Creative Business Writing

Course Overview

An organisation promotes itself in many different ways. News letters, press releases, invitations, small mail shots, leaflets, posters and a variety of PR exercises, unless handled by the experts, usually fall to managers, secretaries and support staff to create and distribute. This is often a daunting task for those who have little or no experience, can produce an unsuccessful end result and, in the worst case scenario, can cause embarrassment for the organisation.

This workshop concentrates on specific creative business writing needs of participants. It provides review and feedback of materials participants bring with them, and gives basic guidelines for developing effectiveness..

Audience

Everyone who is required to produce or contribute to formal and informal promotional written material for their organisation or department, but who have little or no experience.

Although the use of language which 'sells' your message is included in the course, it does not cover general rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling.

Skills Gained

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• prepare their promotions in a structured way
• select from and use a variety of design and distribution tools
• assess the success of their promotions

Course Outline

Introduction

• different types of promotion, formal/informal
• why promotions fail to achieve their objective
• using resources usually available in the office
• identifying useful sources of information/ideas

STEP 1 - Deciding the essentials

• what is the promotion intended to achieve?
• image - what impression does it need to give?
• audience - who is going to see it, who are you attempting to influence?
• the best way of conveying the message
• circulation - what is the best way of distributing your message to the audience?
• cost - how much do you have to spend?
• whose contribution or help do you need?
• deadline - by when does it need to be ready?

STEP 2 - Design and preparation

• being creative, generating ideas and adapting the promotion design of others
• writing the message and including visuals
• arranging information to produce a balanced page
• from mock-up to finished design
• testing and approval

STEP 3 - Distribution

• basic principles of 'marketing' your promotion
• utilising your company's website
• following-up your promotion - monitoring effectiveness