Chapter 2 Planning Business Messages

In Chapter two you are introduced to the 3x3 writing process, where the authors suggest a focus on prewriting, drafting and revising a message with 50% of the suggested effort on revising. When you prewrite, you can focus on determining the purpose of your message, what you are looking for from your audience (to do, think, believe) and who your audience consists of. Whereas, when you draft your message you begin the data collection process, based on what you identified in step one. Depending on the nature of your message you can do varying degrees of research and gather information related to your topic and organize your thoughts with an outline or by some other method and begin to write your message. Finally, when you are revising your message, you will dedicate more time to spelling, grammar, clarity, concision, design factors, etc.

Main Idea

When planning your message, you can consider the main idea or topic of your message. Typically, you will want to create and likely update (throughout the writing process) a main idea sentence. A main idea sentence is typically the most specific summative and/or directive statement that the whole message supports, that factors in both the author and audience needs and/or interests.

You Attitude

When adapting to your audience you want to consider and factor in audience benefits related to your message which may also include an emphasis on use of second-person pronouns, such as you, your, instead of first-person pronouns. You wouldnt necessarily eliminate all use of first-person pronouns such as I/we, us, our. However, you will likely limit your use of them in professional business messages.

Do you follow a method when developing a professional message? What challenges, if any, have you faced when developing a business message? What tips do you have?