Business Growth Blog

Everyone knows you need to proofread. Spelling and grammatical errors make you look sloppy and unprofessional. The problem is, when you've spent so much brain power trying to write and format good content, and you go over and over it to make it just right, proofreading becomes almost impossible. Your brain automatically fixes mistakes.

Y've seen ths thgs bfro – where the wrods dn't haev to be spleled correctly in oder to know wht is bing siad.

Spell check is just one small part of a clean document though. With one click of a button you can find misspelled words – that part is easy. It's the words that shouldn't be there or are spelled correctly, but used wrong, that can get us into trouble.

Read on to find out 9 proofreading strategies, typical error rates, and what you can expect to pay for the service.

One of the main reasons to have a website is to get people "into your world." By that, I mean they’re actively engaged with your company at some level: they’re on your email list, connected with you on social media, or are in conversations with your sales team.

The only way to get someone into your world is to get them to willingly give you their contact information. It’s a little counter-intuitive: we usually think of prospects running away from salespeople as fast as possible, and yet here I am saying that they need to self-select into the sales process.

How in the world does that happen?

I found this infographic on the HubSpot Blog that breaks down a bad prospecting email. It really caught my attention because I have recently seen an email that looks just like this one. I think the author, Leslie Ye is right on with this analysis. Writing good prospecting emails is hard work, and this is a great example of how NOT to do it.

When you’re selling, every word you write on your website, in prospecting emails or in newsletters matters. If you say the wrong thing, you won’t get results. Sounds pretty simple, but there are some phrases I constantly see that are a total turn-off to prospects.

As a small business owner, I get a lot of people trying to sell me stuff. Almost all of them – way more than 50% - say pretty much the exact same thing. It usually goes like this:

Every company needs to create content: web pages, proposals, presentations, blog posts, ebooks, emails, etc. Without a solid process, collaborating with others to develop content can be very cumbersome and clunky. It can take much longer and be more difficult than it needs to.

Microsoft Word has some features that can help streamline the content editing process and increase efficiency.

If you ask any stand up comedian what the most difficult part of his or her job is, they might say, “Reading the room.”

This phrase refers to the comedian's ability to analyze information from the audience and use that information to improve their act. They have to be able to perceive what jokes people are loving and what jokes aren't hitting the mark, so they can factor that into the rest of the set.

On a base level, inbound marketing has to be able to do the exact same thing.

Just like a comedian, a marketer has to to know what their audience will be into and what they will likely ignore. It makes sense if you think about it: you can't appeal to an audience that you don't understand.

So what is the best way to understand what your readers want? To many inbound marketers, it's content curation.

Simply put, content curation is finding and sharing articles with your audience. What exactly does that mean to a business owner? It means that if you know how to curate valuable content and analyze your audience's response, then you can learn what interests your current readers and what can potentially attract new ones.

One fall day I jumped on my bike (bicycle that is) to take a nice 15 mile ride in Northern Michigan. As I was enjoying the fall colors, I turned on my tunes to Octane on Sirius radio. The DJ was interviewing Flyleaf about their new album, Between the Stars.

As I was listening to the interview, a thought popped into my head: these songs are content, with a goal of driving a following and increasing sales.

That's the same exact thing any company needs to do: Create content that drives followers and sales.

Want to have some good content for your website but dread writing? Don't worry, you're not the only one.

A great way to get past the hump is to start with an outline. It will help shape what you want to say, see the flow of the messaging, and make it much easier to draft the rest of the document.

A good outline has direction and purpose. It outlines your main ideas and doesn't stray off-topic. Here are 2 writing tips that can help you use outlining to develop an idea into a workable piece of content.

Drafting digital content can get really stressful. You’re sorting out all of your ideas, sorting how to express them clearly, and your always worried about proofreading for errors. The biggest issue that I see with drafting is a lack of focus. This issue can be alleviated if you can piece together a drafting approach.

So, you have a list of potential customers you want to contact. The problem is, they have no idea who you are.

How are you going to take them from not knowing anything about you to wanting to meet you to learn more about your products and services?

That was my biggest struggle for years. I’m pretty relentless when it comes to prospecting. While many salespeople give up after a few tries, I have no problem contacting them 10 times over a period of time.

I just never knew what I should say when I picked up the phone or typed up that email. It was agonizing. Literally.

This may sound a little melodramatic, but my whole life changed when I read Jill Konrath’s bestselling sales book Selling to Big Companies. In that book, she spoke directly to the angst I was feeling and offered a way out. In it, she said: