Most of our professional communication, even as an entrepreneur, now takes place in written form. It is therefore incumbent upon entrepreneurs to make improving their written communication something they constantly work on. There are plenty of ways to do this that can easily be worked into your daily routine. With that in mind, below are some easy and accessible ways to improve your writing as an entrepreneur.
Table of Contents
Play Language and Word Games
Language and word games are both fun and help you exercise your verbal intelligence, adding new words, expressions and ways of putting things to your lexicon. Many of these games are downloadable on your phone or desktop and completely free to play. Games such as Scrabble, for instance, which have you rely on your vocabulary and letter unscrambling ability to place words on a board, are entertaining and far more mentally nourishing than many of the other games people commonly play to pass the time. If you are new to Scrabble or find yourself struggling to come up with winning combinations, keep in mind that there are word unscrambler tools out there to help you rearrange your tiles.
Make Reading Part of Your Day
To be a better writer, you need to be constantly reading. Reading, and especially reading writers that are far more talented than ourselves, is how we absorb new words, turns of phrase, terminology, sentence structure and good writing habits. Much of this becomes part of our subconscious and is deployed automatically in our written communication, although there are plenty of conscious writing abilities that are honed while reading, and especially word choice. Additionally, as an entrepreneur, it is in your best interests to constantly read, at the very least, the various publications covering your niche or industry. By committing to regular reading, you strengthen your ability to communicate in writing and stay on the cutting edge of your industry.
Make ‘Word Economy’ Part of Your Communication Mantra
Word economy refers to the careful attention that all good written communicators pay to their writing. What it essentially refers to is the ability or focus on making your text as meaningful, clear and concise as possible in as few words as you can. For entrepreneurs, this approach to writing should be something that is worked upon all the time. It gets messages across to busy employees, partners, vendors and investors in as short a time as possible, taking their schedule and your own into consideration. It also minimizes the amount of misinterpretation and time spent reiterating or reexplaining messages.
Conclusion
As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for interacting and managing relationships with a broad range of people. You need to be able to write confidently, convincingly and quickly in order to run your business, position yourself as an expert and someone worth investing in, and even just running your daily administrative affairs. Keep the above writing improvement tips in mind and make yourself known in your professional circle for being a superior written communicator and expressor of ideas.
About Carson Derrow
