Intermediate/Advanced Business Writing Course

An affordable way to become a better business communicator

You get access to a collection of online courses, mini courses and presentations in business communication, under a low cost, month-by-month plan. You have access to all of the courses from the moment you sign up. You can cancel when you want.

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This course bundle helps you improve your written communication skills.

image of tablet, keyboard and paper

You get access to a collection of online courses, modules, and presentations in business writing communication, under a low cost, month-by-month plan. You have access to all of the courses from the moment you sign up. You can cancel when you want.

What's in the course

Each course is self-contained, so you can to choose to take just a single course, if you wish. It contains:
    1. Report writing
      • Reports play an important part in the lives of many business people. They can also take up a lot of time to create.Your reports also need to be good. They need to be clear and credible. Your ability to communicate complex technical information can have an impact on how effective you are in your job. Cherryleaf’s report writing courses and workshops teach people how to write clear and effective reports.
    2. Technical copywriting training course
      • Cherryleaf’s online technical copywriting training course teaches you how to write clear and effective marketing copy, in a straightforward and efficient way. Let us share with you the best practices we’ve developed for writing copy for software and other technical products.
    3. Writing a presentation
      • This is an audio presentation on the different ways to structure a conference presentation.

More information

What will I learn?

Report writing

  • How to write clearly, even if writing doesn’t come naturally
  • Confidence in the work you produce
  • How to save time and write in an efficient way
  • How to analyse your audience and tailor the content to their specific needs
  • How to use best practice in structuring your document

Introduction

  • Why do we need to create reports?
  • Types of reports and their intended aims
  • What are the characteristics of good reports?

Identifying the audience

  • Who is our audience?
    • In what situation will they be reading this?
    • What exactly do they need to know?
    • What is the necessary content and the less-important information
  • How do we meet the needs of more than one audience?
    • The technical reader
    • The decision maker

Planning the document and organising your thoughts

  • Establishing the purpose and scope of our document
  • Outlining and planning the document
    • Getting started
    • Deciding what to include or leave out of your document
  • How to structure and organise the content in a logical and coherent order
    • Developing a formal hierarchy
  • Knowing where to place the most important information, so you focus your readers’ attention on those details
  • Planning different types of reports

Creating skeleton documents

    • Comparisons
    • Investigations
    • Evaluations
    • Recommendations
    • Feasibility assessments

How to present different types of information

  • Page layout and how this can help users find what they are looking for

Advice on English grammar

  • Using plain English – what do we mean by this?
  • Getting to the point and being concise
  • Grammar basics

Presenting data and using images

  • Identify the best type of visual format for your data
  • Telling a story with data
  • Different ways to present data (data visualization)
  • Types of graphs
  • Attention theories
  • Gestalt
  • Colour theories
  • Simplifying information

Reviewing and editing

  • Reviewing and editing

Copywriting

Overview

Getting started

  • What makes a good copywriter?
  • What are your skills?

What is copywriting?

Overview of modern marketing

  • The customer acquisition process
    • Push and Pull marketing
    • The free item of value
  • GDPR requirements
  • How we buy items is changing
  • The 5 steps in IBM’s Outside-In marketing
  • Journey mapping

How people buy

  • Their emotional journey

Copywriting in an Attention Economy

  • The Attention Economy
    • Dominating a niche
    • What does this mean for your copywriting?
  • The four stages of business maturity

What makes you different?

  • How to differentiate yourself

Overview of market research

  • Researching the audience
  • Discovering the users’ vocabulary
  • Thinking in keywords
  • Listening systems and analytics
  • Useful software tools

A framework for copywriting

  • Ground rules
  • Cherryleaf’s 7 point framework for technical copywriting
  • Topics you should include in your content. This includes:
    • The 3 main types of pain
    • Your story – how to structure it
    • Your system or solution – how to describe it
    • The 7 types of proof
    • The Call to Action

Planning and writing multiple page copy

  • Long letters and sideways selling
  • Personalising the message and solution
  • White papers
  • Squeeze pages (lead pages/lead magnets)

Writing techniques

  • Reader focused writing
  • Power words, Up words, Action words
  • Clear English
  • Voice and tone
  • The 9 emotional motivational factors
  • Memorable copy – telling sticky stories
  • Elements of eloquence
  • Words to avoid
  • Advice on grammar
  • Headline writing
  • Images
  • Usability

Copy examples

  • The swipe file

The content brief

  • Briefing colleagues or freelancers

Measuring your performance

  • Analysing and critiquing copy
  • Measuring and testing

Planning

  • Timing messages to predictable events

Troubleshooting

  • Tools and techniques to use

Summary

  • Checklists you can use

Writing a presentation

An audio presentation on different possible presentation structures:

  • The recipe
  • The map
  • The “Lessons I learnt”
  • Nancy Duarte format – how it is, how it will be (politicians)
  • The redemption story – failed but recovered
  • “You Are Not Alone”
  • Nine tips
  • The list – skill 1, skill 2
  • The rhetorical structure
  • Overview, scope and definitions, why this is important, your argument, evidence, deal with objections, next point, summary, conclusion
  • Create interest, main point, supporting evidence, summary
  • The analogy – X does this, what if we see what we do as x
  • The hero’s journey – damsel in distress, knight in shining armour, scary dragon
  • Round up of experts – comments from others
  • Microsoft Sway templates for presentation

Your questions answered

  • The course modules are delivered over the Web in small, manageable video presentations. You can pause the videos at any time and return to the course at times that suit you.
  • You can download the course handouts.
  • You have the option of taking the course on an iPhone or iPad, using the MyTeachable app in the Apple App Store.
  • The courses are separate, self-contained courses.
  • You will have access to the entire package (all courses and modules) from the moment you subscribe. It’s similar to the way Netflix works.
  • If you are only interested in one or just a few courses, you can just take those. Just remember to unenrol/cancel your subscription when you’ve completed the courses you want to take.
  • You can cancel your subscription when you want. Again, it’s similar to the way Netflix works.
  • The courses are is hosted and sold by via the Teachable platform. From a VAT perspective, they are the “Merchant of Record”, and receipts contain their VAT number

Contact us

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