UPDATED IN OCTOBER 2016
In the United States, Thanksgiving Day takes place on Thursday, November 24. If you have U.S. customers, clients, employees, colleagues, donors, members, consultants, or friends, Thanksgiving is a good time to remember them. The national holiday is celebrated by nearly all Americans.
Why not thank your business...
I am working on business writing skills with a team that writes emails to sell their company's product. Here are the 12 essentials for sales emails I created for them. Would you add any essentials to this list?
Grab the client in the subject line and opening sentence. Create a reason...
I have written a lot about writing condolences to people who have experienced a serious loss--deaths in the family and environmental tragedies.
But recently I caught part of a KUOW radio program The Conversation, which focused on Unemployment Etiquette. I realized that messages to those who have lost a job can be...
In a communications class this week, I worked with some managers and directors who recognized their many meetings were not as productive as they should be.
Part of the problem was that their meetings did not have a stated purpose with specific outcomes. Sure, they knew they were getting together to...
The other day when I led the online course Meeting Notes Made Easy, an attendee I'll call Sheila asked how to avoid going into too much detail. Sheila worried that she usually writes a transcript, when what people need from meeting minutes are key points, decisions, and action items....
Last week I taught Meeting Notes Made Easy online. One attendee named Rhett said his biggest challenge in taking meeting minutes was facilitating the meeting and taking notes at the same time.
To Rhett and everyone else I say, "Don't work so hard!"
The meeting facilitator should not be the meeting note-taker....
Alexandra wrote to ask what to write in a follow-up email to people she meets at important meetings in Bucharest. At the meetings, she often talks to potential clients or partners for only a few minutes, and she would like to take those brief contacts to the next level.
She...
We are celebrating the fifth anniversary of Better Writing at Work, our monthly e-newsletter, or ezine. Given my five years of experience, I share these tips for creating and writing electronic newsletters. Please share your tips too.
Be sure your content is practical, something your subscribers can use. Be honest: Readers can't use an announcement...
Today I received an email from a client, Marie, whose job is being eliminated at a prestigious investment company. She wrote to say goodbye.
Because her email is an excellent example of how to say goodbye with class and to keep professional relationships strong, I asked her permission to share her email,...
Friends and colleagues who have lost their jobs need to hear from us. But it can be challenging to decide what to say, with job loss having so many sides to it: stress, opportunity, rest, disillusionment, freedom, fear, elation. Or all of the above.
Yes, it's difficult to know what to...
