The time it takes a person to glance during a fast scroll is all you have to capture that user’s attention. You don’t want that first impression to be a spelling error that influences a split-second decision to stay or go.
With an Internet overflowing with mediocre content and Google’s Core Web Vitals, 1st-page ranking can make or break your brand. Intelligent, high quality content is more important than ever in digital marketing in order to achieve those coveted conversions.
Why is Proper Grammar So Important in Marketing?
1. Clarity
Messages can become unintelligible without proper grammar. Your carefully crafted tweet is wasted by being nonsensical, or worse, the opposite of what you intended.
Consequence: You won’t convert new customers. Immediately confused readers won’t spend time to re-read in order to solve your grammar puzzle.
2. Credibility
How your brand communicates and connects with consumers online reflects who you are as a company. Consumers are right to be skeptical of any brand that doesn’t take the time to proofread their content. These errors also reflect back on professionalism and dedication to attention to detail.
Companies are expected to put out error-free content and copy. People don’t read it and think, “Wow! What great grammar!” Instead, they do connect with your content and brand messaging. When you start putting out error-filled content and copy, then people start to notice, and they are no longer focused on your message or brand, but all the errors.
Consequence: The more errors you publish, the more your credibility, reputation and trustworthiness will go down in consumers’ eyes. Don’t forget Google’s giant Eye of Sauron using its all-seeing powers to drop your ranking like the ring falling into the fires of Doom.
3. Perception
“Sloppy” is the perception of a brand that routinely publishes errors. But what about all that relatable “Internet speak?” U r prolly not more relatable b/c ur social media posts read like a teen’s latest TikTok rant, kwim? Unless that teen demographic is your audience, company and brand social media is held to a higher standard than personal posting.
Consequence: Many people harshly judge others by their grammar mistakes. Your brand could inadvertently become a bad meme. This common human behavioral pattern of judgment affects the perception of your brand. You are responsible for your brand’s standards, and that can often mean taking a more formal tone in your content.
4. Professionalism
Much like perception, readers associate a level of professionalism with businesses that they do not expect of friends and family. As a business, you will be judged more critically for your errors.
The sheer volume of content being published on the Internet provides more potential for error, and there are a lot of errors. By maintaining your brand’s professional standards, you stand out over time.
Consequence: If you are unable to communicate professionally and intelligently with your audience, you aren’t communicating at all. You’ll lose business. Quality will always be valued over quantity, and that applies to Google’s Core Web Vitals, as well. Publishing a large amount of poor quality is more likely to damage your ranking, whereas a smaller amount of quality content can improve it.
Know Your Audience and How They Use Language
Although this may seem contradictory, you may need to ditch the rules of grammar for certain audiences. First, you must know your audience. Second, you need to understand how they consume and react to digital content and participate accordingly. What is the tone of posts? Is there a particular etiquette? You may need to change your strategy to fit the style of the platform you’re using, which may mean using slang, abbreviations, acronyms, particular hashtags or even memes.
When you show you understand your audience, you can then make that very important connection with them. This may develop into a larger long-term return with loyal customers, which pays you back much more than a quick and easy discount or other tactic to drive sales.
Cut Yourself Some Slack, Then Fix the Problem
Everyone makes mistakes. You’re going to publish content with grammar errors. Grammar police are going to call you out. You may lose a customer here and there. The occasional mistake is human and won’t hurt you in the long-term—repeatedly sloppy writing is what sinks your brand and consumer trust.
There are many ways to limit the number of mistakes and typos.
- Use a second pair of eyes and probably a third. Ideally, you have a trained copyeditor that can review your work. If not, you need to look to colleagues with good grammar skills to review your content.
- Step away. When you finish writing content for any platform, don’t look at it again for a period of time. If you have time to wait until the next day, you will have fresh eyes and likely be surprised at how much you can improve.
- Study and practice. Always be watching competitors. Study their content. The more you practice writing and also study grammar, the better your content will be.
- Research. A quick Google search of “top grammar mistakes in online marketing,” or similar, will provide you with cringe-worthy lists of all the mistakes you are likely making.
- Use online tools. There are many online tools to check your work. However, you can’t solely rely on services like Grammarly to magically “fix” all your content. Even if you catch a typo this way, that doesn’t mean all will be caught, or that your message is intelligible. This is not a short-cut or catch all solution.
- Outsource your digital marketing. Even with a small budget, you can find professional digital marketing services, leaving you to do what you do best—run your business or practice.
- Outsource your content writing. Freelance services abound for content writing of all kinds in all areas of industry. These trained professionals can perform ad hoc writing, such as copywriting, content writing (blogs and articles), white papers, website content, brochures, social media posts and much more.
- Hire a full-service marketing agency. Brand image is more than just publishing content. Marketing is not overhead. Marketing is an income driver. If you are not able to perform the same quality marketing that an agency can with the same returns, or you don’t have internal marketing expertise, hiring an agency is something to consider. There are often plans for most budgets.
- Check all your content. Go… right now.
Take the time to find the ways that work for writing, editing and proofreading to avoid losing current and potential customers. You can also contact Points Group for an assessment of your content. We have professional content writers, developmental editors, copyeditors, proofreaders and more.
