Asked to Write a Referral?

As a businessperson, you will write much to promote yourself. As a successful businessperson, you will probably be asked someday to write something that promotes someone else: a letter of recommendation for college, a job reference, a letter of introduction to a professional association.

Assuming this is someone you honestly can recommend and that there are no company policies keeping you from going into detail, by all means tell the college/business/association how fortunate they would be to have this person. Here’s how to make a good impression on your “recommendee’s” behalf:

Be specific. Sure, every administrative department wants students and staff to be honest and hardworking, but the adjectives by themselves don’t mean much. Give specific examples: “In October 2008, Ms. Spencer designed and implemented a new software program that cut our order-processing time by 20 percent.”

Be concise, but not too concise. Think minimum one full page, maximum two pages.

Be positive. People are wary of those who write recommendations simply to get persistent applicants off their backs; evident reservation tempts readers to suspect something is seriously wrong. If you think someone’s shortcomings would affect his ability to function in the position applied for, you shouldn’t be writing him a recommendation in the first place. Otherwise, let him worry about answering the “tell me your greatest weaknesses” question once he gets the interview.

Don’t gush, however. Being too positive arouses as much suspicion as being tentative. If you can show specific ways an applicant has improved in certain areas, that’s ideal.

Focus on qualities that can be transferred to the position applied for. If you supervised a college applicant during her three-month summer job archiving church records, mention her dependability, attention to detail, and other academic-relevant qualities. Unless the college she’s applying to is extremely conservative, they aren’t likely to care much that she is also a third-generation member of the church and hasn’t missed a service since she had the flu in fifth grade.

Be sure that you do, in fact, understand what is relevant. If you have any doubts, the person who requested the recommendation—assuming he’s serious enough to deserve it—is likely to be your best source of information.

Do proofread your reference before sending it. Preferably, let it “cool” a week before the final edit. This is, after all, something with potential to significantly affect someone’s future.

Make up your mind not to take it personally if your reference doesn’t “work.” However good your letter of recommendation is, the person you recommend may not get into the school or be hired for the job. Or he may decide he prefers some alternative, which he didn’t ask your recommendation for. There could be any number of reasons; don’t waste your time trying to find out what they are. If nothing else, you got some valuable writing practice from this.

References are a part of professional life; you may even need one yourself someday. Treat them with the respect they deserve.

Appearances Do Count

When you receive an e-mail ad full of all-caps words and with line breaks apparently inserted at random, how likely are you to buy the product?

When someone hands you an advertising brochure printed on cheap paper and using a different font for every line, how seriously do you take the sponsoring company?

The delusion that one’s genius shines through the sloppiest communication is amazingly widespread among beginning entrepreneurs. Those who don’t outgrow the attitude quickly become “new businesses fail within two years” statistics.

Several past posts (see March archives) have already discussed proofreading of actual text, so I’ll focus here on other visual aspects of written communications. If you want blogs, sales letters, and advertisements to make you look conscientious and competent, remember the following points:

For hard copy:

• Use reasonably heavy paper (it looks sloppy to have text showing through, especially on two-sided brochures). And make sure the paper is fresh and clean.
• Make sure there is sufficient toner to produce crisp print; smudged or faded text and illogical coloring make communications look amateurish, if not cheap.
• For letters, use only white or beige paper and black text. Eye-catching colors are more acceptable in ads, but stick to pastel backgrounds and dark text; light-on-dark and bright-on-bright is hard on the eyes.
• For trifold brochures, make sure each visual item is clearly contained within a single panel or spread—and that both sides have the same top edge!

For e-mails:

• Avoid special formatting unless you know the recipient’s box can handle it. Few things are more visually annoying than the result of a computer’s attempt to translate colors and graphics to a plain-text-only window.
• Don’t use all-caps for emphasis; it’s the electronic equivalent of screaming.
• Try to stick to one screen’s worth of text.
• Always use BCC with multiple recipients, unless they form a small, tightly-knit group. Aside from the issue of advertising everyone’s e-mail to who-knows-who, scrolling through three screens of addresses to reach the main text is a major nuisance.

