As planning is highly valuable in any successful venture of one’s life, it is equally an essential feature in effective message designing for business people. Written message that are not planned never get desired result rather cause miscommunication and bring loss many times for a business organization. In the view of advanced office technologies, the need for careful planning for writing message under principles of Effective communication has enhanced. As the companies are expanding globally more than locally, it is generally considered more essential to prepare the business message thoroughly.
Five Principles Of Effective Communication
• Analyze your audience
• Choose your ideas
• Collect data to support your ideas
• Organize your message
• Who are the people?
• How to Tell?
• What to Tell?
• Adjust the Message
Identify Your Purpose (Or) Determine The Objectives
The first principle of effective communication is to know the reason behind. Unless message has a clear purpose, it cannot elicit the required response. Think, if you are not clear what are you conveying then communication can be successful for you? As a company’s written communication influence the public image of the company. The objective must be determined in the writer’s mind if it is to be successfully conveyed to the mind of the readers. Whether your message is informational or persuasive as sales letters or you seeking am overt response or convert one, the things must not be vague to follow for the readers.
Analyze Your Audience
The more as a writer you know about your readers, the more you will be able to frame your message to get desired response. As a business executive you communicate with the people of different cultures and countries, you must try to have maximum knowledge of your reader’s qualities. The characteristics of the readers or audience that we should try to analyze before designing a message may be following:
Audience Expertise
how much the various receiver’s know about the topic? When written and readers possess the same degree of expertise, problems in achieving understanding would be minimum. However, as a writer we should try to judge about the professional expertise of the readers for successful communication in business life.
Hierarchical Position
is your message being directed at a subordinate or superior level? It a subordinate, that person will have a little choice about accepting the message? If a superior, how re-mailers is the superior with you and your work? We should be sensible enough to know and the feel the situation while framing message.
Audience Age
You should aware of maturity level of your audience, if you wish to make your message interesting for your receivers. Some topics are meaningful and inspiring for young people but not for aged professionals, hence we should consider the age factor.
Educational Level
Effective communicators always know about the educational level of their receivers. The writer or speaker who is easily understood is most likely to get a quick response. Designing your message using 7 C’s of communication will add more value to your message.
Occupation
language and occupation influence each other. That’s why, the knowledge of occupation of receiver will help you to convey your message to them. As long as you limit the use of jargon to the receiver that share their occupation, the process will be useful for all concerned.
Moreover, we must know the communication principles of receivers country to whom you are writing.
Choose your ideas
Always concentrate on making as many ideas as possible on the subject you are writing, only then you can edit and select the most important ideas based on objectives and audience. Generally ideas depend on the type of message and receivers. For example, the Director of Human Resources asked Pam MacDonald to report on whether their bank should become involved in providing day care for the children of employees.
She generated the following ideas:
- Effect on maternity leaves
- Recruitment
- Turnover
- Development of children
- Morale
- Productivity
Collect your data to support your ideas
You must collect sufficient data to explain and support your major ideas. All the necessary materials including facts and figures, the specific company’s policy and procedure, names, dates, broacher’s and sometimes product sample should be the part of your data collection. Insufficient data may not bring desired response from the receiver due to lack of understanding your message in the real perspective
Organize your Message
The order and organization of ideas is as important as ideas themselves. Scattered and disorganized materials may be more complex to follow for the receivers, become a cause of confusion and embarrassment for the readers. However, to draft a message is different job in different cultures. Overall, organization of message will give the final perception of sender mental filter and caliber to readers. It will definitely influence the company credibility in the public.