1. Pertemuan 5 Writing Business Messages (1)
Matakuliah : J0012/ Komunikasi Bisnis I
Tahun : 2008
Pertemuan 5 Writing Business Messages (1)

2. Three-Step Writing Process
Analyze Situation
Gather Information
Select Medium
Get Organized
Revise
Produce
Proofread
Distribute
Adapt to
the Audience
Compose
the Message
Chances are you will compose numerous routine and positive messages during the typical business day. In fact, most of a typical employee’s communication is about routine matters: orders, information, company policies, claims, credit, employees, products, operations, and so on. Such messages are rarely long or complex. Even so, to produce the best messages possible, you’ll want to apply the three-step writing process:
Even though planning routine and positive messages may take only a few minutes, the four tasks of planning still apply. First, analyze the situation, making sure that your purpose is clear and that you know enough about your audience to craft a successful message. Second, gather whatever information your audience needs to know. Third, select the right medium for the message and the audience. Both routine and positive messages are often sent via and instant messaging, but printed memos and letters are still common. Fourth, organize your information effectively.
Start the writing phase by adapting your approach to your audience. Be sensitive to your audience’s needs by maintaining a “you” attitude, being polite, emphasizing the positive, and using bias-free language. To strengthen your relationship with your audience, establish your credibility and project your company’s image. Also, even though your tone is usually conversational, some messages may need to be more formal than others. You’ll want to use plain English and make your writing as active as possible.
No matter how brief or straightforward your message, completing the message properly is important. Therefore, give yourself plenty of time to revise, produce, proofread, and distribute it. First, revise your message by evaluating content and organization to make sure you’ve said what you want to in the order you want to say it. Review your message’s readability. Edit and rewrite to make it concise and clear. Second, design your document to suit your purpose and your audience. Next, proofread the final version of your message, looking for typos, errors in spelling and mechanics, alignment problems, poor print quality, and so on. Finally, choose a distribution method that balances cost, convenience, time, security, and privacy.
Planning
Writing
Completing
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3. Analyze the Situation Define Your Purpose Profile Your Audience
A successful message starts with a clear purpose that connects the sender’s needs with the audience’s needs. Identifying your purpose and your audience is usually a straightforward task for simple, routine messages; however, this task can be more demanding in more intricate situations. If you launch directly into writing without clarifying both your purpose and your audience, you’ll waste time and energy, and you’ll probably generate a less-effective message.
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4. Define Your Purpose General Specific Inform Persuade Collaborate
Outcomes
Timing and Realism
Acceptability
When planning, think about your purpose first. For a business message to be effective, its purpose and its audience must complement each other.
All business messages have a general purpose: to inform, to persuade, or to collaborate with your audience. This overall purpose determines both the amount of audience participation you need and the amount of control you have over your message.
Within the scope of its general purpose, each message also has a specific purpose, which identifies what you hope to accomplish with your message and what your audience should do or think after receiving your message. State your specific purpose as precisely as possible, even identifying which audience members should respond, how they should respond, and when.
Once you have defined your specific purpose, consider whether your purpose is worth pursuing at this time. To help you decide whether to proceed, ask yourself four questions:
Will anything change as a result of your message? 
Is your purpose realistic? 
Is the time right? 
Is your purpose acceptable to your organization?  
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5. Profile Your Audience Primary Members Size and location Composition
Knowledge Level
Expectations
Probable Reaction
The more you know about your audience, their needs, and their expectations, the more effectively you’ll be able to communicate with them.
Identify the primary audience. If you can reach the decision makers or opinion molders in your audience, other audience members will fall in line.
Determine the size of your audience. A report for wide distribution requires a more formal style, organization, and format than one directed to three or four people in your department.
Determine the composition of the audience. Look for common denominators that tie audience members together across differences in culture, education, status, or attitude. Include evidence that touches on everyone’s area of interest.
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6. Gather Information Informal Methods Viewpoints of Others Company
Documents
and Reports
Supervisors,
Colleagues,
and Customers
Audience
Input
Before you compose your message, you’ll need to gather some information. When writing long, formal reports, you’ll conduct formal research. Other kinds of business messages, require less formal information gathering.
Whether you’re preparing for an informational interview with your supervisor, writing an message to a close colleague, or gathering opinions for an article to appear in your organization’s monthly newsletter, you can gather information to satisfy your audience’s needs by using these informal methods:
Considering others’ viewpoints. Consider what they might be thinking, feeling, or planning.
Reading reports and other company documents. Consider company annual reports, financial statements, news releases, memos, marketing reports, and customer surveys for helpful information.
Chatting with supervisors, colleagues, or customers. Fellow workers and customers may have the information you need, or they may know what your audience will be interested in.
Asking your audience for input. If you’re unsure of what audience members need from your message, ask them—whether through casual conversations, informal surveys, or unofficial interviews.
