You can complete this course solo, learning at your own pace or you can learn with a group, progressing week to week and benefitting from peer support and feedback.

Learning with a group - as you would in a classroom setting - offers the added benefit of exposing you to the writing style, tips and ideas of others. Most people find it useful.

​The next group course begins on Thursday 10th October. The course spans five sessions / weeks.

Why this course?
Business Writing Skills explores the way you write your work emails, reports, letters, complaint responses, newsletters, online content and so on, and provides you with grammar and structure best practices to produce clear, impactful writing.

Your writing speaks to your organisation’s ethos and brand. Badly written emails, web content or promotional material creates a poor impression of your company, negatively impacting the way your clients and customers view you, and potentially affecting sales or word-of-mouth.

This course shows you how to structure your written content, produce clear, dynamic sentences and convey key messages for maximum effect, as well as how to streamline your email workload by ensuring your messages are read and acted upon.

What will I learn?
The Business Writing Skills course shows you how to:

• Produce written business documents and online content with greater clarity, building confidence in your work,

• Use words and phrases persuasively to promote action,

• Write to command attention and use sentences which compel the reader to understand and act,

• Avoid some of the common issues which occur when communicating in the virtual world,

• Understand your organisation’s house style and write within its business objectives,

• Understand and use appropriate grammar, punctuation and spelling,

• Know your key messages and how to ensure you’re getting them across,

• Write persuasively, which is useful for reports or where key decisions are involved.

What skills will I develop?
Learn how to:

• Structure effective business emails and compose messages that benefit your organisation and save you time,

• Make sure your email messages get opened quickly,

• Give longer messages a logical structure,

• Differentiate between informal and formal email writing,

• Get your key messages across,

• Avoid the pitfalls of virtual communication,

• Choose an appropriate style for writing business emails,

• Work to address your reader's needs,

• Establish and build rapport with your audience,

• Deal with difficult customers to prevent problems escalating, whilst increasing goodwill.

By the end of the course we will have covered:

• business letter writing etiquette

• good complaints procedure which is the blueprint for excellent communication, including:

  • putting the reader first

  • getting the customer on side in the first paragraph

  • ending on a positive note

  • defusing difficult situations

  • delivering negative news

  • making the most of good news

• writing confidently and clearly

• structuring sentences effectively

• steering clear of letter-writing jargon

• avoiding common grammar traps

• punctuation

Who should take this course?
Business Writing Skills can be taken at your own pace.

There are five sections with marked exercises which you can charge through in a week, or you can spread the course across five weeks working Thursday to Thursday.

If you complete all sections you will receive a certificate which can form part of your organisation’s training objectives and your own personal development plan.

You can start the course as an individual at any time, but if you want to make use of our ‘virtual classroom’ you can book the next group course beginning 12th September, and join our secret Fascebook group to share tips with and learn from other participants, ask questions, or practice real life writing scenarios.

The course is ideal for:

• Anyone in a business setting who wants to hone their skills to improve their written tone of voice and write more effectively and dynamically

• Mums returning to work who want to brush up on their office writing skills

• People for whom English is not their first language

• People who feel less confident in a classroom setting with others, or don’t have time to take a day out from the office

• Bloggers or content producers seeking a more professional tone, wanting to brush up on grammar and punctuation rules or learn the foundations of persuasive writing.