As an entrepreneur, you have a lot going on. You’re trying to start up and run successful businesses, and that’s no walk in the park. Your day can be very demanding, and every second counts. The last thing on your mind is improving your writing and communication skills.
It’s very tempting to simply hire good writers, and leave that skill entirely up to someone else. However, writing skills are one of the most useful things an entrepreneur can do to raise their overall ability to another level.
Writing isn’t just about putting words to paper, it’s about organizing your thoughts, and being able to understanding others better. Here are just a few reasons why you should improve your writing skills.
It Will Help You Become a Better Speaker
Becoming a better writer will help you with your public speaking. That seems backward, but it’s true.
Learning to become a good writer will help you improve your communication skills overall. This translates well to presentations and public seminars. Writing teaches us how to organize our thoughts and how to tell good stories. Both are needed for public speaking.
It’s not always easy to communicate our thoughts and ideas, but learning to write is a great way to pull those thoughts from your head and make them understandable. Once you can do with via writing, you can do it via speaking.
Internal Communication
Just sending simple emails to and from your staff can be a real hassle. Getting everyone on the same page and having them understand isn’t always the easiest task – especially for new ideas that people haven’t heard before.
Getting better at writing will help your internal communication become more efficient. It will allow you to spend less time thinking about what to say, and more time saying it. Here are some best practices for internal communication.
Raising Money
At some point, you’ll likely need to put together a pitch deck and raise some cash. There are obvious ways being a better writer helps here, but what may not be obvious is that the people you’re pitching to are likely well educated, and they’re watching you. Well, written pitches and the communication that follows can really impress a VC.
It’ll also help you craft more meaningful pitches. If you can take a phrase and improve it with your writing skills, it can become significantly more powerful, and even help you close a deal.
Article Writing
This one is obvious, but its application may not be.
Becoming a better writer will open new avenues for you. You can now craft guests posts on popular blogs to boost your profile or the profile of your company. Yes, you could hire people to do this for you, but by developing a distinct voice and using it yourself, your articles will truly represent you as a brand.
It’s not always easy to write articles in a longer form – and can be downright draining if you’re not good at writing yet. Here are some tips for finding and maintaining your motivation as a writer.
Social Media
Create better tweets & Facebook posts. Period. Not much more to say on this issue.
Being a better writer will help you create snappier social media communication. It’ll also allow you to take better advantage of limited character counts. Great writers can say more in less space than someone who doesn’t have a good command of the language.
Identify Poor Writing
This one can be a life saver for an entrepreneur. If you’re not a great writer, chances are you don’t know how to recognize solid writing when you see it. Just becoming better at it, whether you write or not, will allow you to recognize when someone is making obvious errors.
If you’re being pitched on an idea from a firm that wants your company’s money, wouldn’t it be nice to judge them by their communications? If you’re hiring for a key position, skimming a cover letter will be able to tell you a whole lot more about the individual.
Media Relations
Chances are you’ll be doing at least some media. Whether it’s an interview, a request for quotes, or a press release, you want to sound smart and snappy without spending an entire day coming up with the words.
If you can write, almost every one of these tasks will be easier. Even if you’re not writing it yourself, you’ll be able to identify if your staff is making you sound the way you want to be heard. There can be a disconnect sometimes between the press and their reporting. Being a better writer will help make sure that if there is confusion, it’s no on your end.
Sound Smarter
It’s amazing how much smarter a few properly constructed words will make you sound. Great reading and writing go hand-in-hand with a great education. Simply sounding smarter will make you come across as significantly more intelligent, even if you didn’t learn anything other than how to write better.
People love to do business with those that seem confident and smart. Writing can go a long way to increasing both of those stats.
It’ll Make Your Day Easier
Time is at a premium. It’s not just about organizing your day; it’s about making the time you do spend on tasks more efficient.
Almost every point above will speed up some task that involves reading or writing. If you can save 30 minutes a day by not struggling to come up with words for an email or presentation, it would make life a whole lot easier.
Being able to read and write more efficiently can greatly speed up almost any task. Less time is spent understanding and communicating, making your business more efficient overall. Ok, it’s not going to be extremely drastic, but every second helps. Less time discussing things because everyone understands is a huge bonus.
Although not the sexiest part of entrepreneurship, being a better writer can help in numerous ways. In the cut-throat business world, why not give yourself every possible advantage. It could open more doors than you thought.
