A Step-by-Step Guide to Improve Your Business Writing Skills

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | A Step-by-Step Guide to Improve Your Business Writing SkillsToday, a significant portion of business activities refer to communications, and writing is the most demanded ability, among other communication skills.

Despite its importance, many professionals lack this ability and have trouble writing business materials.

An excellent approach to deal with this problem is to hire a pro essay writing service to compensate for your shortcomings. If you are constrained on money, however, here’s everything you need to compose an acceptable business document:

Have a Plan for Your Writing

While improvised writing deviates you from important issues, having a mental plan helps you to address intended writing objectives. Whether it’s a memo, a proposal, or a report, you should consider the following questions and, accordingly, have a systematic plan of what you are going to write.

  • What do I intend to tell?
  • What should the audience do after reading my piece of writing?
  • What evidence, statistics, and documents do I need to attach?
  • Who is my audience, and which style should I follow in this writing?

Do Not Postpone Your Message

In today’s fast-paced world, business people are not willing to read lengthy introductory paragraphs. They want you to get right to the point and don’t have extra time for unnecessary sentences.

Unlike what you learned at school, in business papers, you’re not going to write a catchy introduction, three body paragraphs, and a perfect conclusion for every email you send to your colleagues.

All you need is to present your message right at the start, be clear, and do not make your readers look for the required information.

Make It Easy to Read

When reading a business writing, people take a quick skim to see what it aims to describe and decide whether or not they should read it. Here are a few tips you can use to make it simple for your readers:

  • Include subheadings for each particular message/call to action
  • Use bullet-form lists to highlight crucial points
  • put the primary issues at the top
  • write vital pieces of information in bold or highlight them

Cut The Jargon

Every industry has its own technical or career-specific terminology. However, if you use too many buzzwords or complicated terms, your writing will create confusion for your target audience, especially when you’re writing for clients, stakeholders, or other non-experts out of the organization.

You don’t want to showcase your field expertise or have your partners check the dictionary to understand your purpose. Your main objective is to communicate a message as quickly as possible. So eliminate complicated words and make your writings more reader-friendly.

Note: In some business documents (e.g., project report), adding technical description may be unavoidable to some extent. If you’re not familiar with your field-specific terms, legitimate essay writing services can be a good help.

Keep It Professional

Avoiding jargon doesn’t mean you have to write in a completely informal manner.

When you have a close relationship with your colleagues, it’s all easy to include a joke or an office gossip in your business correspondence. However, it can pose an adverse effect on your content, harm your reputation, and probably lead to a misconception.

A great way to evaluate the level of professionalism in your business writing is to ask yourself, “Do I feel comfortable if my boss reads this email?” If the answer is no, you ought to rethink and rewrite the email.

Keep It Short

Emails and other electronic documents are more likely to be read if they are brief. If your email took more than half a page, email is probably not an ideal way to convey that information. Maybe you can call that person to talk about the issue or find another way to meet your needs.

Save Templates

As you may know, many business writings follow a similar pattern. Once you wrote a good article, letter, or email, you can save it and use it as a template for your future documents.

Another advantage of this method refers to the tight deadlines where you always rush to give in some report, post some advertisement content, or request a tender. When you are in a hurry, errors, typos and confusing phrases are more likely to appear in your pieces- an embarrassing fault that can be nearly avoided by using pre-written formats.

This is also true about professional essay writing services. Having worked with more than a thousand clients, these essay services have a rich source of pre-saved templates that can be used to construct a superior document for you.

Don’t forget to Proofread

Before pressing the ‘send’ button, take a moment to read your work. Check for potential misspellings, fill out incomplete data and omit extra ones. Put your self in readers’ shoes and see whether he/she can connect with your intentions. Always remember that even a single mistake can cause great embarrassment.

Bottom Line

In today’s information-driven world, every worker- irrespective of their role and operating field- must know how to construct business documents. The above-mentioned tips are great for improving your business writing skills, but if you are short in time, you can also write essays online by paying an urgent essay writing service.

