Nothing  makes me crazier than seeing great people and companies shooting themselves in the foot by neglecting to proofread their marketing and informational materials before hitting “send” or mailing/handing them out.  When I see this happen, over and over again, I want to SCREAM!!!

What this kind of oversight says to me is, “I’ve outsourced or automated everything so I don’t have to be bothered with the day-to-day communication to my clients anymore. Someone else is taking care of that.” Really?  To the extent that the Big Cheese doesn’t even spot check to see what’s going out over his or her name anymore?

Today I received an automated, e-mailed invitation to a webinar that had the date and time wrong in the last line, even though the date and time were written in black and white  THREE TIMES in the body of the copy with links to the registration page. It’s apparent to me that someone cut-and-pasted the last line from an earlier announcement and then forgot to change the date and time. Not a huge deal–it happens when you’re in a hurry–but there should be a designated, exemplary, anal proofreader who looks things over before anyone hits “send.”

In the same email, the term “literally” was used wildly inappropriately. (Note to Vice President Joe Biden, listen up: YOU use literally wrong more often than not, too.)  The sentence (which I’m disguising totally to protect the guilty) was along the lines of, “By following this pre-sleep routine at night, every one of your wildest dreams will literally come true!” (Really?!! The one about my wild night with Jack Sparrow will literally happen? I hope Johnny Depp’s wife is okay with this!)

If what you write is a miscommunication or a misrepresentation, your trust factor will go down the tubes faster than warp seven the moment the reader realizes she isn’t going to get her delightful date with Jack Sparrow.

This is why when I read copywriting books that report that “amazing” is a powerful/compelling/converting word, I have to laugh and grouse, “Indeed it is, when appropriately used! But it’s far better to let your clients and customers call you or your program amazing than it is to proclaim it yourself, because unless what you offer amazes literally everyone who uses it (and I’m using ‘literally’ correctly here) , your claim isn’t going to pass the sniff test with some of the takers and some of the not-amazed will take pains to let everyone else know via the social media-driven circus we all know so well.

Great magicians are amazing; re-growing mammalian limbs would be amazing; the atomic bomb was amazing. Not a whole lot of other products, services or information can be legitimately deemed jaw-dropping amazing.

The results of some products, services and information can be deemed amazing, true — but again, the term amazing is for your clients and customers to claim, not you. Doing so yourself in your own copy immediately raises a red flag; people are quickly becoming skeptical of “amazing” since it’s used so haphazardly these days.

The bottom line is this: If you lose your target audience’s trust, you’re toast.

So take time to review whatever goes out over your name, company owners. Make sure you don’t over-promise and under-deliver; it should be the other way around. THAT’s when many of your clients and customers will deem you “amazing.” (They won’t all deem you amazing. There are Grumpy Gusses everywhere who would deem the literal return of Jesus lackluster and disappointing.)

In another part of the same email, one word was bolded and had a beginning parenthesis but the last letter of the word wasn’t bolded and there was no end parenthesis.  Proofreader Required!

Automated emails like the one I got today, even when personalized, appear sloppy, careless, and unprofessional and make the recipient wonder if the product, service or information itself will be cobbled together in the same slipshod way. (“You got my name right, but did every single person who got his email also get the typos and the wrong date and time at the end?”) (Why yes…yes, they did! Literally thousands of people got this same email sent to them. Isn’t this fact worth a few extra moments to make sure the piece was solid?)

Nothing that the public sees should give them a reason to doubt your professionalism, sincerity, or attention to detail. Whenever it does, you’ll have to slog uphill in muddy boots for miles hoping to regain the footing you lost.

It’s easy enough to do. Slow down. Get a proofreader if you or the people you hire to write your copy aren’t anal when it comes to getting things right. Don’t leave your materials to amateurs unless you want to come across looking like one yourself.