Writing Persuasively – Part 1
Persuasive writing isn’t the exclusive preserve of heart-tugging fund-raisers and slick advertising copywriters. In fact, to really give your career a boost, try thinking of everything you write as essentially persuasive in nature.
I’m not exaggerating. Remember, even a routine e-mail has to persuade the reader to open and, finally, to read and maybe even respond to it – no small feat when you consider how many other e-mails it’s competing with. (How many e-mails do you get each day? How many do you delete before opening?)
The first commandment of persuasive writing is: “know thy reader”. It’s actually the first rule of any form of successful communication, and it explains why we get all those phone calls around dinner time asking us if we’d mind completing a short survey (while our dinner cools). I hate to disillusion you, but that person collecting information about you isn’t really interested in your friendship. They are, however, interested in getting to know you better.
And that’s so their employer’s sales/customer relations departments can communicate with you much more persuasively. Basically, they want to know whether you might be interested in their particular product or service and, primarily, whether you can afford it. By the way, this explains why most of us are not on the local Ferrari dealer’s mailing list. Continue Reading »