Tips To Improve Your Business and Project Management Skills

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | Tips To Improve Your Business and Project Management SkillsBusinesses need managers to run successful operations at various levels and across various departments. These managers efficiently plan, manage, supervise, control and monitor business operations. Senior managers need to develop communication, motivational, and leadership skills to further the success of the company. Self-management and time management are also attributes that successful managers display.

If you want a corporate career as a business manager or a project manager, you are aware that meeting and exceeding goals and objectives are key to your success. Efficient project managers and business managers are required to have a set of unique skills that enable them to execute their tasks better and meet deadlines well within time. However, developing these skills is not matter of joke. They need dedication and time on your part and a focused guidance to help you achieve your career goal.

Here are some handy tips to improve your management skills:

Master the art of time management. It makes for a loss as a manager to waste time since time is a limited resource. You just have 24 hours in a day. Time management skills come helpful in optimising time to meet your project deadlines. Allocating jobs skillfully to team members is a key responsibility area of a manager. Displaying good time management is evidence that, as a manager you understand the significance of productivity.

Learn from the past. There will be time in your career when your project will be halted due to unforeseen reasons. This is the time to bring out the best in you to be able to take the right decision. While seeking the advice of your immediate seniors is the obvious choice of many, reviewing successful old projects to understand the current problem better is helpful. This helps to take valuable ideas from the reviewed projects to run the current project efficiently.

Get better at communication. Effective communication with your team member is vital to the progress your project. Talk, hold meetings and respond in time to build confidence in your team through communication. Communication also established transparency among the team and boosts the morale of the team to deliver the project in time.

Set Expectations and Monitor Deliverables

A part of effective communication is also about letting your team members know what is expected of them. It is imperative to set expectations, so that everyone is aware of his responsibility. This helps in the team to follow process and guidelines and deadlines.

While setting responsibilities and expectations, you should keep a watchful eye on the timely delivery of work from your sub-ordinates. Monitor productivity closely on a day to day basis to optimise operations.

A good manager will require to master a number of different skills to progress in his career. Many graduation courses in Business and Project Management are available that help you sharpen your skills. Your online courses with Learning Cloud will offer you a vast array of business management courses that will imbibe managerial skills in you so that you can reach your career milestones earlier than others.

The Importance of Lifelong Learning for Professional Development

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Lifelong Learning|The Importance of Lifelong Learning for Professional DevelopmentWhat do the likes of Michelangelo, Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common? They have all advocated the importance of fostering a love of learning and continuous personal growth. These values are synonymous with the idea of lifelong learning, which is the ongoing process of pursuing knowledge, be it for personal or professional reasons.

Without really thinking about it, most people believe that their education is over when they graduate from high school or university. However, formal schooling is only fundamental. There are countless opportunities beyond it to further your knowledge in a specific field.

While that happens to everyone all the time, lifelong learning involves actively maintaining a focus on learning and development. In doing so, you can make leaps and bounds in your career. It can even help you finally start a business and is instrumental in building a company that flourishes in today’s unforgiving economy.

To drive the point home, let’s take a closer look at the importance of lifelong learning for professional development.

Employability

A quality valued by all employers is the desire to learn and develop, often called a growth mindset.
By demonstrating this, you show that you’re willing to go the extra mile and continuously make an effort to become better at what you do. Employees with this ability are most likely to move up the ranks and achieve the most in their respective fields.

Many people who find themselves in a position of unemployment make the mistake of thinking that job-seeking is their only option. While helpful, just as important is using your free time to take advantage of any coaching, training or mentoring opportunities that are available to you. This can help you escape unemployment sooner.

Advancement

Employers also pay particular attention to people who have transferable skills.

For instance, let’s say two employees are potential candidates for a promotion to chief marketing officer. The one who possesses skills beyond those required in marketing such as communication, listening, creativity and problem solving, will naturally be more likely to get the job than the one who is nothing more than a marketing guru.

