, an idea, or a product. You can cover the specs but keep them contained in a separate section or as backup material. Approach information the way most newspapers have always done (and now do online as well). Put what’s most interesting or compelling up front and then include the details in the back (or link to them) for readers who want more.

Finding the concrete and limiting the abstract

The Little White Lights example in a previous section demonstrates how to effectively focus on a single individual and simultaneously deliver a powerful, far-reaching message. One concrete example is almost always more effective than reams of high-flown prose and empty adjectives.

Make things real for your readers with these techniques:

• Tell stories and anecdotes. They must embody the idea you want to communicate, the nature of your organization, or your own value. An early television show about New York City used a slogan along the lines, “Eight million people, eight million stories.” A good story is always there, lurking, even in what may seem everyday or ordinary. But finding it can take some thinking and active looking.
• Use examples — and make them specific. Tell customers how your product was used or how your service helped solve a problem. Give them strong case studies of implementations that worked. Inside a company, tell change-resistant staff members how another department saved three hours by using the new ordering process, or how a shift in benefits can cut their out-of-pocket healthcare costs by 14 percent. And if you want people to use a new system, give them clear guidelines, perhaps a step-by-step process to follow.
• Use visuals to explain and break up the words. Readers who need to be captured and engaged generally shy away from uninterrupted type. Plenty of studies show that people remember visual lessons better, too. Look for ways to graphically present a trend, a change, a plan, a concept, or an example. In a way that suits your purpose and medium, incorporate photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs, and video. When you must deliver your message primarily in words, use graphic techniques such as headlines, subheads, bullets, typeface variations, and icons — like those in this minibook!
• Give readers a vision. Good leaders know that a vision is essential, whether they’re running companies or running for public office. You’re usually best off framing your message in big-picture terms that make people believe the future will be better in some way. Don’t make empty promises; instead, look for the broadest implications of an important communication and use details to back up that central concept and make it more real. Focusing a complicated document this way also makes it more organized and more memorable — both big advantages.
• Eliminate meaningless hyperbole. What’s the point of saying something like, “This is the most far-reaching, innovative, ground-breaking piece of industrial design ever conceived”? Yet business writing is jam-packed with empty, boring claims.

Today’s audiences come to everything you write already jaded, skeptical, and impatient. If you’re a service provider and describe what you do in words that can belong to anyone, in any profession, you fail. If you depend on a website and it takes viewers 20 seconds to figure out what you’re selling or how to make a purchase, you lose. If you’re sending out a press release that buries what’s interesting or important, you’re invisible. The solution: Know your point and make it fast!

Go for the evidence! Tell your audience in real terms what your idea, plan, or product accomplishes in ways they care about. Show them how

• The product improves people’s lives.
• The non-profit knows its money is helping people.
• The service solves problems.
• You personally helped your employer make more money or become more efficient.

Proof comes in many forms: statistics, data, images, testimonials, surveys, case histories, biographies, and video and audio clips. Figure out how to track your success and prove it. You end up with first-rate material to use in all your communication.

Being appropriate to the occasion, relationship, and culture

Pause before writing and think about the moment you’re writing in. Obviously if you’re communicating bad news, you don’t want to sound chipper and cheery.

Always think of your larger audience, too. If the company made more money last month because it eliminated a department, best not to treat the new profits as a triumph. Current staff members probably aren’t happy about losing colleagues and are worried about their own jobs. On the other hand, if you’re communicating about a staff holiday party, sounding gloomy and bored doesn’t generate high hopes for a good time. The same is true if you’re offering an opportunity or assigning a nuisance job: Make it as enticing as possible.

Just as in face-to-face situations, the moods embedded in your writing are contagious. If you want an enthusiastic response, write with enthusiasm. If you want people to welcome a change you’re announcing, sound positive and confident, not fearful or peevish and resentful — even if you don’t personally agree with the change.

Make conscious decisions about how formal to sound. After you work in an organization for a while, you typically absorb its culture without noticing. (In fact, most organizations don’t realize that they have a culture until they run into problems when introducing change or a high-level hire.) If you’re new to the place, observe how things work so you can avoid booby-trapping yourself. Read through files of correspondence, emails, reports, as well as websites and online material. Analyze what your colleagues feel is appropriate in content and in writing style. How formal is the communication for the various media used? Adopt the guidelines you see enacted.

