Check out a few blogs online — even A-list blogs or blogs published by major news outlets — and you’ll quickly start to notice something: No one seems to be editing this stuff. They’re riddled with grammatical errors, typos, dead links, and more.
Why is this?
The quick answer is that, yeah, no one is editing this stuff. It’s written quickly and that blue “Publish” button is clicked before the keyboard can cool off. Mistakes? They can always be corrected later… if the writer isn’t too busy writing his next post.
Check the comments on the busier blogs and you’ll often find a peanut gallery lampooning the editorial staff’s lack of talent when mistakes are made, but generally these seem to be ignored by editors and other readers alike. It’s not uncommon to see headlines with spelling errors in them. That may lead some to wonder: Does quality really matter on a blog?
I think it does, and more than you think. Sure, misspelling “your” or “its” once or twice may not send readers running away in droves, but over time mistakes like this add up, and damage is done. Think about your business’s goals. Do you, like many companies, stress quality as a key feature of your products or services? How does it look, then, if you can’t spell-check your work? What does that say, subconsciously or not, about the rest of your business’s offerings? This kind of bias is more common than you might realize. Many restaurant goers, anecdotally at least, tend to be less trusting of the food served at restaurants with typos in their menus.
So give your blog posts a quick once-over before you push them live. Don’t have the time? Hire someone to keep tabs on your blog and correct errors, either before you post them or after, “editing behind” you shortly after publication.