The process for creating business messages
-Writing EFFECTIVE BUSINESS MESSAGES involves examining, developing, and refining business ideas in a way that provides to you audience.
- It drives COLLABORATION and PRODUCTIVITY in your work relationships.
3 steps for creating business messages
1) Plan
2) Draft
3) Review
Planning
Audience, Message, Ideas
Goals:
Get the content right.
- understand the needs of the audience.
-Generate the best of ideas to address a business issue.
-Identify the primary message and ket points
Drafting
Tone, Design, Style
Goals:
Get the Delivery right
-Set a positive and other-oriented tone.
-Make the message east to read
- Make the message easy to navigate
Reviewing
FAIR test, Feedback, Proofread
Goals:
Double-check everything
- Ensure the communication is fair
- Consider whether your message is effective
- Remove any distractions
Expert Writers
-More likely to ANALYZE the needs of the audience, GENERATE the best ideas to tackle a problem, and IDENTIFY the primary message and key points before starting a FORMAL DRAFT of a business message.
The AIM planning process
-The MOST IMPORTANT stage of creating effective business messages is planning
- The AIM PLANNING PROCESS unleashes your best thinking and allows you to deliver influential messages
A: Audience
-Identify benefits to others, recognize their values and priorities, and anticipate their reactions.
I: Ideas
-Identify and analyze the business problems at hand; display excellence in business thinking
M: Message
-Identify and frame your primary message(s), choose your key points, and select your call to action
Audience Analysis
-Effective business communicators think about the NEEDS, PRIORITIES, and VALUES of their audience members.
- They envision how their readers will respond when GETTING THE MESSAGE-in thought, feeling, and action.
Audience Analysis (5)
- identify reader benefits and constraints
- Consider reader values and priorities
- Estimate your credibility
- Anticipate Reactions
- Keep Secondary audiences in mind
Identifying reader benefits and constraints
- For many messages, this is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT planning step
- Your readers respond when you provide them with something that they value
Values
Refer to enduring beliefs and ideals that individuals hold
Priorities
Involve ranking or assigning importance to things, such as projects, goals, and task
Estimating your Credibility
- Your readers will JUDGE your recommendations, requests, another messages based on their view of your CREDIBILITY
- many entry-level professionals have relatively LOW PROFESSIONAL credibility because they are viewed as the newcomers.
Changing your Reputation
- Set up a time to TALK with your boss
- Ask your boss if you can take any HIGHER RESPONSIBILITY projects
- make sure you fit in with the corporate culture in terms of PROFESSIONAL DRESS and communication style
- Attend a lot of meeting to get to know as
Developing great business ideas involve:
SORTING our the business issues and objectives.
COLLECTING as many relevant facts as possible
MAKING sound judgments about what the facts mean and imply
Idea development
-Identifying the business problems
- Analyzing the business problems
- Clarifying objectives
Facts
statements that can be relied on with a fair amount of certainty and can be observes objectively
Conclusions
statements that are reasoned or deduced based on facts.
Positions
stances that you take based on a set of conclusions
1) Framing the primary message
-what is the primary message?
- What simple, vivid statement (15 words or less) captures the essence of your message?
2) Setting up the logic of your message
- What are your supporting points?
- What do you want to explicitly ask your readers to do? (call to action)
- How will you order the logic of your message
Setting up the Message framework
- Most business arguments employ a DIRECT or DEDUCTIVE approach
-They begin by stating the PRIMARY MESSAGE
- then they lay out the SUPPORTING reasons and CONCLUDE with a call to action
Logical Inconsistencies
-Unsupported generalizations
- Faulty cause/ effect claims
- Weak analogies
- Either/ or logic
- Slanting the facts
- Exaggeration
Tone
The overall evaluation the reader perceives the writer to have toward the reader and the message content,
-Demonstrate positivity
- Show concern for others
Make your message more positive
-Display a Can-Do, confident attitude
- Focus on the positive rather than negative traits of products and services
- Use diplomatic, constructive terms related to your relationships and interactions
Concern for others
- Avoid relying too heavily on the I-VOICE
- Respect the TIME and AUTONOMY of your readers
- Give CREDIT to others
Meta Messages
-The overall but often underlying messages people take away from a communication or group of communications
- Encoded and decoded as a combination of content, tone, and other signals
Mixed Signals
occur when the content of a message conflicts with the tone, nonverbal communication, or other signal.
- sending mixed signals is not only confusing, but it also recently results in NEGATIVE META MESSAGES