Every passing year seems to decrease the formality of business communication. Just as in choosing what to wear to work, people are dressing down their writing. This less formal style can come across as friendlier, simpler, and more direct than in earlier years — and should. But business informal doesn’t mean you should address an executive or board member casually, use texting or abbreviations your reader may not understand, or fail to edit and proofread every message. Those are gaffes much like wearing torn jeans to work or to a client meeting.

And you want to be especially careful if you’re writing to someone in another country — even an English-speaking one. Most countries still prefer a formal form of communication.

Writing as your authentic self

Never try to impress anyone with how educated and literate you are. Studies show that people believe that those who write clearly and use simple words are smarter than those whose writing abounds in fancy phrases and complicated sentences.

Authentic means being a straightforward, unpretentious, honest, trustworthy person — and writer. It doesn’t mean trying for a specific writing style. Clarity is always the goalpost. This aim holds true even for materials written to impress. A proposal, marketing brochure, or request for funding gains nothing by looking or sounding pompous and weighty.

Being relentlessly respectful

Never underestimate or patronize your audience, regardless of educational level, position, or apparent accomplishment. People are sensitive to such attitudes and react adversely, often without knowing why or telling you. In all work and business situations, take the trouble to actively demonstrate respect for your reader. Specifically, do the following:

• Address people courteously and use their names.
• Close with courtesy and friendliness.
• Write carefully and proofread thoroughly; many people find poorly written messages insulting.
• Avoid acronyms, jargon, and abbreviations that may be unfamiliar to some readers.
• Never be abrupt or rude or demanding.
• Try to understand and respect cultural differences.

Apply these guidelines whether you’re writing to a superior, a subordinate, or a peer. You don’t need to be groveling to an executive higher up the chain than you are (in most cases), though often you should be more formal. Nor should you condescend to those lower down. Consider, for example, how best to assign a last-minute task to someone who reports to you. You could say the following:

Madge, I need you to read this book tonight and give me a complete rundown of the content first thing tomorrow. Thanks.

Or:

Madge, I need your help — please read this book tonight. The author is coming in tomorrow to talk about engaging us. I’m reading another of his books myself and if we can compare notes first thing tomorrow, I’ll feel much more prepped. Thanks!

Either way, Madge may not be thrilled at how her evening looks, but treating her respectfully and explaining why you’re giving her this intrusive assignment accomplishes a lot: She’ll be more motivated, more enthusiastic, more interested in doing a good job, and happier to be part of your team. At the cost of writing a few more sentences, you improve her attitude and perhaps even her long-range performance.

Smiling when you say it

People whose job is answering the phone are told by customer service trainers to smile before picking up the call. Smiling physically affects your throat and vocal chords, and your tone of voice. You sound friendly and cheerful and may help the person on the other end of the phone feel that way.

The idea applies to writing as well. You need not smile before you write (though it’s an interesting technique to try), but be aware of your own mood and how easily it transfers to your messages and documents.

Your feelings of anger, impatience, or resentment might be well grounded, but displaying them rarely helps your cause. People dislike negative, whiny, nasty messages that put them on the defensive or make them feel under attack.

Suppose you’ve asked the purchasing department to buy a table for your office and were denied without explanation. You could write to both your boss and the head of purchasing a note such as the following:

Hal, Jeanne: I just can’t believe how indifferent purchasing is to my work and what I need to do it. This ignorance is really offensive. I’m now an associate manager responsible for a three-person team and regular meetings are essential to my …

Put yourself in the recipients’ places to see how bad the effect of such a message can be — for you. At the least, you’re creating unnecessary problems; at worst, perhaps permanent bad feelings. Why not write the following instead, and just to the purchasing officer:

Hi, Hal. Do you have a minute to talk about my request for a small conference table? I was surprised to find that it was denied and want to share why it’s important to my work.

The best way to control your tone is to let emotion-laden matters rest for whatever time you can manage. Even a ten-minute wait can make a difference. Overnight is better, if possible, in important situations. You’re far more likely to accomplish what you want when you come across as logical, reasonable, and objective. Positive and cheerful is even better.

Sometimes the challenge isn’t to control bad feelings, but to overcome a blah mood that leads your writing to sound dull and uninspired when you need it to sound persuasive and engaging. Knowing your own daily patterns is helpful, so you can focus on the task that requires the most energy when you’re most naturally up.

