Managing a Successful Brand: The Importence of Producing Error-Free Content

Did you notice the spelling mistake in the title of this piece? Chances are you did. In fact, it probably sprang from the page almost immediately. These types of editorial errors play a big role in how your company is perceived. From the first page to the last, error-free content is of the utmost importance. Communications documents, whether internal or external, that are riddled with spelling, grammar, or formatting errors can pose a potential threat to the future of your company! When these types of errors continuously pop up in your content, you can be sure that your clients or potential clients are making negative judgments about your company, employees, and services. These kinds of perceptions, however harmless they may seem, can hurt the top-notch brand you worked so hard to create.

Negative Judgment #1: Your Company is Unprofessional
You know that your company is professional. You’ve worked hard to develop an image that your company’s services are at the top of your field. Content that has a lot of errors is a red flag that your company is not carefully and thoroughly reviewing materials for publication. This can indicate a level of unprofessionalism, since the way you present your company to the world should be high on your list of priorities for creating and managing a positive brand. If you can’t take the time to ensure that your own products are perfect, how can potential clients know you won’t do the same to them?

Negative Judgment #2: Your Employees are Not Skilled
Of course you employ only the best in your field. But even skilled writers and editors make spelling and grammar errors in initial drafts. Tight deadlines make people work faster, which means the important quality assurance phase of document production is often foregone to deliver the product on time. Producing error-free content is as simple as carefully reviewing any material you’ve written. Enlist the help of a colleague or two to give the document additional pairs of eyes and make sure to use the “Spell Check” function in your word processor.

Negative Judgment #3: Your Services and Deliverables are Low-Quality
Imagine opening an issue of Time magazine and finding multiple editorial errors on the first page. You turn to the next page, which is just as plagued by spelling and grammar mistakes. Regardless of what the article is actually saying, it’s hard to really trust content that doesn’t follow the basic rules of spelling and grammar. It’s like the old saying, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” Readers get distracted by mistakes on the page, and no matter how profound what you’re trying to say is, they will determine that your services are low-quality.

Everyone makes mistakes in their writing; it’s a natural part of the drafting process. However, you have to be ready to give your final product that finishing polish before presenting it to the public. No matter how small you think the errors may be, these kinds of mistakes speak volumes to your contacts. Protect your brand by making sure you are producing only the highest quality material!

Are writing and editing just not your company’s strong point? Contracting with a writing and editing service like ProEdit can help improve your content at a low cost and with a fast turnaround.

Learn more about ProEdit's services or request a quote. 

Take a Second Look: Avoiding Editorial Errors

You finally did it! You put in the time, the money, the effort, and now you have something to show for it: the product. All you have left to do is to get it into the hands of customers. Unfortunately though, without a professional presentation, your product won’t even make it to a vendor. But before you go spend the rest of your budget on flashy sales gimmicks, take a second look at your presentation. Will it gain the attention and respect of the buyer? The answer to this question and the key to your success could lie in a simple proofread.

Often, companies spend their entire budgets on research, development, and production, only to cut corners when it’s time to write a proposal. To meet deadlines and stay under budget, a project manager with no formal writing experience might type up a plan and run a quick spell check. No mistakes? Fantastic. Run the presses and send it off before the office closes. But wait, there’s a problem. Automated spelling and grammar checks don’t catch every mistake.

For example, that manager means to start a sentence with “Whether friends and your family,” but instead, being in a rush, he writes “Weather fiends and you’re family” The buyers receive the proposal and immediately jump to the conclusion that either A) the company is accusing them of being related to a gang of cut-throat rainstorms or B) the company lacks the professionalism to properly edit documents.

That company’s product might be exactly what the buyers need; however, the buyers never make it past the errors to see what the company has to offer. Pardon the pun, but they can’t see the sunshine for all the rain. Eventually, that company is going to have to learn how to professionally edit documents, hire professional editors, or suffer everlasting bad business.

Sales proposals, however, aren’t the only types of documents you should submit for professional editing. Businesses need websites, and these websites should be free of errors. As a service or product provider, you are constantly trying to sell while consumers are constantly looking to buy. The Internet has made this relationship easier than ever. With a simple query into a search engine, consumers can find your business within seconds. If the visitors see typos or poorly constructed sentences, they are likely to leave your website to find something more professional that might meet their needs.

