Lets take a minuet to tok abt quality, Ok?

I'm not advocating perfection in all the content you create, but I've run across a number of articles and posts recently that included errors in grammar, organization, word usage, spelling and more. You shouldn't underestimate the impact that poorly-written content can have on your professional reputation.

Regardless of your level of expertise or your passion for a cause or an issue, your readers will not be impressed if poor writing gets in the way of the message. Potential customers or partners want to associate with people and organizations that provide the products, talent, or services they need. But they also want their own reputations to be strengthened as a result of that association. Sloppy writing can drive your prospects towards the competition - especially if your company is relatively small.

If published articles suggest a lack of education or skill, the personal reputation of the author is damaged. The image of the brand can suffer as well. Negative impressions fostered by sub-par writing may seem to be subtle, but professionally-written material does make a difference.

Be Considerate of the Time Constraints of Readers

We're all bombarded with content today. There is more available than can possibly be consumed. Readers have to devote more time to deciding what to read in the first place. If they've decided your content is worth their attention, congratulations! But make it difficult for the reader to understand your message or require them to muddle through distracting errors, and you're going to lose them pretty quickly. You may find it difficult to ever lure them back.

The move towards consuming content on mobile devices only makes it worse. Reading articles on a phone often requires a lot of zooming and scrolling. Going back to re-read parts of paragraphs because readers can't make sense of what the writer was trying to say takes a lot of time. Unless the content is really important, they'll just give up.

How to Prevent Some Common Writing Mistakes

Here are some things I do to reduce the number of mistakes that get in front of my audience:

• I never compose a comment or reply using the web interface that is provided. They tend to be small windows, making it tough to see my whole piece. And there are no spell-checkers. Instead, I write and edit my content in Word, check the spelling, and when I'm satisfied, I paste the content into the blog comment box.
   
• I read my content aloud. You'd be surprised at how many things can be caught! We use a different part of our brain to speak and we generally have to slow down. Somehow, just hearing the words I've written makes a difference. Reading aloud often allows me to discover missing words that I swore were there during silent proofreading.
   
• I look for the common word usage and grammar errors. We all know the ones that can trip us up. We've probably been struggling with them since high school English class: their vs. they're, to, too, and two, or ending sentences with prepositions. If you're not sure of the proper usage, look it up or find a different way to say it!

• I wait a day to publish. I know it sounds inefficient, but I almost always finish a piece and then set it aside before sending it to an editor or the client. Reading the article the following day results in better phrasing, the elimination of unnecessary verbiage, more bullet points, etc. It has happened so often that I've become faithful about building in this delay. If deadlines are too tight, I try to set aside an article for a few hours at least, before I return to do the final review.

• I regularly check all the links and attachments. This is really important. Over the course of time, links can get broken. Supporting content can get moved or renamed, often without my knowledge. It's so disappointing to check the metrics to find that lots of readers clicked on my links only to discover that they ended up at a "page not found."

There are lots of other ways to improve the quality of your writing. Everyone has things that work for them. But when it comes to the reputation you are trying to build with branded content, there is a high price to pay for poorly-written material. You've spent a lot time writing the piece. It's worth it to spend a little more to make sure your work will improve your reputation, not detract from it.