The Proof Fairy

3 examples of why proofreading is so important

alison.neale — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:54:30 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of proofreading recently, on a variety of topics. One of my clients writes business tenders and he gets me to check them all over before they’re submitted – when competition for a contract is tough, it could be the one or two small typos that slip through that make all the difference. Another client is an aspiring author, and I have been proofreading his first three chapters before he sends them off to publishers – again they could be rejected if there are spelling mistakes or poor grammar. Most of the errors I pick up are fairly unexciting, but there have been a few high profile ones recently that bring home just how important proofreading really is. I hope the following will bring a smile to your face – and also make you double check your work from now on (or, better still, send it to me!)

One of the most high-profile typos in recent months has to be the “ground black people” in an Australian cookbook. The phrase, which of course should have been “ground black pepper”, appeared in The Pasta Bible and led to all 7,000 copies being destroyed, at a cost of over $AU20,000! Amazingly, the Head of Publishing at Penguin Australia defended the proofreader responsible for letting the error through, saying that they would have been “concentrating on checking quantities, a common source of error in cookbooks” and that as almost every page would have included ground black pepper as an ingredient, he saw this as “quite forgivable”. Not so forgivable when it was an expensive error that caused a lot of offence too …

This next error was spotted in Birmingham by 4Networking member Richard Heathcote. Perhaps the error is intentional and aimed at getting people to talk about it – in which case it’s certainly worked. Mind you, I think I’d be wary about buying a property built by a company who apparently show so little attention to detail …

Apparently, the building opposite had an identical poster but with “appartment” instead of “aptartment” …. and that apostrophe shouldn’t be there, either!

Finally, an error closer to home (for me anyway) that appeared in the Oxford Mail – a newspaper that is no slouch when it comes to typos. This one is probably one of its best/worst though, depending on how you view it. Check out the entry for March 2008 … Now I know local councils come in for a lot of abuse, but maybe this is going a step too far?!

Why having an online presence is essential for all businesses

alison.neale — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:14:04 +0000

Having been online myself since 1996, the Internet is a huge part of my life, and I can’t remember how life was before it – or imagine how I’d cope without it! However, I’m continually coming across people – and, more often, businesses – who aren’t online and who certainly aren’t using social media within their marketing mix.

The worst case scenario is businesses who don’t have any kind of web presence at all. Now for me personally, when I want to find contact details for a company, or check out a restaurant, or find someone to supply me with a product, the first place I go is Google. And if that company has no presence at all, or shows up in the Yell listings but doesn’t have a link to a website, then the chances of me using them are tiny. I’ll always keep looking till I find a business with a website. Why? Because it means I can research them before I contact them and already feel I have a relationship with them before the business transaction even begins.

So for me, companies lose out on business completely through not having a web presence. But how much are they affected by not using social media to promote themselves?

Going by the video below, hugely. Even if you take the statistics with a large pinch of salt they do a great job of showing how vital the various forms of social media have become to everyday life.

For businesses, the statistics about the effectiveness of advertising in particular are worth taking note of. Only 14% of people trust advertisements. Only 18% of traditional TV ad campaigns make a positive ROI. 78% of us trust the recommendations of our peers. And how are those recommendations communicated? Through social media, of course. Through people blogging about your products, tweeting the links to friends, discussing your service on Facebook. The web in general, and blogs, Facebook and Twitter in particular, have taken over from traditional advertising - and you will lose out if you’re not part of the sopcial media party.

If you’re not using the web and social media to promote your business you ARE going to get left behind. If you’re not convinced of that, watch the video below. If you want to join the social media revolution and use it to grow your business, email me and ask me how!

7 ideas for your business blog

alison.neale — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:41:42 +0000

Blogging for business is a fabulous way to promote your website, because it keeps the content fresh and that attracts new visitors, keeps people coming back for more AND lets the search engines know your website is active. But inspiration often dries up after the first few posts – so what can you blog about? Here are some ideas to keep you blogging!

Blog about new products: Have you just started offering a new service or product? Blog about it! Write about the benefits to your potential customers, and then tweet about the new post or promote it on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Blog about companies you work with: We all use a variety of services to help us run our business. Why not blog about a good experience you’ve had with another company? Not only will it increase traffic to your own site, but if you let the other business know about your post, they might blog about you in return!

Blog about relevant stories in the news: Keep an eye on relevant industry news stories and blog about them. These are easy posts to make – so long as you link back to the original article, you can copy and paste the most interesting sections and just add a comment to give your own spin to the story.

Blog in pictures or, better still, in video: Videos on YouTube receive over 2 BILLION views A DAY, and more and more businesses are seeing the benefits of promoting through video. Make a video about your business, post it on your blog and add it to Youtube . You can film a process you do online, speak to camera about an area of your business that will help others, or even find a relevant video and comment on that.Failing that, use photos relevant to your business to brighten up a post.

Blog about what you’re up to: If you’ve been working on an interesting project, or with a new client, the story can make an interesting blog article. You’ll probably want to check that your client is happy for you to talk about them, but so long as you give them a link back to their website most people won’t mind!

