What’s Your Point?
Effective Communication Means Efficient Writing
Effective communication is built upon efficient writing.
Each word needs to serves a purpose, to point to a larger strategic goal, and anything unnecessary needs to be cut out.
This has always been the case, whether one was writing a letter, an essay or a novel.
But today efficient writing is more important than ever. So many of our messages and arguments need to be boiled down to concise presentations, elevator pitches, tweets, emails, memes, web pages, tag lines and bullet points.
This seminar and workshop covers the basics of effective communication through efficient writing.
We’ll discuss when to use proper grammar and syntax and when it’s more efficient to break the rules.
We’ll also get into how to correctly structure an argument.
Most of all, we’ll explore the underlying story or strategy behind your writing and how to use that as a guide for all the decisions you make.
Attendees will put these basics immediately into practice by analyzing the writing of others, both good and bad, as well tackling a number of quick writing assignments, from developing a promotional email campaign to summarizing the story of their life in two minutes.
They’ll leave with more confidence in their own verbal capabilities, along with the skills to analyze and execute effective, results-driven prose.
What you’ll learn about Effective Communication though Efficient Writing
- Understanding what it is you’re writing and why
- Analyzing your readers’ wants and needs
- Getting that first draft out quickly and effortlessly
- Basic grammatical, syntactical and logical pitfalls and how to avoid them
- Structuring your prose
- Editing and concision
- Choosing the right word at the right time
What we’ll cover
- What is “effective communication”
- What is “efficient writing” and why it matters
- How business writing is unique
- Pre-writing, writing and rewriting
- Doing your homework
- Knowing your audience
- Knowing your material
- Knowing your medium
- Basic Organizational Concepts
- What is a sentence?
- What is a paragraph?
- What is a story?
- Basic English and common mistakes
- grammar
- syntax
- punctuation
- spelling
- Writing for the medium
- for an email
- for a tweet
- for Powerpoint
- long-form articles and essays
- Writing authentically
- The importance of tone
- Finding your natural style and unique voice
How you’ll apply what you learn
- Evaluation of writing examples good and bad
- Identifying writing errors and correcting them
- Rewriting wordy sentences
- Writing a story in 5 minutes
- Writing an email campaign
- Setting up Writing Maps including purpose statements, audience analysis, organization and media