For Web pages and blogs:

• Use short pages, short paragraphs, and wide margins.
• Remember that while Web users like graphics, they hate it when something downloads slowly or not at all.
• For visuals, use photos (not clip art) that show your business in action or display its products.
• Use eye-friendly color combinations of background and text, even more important here than in hard copy. Ten paragraphs of white-on-navy, or gold-on-white, are agony to the eyes on a computer monitor.

For everything:

• Make sure margins line up logically and space between paragraphs is equal. (Check visually; printers and word processors can do strange things).
• Remember that fancy fonts have no place in letters. Even in ads, atypical fonts make a poor impression if they are so squiggly or tiny as to be unreadable. And remember that boldface/italic, or different-from-the-rest-of-the-text fonts, are best reserved for section headings.
• Remember that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression!

Doing without Visual and Voice Cues

Having discussed “touchy situations” in the last post, I have to admit that such situations—and many others—are often better dealt with face to face than in writing. Researchers estimate that people form 55 percent of overall impressions from visual cues, 38 percent from tones of voice, and a scanty 7 percent from actual words used. So when writing, we have to work more than ten times as hard to get a point across.

Still, there are times when writing is necessary—to address larger segments of the public than can be met with directly, or to communicate on subjects you find so touchy that you doubt your ability to maintain a professional demeanor. One advantage of the written word is that it lets you take things back before they get anyplace where they might do damage. (Also, if you feel like communicating something at 4 a.m. without getting dressed, no one need know.)

To compensate for being deprived of visual and voice cues:

Be certain to include all essential facts—and to get them straight. Outside of instant messaging, writing makes quick clarification on confusing points impossible. Worse yet is the message that clearly communicates wrong information—“off by one digit” can literally mean “off by a mile” when sending important addresses.

Choose strong, descriptive words. “Forty-story building” is easier to visualize than “skyscraper”; “customers seeking refunds” paints a clearer picture than “dissatisfied customers.”

Don’t, however, use “loaded language.” Calling people names always reflects badly on you—even when the message’s recipient isn’t your target.

If what you’re writing is intended or likely to have a significant impact, let the message “cool” for at least one full day before editing and sending it. Not only is the second draft always better than the first, longer gaps between the two equal greater improvement.

Don’t expect anyone to automatically realize you’re “just joking.” The reader won’t see the grin on your face or hear the light tone of your voice. Before sending a message, consider it at face value; the recipient definitely will.

Don’t rely on emoticons or acronyms to clarify your intent, either. It looks overly casual for most business communications; it may cause “translation problems” between plain text and graphics; it can be confusing (not everyone knows that “LOL” means “Laughing Out Loud”); and, like expressing anger with generic profanities, it’s frequently the lazy way out of looking for appropriate words.

Consider your recipient. Slang and clichés are fine with family or close friends, but a bad idea with anyone you want to impress professionally.

Don’t get so formal as to be stuffy. Hardly anyone writes “I will not” for “I won’t” anymore. You do want it to be obvious that your message was written by a human being!

Making a good impression takes work, but it’s worth it. A little careful attention to detail goes a long way, even when you have only words to work with.

To help business owners promote themselves as experts in their fields, Spread the Word Commercial Writing is offering a special of one free e-article to catch your ideal client’s interest. Contact katherine@spreadthewordcommercialwriting.com for details.

Dealing with Touchy Situations

However much we hate being misunderstood or embarrassed, business life is full of such opportunities. As long as the world remains imperfect, there will be dissatisfied customers, media scandalmongers, and political-correctness-vs.-tradition. Anyone mature enough to be in business should be mature enough to avoid provoking such situations, and to deal with them when unavoidable.

To minimize the risk of your written communications’ generating bad feelings:

• Understand the “political correctness” minefield. Nowhere is it so easy to insult someone unintentionally as in “outsider” references to their culture, gender, or religion. Some people are so sure the world hates them that they take anything short of wholehearted endorsement as a hate crime. The best way to minimize trouble is to surround yourself with advisors from a variety of backgrounds; there’s no one like an “insider” for keeping others sensitized to a group’s sore points and preferred descriptive terms.
• Never, ever insult anyone personally in writing. The difference between unwelcome criticism and a personal insult is that the former is both specific and provable. “JD hasn’t made a sale in ten months” can be backed up with evidence; “JD is the biggest incompetent who ever lived” not only is unprovable but implies a smear on every aspect of the person’s character. And while even a verbal insult can come back to haunt you in court, if you delivered it in writing you lose all benefit of the doubt.
• Focus on the positive. When you never have anything good to say, even people not directly affected by your comments reflexively look for bad things to say about you.

