It’s taken me a while to get here but I’m starting to believe that almost everything in life comes down to marketing and almost everything in marketing comes down to how well we use language.

Whether we’re parenting a twelve-year-old or selling socks, we choose a goal, select a delivery method and create some urgency around motivating the response we want. Although the process is simple, the approach is an art form. Few of us have unlimited resources and choices must be made: do we launch an internet marketing campaign or issue a special edition of the employee newsletter? Tweak the company blog or stage an event? Maybe it’s time to beef up our podcasting presence?

Important choices must be made and results matter.

Strategic language, gainfully employed, is always crucial to the process: good writing might fly under the radar but bad writing never does and your target employee, group member or supporter won’t hang around if they’re bored or confused. Not only that, time has become such a precious commodity these days that if the language or message is unclear, your intended audience will tune out and get on to more urgent issues. When that happens, you miss out on the attention you’d like to receive and, worse still, you’re unlikely to meet your objectives.

Shall we talk about the dollars and cents as well? Promotion can be costly in terms of employee time invested and hard dollars spent and there is a natural tendency for staff to become less connected to the bottom line as an organization expands. This is not necessarily willful contempt – but we’re sometimes a little more motivated to protect someone else’s money when we share an occasional coffee break with them.

Every dime spent on communication in a large corporation has every bit as much value as a dime spent in a start-up. Looking after those dimes, however, is just a little bit more difficult.

So where does that all leave us?

Experienced communicators know that all communications pieces should have specific goals and should target specific audiences. They need to be well-organized and written in clean, grammatically correct language and contain appropriate content delivered in an equally appropriate writing style. There can be a lot of nuances in corporate communications and it can be nerve-wracking for communications managers to ensure the job is handled properly. Internal staff are often pressed to the limit of over-full work days and hiring a freelancer is not always a guarantee of success.

I sure sympathize and it seems to me the most effective writers I know are those of us who look at our writing not just as a means of delivering a message but also as an important method of actually promoting the product or service we’re writing about as well. Good writing is just the beginning – but the right words work wonders.

Optimize that website? Of course! But for pity’s sake make your sentences sing so once you’re basking in all that attention your message is credible and convincing – so you will be too.

If hiring a professional copywriter isn’t in the plans, learn as much as you can about writing well or designate someone within your organization to take over the important task of getting your message out effectively. The right words work!

Author Bio: Susan Crossman is a career writer who promotes excellence in communication through writing with clarity. Her freelance writing services include web content,newsletters,reports,speeches and other custom documentation. For more details, please visit her website at http://www.crossmancommunications.com

Category: Writing
Keywords: Copywriter,writing for corporate communications,speech writing,ghost writing,issues in communication