If you use Twitter as a social media tool, you probably don’t think it helps your writing.  It does.   Here’s why.

When you must put a thought, sentence or paragraph into 140 characters, it forces you to remove useless words.  If you are ready to post and it shows you are over the letter limit, you have to go back, think what you can cut, then eliminate those words or letters.

Doing this, forces you to consider how you write and can over-write.  You have no other choice. 

Moving away from Twitter, keep in mind that  you can almost always find words in your professional or personal writing that don’t add to your thought or sentence.  When you edit, a good exercise is to use a character limit, similar to Twitter, and you’ll find yourself more aggressively chopping.

You don’t always need to parse your communications.   Ponderous and creative sentences and paragraphs have their place, and some issues just can’t be explained in short bursts.  But when you face a need to cut, like the 140-character limit the Twitter imposes on its users, that’s a valuable training tool to keep in mind on your other writing projects.  

Stop using the same word over and over.  Ooops, let’s amend that first sentence.  Stop using the same word frequently.  There, I feel better.

If you go back and look at your writing, often there is an over-used pet word.  For some reason it’s typed three times into a sentence.  You thought the step you took to organize your thoughts was a step in the right direction when you took the step. 

The Thesaurus was invented to stop this repetitiveness.  There is no excuse for not changing out a specific word that appears too often in your writing – business or otherwise.  Bringing the Thesaurus into play not only cleans that up, but makes what you wrote more interesting because as you insert a different word, it causes you to look at your sentences in a fresh light, unleashing your creative impulse.

So find those words you repeat.   Dial in the Thesaurus.  Find a new one.  Try it out.  Roll it around in your brain.  See if you can reconstruct your sentence.  It’s fun, and your writing benefits.  You’ll find when you take that step, that the next step isn’t the hardest step.  J

To effectively communicate, you have to get on the same page as the people to whom you deliver your message.  If your writing is outside their technical knowledge zone, you lose them. We all use phrases and terms that others don’t understand.  Minimize them in your writing, or make sure to explain them up front in a universal way that helps your readers know your meaning when you employ specific terms.

Our younger daughter often helps me with IT-related issues.  I’m a baby boomer.  I blog, tweet, use LinkedIn and Facebook regularly.  I post, put up pictures, attach videos, know how to target messages to specific audiences.  At the same time, I’m not an expert on social media, and still need to learn more.   My daughter helps me during those times.

Often, she and I are not on the same page, and she whips through her explanations before I have time to cognitively absorb (or write down on paper) what she said.  So I’m confused.  She uses terms that I don’t know.  If I ask her what she means, she goes through it so fast, that I nod my head like a dumbbell, pretending I absorbed what she said and can regurgitate it later.  But that’s not the case.

We were looking to download an MP file recently.  I couldn’t tell you what an MP file means.  Several steps had to occur to save it, then for me to post it on social media for a client.  My daughter rapidly clicked, moved and stored the file, putting it in a zip file, then hitting the “bar” icon, then storing to “downloads.”  She explained what she did, but I didn’t know all the terminology and she moved too fast.  We weren’t on the same page.

It’s important to always be aware of these types of situations in your communications.  If you speak to an audience, ask questions and read their body language to ensure they get all the complicated phrases or subject matter you talk about.  In your written communications, give simple explanations early so you can follow up with more complicated material.  Don’t assume people know your subject.

Your communication effectiveness improves when you get on the same terminology page as your audience.

Though it may sound ultra simple, polishing your writing is one of the most important parts of the process.  And it’s not hard, but it does take a commitment, and it pays off with your readership.

When you rub the desk or floor polish into the wood, and buff it out, the goal is to make is shine.  The same thing applies to all your writing, business or otherwise.

Giving your words, sentences and messages that extra effort gives your communications more oomph.  In a world with thousands of stimuli seeking your attention daily, an extra glow helps your blog, column, message to employees, press release, earnings announcement or any other business (or personal) communication stand out.  That’s what you want.

Take extra time.  Give what you wrote a second read with an eye towards changing a few words, making a sentence more active or special.  Practice by setting aside 15 minutes to write for the fun of it, or to go back over things you’ve written in the past and see how you could make those communications more interesting.

Rewrite, edit, slash, insert, bury, cut, substitute, add.  Pick one of those words and stick it into your head, and look at your most recent communication, then polish so it shines a little brighter.