10 Steps to Successful Business Writing

STEP FOUR

Grab Your Readers’ Attention

Compete for attention by getting right to the point

Enliven text with active verbs and compelling language

Direct your message to your readers’ trigger points

We’re always vying for readers’ attention and pushing our ideas to be read in a business environment where employees at all levels are inundated with information. On a typical business day, the average worker is exposed to more than 3,000 marketing messages. These include newspaper ads, radio/TV commercials, billboards, transit ads, emails promoting business services, office posters pushing company activities, intranet ads, and much more.

Communication theorists call this information overload, a term I first heard as a college student in the ...