Letter Archives - Page 5 of 6

Does Your Cover Letter Let You Down?

Getting that competitive advantage in a crowded job market can be a challenge. One of the best tools you have outside of your Resume is a compelling Cover Letter that has fresh, engaging content that clearly outlines why you are the best fit for the role.

This is the perfect opportunity to present to the Recruiter or Hiring Manager a number of compelling reasons why you should move to the next stage of the process, an interview.

Ensure you have read and understood the role requirements and what is needed to succeed and put forward why you, meet and exceed those key requirements.

Nothing captures the attention of a Recruiter or Hiring Manager more than a well-tailored document highlighting why you, as a potential employee meet those requirements. Also, provide some specific examples in the document.

While this may take some time to complete, the investment can be worth it, regardless if you undertake the document yourself, or get a professional service provider to undertake the work for you.

Don’t leave a Recruiter or Hiring Manager to read between the lines in your Resume, put forward why you meet the requirements and what you will bring to the role – be clear on the value you will add to the business.

A couple of key things to consider:

Spelling and Grammar: check your spelling and grammar (get a trusted friend to review your document or use a resume service provider such as Resumes to you).

Content: ensure your content is fresh, exciting and not a simple copy and past of your resume content.

Format: format your document in a standard professional layout. Your cover letter is a first impression and you want to make the right impact. If it’s badly formatted, it could negatively impact your chances.

Personalise your cover letter: If you know the recruiters name, address the letter to them. Add the name and address of the company and add the position name as the reference. (personalising your cover letter will have a positive impact).

Double check: Before you hit send, make sure you have attached the correct documents, especially when sending. Sending an application for a job addressed to the wrong company or recruiter could kill your chances. It looks unprofessional, sloppy, and demonstrates lack of care or attention to detail.

Fixing an issue: If you send an application and suddenly realise that you have sent an incorrect document, don’t forget about it… contact the recruiter and inform them that you have sent the wrong document and arrange to send the correct items – you’ll be surprised how this can work for you.

There are other things to consider, based on your needs when developing a cover letter.

One of the best investments you can make is to have your cover letter reviewed and, if needed, professionally rewritten to improve your chances in a competitive and crowded market.

If you have errors or your document is poorly written, that could cost you dearly during your application process, so checking these few items could make all the difference.

Instant Sales Letter – Writing

Opinions regarding instant sales letter are divided. Whereas some prefer to slog away for hours on end composing a sales offer letter, others go in for a ready-to-use instant sales letter template. Yet others hire an experienced sales copywriter. Sales offer letter writing becomes faster if a template is used or a set of directions are followed to produce an instant sales offer letter. If the end results of both are similar, there is no harm in relying upon instant letters to promote your goods or services.

Writing instant sales letter is both user and pocket friendly. The template used requires cutting and pasting job or overwriting the information given there with information about your own company and product. Instant sales offer letter templates are an asset for the owner of a flourishing company though they contain general format that can be molded to suit all requirements. They are versatile and can be made to work for any type of business – large or small, for goods or services.

Employing a sales copywriter need not be expensive and beyond the reach of most small or budding companies and having a copywriter as a regular staff is not reasonable for most companies. In case you are not comfortable compiling a letter that will be a great click, use an instant sales letter template to keep yourself afloat among your contemporaries. These templates come with a promise to deliver what you are seeking quickly while maintaining high standards of a professional writer. Time means money and fast sales letter writing is the need of the hour.

Sales offer letter guidelines include a few attributes that make them easy to use and have a long lasting impact on the readers. Templates may be downloaded and utilized to promote your business and the product with efficiency at par with a sales letter meticulously written by an expert. It should be remembered that templates are like clay – a person can give them the form he wants. Include striking headline which actually is the corner stone for a sales offer letter of any sort. Once a reader’s senses are aroused, there is no stopping your product from becoming much in demand.