Blog your knowledge: We all have information about our particular industry that we can share. Give some of it away in a blog post! Try writing a “top tips” list like this one, or sharing a couple of “industry secrets”.

Blog on other people’s blogs: This one is harder to organise but try striking up friendships with other bloggers in complementary industries, offer to write on their blog – and ask them to blog for you too! “Guest blogging” is becoming very common now – it gives your blog a fresh perspective and you’ll get the guest blogger’s fans coming over to your blog to see what’s going on!

I hope these ideas will give you plenty of inspiration your own blog. Please do leave me a comment if you use any of them, and I’d love to see what you’ve written!

Blogging for Business: video advert!

alison.neale — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:57:24 +0000

My first foray into video blogging – this is also on YouTube and I hope it will capture a % or two of the 2 billion+ views every day! The music’s a little cheesy but the message is there

Thanks to Maximum Marketing for creating this!

Time for a Change!

alison.neale — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:45:34 +0000

One of the wonderful things about having your own business is that you don’t have to keep treading the same path and doing the same things. Businesses grow organically and being your own boss means you can respond to change really quickly. And that’s what’s been happening with The Proof Fairy.

When I first started this business it was as a sideline to something else I was doing, but for the last few months it has become my full time business, and I’ve started putting in place new elements to make it a “proper” business rather than a “bit on the side”! You’ll probably already have noticed the new logo, designed by Gareth Coxon of Dot Design; you may also have spotted a slight change in the services I offer, including the addition of two blogging packages.

Well, over the next couple of weeks you’ll notice a few more changes – in particular, this website. To tie in with the direction the business is now heading, the website will be moving away from the lovely wordpress.com to the even lovelier wordpress.org. I hope the transition will be smooth and problem-free – but if you notice any irregularities over the next few days, rest assured, they will be sorted out pronto!

So, that’s about it from this site for now … see you on the other side!

Blogging for business – are you doing it?

alison.neale — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:55:20 +0000

Most people have heard of blogging; lots do it. But plenty of businesses don’t realise just how useful a regularly updated blog can be, and now I can help.

So why blog? What benefits will it have to your business? Well to start with, blogging for business is great for improving your search engine ranking. Updating the content regularly means the spiders keep visiting; they know your site is active and that improves your position in the rankings. You can also include plenty of important keywords in your blog posts to improve your position when people search for the services you offer. For example, this article is all about blogging for business; by including a few mentions of it and including “blogging for business” in the URL, it’s likely to score highly when people search for that term.

OK, so keeping an updated blog can improve your search engine ranking which pulls visitors in to your website – and blogging can also keep them coming back. Everyone coming to your site is a potential customer but they may not yet be ready to buy what you offer. If your website is static and nothing ever changes, they aren’t likely to come back again. If you have an informative and entertaining yet educative blog that they can take something from (Lord Reith was talking a lot of sense!) then they are more likely to bookmark you and come back regularly, or perhaps subscribe to your RSS feed so they can see when you update. The more they visit your website, the more they’ll get to know and trust you and the greater the likelihood that it’ll be YOU they do business with when they want what you’re offering.

Of course, the other advantage of blogging for business is that you can engage with your customers in a way that static websites can’t. You can use your blog to introduce new products and services; talk about interesting projects you’ve worked on; give people a glimpse of the person behind the business; or comment on an interesting and relevant news story. Blogging gives your visitors the opportunity to comment and that opens up a conversation between you both, which helps the relationship develop even faster!

Blogging also helps you link up your website with any other social media marketing you’re doing. For example, when you blog you can announce it to the world via your Twitter or Facebook account and that will pull people into your website. You can use your blog articles in your e-newsletter. You can even post your blog articles on other websites, for example 4Networking or Ezine Articles, and that will increase visitors too.

So you can see why blogging for business can be really useful; but what if you don’t have a blog set up and don’t know where to start, or don’t have the time or the inclination to keep one? That’s where I come in. I now offer a couple of blogging packages aimed at small businesses. One provides you with a series of articles you can use on an existing blog; the other includes complete setup and maintenance, as well as regular articles posted on your behalf.

Blogging for business is a great way to promote your company, attract new website visitors and engage with your customers. If you’re not doing it already, why not?!

Putting the customer first

alison.neale — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:03:52 +0000

“Don’t forget, it’s not what you like but what your potential clients like that matters.”

That is probably the most valuable thing I have learnt this week.

I’m going through a rebrand for The Proof Fairy, and asked Gareth Coxon of Dot Design to come up with a new logo. I had one idea – involving a “mini me” character – and left it to Gareth to come up with some others. He sent me four designs, but two of them didn’t feel right so I ruled them out straight away. The third logo – featuring a pen and stars – was lovely, but the fourth was THE ONE, it was EXACTLY my idea come to life. So that was it – I had my new identity.