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7. Accurate Ethical Pertinent
Provide Information
Accurate
Ethical
Pertinent
In many cases your audience’s information needs are readily apparent; for example, a consumer may send you a letter asking a specific question. In other cases, your audience may not be particularly good at telling you what’s needed. Asking a question or two forces the person to think through the request and define more precisely what is required. Also, try to think of information needs that your audience may not even be aware of.
Once you’ve defined your audience’s information needs, be sure you satisfy those needs completely. In addition to delivering the right quantity of required information, you are responsible for verifying the quality of that information. Ask yourself these three questions:
Is the information accurate? Inaccuracies can cause a host of problems, from embarrassment and lost productivity to serious safety and legal issues.
Is the information ethical? By working hard to ensure the accuracy of the information you gather, you’ll also avoid many ethical problems in your messages.
Is the information pertinent? Remember that some points will be more important to your audience than others.
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8. Selecting the Medium Oral Media Written Media Visual Media
Electronic Media
Written Media
Selecting the best medium for your message can make the difference between effective and ineffective communication. A medium is the form through which you choose to communicate your message. You may choose to talk with someone face to face, post to a blog, send an , or create a webcast—and there are many other media from which to choose.
In fact, categorizing media has become harder in recent years with the advent of so many options that include multimedia formats. For the sake of discussion, you can divide media into oral, written, visual, and electronic (which often combines several media types).
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9. Oral Communication Conversations Interviews Speeches Presentations
Meetings
Primary oral media include face-to-face conversations, interviews, speeches, and in-person presentations and meetings. By giving communicators the ability to see, hear, and react to each other, traditional oral media are useful for encouraging people to ask questions, make comments, and work together to reach a consensus or decision.
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10. Advantages Disadvantages
Analysis of Oral Media
Advantages
Disadvantages
Immediate feedback
Ease of interaction
Rich non-verbal cues
Emotional content
Limited participation
May not be permanent
Reduced control
No editing or revision
Primary oral communication media include face-to-face conversation, telephone calls, speeches, presentations, and meetings. Being able to see, hear, and react to each other can benefit communicators, giving oral media several advantages:
They provide immediate feedback.
They allow a certain ease of interaction.
They involve rich nonverbal cues (both physical gestures and vocal inflections).
They help you express the emotion behind your message.
Traditional oral media are useful for getting people to ask questions, make comments, and work together to reach a consensus or decision. However, if you don’t want or need all that interaction, then oral media can have several disadvantages:
They restrict participation to those physically present.
Unless recorded, they provide no permanent, verifiable record of the communication.
They can reduce the communicator’s control over the message, if people interrupt or ask unanticipated questions.
They often rule out the chance to revise or edit your spoken words.
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11. Written Communication
Reports
Proposals
Letters
Memos
Written messages take many forms, from traditional memos to glossy reports that rival magazines in production quality.
Memos are used for the routine, day-to-day exchange of information within an organization. Because of their open construction and informal method of delivery (such as being placed in baskets), memos are less private than letters.
Letters are written messages sent to recipients outside the organization, so in addition to conveying a particular message, they perform an important public relations function in fostering good working relationships with customers, suppliers, and others.
Reports and proposals are usually longer than memos and letters, although both can be created in memo or letter format. These documents come in a variety of lengths, ranging from a few pages to several hundred, and are usually fairly formal in tone.
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12. Analysis of Written Media
Advantages
Disadvantages
Planning and control
Permanent record
Audience reach
Minimal distortion
Delayed feedback
Few nonverbal cues
Distribution issues
Preparation time
Written media have a number of advantages:
They allow you to plan and control your message.
They offer a permanent, verifiable record.
They help you reach an audience that is geographically dispersed.
They minimize the distortion that can accompany oral messages.
Disadvantages of written media include the following:
Many are not conducive to speedy feedback.
They lack the rich nonverbal cues provided by oral media.
They often take more time and more resources to create and distribute.
Elaborate printed documents can require special skills in preparation and production.
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13. Visual Communication Charts Graphs Diagrams
Although you probably won’t work with many messages that are purely visual (with no text), the importance of visual elements in business communication continues to grow. Traditional business messages rely primarily on text, with occasional support from graphical elements such as charts, graphs, or diagrams to help illustrate points discussed in the text. However, many business communicators are discovering the power of messages in which the visual element is dominant and supported by small amounts of text. For the purposes of this discussion, you can think of visual media as any formats in which one or more visual elements play a central role in conveying the message content.
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14. Analysis of Visual Media
Advantages
Disadvantages
Ease communication
Reduce complexity
Expedite understanding
Assist the audience
Artistic skills
Preparation time
Technical requirements
Transmitting and storing
The advantages of visual media include the following:
Can convey complex ideas and relationships quickly
Often less intimidating than long blocks of text
Can reduce the burden on the audience to figure out how the pieces fit
Visual media also have some disadvantages:
Can require artistic skills to design
Require some technical skills to create
Can require more time to create than an equivalent amount of text
More difficult to transmit and store than simple text messages
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15. Electronic Communication
Oral Communication
Written Communication
Visual Communication
The range of electronic media is broad and continues to grow even broader, from telephones and podcasts to blogs and wikis to and text messaging. When you want to make a powerful impression, using electronic media can increase the excitement and visual appeal with computer animation, video, and even music.