Stay attuned to bringing the benefits of the product into limelight, not describing its appearance. Avoid using an instant letter creator which encourages the use of irrelevant material. as nobody wants to read trash. Write in a conversational tone using plain, straight-forward language. This ensures that the reader does not feel challenged trying to comprehend what the letter is all about and send your sale plunging down!

Drop a broad hint for the reader to buy your product. Try not to use a template for instant sales that sounds too pushy. This may culminate in shaking off many potential customers. Leave the ultimate decision of buying your product to the reader. A letter writer can help to modify the instant sales letter created using a template or you can try your hand at it.

History of Letter Writing

Letters were extensively written to exchange messages during the 18th century in England. At that time, as there were no other means of communication like telephone and fax, people wrote innumerable letters throughout their lives to convey messages. Letter writing was, therefore, a necessary writing skill that everyone learnt and practiced.

Literary scholars had introduced a style of letter writing known as the period style. Normally, all business correspondence was in this style only. It was much different from today’s style of writing that focuses on brevity to such an extent that even word spellings are truncated. Earlier, quill pens were used to write letters. They were long pens with a feather on top. Each pen was designed to have a unique cut. It was a precious possession that people transferred to their next generation.

In those days, different types of paper were used for different letters. For example, laid paper was commonly used in formal letter writing. Moreover, letters were written following certain guidelines. For example, a letter began with the sender’s address followed by a salutation like Dear, My Dear, Dear Sir or Dear Madam. In formal letters, the year was included as a part of the date. The receiver’s name and title was also mentioned. Even the closing note was very different from that of today. Some of the examples are:

• I have the honor to be

• With best love

• Yours ever

• Your Obliged

• Very Respectful

• I am yours ever

After a letter was written, sealing wax was used to bind the letter pages. The color of the wax symbolized the nature of a message. For example, black wax signified the notification of someone’s death in a family. As there were no envelopes to enclose the letter, the name and address of the recipient was written on a sheet of paper and was folded around the letter. Later on, when envelopes and postage stamps were introduced, the value of a stamp was determined according to the number of sheets written. Therefore, it was a common practice to write small letters and fill a page completely to reduce the number of pages. Unlike today, it was the recipient who paid the postage charge.

If you want to explore the period style of writing, you can read various classics, letters, and other literary works of that era. Some of the literary works include a series of letters containing dialogues between literary characters.

The Importance of An Application Letter

A well organize application letter will trigger for you to be hired in the job you are applying. The application letter most of the time is also called as cover letter, serving as the front page of your resume. This letter, since it is being passed to the HR (Human Resource Department) or Personnel Officer of a company it is also one of the types of business letter.

We write an application letter because we wanted to know that the person the company searching for the job is the best and perfect for the position. Therefore, it is inevitable to write an application letter in applying for a job. But what is really the importance of an application letter?

In writing an application letter, it should be done with an extra-ordinary attention because this letter is not an ordinary one. It looks like you are selling yourself to the company because they will be paying you amount if you will get hired. This is why you should take considerable time in formulating your application letter for you to be bought by the buyer. That your intellectual know how is almost or exactly fitted on the vacant or available position.

In selling a product, the presentation of advertisement and other resource information about the product should be convincing and reliable so as to be bought by buyers in the market. The same with the application letter, since you are selling your self to the company and the application letter serves as the advertisement and reliable information about yourself, it should be convincing for the HR or the Personnel officer to go over your resume for further evaluation.

In addition, since this is a letter, you should be careful on your sentence structure. The simple subject and verb agreement should be followed accordingly not to mention other grammatical sentences boosting your knowledge and skills you are offering. The organization and structure should also be given attention.

Though every part of this letter is important, the employer is eying on the part where you are stating some of your experiences relevant to the company’s needs in the operation of their businesses. You should be careful in structuring this part because in here lies if they will go over your resume for further evaluation.

Before you create your own application letter, have sometime to ask some of your friends or you can surf over the internet. In here lies more information on how to make an application that could stimulate your reader and be hired for the desired position you are applying.

Letter Writing: Confrontational Letter Writing Defined

‘Confrontational letter writing’ is a distinct form of letter writing.