Lifelong learning contributes to a broader set of skills that increases your advancement opportunities. In addition, you have the ability to enter different sections within your career path, or even outside of it. This can make for a more interesting and exciting work life where you frequently enjoy new experiences.

Prospects

Not everyone is lucky enough to land their dream job after school. This can lead to an unsatisfactory and unfulfilling career, even when the pay check is more than sufficient. Lifelong learning can help alleviate the situation by equipping you with the knowledge and expertise required to enter the field you really want to work in.

Depending on how you learn, you can even obtain qualifications that are versatile in nature, meaning that your career prospects aren’t limited to a specific industry or field. This is true for many different programs, a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) being a good example. This post from Aston University details more information about the career prospects of an MBA.

Resources
The benefits of lifelong learning for professional development are clear and simple. But what resources are available to facilitate your new pursuit of knowledge? Plenty. The following are a few to help you get started:

  • The Internet: From simple resources like blogs and discussion forums to fully-fledged online courses and programs, the internet is the ultimate resource for learning anything.
  • Mentors: Someone with knowledge and experience in a field that you’re interested in can teach you what you need to know and reveal unseen areas for improvement. They can also help you avoid the mistakes they made when they were in your position.
  • Literature and Books: Whether bought online or read at the library, traditional literature is no less relevant today than it was before the internet.
  • Internships: Any form of apprenticeship can help you learn from qualified professionals and gain valuable hands-on experience.

These are just some of the resources you can utilise to participate in lifelong learning and contribute to your professional development. Let’s end things by looking at how lifelong learning can benefit your personal life.
The great thing about learning is that it doesn’t even need to have a specific purpose, as the act can be a rewarding experience in and of itself.

Compared to passive activities like watching television or playing videogames, learning is far more rewarding and has lasting benefits. Plus, it’s guilt-free. Knowledge is and always will remain synonymous with power.

Future-Proof Your Career

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Future-proof your career|Future-Proof Your CareerTimes are uncertain, particularly when it comes to the world of work. You may be worried about your future and what your job will look like next year, in five years’ time or even a decade or so down the line. You might be worrying that what you do will become obsolete. It’s only natural, but instead of worrying, wouldn’t it be better to take action and dow what you can to future-proof your career?

If you want to ensure that your skills and experience are still required in years to come, here are a few things you can do to future-proof your career starting now…

Work for academy organizations

Academy organizations are companies that invest in the development of their employees. When you work for them, you will be given lots of opportunities to learn new skills and reach your full potential. Because they take your development seriously, you are far less likely to be redundant in the future, Companies that are known to be academy organizations include Randstad and AT&T, but there are many more and you would do well to find some in your industry.

Stay Tech Savvy

There’s no turning back the clock when it comes to technology — it is in all our futures and that includes the future of our work as much as anything else. That is why if you want to future-proof your career, you really do need to keep up with technology and keep improving your digital skills whether that means learning how to code or studying for your agile product owner certification. The better you understand, and are able to use, technology, the more likely you are to remain employed now and in the future.

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article |Future-proof your career|Future-Proof Your CareerFocus on Transferable Skills

The business you are working for now might not still be in business 10 years down the line, so if you want to remain employable, it’s a really good idea to focus on transferable skills — the kind of skills that any employer in any sector will be looking for. This includes things like communication, leadership, creativity and management skills. If you keep these at the core of what you do, you will always be in demand.

Build a Global Network

The more people you know, the more opportunities are going to come your way. So, if you want to protect your career in the future, you need to build lasting connections now in the present, and you should ideally do so on a global level if you want to maximize your opportunities. So, connect with people on social media, attend trade events and conferences, write a blog, and do anything you can that will enable you to form bonds with others in your industry and adjacent industries that could use your talent.

Review Your Options

You may love your career now, but it pays to keep your options open, review the current climate and identify potential new opportunities, on a regular basis. By doing this, you will always know how you’re doing now and what else you could be doing if things start to change and you need to protect yourself.

The world might be changing, but you can maintain your success by being careful, staying up to date and building your network. I wish you luck!

