What Steve Jobs Can Teach Us About Business Writing
My mantra is that business writing is all about relating to your intended audience. When service professionals write newsletter columns, blog posts, trade articles or basic e-mails, more often than not, they’re trying to connect with clients and prospects. Whether they succeed in making that connection depends on several factors.
First and foremost, as communication expert Joey Asher points out in Lessons From a Lousy Law Lecture, business writing has to be audience-centric. When your writing fails to focus in on and address their needs, challenges and concerns, readers will quickly lose interest. They’ll turn the page, click the back button or hit delete.
So, how do you grab and hold the reader’s attention?
Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen suggests that you take some guidance from Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation at this year’s Macworld. According to Reynolds, Jobs was so engaging and effective on stage because he:
- Developed rapport with the audience. “Right off the bat he was acknowledging the importance of the audience and that they are they important ones, they are who this presentation is for.”
- Gave them an idea of where he was going. He didn’t offer a detailed itinerary, but just “a bit of a road map of the journey [he was] taking them on.”
- Showed his enthusiasm. Although his opening included the words: “Incredible, extraordinary, awesome, amazing, revolutionary,” Jobs delivered them with genuine and sincere zeal. It wasn’t a put on.
Yes, Jobs gave a live presentation. But, what worked for him in real time will work just as well for most business communications, including your business writing.
