Chapter 8: Writing for Business
Chapter Summary
Key Takeaways
- Memos are used to communicate a message throughout an organization – usually to a large group of people.
- Letters are generally used to communicate outside of an organization. They should be formatted a specific way.
- Businesses use social media to gain new clients, sell products, address stereotypes or misconceptions, build familiarity, and to establish themselves as experts in an area.
- Purpose and audience are important for business communications.
Activities for Further Reflection
- Look at your social media presence. Which content gets the most likes/comments/interactions? Why do you think this is?
- Choose a brand that you admire and perform the same type of analysis that we did with Special K. Write a short paragraph explaining your results.
- Choose one of the following scenarios, then write an email, memo or letter as a response. Think about what genre would be most effective, then use the models discussed in the chapter to write your response.
- Easter is coming up in a few weeks and you work for a flower shop. Many people order lilies for Easter, but these can be toxic to pets. The florist has come up with a pet-friendly Easter bouquet. He asks you to let the customers know about the dangers of lilies and suggest that they order a non-toxic Easter bouquet instead.
- You work for a non-profit that gives out scholarships to disadvantaged teenagers. You’ve already informed the winners of the scholarship by phone, but your boss wants you to send them something in writing with all of the official details and any forms that need to be filled out to claim the scholarship.
- You volunteer on your condo’s strata. The strata has approved painting the outside of the building. Between April 5-10, the residents must not open their windows and must remove anything from their balconies. You don’t have email addresses for every resident, but you do have access to their physical mailboxes.
- You recently purchased a new guitar at a local music shop. One of the shop’s employees, Maria, spent over an hour helping you make your purchase. She was very knowledgeable, and was the reason that you purchased the guitar at the small local store instead of going to a larger store with more selection. You want to let Maria’s boss know about her excellent service.
References
Bovee, C., & Thill, J. (2010). Business communication essentials: A skills-based approach to vital business English (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Guffey, M. (2008).Essentials of business communication (7th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Shea, V. (1994).Netiquette. San Francisco, CA: Albion Books.
Attribution
This chapter contains material taken from Introduction to Professional Communications is (c) 2018 by Melissa Ashman and is licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
This chapter also contains material taken from Memos, which is published on WritingCommons.org. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