I showed a few people and they all loved it too. Then one of them – Jez Hunt of MetaMorph – suggested that I run a poll on which of the two designs people preferred. After all, as he said, “It’s not what you like but what your potential clients like that matters.” Good idea.

So I put the two designs up on my personal website, and posted on the 4Networking forum, Twitter and Facebook, asking people to vote for the one that best represented The Proof Fairy. I was sure “my” idea would be the clear winner.

I’ve never been so wrong! Fifty people voted – and 92% voted for the other design, the pen and stars! People remarked that it worked well for my business and that the “mini me” was just not very professional. So now Gareth is working on some variations of the pen and stars logo, and I’m confident that my new image is going to be perfect for The Proof Fairy.

But boy oh boy, that could have been an expensive mistake. If I’d gone with my own choice, I could have seriously damaged my business, because I just wouldn’t have been projecting the right impression. I’m so pleased that I decided to open it up to the public vote!

Whenever you’re working on your business, whatever you may do, always think about what your customer will like or need. What you like doesn’t really matter. Of course you can’t completely go against your own judgement, but sometimes you need to take a step back and look at your business from a different perspective. Perhaps the lesson to be learnt here is that whatever we may think, the customer usually is right!

And what do YOU do?

alison.neale — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:07:29 +0000

Recently I’ve been to a lot of different networking events, as well as my regular 4N ones. Now I love going out and meeting new people, but it does get a bit wearing when everyone keeps asking you, “And what do YOU do?” Normally I say, “Well, I do some proofreading, copywriting, editing, that kind of thing,” … and then watch as their eyes glaze over.

Time for a change, I think. So now I’ve started saying, “I work magic with words” … and the difference in people’s reaction is incredible! Instead of looking bored, people want to know more – they ask what sort of magic I do, how I do it, and can I do some for them please!

Having a catchy strapline – one that you can use verbally as well as on your business card – is a really useful way of bolstering your brand identity. It also gets people’s attention, especially if it brings with it a little intrigue. When you leave your strapline open to some interpretation you will get people asking you questions, and that’s always better than having them look disinterested in your business.

So of course now I want to know …. what do YOU do?!

Taking the hassle out of blogging for business

alison.neale — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:44:57 +0000

Do you use a blog to promote your business?

Keeping a blog is one of the easiest ways you can keep your website content fresh, both for your visitors and the search engines. But unless you are keen on writing, it can be one of those jobs that stays at the bottom of the “to do” list … and having a stale blog is almost worse than having no blog at all.

I can provide you with a package of blog articles, written specially for your business and based around keywords or topics that you choose. You can use these articles on your blog once a week, once a month or in and around other stories that interest you. You can even use them on other forums and networking sites!

Email me for more information on blog article packages

Don’t yet have a blog?

Adding a blog to your business website attracts visitors, turns your site into an interactive experience and helps with search engine optimisation. Updating a blog regularly tells the search engines your site is active, which helps with search engine ranking. You can also base your blog entries on the keywords and topics that your customers may be searching for.

For a small monthly fee, I’ll take away all the hassle of blogging!

The Blog Startup Package includes:

Set up of a WordPress blog, in similar in style to your existing website
Brand new blog entries every week, written specially for you, on your chosen topics or keywords
Management of the blog, including moderation of comments to keep the spammers away,
Promotion of every blog entry via my Twitter and Facebook followers.

Of course, you will have overall control of the blog – you’ll be able to add to it whenever you wish, and will have final approval of anything I write before it is published.

Email me for more information on the Blog Startup Service

Tips to help you with proofreading

alison.neale — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:44:14 +0000

Almost all businesses use the written word to promote themselves and most people rely on their spellchecker … but that can be a big mistake!

See, spell checkers are okay, but they’re not infallible. Much of the language we use is based on context, so a spell checker will not know if you’ve used “compliment” when you meant “complement”. It won’t be able to tell that you’ve missed the “d” off the end of “and”, or that there’s a word missing from a sentence. And it will often throw up odd grammatical suggestions that will turn your paragraph into nonsense.

And you can’t guarantee that YOU will be able to spot your own mistakes either! It’s true – when you’ve thought of the words, researched the words, written the words and proofread the words, you will see what you expect to see, not what is actually on the page. Here are five tips to help you spot those annoying typos and errors in your writing:

1. Read the text out loud. This forces you to read every word on the page; it’s much easier to skip over things if you read in your head.

2. Don’t proofread a document as soon as you finish writing it. Take some time away so the words are not as fresh in your mind.

3. If you’re checking a string of numbers, check them backwards as well as forwards. Or get someone else to read them out while you check them.

4. Print out documents rather than proofreading on-screen – it’s much easier to spot errors on paper.

5. Use the dictionary! Don’t be ashamed to look up a word up if you’re not sure of its spelling.
However, my most important tip would be to get someone else to proofread for you. A second pair of eyes is essential to prevent you letting typos go out unchecked. If you don’t have anyone around, consider using a professional proofreader; my Pay As You Go Proofreading Service will help make your life typo free for a very small price!