More and more, businesses are eschewing print for digital marketing, via websites, blogs, social media and email campaigns. It’s cheaper, easier to get to the customers or potential customers you need to talk to, and it gives a great impression of your business. Or does it?
These days, many blogs are dedicated to business. Whether you are someone who is trying to make a living by retailing handmade crafted items, or someone who wants to inspire an air of authority over their chosen industry, be it IT, social media or law, language must be accurate, intelligible and most of all grammatically correct. Language should persuade people to keep coming back to you, and must give an air of ‘I know what I’m talking about’. Grammar and spelling errors that have been spotted within your blog posts may lead your prospective clients to wonder what other mistakes your company has made.
However, blogging takes time, and thousands of companies have a requirement to post several pieces of updated content per day, which puts many of those writing these blogs under immense pressure to get them done quickly, often on top of a heavy workload of other duties. Where do you draw the line between getting the job done, and getting the job done correctly? Is it acceptable to put blog posts up quickly, and correct them later, or should you perhaps put some room into your blogging schedule to get your posts read by a professional proofreader, in order to spare your blushes?
It’s not just your blog, either. Web copy should be checked several times before you hand it over to the webmaster to upload, and when it comes to product descriptions, there are some mistakes that can cause you more problems than simple embarrassment. If you get the usage instructions wrong on a product, then you could cause someone severe harm.
We could take this even further. Who’s running your social media accounts? However grammatically correct and professional your blog posts, web content and sales literature, if your customer visits your Facebook Page to find text like the below, then they’re very likely to get the wrong impression of how professional your company is, and may attract some unwanted attention.
I’m not saying that you should ensure all of your tweets and Facebook posts have been proofread by a professional proofreader, but ensuring that only the most competent members of staff post social media updates, and making sure you never post in haste will be a good place to start. Of course, if you require a professional proofreader for your business copy, be it printed or on the Internet, just get in touch and I’d be delighted to give you a quote.