Of course, too much avoiding of the negative can get you into worse trouble if you owe the public an apology or if there is some other real problem to be dealt with. Everyone knows about corporations and government entities that insist finances are stable up to the moment everything collapses, or that no one did anything wrong long after the evidence is undeniable. To minimize the damage when real trouble strikes, the #1 thing to remember is: Never try to dodge the issue. It will only hurt you in the probably-not-so-long run.

Not dodging the issue means:

• Not downplaying the seriousness of the problem. It’s bad enough to have the media and the public questioning your competence; don’t give them reason to question your honesty as well.
• Being open about the nature of the problem, the challenges involved, and the planned solution. Many businesses fail here because of paranoia about “revealing sensitive company information.” It’s one thing if a revelation compromises someone’s personal privacy, or gives so much detail as to show competitors how to duplicate a product or procedure; but every word in the employee handbook shouldn’t be top secret.
• Being willing to apologize on the company's behalf, without mixing excuses with the apology. People think more, not less, of someone who is willing to unequivocally accept blame.

When it comes to good public relations, a little healthy humility goes a long way.

Press Release Pointers

To keep the public aware of and well disposed toward your work, you need positive media coverage. Customers are more likely to trust businesses that have other ways of getting attention besides buying it through advertising.

However, you can’t always rely on the media to notice you on their own; it pays to take an active role in keeping them up to date. The traditional press release, also called the news release or media release, is still an effective tool for getting your name in the papers or on the major Web sites. It’s normally written in a format similar to the following:

----------------------------
Headline/Title

One- to four-sentence summary

City, State, Preferred Date of Release [if none, “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE”]

Main news story.

About [sponsoring company and/or release writer]: [one short paragraph]

Contact:

Full contact information for the best person to answer any questions.

### [or “-30-” or “END”] [centered]

----------------------------

Correct format won’t get you far, though, without good writing and newsworthy content. To earn your release the best chance of being published:

Address your release directly to the editor of Business News (or whatever department publishes articles on your topic). And write to the person’s full name or “Mr./Ms. Smith,” not just a position title and definitely not a first name alone.

Gear your submission to the recipient’s convenience, not your own. Follow any specific instructions from the paper/Web site/media service on how, when, and where to send releases.

Choose “news” that’s interesting to potential readers, not simply to your own office. (See last two posts for hints on judging this.) Strangers are not interested in what your business does unless it affects them directly, offers something they want or need, or is intriguing or funny enough to entertain them.

Make the title short (no more than 80 characters) and descriptive. Study published news headlines to get the right feel.

Keep the whole thing to a maximum of 800 words. One of the best ways to reduce word count is to change adverbial phrases (“walks proudly”) to verbs (“struts”) and adjectival phrases (“luxurious car”) to nouns (“limousine”).

Put the most important information first; the further into a release a paragraph is located, the more likely it is to be cut before publication (or go unread after).

Include at least one direct quote (“‘This will give our customers an extra hour of daily free time,’ said CEO Craig Johnson”); rewrite your own best thought in quote form if necessary. Readers like to hear real people speaking.

Never use a five-syllable word when a two-syllable synonym is available.

Don’t overload the text with technical details, but do include your contact information for the benefit of interested potential clients.

Be extra careful to get all facts—especially contact information—accurate. And remember that typos hurt your professional image. Once you think the release is finished, let it sit for a full day and then proofread it.

Be certain, as with an ad, that you can keep any promises you make!

Features vs. Benefits

If your ads suffer from a discouraging lack of response, it may be that they don’t answer every reader’s key questions: “Why should I care?” and “What’s in it for me?” Sales materials don’t deserve the name if they talk exclusively about features rather than benefits.

Features are the specifics on what a business does or is. Benefits are the specifics on what a business does, or can do, for its customers. Features, at best, capture attention for a few moments before readers direct their attention elsewhere. Benefits are what assure potential customers you offer something they will find useful, helpful, or pleasurable.

