Chapter 4: Creating Written Leadership Communication

Chapter 4: Creating Written Leadership Communication

A leader has the ability to share knowledge and ideas to create a sense of urgency in the people they work with. Professionally written communication falls into one of two broad types: correspondence (text message, e-mails, blog posts, memos, and letters) and reports (including proposals, progress reviews, performance reports, and research documentation). Achieving the most effective communication medium, a leader must know the purpose of the message by creating individual and team written communication, organizing the content coherently, conforming to content and formatting expectations in correspondence, including expected content in reports, and formatting written communication effectively.

Connecting with social network is a good way for us to consider carefully how we want to approach social media and how we wish to present ourselves in these public situations such as writing on a blog. Organizing the content coherently, A professional audience expects order and logic in a document; they expect it to make sense to them, to be coherent, which is what we want our communication to do.

By conforming to content and formatting expectations in correspondence, we will determine the actual content of our letters, memos, e-mails, and text messages based on our purpose, strategy, and audience but these types carry some expectations such as including expected content in reports, Professional audiences also have expectations for longer documents and reports.

Formatting written communication effectively is a very important method in writing your message. Formatting is used in creating a professional appearance for all of our written communication. The frequent using of headings and lists to break up the text, separate main ideas, and avoid long blocks of text will make our documents more attractive to others people.

Question

1. How to approach social media?

More often than not, businesses begin a social media campaign with the wrong expectations. Compared to traditional marketing techniques, this technology and these platforms are relatively new. As opposed to viewing it as a traditional market economy, it is helpful to view social media as a gift economy in order to understand how important the relationships that are crafted on these platforms are.

According to a recent article in Harvard Business Review, in a traditional market economy money is given in an exchange for goods or services; however, in social media the focus has shifted to a relationship. People who participate in social media are there to develop their relationships with friends and family first and foremost, not to make transactions.
Because of the way that these encounters that are cultivated, certain transactions are made based on trust and a genuine relationship. In order to get to that point however, businesses and brands must ingrain themselves within this social currency. As opposed to pushing products onto an audience, businesses must consider how individuals use their products and what would help make these interactions better. On the most basic level, social media is another channel for businesses to get their message out. There is an undeniably large audience on social networks, and for certain demographics, not being involved in social media can be a deterrent for consumers. Businesses involvement on social networks has become expected, as a way to learn more about the brand and develop a relationship with it. If this technology continues to progress and become more ingrained in our culture, a business that isn’t willing to allow this kind of engagement will probably suffer. Beyond simply talking at consumers and giving them information, the next step in social media is to develop individual relationships with users. By doing so, brands and businesses have the ability to create brand ambassadors for their products and services. Users and fans are more likely to act on a recommendation from their friends than they are from an advertisement, which makes these relationships invaluable.

The best way to be successful in social media is to develop a community for these individuals to connect with each other. Based on a general appreciation of one quality of a business or brand, users can engage with each other in a way that was lacking and now adds to their social experience.

2. What are the guidelines for checking?

–       Proof your headers and sub headers – People often skip these and focus on the text alone. Just because headers are big and bold doesn't mean they're error free!

–       Read the document out loud – This forces you to go more slowly, so that you're more likely to catch mistakes.

–       Use your finger to follow text as you read – This is another trick that helps you slow down.

–       Start at the end of your document – Proofread one sentence at a time, working your way from the end to the beginning. This helps you focus on errors, not on content.