Proofreading – the little details that make a big difference to your brand.

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I don’t know about you, but as a marketing professional, finding a grammatical error on anything in print is simultaneously a source of interest and irritation to me. Menus, newspapers, presentations, signage, occasionally even books – you name it, I’ll find it. Digital copy can be even worse, and with the advent of auto-correct on mobile devices, texting and tweeting brings on multiple challenges for users (I’ve even spelled my name incorrectly thanks to auto-correct!)

Writing styles are subjective based on the audience, but there’s little wiggle room when it comes to proofreading. You and I can have a difference of opinions as to whether my storytelling appeals to you, but the disagreement ends when it comes to accuracy, grammar, and punctuation.

So why is proofreading important? In my opinion, it’s because of first-impressions. If you’re trying to sell yourself as a professional, sending a communication filled with grammatical errors and typos will throw the reader off, and may cause them to doubt your abilities. I mean, if you can’t bother to review an email for accuracy before you hit the send button, then how can I rely on you to provide the level of detail needed to do your job well?

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all made grammatical mistakes at some point in our careers, and I’ve worked with brilliant visionaries who couldn’t spell to save their life. The difference is that they knew how important it was to be surrounded with excellent writers and communicators who could take their thoughts and scribbles and translate them into something motivational.

Our world is moving at such a fast pace; everyone is on a tight deadline to produce and deliver. But if an organization doesn’t have a solid review process in place, the risk for error can be high. For example, an organization I worked for produced a wall calendar as a holiday gift for all its employees, all 35,000 of them. A nice gesture, but a costly one when it was discovered that the month of December was printed incorrectly. If only the department that produced the calendar had a review process in place, they would’ve caught the error before going to print. I’m sure that whoever gave the final OK wished that they’d had a strong review process as well.

Perhaps if Kackert Marketing were on-board, they’d have the peace of mind knowing that their calendar (as well as all projects) was delivered accurately, well-written and when sent to the production queue, was 100% ready-to-print. Let us know if you’d like to have that same peace-of-mind.