1. Sweat the detail on your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn summaries are often bulging with buzzwords. Last year, the five most commonly used words on LinkedIn profiles were strategic, responsible, creative, effective and expert. If these are sounding familiar, it's time to update yours.
Exercise: Work out what your profile buzzwords are, and cut them. Then replace each word with an anecdote or example that makes the same point. Something that tells me why you're good at your job. Something that shows me how you think. Something that lets the real you shine through and gives me a reason to notice you.
2. Burn the fat on your emails
If you send emails out and get tumbleweed back, your messages aren't working hard enough. Chances are they're just too long, and leave your reader searching for the point.
It's time to become a lean, mean email machine.
Exercise: Put yourself in the shoes of a smartphone email-checker whenever you write. Before you start, jot down all the things your reader really needs to know or do. Then put those in the first couple of lines. Or, better still, in the subject line. Don't make your reader scroll down to find anything important.
And if you don't want to wade through long emails in reply, invite people to VSRE. The very short reply expected movement is saving time for emailers everywhere.
3. Give yourself a grammar workout
Are you still grappling with your semicolons or wondering what an Oxford comma's actually for? Then make 2014 the year you beat your grammar gremlins for good.
Exercise: Next time you're stuck on something grammatical, stop. And look up the rule. Straight away. These days there are lots of places you can go for straightforward help that won't make you feel like you're back at school. The Writer's style guide might be a good place to start.
4. Pump up your presentations
PowerPoints filled with bar graphs and statistics don't inspire us. Stories do. That's why the best business leaders use personal anecdotes to bring their ideas to life.
Whether you're presenting to the board, talking to customers or motivating your team, you can use a good story to your advantage, too.
Exercise: First, decide what kind of story you want to tell. Maybe it's a love story, an underdog story, or an unexpected trial against adversity. Then give it a simple structure. The "somebody ... wants ... but ... so… " framework could help you get to the heart of the problem. And show the solution in a memorable way.
5. Tone up your business language
Are your company's words more of an assortment than that leftover box of festive chocolates? Then it's time to get consistent.
Exercise: Pick three pieces of your company's writing at random. Now cover up your logo and read them carefully. Would you recognise them as coming from the same company?
If the answer's "no", your brand language or tone of voice guidelines could need updating.
This is about more than deciding how you're going to format bullet points or capitalise headlines. For your tone to be authentic it needs to reflect what your company does, why you do it and what really matters to your audience. (Just jumping on Innocent's chatty bandwagon won't cut it. It works brilliantly for them, but we can't all sell squashed fruit for a living.)
By Hannah Moffatt, language trainer at The Writer.
The Guardian's Changing Media Summit takes place on 18 and 19 March 2014 – click here to find out more.