Editing is vital to every form of writing. Neglecting to edit will always yield negative or no results, regardless of content. Students who express complex concepts but fail to properly edit will make worse grades than those who do edit, even if the ideas are less developed. Job applicants with outstanding education and experience whose résumés contain misspelled words or incorrect punctuation are not likely to be contacted for an interview.

Regardless of deadlines or budget limits, editing should never be neglected. You may not be willing to give up your time looking over a document you just finished. It may be more work than you want to put in. In these cases, there are companies and individuals who will edit for you. This can even be more helpful than editing your own work. Because they are not familiar with your ideas and style, they tend to catch your mistakes more easily. Plus, it’s their job to do a good job. Remember that you have spent all of your resources on developing a product, a service, a grade, or even yourself. Why not spend the time, the effort, or the funds to ensure your work is correct and sounds great? It never hurts to take a second look.

Request a ProEdit price quote for your editing project or give us a call at 1-888-776-3348.

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Friday the 13th: The Revenge of Project Killers

What’s worse than Friday the 13th? The sequels.

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but now that I have your attention, what’s really worse than Friday the 13th—even worse than having a black cat cross your path under a ladder? Falling prey to superstitious assumptions when we should know better.

Before you think we’re talking about tossing salt over your shoulder or staying away from cracked mirrors, we’re not. We’re talking about the assumptions that affect your writing.

Sure, they may not be fully recognized superstitions yet, but they’re definitely myths that sneak into attitudes about the communication process for many writers, editors, presenters and instructors. They lurk around the corners of our minds and are always looking for ways to creep in and kill our effectiveness when it comes to communication projects.

So, what are some of these “Friday the 13th” project killers we need to look out for?

Project Killer #1 – I’ve done this course dozens of times. I don’t really need an instructional designer to fix it. It’s fine like it is.

There’s a lot of truth to the cliché “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But in many cases, something that “ain’t broke” can be made more effective with tweaking, especially when it’s going from one format (i.e., PowerPoint slides and a live presenter) to another (computer-based training). Think of it this way—even a best-selling novel has to be changed into a script before it can dominate the box office as a movie. So why shouldn’t your already successful course be adapted into an eLearning format so it can further engage the minds of your learners?

Project Killer #2 – Project managers are just an unnecessary step to slow us down. I can oversee this project just fine.

You’re already in charge of so much. Do you really want to add another hoop to jump through? A project manager can take care of the day-to-day details of keeping a project on track without the distractions that already take up so much of your time. Then you get to come in and deal with content when it’s ready to be seen instead of being bombarded by the trifling minutiae that can bog you and the project down.

Project Killer #3 – Why should I send this out to an editor? I ran it through spelling and grammar check.

Spell check is only as good as its dictionary. (Spell check actually flagged “its” as incorrect in the previous sentence in favor of the conjunction “it’s.”) It only recognizes misspellings, so words that can be spelled different ways (i.e., they’re, there, their) don’t get any help from spell check. Neither do words that are commonly mistyped (such as “up” for “us” or “of” for "off”). Furthermore, neither spell check nor grammar check helps you communicate better by tightening your writing, making better word choices, shifting from passive to active sentences, or replacing jargon with regular human speech.

Why is it so important to be careful with these project killers lurking about in the shadows? Well, unlike summer blockbusters or the latest action thriller, not all of your projects get a sequel. If you don’t get them right the first time, there might not be a handy black cat or convenient Friday the 13th to blame.

Written by: Sean Taylor, ProEdit

Avoid these Project Killers - learn more about ProEdit's services or give us a call at 1-888-776-3348.

Who’s Next? Making Your Job Outsource-proof

By Doug Davis

Fellow technical communicators, what I’m about to say is not going to win me any popularity contests. It’s the 1000-pound gorilla in the living room. It’s the emperor’s new clothes. Here it is. Ready? Outsourcing is here to stay. But why? Because a whole lot of the time, those outsourcing relationships work out just fine for the companies that choose to pursue them.

