Strong business communication skills are imperative for business leaders and their teams. Internally, effective business communication boosts productivity and increases employee satisfaction. Externally, better communication skills heighten customer satisfaction, open up new business deals, and improve your bottom line. Understanding how and when to use different types of business writing styles is a key part of helping teams become experts at business communication in any context. 

In this post, we’ll review four business writing styles and outline five steps business leaders can take to up-level business communication across the workforce. We’ll also explore how businesses are using AI to save time and maintain consistent business writing standards across touchpoints. Let’s dive in!

Why Is Business Writing Important?

Knowledge workers spend nearly half their workweek—an average of 19 hours—on written communication. Business writing includes memos and press releases, technical writing and formal business documents, transactional emails, customer interactions, marketing messages, LinkedIn posts, and all the back and forth on Slack and other internal communication channels.

No matter if you’re communicating in real time or asynchronously to direct reports or to customers, or if you’re writing ad copy that will be seen by millions, business writing is how work gets done. It affects almost every aspect of our work and work lives. It’s how we move work forward, collaborate, achieve business goals, and maintain positive workplace relationships. How successful we are at any of these essential business practices is directly impacted by our ability to write and communicate effectively. That’s why it’s so important for business leaders to invest in effective business writing skills for themselves and their teams. 

Let’s dive into the four key business writing styles that you might see in company-related communications.

Four Key Business Writing Styles 

Different writing styles have distinct characteristics based on audience, format, and intent. Good writing starts with considering who will read it, their needs, what you want them to do, and what type of writing is most likely to achieve those goals.

Helping employees understand when to use each writing style and how to employ it is a great starting point for improving business writing enterprise-wide. 

Informational business writing

Informational business writing provides readers with valuable knowledge and insight. You should use informational writing to convey information and position your brand as a voice of authority.

When to use an informational writing style: 

• Business reports, such as financial reports or quarterly reviews
• Presentations to the board or other stakeholders
• White papers, webinars, and other educational materials 
• Product information pages and FAQs
• Employee handbooks

Tips for writing informational pieces:

• Provide enough context for your audience’s level of expertise.
• Organize your information thoughtfully with clear headings.
• Avoid opinions; stick to the facts.
• Include only relevant information.
• Use a clear, concise writing style and simple sentence structure.

Instructional business writing

Instructional business writing is similar to informational writing because both help the reader learn something. The difference is the end goal. Instructional writing teaches the reader how to do something. For example, you would use an instructional writing style to let customers know how to use one of your products or how to troubleshoot common issues.

When to use an instructional writing style: 

• Customer-facing how-to articles and documents such as user manuals, onboarding instructions, and support text
• In response to customer support questions
• Knowledge libraries for customer service
• Internal resources for professional development, such as training materials
• HR communications, such as performance improvement plans

Tips for writing instructional pieces:

• Keep your audience’s level of expertise in mind.
• Break your instructions down into clear, simple steps.
• Include solutions for commonly encountered problems.
• Let your audience know where to go if they need more help.

Persuasive business writing

The persuasive business writing style aims to inspire your audience to make a decision or take a specific action, such as to buy a product or make an investment. Persuasive writing may overlap with other writing styles but is distinguished by its intent. Persuasive writing appeals to readers’ emotions or curiosity to coax them into taking an action that supports your business goals.

When to use a persuasive writing style:

• Business proposals, in which the person you are hoping to convince is a colleague
• Sales emails and other individual marketing communications in which you are hoping to convert a prospective customer or client
• Content marketing copy, product copy, and other marketing materials that target a broader audience of potential buyers or clients

Tips for writing persuasive pieces:

• Make sure it’s personalized: Use your intended audience’s priorities to shape your argument.
• Support every claim with evidence.
• Be efficient: Cut any content that does not support your argument.
• Get creative and original—the most persuasive arguments are the ones that shed light on a different or new point of view.
• Write in active voice and try to avoid passive voice or third person.

Conversational business writing

A conversational writing style is primarily for internal use, but it can be strategically used across external communications to provide a friendly, human touch to more traditional, transactional business writing. For example, a conversational tone can make a newsletter or other business letters more engaging or may be part of your brand style guidelines.

Conversational writing is less formal than other styles of writing. It channels a bit of the writer’s own writing style or your brand’s personality to better connect with the reader.

When to use a conversational writing style:

• Informal internal emails to colleagues
• When delivering invoices or contracts
• To make transactional information or checkout sequences more engaging
• Anytime you want a warmer communication style

Tips for writing conversational and transactional writing:

• Maintain a polite, approachable tone.
• Match your tone to your level of familiarity with the recipient.
• Beware of being overly informal.
• Respect your audience’s time: Keep your message as concise as possible.
• Be especially sensitive when conveying bad news.

5 Steps to Cultivate Better Business Writers

Helping teams develop effective writing skills across all writing styles is critical to business success. Business leaders often believe their company communicates better than it actually does. Grammarly found that 87% of business leaders perceive their organization’s communication as “highly effective,” compared to 63% of knowledge workers who do—a 24-percentage-point gap.

It can be hard to pinpoint what effective communication looks like and to achieve it consistently when employees have varying educational backgrounds, learning styles, English language proficiencies, and degrees of AI literacy. 

These five steps can help overcome these challenges and empower everyone in your workforce to become a better business writer.

1. Establish clear communication guidelines: Develop and communicate clear policies and guidelines for communication within your company. These can be captured in a brand style guide and set up in AI-powered writing assistants like Grammarly to be readily available across the business. 
2. Provide training, development, and resources: Offer training programs, workshops, and tools that facilitate effective communication and help to upskill employees. 
3. Offer the right communication channels: Provide a variety of communication channels and platforms to accommodate different preferences and needs and facilitate collaboration. Invest in tools that improve where teams communicate, but also look for tools that will enhance how they communicate across channels.
4. Invest in a unified communication layer: Too many companies are investing in tools that help them communicate more frequently rather than more effectively and consistently. An AI-powered communication assistant helps enhance communication no matter where your employees work.
5. Evaluate and adapt: Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of communication efforts, measure your tech stack’s ROI, and solicit employee feedback to identify areas for improvement so you can continuously improve communication and adapt different styles to align with business goals. 

The Role of AI in Business Writing

AI technology is a valuable tool for improving writing enterprise-wide. Enterprise-grade AI writing assistants like Grammarly are audience-, organization-, and task-aware, so they consider your style guidelines and work context when making suggestions. Employees with varying levels of writing ability get the support they need to write confidently, producing more effective business writing, faster. The best writing assistants integrate with the tools that teams already use, so they are available at the point of communication, whether you’re crafting an email or writing a business report. 

Building a workforce of better writers is more achievable than you might think. By communicating good business writing practices and leveraging AI-powered communication assistants, business leaders can rapidly improve how their team communicates internally and with customers.

 

Ready to boost effective communication across your enterprise? Download The Ultimate Guide to Business Communication to learn more about the five steps outlined in this post. You’ll also get a detailed breakdown of each dimension of business communication and learn how to overcome communication barriers.