The four tasks involved in planning business messages are viz. analyzing the situation, gathering information, selecting the right medium, and organizing the information. First of all the purpose of the message is to be determined, whether it is to inform, persuade or collaborate. The purpose should be worthwhile and realistic. The timing of the message should be appropriate and the primary audience to whom the message is targeted must be identified. After analyzing, the gathering of information takes place. In this step, a decision as to which type of technique whether formal or informal should be taken. All the relevant and realistic information should be collected. Next, the best medium is to be selected. The pros and cons of oral, written, visual and electronic media should be assessed. In the last step i.e. organizing the information, the main idea is to be defined along with choosing the correct approach (The Three-Step Writing Process).
The three step writing process in business messages consists of Planning, Writing and Completing. In the writing part, the first measure to be taken is to adapt to the listening capacities of the audience. The language must be sensitive and must reflect relationship skills and style. The words chosen must be strong, sentences must be effective with lucid paragraphs. The final step involves the completion of the message. In this step, the writer’s checklist must include revising, producing, proofreading and distributing the message. After following the above mentioned guidelines a business message can be successfully delivered to the target audience (Bovee, Thill, & Chatterjee, 2011).
A simple way to verify if the message received is created using the three-step writing process is to evaluate the content, style, tone and organization of the message. Whether the information is relevant, accurate and sufficient is to be analyzed. The message must be reviewed for readability. Next, the message must be checked for clarity and conciseness. The message should contain short and to the point sentences and a polite tone. It must not contain dangling modifiers and camouflaged verbs. It should not contain redundancies, unnecessary words and phrases (Guffey & Loewy, 2008).
The business messages received that comply with all of the above mentioned characteristics can be said that they have been prepared by using the three-step writing process.
References
Bovee, C. L. & Thill, J.V. & Chatterjee, A. (2011). Business Communication Today. India: Dorling Kindersely (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2008). Business Communication: Process and Product. Mason, USA: South Western Cengage Learning.
The Three-Step Writing Process. Retrieved online on Sep 16, 2012, from http://www.prenhall.com/behindthebook/0132328992/pdf/Bovee_CH03.pdf.
