Frontline Perspectives

Gaining a prospect’s trust — and maintaining a customer’s — is key to making sales. But if you’re like a lot of busy marketers, you may be making some common writing mistakes in your various communications. Before long, it can make your company look less than professional … and that can erode your clients’ and prospects’ trust at a time when you need it most.

Let’s take a look at five of the most common mistakes:

Sloppy or non-existent proofreading
Most typos and grammatical errors are easily caught and corrected with a thorough read-through of the document before you send it out. The spellcheck feature on word processing programs is a good start, but won’t catch everything. So proof. And then proof again.

It’s vs. its. And similar battles.
This one is common and avoidable. Watch out for your vs. you’re, and their vs. they’re and there, as well. They can trip you up and make your writing less effective.

Unexplained abbreviations
You may know that CMS means content management system. But will your reader? Think carefully about when it would be helpful and necessary to spell out abbreviations or acronyms the first time you use them.

Overuse of title case
It’s great that you love your company’s products. But unless they have proper names — like PowerPoint — don’t use title case. A submersible centrifugal pump is just as powerful as a Submersible Centrifugal Pump.

Numbers
Assuming you follow the AP Stylebook, remember that numbers less than 10 should be spelled out in body copy (unless you’re listing measurements or other stats that require the use of numerals.) All numbers greater than 10 are written as numerals.

This list is just the beginning. Future posts will look at some other common mistakes and discuss ways to make your writing more impactful. Until then, keep writing to nurture leads. And don’t forget to proof!