Does your copy talk directly to the customer? Good persuasive copy is full of “you’s” and short on “we’s.” Every ad should ask rhetorically, “Do you have this problem?” or “Do you enjoy experiencing this activity/feeling?” before explaining how the product or service solves the problem, or provides the activity/feeling, better than any other option.

Does the copy appeal to emotion? However much we like to think of ourselves as rational, reasonable people, we all let personal desires and wishes guide most of our actions. If your copy is sufficiently vivid and “you-oriented” that potential customers begin picturing themselves enjoying whatever you’re offering, you’re well on the way to a sale.

Does the copy tie all straight facts to potential gain for the customer? “Our new auto runs 10% more efficiently than last year’s model” may evoke a yawn and a “whose doesn’t?” “Our new model's increased efficiency can make your gasoline budget go 10% further” will get people thinking “this might be a worthwhile investment.”

Does the copy leave no doubt as to what it’s selling—and does it state this at the beginning rather than the end? Only the most prominent brands can get away with wildly imaginative commercials that hardly mention the product/service at all. But many feature-heavy ads are only a tiny improvement when it comes to being comprehensible. Some “ads” spend so much time explaining how the machinery works or how the service was tested that they never get around to stating clearly what is being advertised—or of asking people directly to buy it. Other ads tuck this information into one small paragraph at the end of a crowded page, forgetting that few readers bother to go on to the end once they get bored.

Does the copy tell readers how to buy? Ease in ordering is a benefit too often neglected; even readers interested in buying will give up quickly if there’s no Web site address, no order form, and no mention of which stores might be selling a product. The vast majority of consumers, given no way of immediately locating a product or service, will consider it not worth their while to spend time searching.

Thinking in terms of “benefits” has obvious advantages in persuading people to buy immediately. But it can be equally helpful when your purpose is simply to make a good impression on your public. The next post will discuss this and other things worth knowing about press releases.

It’s Not about You

“I know and you know people who blunder through life trying to wigwag other people into becoming interested in them,” wrote Dale Carnegie in his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Of course, it doesn’t work. People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves—morning, noon and after dinner.”

It’s amazing how many intelligent entrepreneurs never learn this. Every other sentence in their press releases starts with “we.” Their Web sites read like transcribed employee manuals, and their advertisements resemble research and development reports. They never consider that most consumers, struggling to keep up with existing responsibilities, might not care that some company they’ve never heard of makes orange widgets or won an award from the Fourth Annual Business Committee of Nowheresville.

Even worse are the direct appeals that come across as “Give me what I want because I want it.” Carnegie’s book includes one such letter as an example of how not to win cooperation: “We desire to retain our position in industry leadership… Will you put us on your preferred list for regular updates and send a prompt acknowledgment of this letter, giving us your latest ‘doings.’” The typical reader’s reaction is likely to be something along the lines of “Why should I care about what you want or how important you are; I have problems of my own to worry about. Who do you think you are, anyway, ordering me to drop everything and write a detailed response right now?” Not exactly conducive to good public relations.

If you wonder whether your own promotional writings may be too self-centered, here are nine red flags to watch for:
1. You can’t describe the typical person who can be expected to read the text.
2. The text is full of company-specific jargon. (If you’re not certain, ask a trusted friend outside your business to read a hard-copy sample and highlight anything s/he needs you to define. If the papers come back looking gold-plated, it’s time to consider hiring an outside writing expert.)
3. The text of an item intended for the general public is full of industry-specific jargon.
4. The text includes large numbers of statistics. (Unless you can present those statistics in an exceptionally intriguing or humorous manner, no one who wasn’t directly involved in producing them will be interested.)
5. The text brags too much. (Non-stakeholders couldn’t care less about the awards you win unless those awards are for something exceptionally intriguing; everyone has a “Top Sales” or “Citizen of the Year” award. And even readers who rejoice in your triumphs will get bored if the “how great we are” text runs beyond a few paragraphs.)
6. The text contains the phrase, “I/we want.” (Only your personal friends and loved ones will do anything for you simply because you want it.)
7. The text includes any requests that fail to say “please” (and preferably “thank you” as well).
8. The text contains far more “we’s” and “I’s” than “you’s.”
9. The text talks extensively about what you can do, but never mentions what you can do for the reader.

That last point will be covered further in next week’s scheduled topic, “Features vs. Benefits.”