Of course, if you end up on the wrong end of a pink slip because of some outsourcing arrangement, you are in for one of the most traumatic times of your life. But if you stay ahead of the prevailing wind, there are some things you can do to help prevent your job from being the one that’s axed.

And just to liven things up a bit, I’ve included some song lyrics in italics. 


In the Beginning...

“The change it had to come. We knew it all along.”

Where did all of this outsourcing stuff come from anyway? The outsourcing fire was fanned by two big trends in our industry. The first was economics. During the nineties, the cost of experienced technical communicators kept going up, up, and up. Then, when profits within the technology sector started to fall, bean counters started looking for ways to cut costs. Outsourcing was perceived to be the answer to their financial woes.

The second big reason was the advent of telecommuting. In our industry’s eagerness to embrace telecommuting, we unwittingly set ourselves up for our jobs to be outsourced. The downside of being able to telecommute is that jobs that are able to be done remotely can be done by someone who is, well, remote. Low-cost computers, high-bandwidth Internet connections, standardization of toolsets, and countless presentations to upper management on the benefits of telecommuting set us up for outsourcing. Ready … aim … shoot your own foot.

So, for those of you whose jobs haven’t been outsourced, what can you do to help reduce the likelihood that your job will be outsourced? Here are six techniques you can use to help outsource-proof your job.

Technique 1. Ex-telecommute yourself.

“I’ll move myself and my family aside.”

If you are a telecommuter, you can easily find yourself out of the rumor loop. Make sure to have regular face time at the office and around the water cooler. Keep your ear to the cubicle wall. Learn what’s happening in other parts of the company. If outsourcing is happening elsewhere, be on red alert. It’s probably being considered on a much more widespread basis.

Technique 2. Suck up big time.

“Smile and grin at the change all around.”

When you were in school, did the teacher’s pet ever get expelled from school?  Hmmm?  It’s not pretty, but sometimes it just pays to do extra stuff for your boss. Offer to edit his/her memos or help with presentations (after hours, of course, lest they think you don’t have enough real work to do). Through doing extra stuff for your boss, you’ll get some extra face time and may even get a tip that something’s afoot. Let them vent to you about the stresses and problems they are encountering, but be sure to keep quiet about what you learn. Information is a precious thing until everyone knows it. Make your move to another job if you need to, and then try to help your coworkers. It’s like what they say on airplanes, “Put your mask on before helping others.”

Technique 3. “I’d like mine with extra SMEs, please.”

“I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky.”

If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you know that I’m a real advocate of technical communicators becoming subject matter experts. If you know your company’s products and services inside and out, it’s going to be hard for your employers to see you walk out the door with a cardboard box. One reason is that you may take your cardboard box right across the street to their top competitor. Knowing the industry you write about is much more important than knowing about the writing industry.

Technique 4. “Wrong, wrong, wrong … better … nope still wrong.”

“Sit in judgment of all wrong.”

It’s a common scenario for companies to outsource the writing functions but retain employees for editorial and quality control functions. If you think your department could be the target for future outsourcing, it would be wise to align your job duties as closely as possible with that of a lead editor or the last check before the work goes out the door.

Technique 5. Get bossy

“And the men who spurred us on …”

In most cases, the manager is the last person standing. Writers are more likely to get outsourced than editors. Editors are more likely to get outsourced than managers. But, managers, be forewarned. Always be a manager who does real work. Edit something. Write a chapter now and then. Keep your skills current so you will be viewed as a utility player, not as overhead.

Technique 6. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

“Meet the new boss. The same as the old boss.”

Let’s say that all has failed, and your job is about to be outsourced. Consider contacting the firm that’s going to provide the services to your employer and inquire about a job. You may be a very valuable commodity to the outsourcer because you know the stuff they are going to need in order to do the work, and you have an immediate project to work on for them.

Here’s one last thought on the subject of outsourcing. Don’t burn bridges with your former employers. They may need you back later. Then, it will be time for you to decide whether working with them is a good match for your long-term strategic goals. 

(Song lyrics, "Won't Get Fooled Again," Written by Pete Townsend, Performed by The Who. On Wikipedia)

© Copyright 2010, Doug Davis