Page 71 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

60 How to Write Effective Business English

CASE STUDY Richard Branson and the Virgin Group

Sir Richard Branson, the highly successful founder of the Virgin Group,
is known for his inspirational blogs. He gives valuable advice in one of
his posts as a LinkedIn Influencer, on how he manages to write and
avoid writer’s block:

What do you talk to your friends about? What was that interesting article
you read the other day? What was everyone chatting about in the office at
lunch? Could there be a blog in that? More than likely, yes.

He advises keeping it personal, as inauthenticity is easy to sniff out. If it
wasn’t really him writing on LinkedIn or posting his virgin.com blogs,
people would spot it a mile off. He loves sharing what’s happening in
his world and the latest happenings at Virgin, and can think of no better
way of doing it than in real time, online.
If we analyse his blogs, they are often very short. One blog simply
read: ‘The difference is in the difference’. That sums up his philosophy
that if you aren’t making and expressing a difference then you shouldn’t
be in business.
He then asks for readers’ comments on the business difference they
are trying to achieve. His words ‘I’d love to hear about it’ show his
interest and encourage interaction: the hallmark of successful social
media writing.
This short blog (tags: inspiration, business, quotes) achieved 11,100
shares, with a breakdown: 687 Facebook likes, 3,186 Tweets, 2,100
Google+ and 5,100 LinkedIn shares. There are also links to: ‘My Top 10
Quotes on Leadership’ and ‘My Top 10 Quotes on Failure’.
So if we analyse his writing:

1 he often uses an intriguing headline;
2 he writes simple, universal truths expressed in his easy,
conversational style, reinforced by personal brand;
3 his business messages reach out to an inclusive ‘you’;

4 there’s a call to action in an engaged style.