The global business landscape is moving towards digital. Companies that were previously opening brick and mortar stores are now focused on online operation in pursuit of serving a broader audience and occupying a share in the global marketplace.
However, this transition comes with its challenges. The online space is becoming more competitive with the penetration of both SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and large-scale businesses. It means that survival will only be possible with best practices that give your business an edge over others.
In simpler terms, you need to build your online presence with top-tier SEO and marketing strategies that help Google find and put you in reach of your potential audience.
Amplifying online businesses is an umbrella that constitutes a broad range of activities. This article will focus on one particular aspect of the content sphere – the elimination of outdated phrases in business writing.
What is Business Writing?
Content is key when it comes to digital marketing. It is the primary source of obtaining traffic and converting leads. It is also the core parameter upon which leading search engines like Google index your online business.
Business writing is a part of the content that specifically caters to your business correspondence and the information you place on the internet about your company and its offerings. The content used for businesses is mainly professional and often drives converting authentic leads into potential sales. To ensure that, business writing needs to be concise, precise, and valuable for the reader.
How Is It Different?
There are two key types of writing – business and academic. Academic writing is more formal with descriptive sentences, whereas its business variant is focused primarily on communication. Information about your business, its product line, a how-to guide to opt for your services, and a call-to-action (CTA)-based copy, everything in business writing ensures communication to the reader with minimal effort.
Business writing services also differ because each business has its vibe and communication. While a makeup brand could be informal in writing, a financial services company would be detailed and formal.
What does a business writer do?
Business writers write about businesses topics such as finance, the stock market, and the economy. They share relevant information with their readers and offer advice based on financial trends and market observations using their knowledge and network.
Outdated Phrases and Modern Practices
In your business writing, the last thing you need is opting for phrases that users don’t longer relate to. These phrases give off an unprofessional impression to the reader, which is why eliminating them from your business writing is of critical importance.
Unsure About the Obsolete Phrases Today?
We have listed eight of the most common phrases that have lost their essence in business writing. If you want to ensure top-tier writing that speaks to your potential customers, make sure you remove the following eight phrases from your content.
Business Correspondence
This mainly refers to official business communication like memos, emails, business-to-businesses correspondence, and more.
#1 Please Find Enclosed
Postal services are long gone (although a very small group would disagree). You would write “please find enclosed” followed by whatever document you have inserted in the envelope. The same does not go for businesses emails.
You ‘attach’ a document in online businesses correspondence mails. It is why you write “please find attached” or “PFA” in emails today. Conveying a message through this phrase is a common and professional way. However, you may also use other variants to replace “enclosed” with “attached.”
#2 Yours Very Truly
Another common part of the business correspondence is finishing emails with “yours truly” or “yours sincerely”. This practice was introduced in offline mailing methods, but it is already outdated.
Since the offline correspondence may consider outdated, so are its phrases. This means that you don’t have to write “Yours truly” to finish your official online correspondence. You can use words like “sincerely” or “regards,” followed by your official name and designation to end business correspondences appropriately today.
#3 My Bad
The usage of phrases like “my bad” is outright unprofessional. The same goes for its usage in any content you write for your businesses online. The early 2000s popularized this phrase, commonly used until about a decade ago.
You can replace this word by simply being more formal about it, using phrases like “I’m sorry” or “I apologize for the inconvenience”. These new phrases give off a more professional vibe casting a decent impression on your potential prospects.
#4 I Am Forwarding
The context of the phrase “I am forwarding” has changed. Businesspeople no longer send an attachment stating “‘I am forwarding’ this document to you” unless they forward someone else’s email.
The phrase “I am sending” is used in modern business communication if you send an email from your end. This is simple to understand and removes the ambiguity of whether the person is sending a document from his end or forwarding it from someone else’s email.
Business Writing
Unlike business correspondence, businesses writing is the content you produce online to amass traffic and leads through your website. This area of business writing also has a few phrases that are becoming obsolete over time. Here are a few of them you should eliminate from your content right away.
#5 To Begin With
As mentioned previously in this article, business writing is supposed to be formal. A good piece of businesses writing will not begin with a preposition, rather from a fact, a question, or a query that builds curiosity within the reader.
If you are writing content for your businesses, avoid using prepositions at the beginning of the sentence, and replace them with a compelling sentence, convincing the reader to continue reading.
#6 Last but Not Least
This phrase is no longer an opted-for way to conclude a piece of business writing. “Last but not the least” is inclined more towards debates. People are replacing such phrases with “In a nutshell” or a simple “in conclusion” in modern businesses writing.
Using an alternative phrase will give your writing a professional yet communicative touch, which sets well with most modern readers.
#7 What Is More
Contemporary business writing is about simplicity and accuracy. You don’t want your readers to jumble up in words; Rather, they can easily understand your content and respond to a CTA. Starting a sentence with “what is more” decreases its readability by complicating the sentence structure.
Use shorter, more concise words instead like “in addition,” “moreover,” or “furthermore,” etc. They enable you to communicate that you are adding to the previously mentioned point.
#8 At Your Earliest Convenience
This is a common problem with CTAs in business writing. Asking a reader to do something at their earliest convenience loses your authority, which can subconsciously leave a negative impact in the mind of a reader – it may even lose the appeal of your CTA.
While writing CTAs in business writing, you can maintain your authority by eliminating this phrase or replacing it with a call-to-action that drives readers to take action instead of shunning them away.
Professional Business Writing Services
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