The internet has made us L.A.Z.Y.
We all too often hurriedly type out emails and web copy, blog posts and comments without a second thought to our spelling or grammar but it's the spelling and grammar that visitors to our professional websites and blogs come into contact with *before* they ever get a chance to understand just how fabulously intelligent and together we are as professional VA's.
I've seen far too many websites in *every* industry with obvious spelling and grammatical errors staring me in the face and I wonder at each and every one of them just how on earth they *missed* those mistakes and how they could possibly manage to attract new business with these errors marking up their otherwise professional appearance.
Spelling errors are like blemishes on an otherwise beautiful website.
You can have the best design and most future-forward coding, but if your content is lacking in articulate and correct presentation it just ruins the whole thing.
VA's are no exception in terms of copy errors...but they should be.
Your website and blog copy should be as flawless as the work you do for your clients and that means triple checking your web content for spelling and grammatical errors on a regular basis.
One quick and easy way to do this is to copy and paste your content into a word document or email template and run the 'spellcheck' feature. Correct any errors and replace the fresh copy on your website with the knowledge that you at least have a perfect presentation of your skills.
But keep in mind, even spellcheckers make mistakes - they can't possibly understand the difference between words like 'made' and 'maid', etc. and will often make their *own* mistakes in trying to 'correct' you - so don't fly through the spellcheck process either, but rather, take your time with it and slowly, thoughtfully examine the suggestions made by the program.
I find it incredibly amusing when a VA offers copywriting or editing, customer communications or press releases as services but they've spelled three or four (or more!) words on their web page incorrectly or have left out an 'is' or a 'the' here and there.
If I'm contracting out to another VA the FIRST thing I check for in their online persona is correct spelling and grammar. You can safely assume that a large percentage of clients shopping for a VA do the exact same thing.
These errors are easy to make, and we all do it - typing too fast, working on too many pages at once - and our tired eyes and addled brains start to miss the obvious.
When drafting a blog post or a new web page, take the time to spellcheck and then GO BACK the next day and re-read your copy to make sure you haven't missed anything. Better yet, have a second pair of eyes scan your work to make sure there aren't any little typos remaining.
If you think that because the web is filled with these kinds of errors you can 'get away with a few little typos' you're selling yourself, and your potential clients, short. Because the truth is, a potential client is only *potential* if they look at your website and feel like you can do a better job than they can do, or at least as good a job - and spelling errors just don't lend themselves to that notion.
There are quite a few free spellcheck programs available - the best of which are listed at Wikipedia
here.
Do yourself, and your website, a favor - and USE one of them if you aren't already.
Take the time to examine your existing website content and revise it for spelling and grammar.
Your potential clients will never have to know that for the last six months you've had the word 'communication' on the front page of your site as 'comunication'
Check your SPELLING
, blog posts, website content, word docs - virtually anything! It's free to download, is easy to install, and voila-you've got an instant spellchecker right at the top of your browser window!
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