Want To Further Your Career? Here’s How To Do It!

There is no one in the world who wants to continue to be at the bottom of their career. There are very few who get into a junior position in a company and choose to stay there because they know how to do it. They aim for the top spot, the CEO seat. They want to be the department manager, pushing themselves to the top of their career and not settling for anything less.

If you find that you are staring at the same four walls of the cubicle that you stepped into a decade ago, then you need to give yourself a shake.

You cannot complain about your job while continuing to walk the same steps day in and day out. It’s just not okay to stay stuck – especially when you’re not okay with being stuck where you are! You could be advancing slowly, or you could have a possible future in the company in which you currently work. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t progress. Progression is what gets you from the current workspace to something better, more satisfying and – often – with better pay.

You deserve to have the very best future you can have, and that’s why we’ve got some excellent tips to help you to further your career. Don’t stay stuck in a position you hate when there is a whole world out there for you to conquer and do well in. Let’s check out those tips!

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | Career Development | Want To Further Your Career? Here's How To Do It!

Give Yourself Some Goals

Setting goals is a standard tip for anyone who is looking to do better in their career, but you need to think about this carefully. Goals need to be listed to keep you focused, and as you move upward through your chosen industry, you should consider making your goals smaller. Yes, your overall goal may be to own a company, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t set small goals to get you where you need to be. If you know what you want, break it down as to how you plan to get there and achieve each of those little steps.

Get Educated

What do you need to have under your belt to get where you need to be? It’s a big question to ask yourself, as if you don’t have the right piece of paper in some roles, you may find that you can’t get very far. For example, your IT degree may get you so far in the industry, but upskilling to a Masters in IT Security? That could get you so much further than you ever expected. Education is often the key you need to get you to an entirely new life. The more you learn, the more you can achieve, so check out what education you need to get to that next step.

Ask – Don’t Demand

If you feel like you are being wasted in the position that you are in, ask for more. Your employer is supposed to be supportive of your goals, and you will find that you may need to ask for the things that you want if you want to get ahead. It’s in their interest to help you to get that step up and do better. After all, your skills are going to help them to be successful. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do better and get higher in your organization, and most employers covet that level of ambition. Keep working hard and approach your manager with a list of reasons you feel you are ready for a promotion. You need to be able to argue your point correctly and talk through your reasons if you hope to have a good outcome.

Rethink Your Resume

How does your resume look right now? You want to ensure that you look like an attractive candidate for any job for which you apply. If your resume is looking pretty bare right now, start looking at ways you could improve it. Are there courses you could attend to thicken it? Are there better options in your job? Could you be doing more? Add to your statement of service, too, and make your resume look slick and ready!

StrategyDriven Professional Development Article | Career Development | Want To Further Your Career? Here's How To Do It!

Know Your Passion

No matter what you are passionate about, it would help if you went after it. If you are not working in an industry for which you feel passionate, then get out of it. Nothing is stopping you from going after your passions, except you. Find out what they are and figure out what skills you need to be successful at it. Then go and get trained, educated, or whatever you need for it to go well.

Accept “No” Graciously

You want to step up and further your career, and that’s going to come with a ton of rejection. However, it would help if you didn’t allow this to be a problem for you. Take their no and use it to fuel your goals. Never take that first rejection as the only answer for you – push forward and follow your heart to success.

Start A Side Hustle

Any job that you want will require your focus. A side hustle in that specific field will give you all the fuel that you need for success. Start small and work around your permanent job. Over time, you’ll be able to build up and do more. Eventually, your side hustle could be your only hustle, and that is what will propel you forward!

Communicate Your Needs Well

One of the biggest secrets to success lies in the way in which you deal with other people. If you know how to communicate well, you can build connections with the right people in your field and get the job offer, raise or promotion that you need.

Right now, you feel stuck, with nowhere to go. You need to pull your socks up and make life happen for you. If you want a better career, go and do what you can to get that career. There is nothing out there stopping you – except you.