Here is a quick overview of the major electronic media now used in business:
Electronic versions of oral media include telephone calls, teleconferencing (when three or more people join the same call), voic messages, and audio recordings such as compact discs and podcasts.
Electronic versions of written media range from and instant messages to blogs, websites, and wikis.
Electronic versions of visual media can include electronic presentations, computer animation, and video.
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16. Analysis of Electronic Media
Advantages
Disadvantages
Delivery speed
Audience reach
Multimedia formats
Accessibility/openness
Easy to overuse
Security threats
Privacy concerns
Productivity issues
Electronic messages offer considerable advantages:
They deliver messages with great speed.
They reach audiences physically separated from you.
They reach a dispersed audience personally.
They offer the persuasive power of multimedia formats.
They can increase accessibility and openness in an organization.
For all their good points, electronic media are not problem-free. Consider some of these disadvantages:
They are easy to overuse. Sending too many unnecessary messages to too many people can overload company networks and even result in lost messages or system crashes.
They can expose companies to data security threats and malicious software.
They often lack privacy. Some people are careless about screening their distribution lists; plus, any recipient can easily forward your message to someone else. In addition, and voice mail can legally be monitored by employers, and both can be subpoenaed for court cases.
They can seriously drain employee productivity. Employees can be easily distracted either by constant streams of , IM, voice mail, conference calls, and faxes or by surfing the web and visiting non-business-related websites during working hours.
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17. Choosing the Right Media
Leaner
Richer
Custom Reports, Memos,
Letters, , IM,
Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts
Standard Reports,
Webpages, Mass Media,
Posters and Signs
Telephone,
Teleconferences,
Videotapes
Face-to-Face,
Multimedia,
Virtual Reality
Selecting the best channel and medium for your message can make the difference between effective and ineffective communication. You must choose between the oral or written channel, and you must consider the media within each channel. Make sure your channel and medium match your purpose and your audience, and then tailor your message accordingly. Time and cost are also factors that will affect your choice of channel and medium.
Media richness is the value of a medium in a given communication situation. Richness is determined by a medium’s ability to convey a message via more than one informational cue, facilitate feedback, and establish personal focus.
Face-to-face communication is the richest medium because it is personal, it provides both immediate verbal and nonverbal feedback, and it conveys the emotion behind the message. Unaddressed documents, such as fliers, are the leanest media.
Choose the richest media for non-routine, complex messages; to extend and humanize your presence throughout the organization; to communicate caring to employees; and to gain employee commitment to organizational goals. Use leaner media to communicate simple, routine messages.
A Continuum of Media Richness
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18. Choosing the Right Media
Sender
Intentions
Urgency
and Cost
Audience
Preferences
Message
Formality
Media
Limitations
When choosing a medium for your message, balance your needs with your audience's needs. You certainly want to select the medium whose advantages offer you the best fit with the situation and your audience. Just as critical, however, is considering how your message is affected by important factors such as the following:
Message formality. Your choice of media governs the style and tone of your message.
Media limitations. Every medium has limitations, which must be considered.
Sender intentions. Your choice of medium influences your audience's perception of your intentions.
Urgency and cost. If your message is urgent, you'll probably use the phone or instant messaging. But don’t forget to weigh cost against speed.
Audience preferences. Make sure to consider which media your audience expects or prefers.
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19. Organizing Information Define Topic and Main Idea
General
Purpose
Specific Purpose
Topic
Main Idea
Teach customer service
department how to file
insurance claims.
To Inform
To Persuade
To Collaborate
Insurance
Claims
R&D Funding
Incentive Pay
Proper filing of claims
saves time and money.
Competitors outspend us on
research and development.
Linking wages to profits
motivates workers.
Convince managers to
increase spending on
Solicit ideas for incentive
plan that ties wages to profits.
Before you can even begin arranging the information in your message, take a moment to define your main idea. The broad subject, or topic, of every well-organized business message can be condensed to one idea, whether it’s soliciting the executive committee for a larger budget or apologizing to a client for an incident of poor customer service. Your entire message supports, explains, or demonstrates your main idea—a specific statement about the topic of your message. Your main idea may be obvious when you’re preparing a brief message with simple facts that have little emotional impact on your audience.
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20. Sequencing Messages Direct Approach Indirect Approach
(Deductive)
Indirect Approach
(Inductive)
Audience Reaction
Once you’ve defined your ideas and outlined or diagrammed the structure of your message, you’re ready to decide on the sequence you will use to present your points.
The Direct approach (deductive). The main idea (such as a recommendation, conclusion, or request) comes first, followed by the evidence. Use this approach when your audience will be neutral about your message or pleased to hear from you.
The Indirect approach (inductive). The evidence comes first, and the main idea comes later. Use this approach when your audience may be displeased about your message or may resist what you have to say.
Message Length
Message Type
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