A confrontational letter is a letter that confronts a situation, a problem or dispute. It seeks a specific objective from the recipient that will not usually be granted without resistance.

The writer wants a certain objective and the recipient of the letter will not grant that objective unless convincingly persuaded that he should.

It is not a cheery letter exchanging pleasantries. It is starkly confrontational and directly confronts an issue and seeks to elicit from the recipient of the letter a favorable response. In most instances the recipient is not eager to provide the objective being requested.

Usually there are two basic situations where such a letter emerges:

The First Situation: An individual has received an important and serious letter from another individual, a government, a regulator/authority, a lawyer, a bank, a corporation, an institution, etc. – a letter which contains a demand of some sort.

The individual needs to effectively confront and respond to that letter. He needs a well-written persuasive letter that forcefully confronts that party with his own position and attempts to persuade that party to either moderate, post-pone or abandon the demand.

The Second Situation: An individual has a serious situation or problem and wants to confront and persuade a 3rd party – another individual, the government, regulator/authority, a lawyer, a bank, a corporation, an institution etc. to do something – to agree to his request for some sort of action or forbearance.

In order to accomplish this goal the individual needs a well-written persuasive letter that persuades the recipient to agree to his request.

These letters are confrontational letters. Letters that confront a serious problematic situation and attempts to resolve the problem exclusively through the use of letters.

To be effective this form of letter writing must usually be restricted exclusively to letter writing and not be augmented by verbal confrontation. This is because in many instances verbal confrontation gives a distinct and unfair advantage to the recipient of the letter.

‘Confrontational letter writing’ is a distinct form of letter writing and to increase the chances of success it necessarily needs to be written by a writer who is experienced in writing such letters. This is not the sort of exercise that can usually be effectively conducted by a novice or the average layman – expertise and experience is essential.

The professionals most adept at writing confrontational letters are lawyers who have had extensive experience in this type of writing. Many of the skills required to be a successful confrontational letter writer are those same skills that make for an effective court room litigator or negotiator.

While general advice can be given as to how best to write and structure confrontational letters – there is no substitute for experience. A novice confronted with an urgent need to send an effective confrontational letter should seek professional assistance.

The AIDA Principle – Sales Letter Writing Tips

For most business owners, writing sales letters are perhaps one of the hardest things to do. But for those who have basic knowledge in copywriting, sales letter writing might not be as hard as what most people think it is. This is because there are actually proven formulas that work in almost types of business letters. One of these formulas is the AIDA principle. The AIDA principle is an acronym for basic guidelines in copywriting. AIDA stands for (A) attention, (I) interest, (D) desire and (A) action.

Attention

The very first thing that the reader would do upon receiving your sales letter is to scan the entire content. Most sales letters are quite long, and the customers wouldn’t really take so much of their time to read the whole content of your letter not unless it catches their attention upon scanning it. Having said this, the letters should be eye-catching enough so as to draw the attention of the reader to the letter.

This can be done by using a catchy and colorful heading. The heading should also be on different font size as the body of the letter. Using bullets and subtitles would also help in catching the attention of your reader. Interest Upon catching your customer’s attention, it is important to keep the customer interested about the succeeding lines of the sales letter. The first paragraph is basically as important as the heading and so as the second and the last paragraph. Each paragraph should achieve the purpose of keeping the reader interested in reading the next paragraph.

One way to keep the reader’s interest is by asking questions. Questions are proven to arouse interest as the reader would be pushed to think upon reading the question. It is important however, that the question is relevant to the product that you are selling.

Desire

In the certain part of the body of the letter, second and third paragraph perhaps, it is necessary for you to stimulate the desire of the customer to invest on the product. This part is crucial as this would provide the selling point of the product. This could be done by citing the benefits and advantages of owning the product.

If you are promoting a laundry shop, for example, you may mention that the laundry shop is conveniently located in front of a coffee shop wherein the customers can have coffee while waiting, or that the laundry shop has its own Wi-Fi network that would allow internet access inside.

