Easy Ways to Lose Business: Editing faux pas

Copywriting, press releases, e-mails, newsletters, e-books, product descriptions, content pages, ads all have fallen prey to the hustle that is marketing. Often these pieces of your company, these spot light pieces, will reveal something you don't want clients or potential clients to see. Misspelled words, incorrect grammar, dead text links, misdirected pages, and wrong telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Edit your copy! Then get someone else to edit again.

I am amazed how easily someone can throw his image out the door so carelessly. While online forms of media continue to thrive so to do editing mishaps and oversights.

I worked for a company who often utilized both print and web ads. I got interested in learning the designs techniques and worked closely with the creative team to create content and visually inspect ads for production. In doing so I realized while the creative team had reasons of their own to add or delete certain images and rearrange content they desperately needed a proof reader in the least. By becoming the "eyes" for these ads we were able to improve the content, thus the image of our company. Lesson: Getting too close to a project can cause you to "see" things that aren't there but should be and to overlook things that need change.

Try this: reread something you've written a while back, if it wasn't proofed then chances are you'll find simple mistakes that may have cost you.

Copyediting is one of the many services I provide from my web site. It can be as simple as evaluating a web site, e-book, pamphlet, or even a simple page to provide helpful tips on grammar and wording. Spell checks are great but only for impersonal media. Blogs and e-mails can get away with spell checkers. Print media, your homepage, your college thesis, your image deserve more than a simply "ABC Check" prior to its release into the competitive world.

Kristen
President
Blog@ContentWorth.com