If you don’t have the luxury of waiting for a good mood to hit before writing, try the following method. Churn out the basic document regardless of your spirits. Later, when you’re feeling bouncier, inject the energy and enthusiasm that you know the original message is missing. Typical changes involve switching out dull passive verbs and substituting livelier ones, picking up the tempo, editing out the dead wood, and adding plusses you overlooked when you felt gray. Chapter 2 in this minibook is chock-full of ideas to enliven your language.

People naturally prefer being around positive, dynamic, enthusiastic people, and they prefer receiving messages with the same qualities. Resolve not to complain, quibble, or criticize in writing. People are much more inclined to give you what you want when you’re positive — and they see you as a problem-solver rather than a problem-generator.

Personalizing what you write

In many countries, business emails and letters that get right down to business seem cold, abrupt, and unfeeling. Japanese writers and readers, for example, prefer to begin with the kind of polite comments you tend to make when meeting someone in person: “How have you been?” “Is your family well?” “Isn’t it cold for October?” Such comments or questions may carry no real substance, but they serve an important purpose: They personalize the interaction to better set the stage for a business conversation.

Creating a sense of caring or at least interest in the other person gives you a much better context within which to transact business. If you’ve thought about your audience when planning what to write (see the previous section, “Defining your audience: Know your reader”), you can easily come up with simple but effective personalizing phrases to frame your message. You can always fall back on the old reliables — weather and general health inquiries. If communication continues, you can move the good feelings along by asking whether the vacation mentioned earlier worked out well, or if the weekend was good — whatever clues you can follow up on without becoming inappropriate or intrusive. The idea works with groups, too: You can, for example, begin, “I hope you all weathered the tornado okay.”

Some techniques you can use to make your writing feel warm are useful but may not translate between different cultures. For example, salutations like Hi, John set a less formal tone than Dear John. Starting with just the name — John, — is informal to the point of assuming a relationship already exists. But both ways may not be appropriate if you’re writing to someone in a more formal country than your own. A formal address — Mr. Charles, Ms. Brown, Dr. Jones, General Frank — may be called for. In many cultures, if you overlook this formality and other signs of respect, you can lose points before you even begin.

Similarly, it feels friendlier and less formal to use contractions: isn’t instead of is not, won’t instead of will not. But if your message is addressed to a non-native English speaker or will be translated, contractions may be confusing.

Framing messages with you, not I

Just accept it: People care more about themselves and what they want than they do about you. This simple-sounding concept has important implications for business writing.

Suppose you’re a software developer and your company has come up with a dramatically better way for people to manage their online reputations. You may be tempted to announce the following on your website:

We’ve created a great new product for online reputation management that no one ever imagined possible.

Or you could say this:

Our great new Product X helps people manage their online reputation better than ever before.

The second example is better because it’s less abstract and it makes the product’s purpose clear. But see if you find this version more powerful:

You want a better way to solve your online reputation management challenges? We have what you need.

When you look for ways to use the word you more, and correspondingly decrease the use of I and we, you put yourself on the reader’s wavelength. In the case of the new software, your readers care about how the product can help them, not that you’re proud of achieving it.

The principle works for everyday email, letters, and online communication too. For example, when you receive a customer complaint, instead of writing the following:

We have received your complaint about …

You’re better off writing this:

Your letter explaining your complaint has been received …

Or:

Thank you for writing to us about your recent problem with …

Coming up with a you frame is often challenging. Doing so may draw you into convoluted or passive-sounding language — for example, “Your unusual experience with our tree-pruning service has come to our attention.” Ordinarily we recommend a direct statement (such as, “We hear you’ve had an unusual experience with …”), but in customer service situations and others where you want to relate to your reader instantly, figuring out a way to start with you can be worth the effort and a brief dip into the passive. (See Chapters 2, 3, and 4 in this minibook for ways to expand your resource of techniques for fine-tuning your tone through word choice, sentence structure, and customized content.)

In every situation, genuinely consider your reader’s viewpoint, sensitivities, and needs. Think about how the message you’re communicating affects that person or group. Anticipate questions and build in the answers. Write within this framework and you will guide yourself to create successful messages and documents. When you care, it shows. And you succeed.