Action

Finally, the last paragraph should encourage the customer to take immediate actions of owning the product. At this point, it is vital that you would convince him to do whatever that is that you ask him to do. This can be done by mentioning the benefits that he or she could get if he or she would own a product now. In the case of the laundry shop example, you may say like there is a discount for the first 100 customers.

Applying the AIDA principle does not only facilitate your sales letter writing tasks, it also helps increase the number of customer responses to your sales promotion letter. Get more tips on sales letter writing tips.

Sample Request Letter

Request letters are written when you want to seek a favor from the concerned authority. You may request for scholarship, recommendation, product feedback, and many more. They strictly follow all the rules of formal letter writing. The language is extremely official and polite. The content is brief and to the point. Request letters are objectively written without any emotional statements. The central idea is to convince the person and not to coerce him to give in to your request.

To get a clear idea about how to write a request letter, look at the example given below.

Scenario – You as Tom Clark, wants to write a letter to the Chancellor of a university to grant you scholarship for further studies.

Tom Clark (the name of the sender)

The Clark House (complete address of the sender)

Street No.8

ABC

Date:

To

Ms. M.M. Williams (the name of the official)

Chancellor (title or designation)

University of California (address of his organization)

ABC

Subject – Request for the grant of scholarship

Dear Madam, (Use ‘Sir’ to address a male)

I introduce myself as Tom Clark, a topper in the Business stream in the state exams. I would like to apply for the Best Student Scholarship to help me take up studies at the college level.

I am a student of Fountain Valley School and passed the state exams with a score of 395 out of 400 marks this year.

I belong to a respectable family. My father, Tim Clark, is a farmer. He toils throughout the day and earns a meager amount. He is a law-abiding citizen and has never got into any conflicts with anyone. The locals of our village look upon him for his righteousness. My mother, Julie Clark, works in a local bakery shop. My other family members have served the nation during Tsunami catastrophe. Two of my brothers worked day and night with local doctors to save lives of tsunami victims. My younger sister is studying in eighth grade.

My parents are financially weak and have a large family to support. They cannot afford the expenses of my further studies. Therefore, I request for some financial support to help me go to college and fulfill my career dreams.

I enclose copies of a reference letter and character certificate from the principal of my school. I also attach my mark sheets of the state exam.

I will be obliged if you consider my plea and help me.

Thanking You,

Yours faithfully,

(Signature)

Tom Clark (sender’s name)

Letter Writing Techniques – Good News Vs Bad News Letters

There are different strategies and techniques to be discussed when writing good-news and bad-news letters. In good-news letters a writer is conveying good news to the receiver. The first paragraph (introduction) provides the good-news topic (reason for the letter). The second paragraph (discussion) provides the details of the good-news and the third paragraph (conclusion) calls for action.

Bad-news letters use the indirect approach and opens with a neutral idea while providing facts and supporting evidence. The second paragraph presents the reason for the bad news letter. The third paragraph ends with a neutral close. Tact and politeness is required when writing a letter of bad news. A writer of a letter of bad news must pay attention to tone and structure throughout the letter to avoid future problems. Writers must prevent themselves from offending the reader.

All writing is a form of persuasion. A writer tries to persuade their reader to understand his, or her point of view. Attention to wording is essential in a bad-news business letter to prevent breaking the code of ethics. An example for a reason for a bad-news letter is:

A company I work for has been advised to downsize labor cost by any means possible. The only choice I have is to terminate all temporary positions within the company. This decision requires that I write bad news letters to each of the temporary employees, terminating them and explaining to each one the reason for termination. I must take care to use tact and politeness throughout the letter while making it clear that their job performance was excellent and had no bearing on my company decision. When writing to the employee, I should offer a severance pay and to write a letter of recommendation to help the employee with job search. Additionally, medical benefits should be extended for a short time after termination. Additionally, letting the employee know that with his, or her given qualifications and proven abilities, I am confident that he or she will find another position in the near future. End on a calm and upward happy note.

