Writing about business mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be done for a variety of purposes. Whether it’s for an announcement of companies undergoing this process to informing readers how it works, it serves a variety of purposes, especially for entrepreneurs.
However, since it is mostly technical and is intended for a specific audience, it might be difficult for other people to appreciate.
Although the topic of mergers and acquisitions is often formal and technical, it doesn’t have to be boring. Regardless of who you’re writing an article for, spice up your work with these creative ways of writing about business mergers and acquisitions.
1. Choose Your Audience
The first step in creative writing is knowing who to write for. You can’t please everyone and neither should you try to. If you’re writing as an announcement of an ongoing M&A agreement between two businesses, then the audience is most likely members of the same industry or other entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking to write informative articles on the subject, then your likely readers are upcoming entrepreneurs, small business owners, and younger professionals.
Creativity comes in the form of knowing what to write after knowing who to write for. Each target audience has their respective expectations about an article and not meeting those expectations mean increased risks of losing their interests.
2. Start Strong
Writers, regardless of form or medium, are always expected to hook their readers. At a time when people are too busy to read entire articles, it’s up to you to give the incentives to keep them reading. Of course, there are certain guidelines to writing specific kinds of articles, and you have to keep in in mind.
Not all articles allow you to use colorful, literary leads like those you’d find in novels. Although this is especially challenging, more so for people who write different types of articles.
This race to get the readers’ attention often leads to the use of click baits or overly sensationalized titles or headlines. Remember that writing about business mergers and acquisition is a subset of finance and entrepreneurship and as a writer in this field, you have to build trust with your readers. Adding shock value and sensationalism might not work well in the long run.
3. Use Relevant Examples
Mergers and acquisitions is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of activities related to the consolidation of assets or business entities. For example, there are five major types of mergers at least four types of acquisition. Each of these has different conditions, arrangements, and implications for the businesses and people involved.
While this sounds like nuances and small details, understanding these differences is a good opportunity to show that you know what you’re talking about. Furthermore, the use of specifically relevant examples puts your topic in a clearer perspective by using similar cases to the one you’re writing about.
4. Balance Your Jargon
Technical terms are generally off-putting and intimidating for people who do not belong to the same field as these jargons. However, you can’t simply replace those words at the risk of sounding unprofessional or worse, appearing inaccurate.
This might need practice or even a few bits of feedback from test readers, but this is one of the forms of variety that every technical article reads. Knowing your jargon also shows your familiarity with mergers and acquisitions but learning when to use alternatives shows your skill as a writer.
Reducing the use of jargon includes defining technical terms once in an article, avoiding lengthy noun strings and hidden verbs, and thoughtful word placements.
5. Include a Narrative
With the right sources, it’s easy to create a write-up that tells your reader about a specific M&A topic or a piece of news between businesses undergoing the business procedure. However, keeping them engaged is an entire matter altogether. A small piece of advice that can add flair to an article is a story.
There are different approaches that can be used to achieve this. Depending on the type of write-up, you can identify an issue or a problem that was resolved by the M&A. Generally, these business processes are pursued under the promise of economies of scale, or that larger companies gain more advantages.
If acquiring an additional business is in synergy with the parent company’s product lines or existing services, then it could present a good frame for your writeup. Aside from presenting the facts, readers gain valuable wisdom by visualizing the implications of the merger or acquisition that took place as detailed in your writeup.
6. Use Transition Words and Shorter Sentences
This is a piece of general writing advice and can also be applied to articles on business M&As. Using transition words like furthermore or however connects the next sentence to a previous one.
It creates a sense of continuity and makes the reading experience smoother. Just creating a series of sentences that stand on their own and without proper transition feels dry and bland.
Also, shorter sentences help in writing. Online tools, such as those used in blogs and brand websites, usually include sentence length in gauging the readability of a written work. Although the exact number might vary, the ideal sentence length should not exceed 20 words.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that all sentences must be short. As with word and jargon usage, sentence length is something that can always use a little variety.
