Any successful business owner will tell you that your business is only as good as your reputation. If your reputation tanks, your revenue is soon to follow—before you know it, you could find yourself bailing out of a sinking ship.
Any successful business owner will tell you that your business is only as good as your reputation. If your reputation tanks, your revenue is soon to follow—before you know it, you could find yourself bailing out of a sinking ship. That’s why protecting your company’s image is essential to maintaining your position in the industry and continuing to grow. I like to call this idea image control. It’s kind of like applying the concept of quality control to your brand’s image and reputation. While there are many things that could affect your company’s image that are beyond your control—an incredibly hard-to-please customer who blasts you in online reviews, or an unhappy former employee who never expressed dissatisfaction until they quit and started publicly badmouthing the company—you do have the ability to take control of some key areas in business operations.
Your company’s reputation with the public involves many components: the quality of your products and/or services, the quality of your customer service, your company’s commitment to the community and other issues like the environment, and the level of professionalism and integrity that your organization exhibits. Written communication plays a key role in all of these components, whether it’s an email to loyal customers, a product update or blog article posted on your website, or a memo to vendors regarding changes in company policy. Clear communication—both externally and internally—is therefore key not just to smooth operations, but also to image control.
That’s where editing comes in. Believe it or not, quality business editing is your first line of defense for effective image control. What’s so important about editing, you ask? Editing can tackle two layers of potential issues related to your organization’s image. The first is good grammar. Grammatical accuracy is more important to the public than one might think. 59% of consumers would actually avoid doing business with a company that has blatant grammatical errors or typos in their writing. Plus, a whopping 74% of consumers care about grammar-free writing on a company’s website or blog. One online customer responded in a recent poll, “If I see a typo, I’ll leave without buying a thing.”
While this may come as a surprise, what it means is that there’s value in good grammar. It also means that, as a business owner, it’s in your best interest to make sure that the content and text you’re distributing is error free and grammatically accurate. In fact, incorporating quality editing into your business process can actually save you money by helping you retain customers and maintain a professional image in the industry.
Good business editing isn’t just about fixing typos and catching grammatical errors, however. That’s where the second layer of image control comes in. Quality editing should ensure consistency, integrity, and professionalism in all of your written communication. It’s an opportunity to check facts and cultural assertions that could prove embarrassing if found to be inaccurate. Remember Delta’s infamous tweet during last year’s World Cup? I’m sure they wish we didn’t! After posting an image of a giraffe in association with Ghana—a country with no native giraffes, the tweet went viral and the airline got slammed in the media. To top things off, Delta’s apology tweet contained a crucial misspelling, mistakenly writing the word precious instead of previous.
While Delta’s was a huge faux-pas, it isn’t the only big corporation to have made major blunders in social media, marketing, and other forms of communication in recent years. Which brings me back to my point: quality editing—for both grammatical errors/typos as well as context, cultural/technical accuracy, and clarity—will ensure effective image control and instil increasing value in your company.
Even those companies with internal writers are often in need of an external source of quality editing to deliver image control and ensure consistency and accuracy across all writers and divisions/departments. Hiring a reliable editing service like HAMNIC Solutions for long-term quality editing of your company’s documents and content is the perfect solution.
One final word of advice: The next time you sit down to send off a quick tweet or email, consider having an extra set of eyes look it over before hitting Send.
Check out our unique editing options for all of your company’s written communication.
