Getting the "Call to Action" Right in Business Writing
Anyone who has attended a business writing seminar knows that the single most important task to be achieved in these types of communications is the call to action. Without an effective CTA, your message will be discarded like tickets to Charlie Sheen's My Violent Torpedo show.
As communications expert David Silverman writes on HBR.org, a call to action is not just one line, but rather the sum of the entire message you send. Everything counts, from sentence style (simple, not complex) to the use of humor (never).
But Silverman also adds a necessary ingredient that most of us, even experienced business writers, overlook. Understand that your audience is not going to read your entire document, but rather scan it, looking for the gist of the matter. Writing for scanners is an art in itself.
"To make sure your message gets across," Silverman suggests, "give clues to where the information that matters to the reader resides. Easy to read titles, subject lines, headings, and bullet lists, are all helpful in getting those zooming eyeballs to pause."
To which I add, make your paragraphs short -- 50 words or less (the length of this one.) To scanners, a thick paragraph is an invitation to stop and jump ahead, or to stop reading altogether. Short graffs also force you to accept the one-idea-per-paragraph rule, another Silverman maxim.
In a related move, keep your column-width rather narrow. Adjust the margins so that no more than 20 words (and 15 is better) are on a line -- a trick most content-heavy websites have learned. Compare what you are reading here with this more sprawling text in a press release.
Read his entire blog post, How to Succeed in Business Writing: Don't be Dickens. Then return to give us your keys to successful business communication -- but keep it short.
Related Reading
- Dear Steve: Do "Unpolished" Emails From CEOs Hurt the Firm?
- The One Idea Presentation
- Why Email Writing Should be Part of Your Job Evaluation
(Photo by Flickr user hiddedevries, CC 2.0)