5 Great Tips to Effective Letter Writing

Many people might wonder the need for letter writing in a world dominated by emails. If you wish to streamline your communication, never ignore the power of a well constructed letter. An email cannot achieve the impact that a well written letter can generate. Whether it is business, sales, cover or personal letter, you can master it by learning some simple tips.

1. The content of a letter should be planned well. To streamline your communication, make a draft of your letter. This will help in communicating effectively. Make sure that all the points have been detailed and check your letter for readability. Rephrase those sentences that can be misunderstood. Check the spelling, especially, the name of the receiver. Another key aspect is the consistency in the spelling of names. To be on the safer side, it is always wise to prepare a draft of business, sales and cover letters.

2. Use of language. For business letters, always use formal language. Sales letters need to attract potential customers. So they can be informal with catchy headlines. But when the sales letter talks about guarantee, delivery and other core issues, use a formal tone. Cover letters should always be written in formal language. Maximum flexibility with language can be shown in a personal letter. Depending upon your relationship, you can choose a formal or informal language. To streamline your communication, you should learn the art of selecting the appropriate tone for your letter.

3. Your letter might be intended for several people. This does not mean that it should not have a personal touch. Always write a business or sales letter like writing to a single person. A personal touch in your sales letter or newsletter will make the reader feel more comfortable. The reader should never feel like reading a brochure. The letter should have the effect of a personal conversation.

4. One of the best methods to streamline your communication is to make effective use of all modern day writing techniques. Use headlines to indicate the subject matter. Make use of bullets to detail important points. Use simple language. If a scientific term is used explain it in parentheses. You can make use of italics, bolding and underling in the letter. You can also create a template for your letter.

5. Brevity. Today, people do not have time to spend on reading long letters. Make your point in least number of words. Never deviate from the core subject. Unnecessary deviations from the subject can do more harm than good. Sometimes the reader might totally ignore the letter.

Letters are an important tool of communication. Remember, they can also become documental evidences. Your success in the modern day world depends on how effectively you are able to streamline your communication.

Mechanism of Effective Letter Writing

The need and demand to write effective letters has existed for long as a means of communication between two individuals. It holds a key importance in all aspects of life including social, personal, and professional.

However, in the present days, the importance of letters has been overpowered by the electronic media including phones, mobiles, and emails. These medium do not actually require writing a letter to put across an individual’s point of view but even then it is believed that the impact an effective letter can generate is unique in its own way.

If anyone wishes to streamline their communication and put across their point of view, then no electronic media can dominate the power of an effective and well-constructed letter.

Initiating the letter is the most challenging thing. Many people are often confused how to start the letter and some are paralyzed at the prospect of having to fill the sheet. After that another important tip to start effective letter writing is to draft a letter. Drafting is a rough sheet or an early version of the actual writing piece. In the sheet the individual can write all the words and sentences that come to his or her mind and then form a rough piece of the final letter. Write and re-write again and again so as to get a final edited version. Then, it is important that the writer knows the purpose of the letter that should be clear, precise, and effective. The purpose of the letter should be in the mind of the writer and should be presented in a way that it potentially reaches the mind of the reader.

Then another important aspect is the type of content. The content should be well organized in a form of effective paragraphs. The paragraph should be short and precise with simple and contemporary language. The spellings and grammar should also be checked again and again with utmost care. Vocabulary should also be within the experiential domain that the readers can easily understand. Use of language should be in accordance to the type of letter. For business letters, usage of formal language is appropriate with catchy headlines in order to draw the attention of potential reader.

Then, another important aspect is the length of the letter. In the busy lifestyle today, people don’t prefer reading long letters. So, the content should be brief and explanative, whilst putting across the actual point of view or the purpose of the letter. Some even put bullets in official letters to put across some important points in a precise and straightforward manner.

The letter should be ended with a clear conclusion or an ending statement. When the final copy is ready, read the letter twice or thrice to check out few errors and then rectify those effectively.