Grammar can make or break your marketing campaigns. With Christmas just around the corner, let’s take a look at some essential tips for proofreading your campaigns, before you ‘hit’ send on those festive marketing emails and social media messages.
1. Install Grammarly
The spell-checker in Microsoft Office or the iWork suite are great tools to rely on, but this sense of security is lost when working on email or web-based platforms such as MailChimp and WordPress, among others. Thankfully, there are some pretty awesome web-based tools out there to make sure your writing is spot on. If you haven’t already done this, install Grammarly now. It’s an English language writing-enhancement platform that can check more than 250 grammar rules, whether you’re drafting an email, a social media campaign or a blog post in your web browser.
Source: www.grammarly.com
2. Read your writing backwards
Even the best spell-checker will have its flaws, so you still need to rely on some old-school tactics to get your emails and marketing campaigns proof-perfect. One way of doing this is by reading your content backwards – start by proofreading the last sentence, and then the next and the next, until you reach your headline. This way, the context of what you’re writing does not interfere with the proofreading process – your brain can zoom out of the content of your message and devote itself fully to checking the grammar.
3. Read it out loud
You may be surprised at the results you get when you try this. Not only will this technique highlight any grammatical errors in your writing, it will also help you draft a more stylistic email that simply sounds better.
4. Give your writing some space to breathe
In our busy culture where deadlines loom over us like volcanoes ready to erupt, it can be hard to find the time to simply take a break from it all. Especially your freshly-drafted marketing campaigns. But even if you have no more than a few hours to spare, make sure that you take a break from your writing and come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes. Avoid another common pitfall – check any website links that you’ve included, to make sure that they’re not broken.
5. Print and proofread on paper
This may not be the most eco-friendly suggestion, but seeing a piece of writing in digital format is simply not the same as seeing it on paper. Having a physical copy of your work in front of you will help you create some distance from the writing and spot any grammatical mistakes more easily. Make sure you pay extra attention to any facts and figures that you’ve quoted, going over them a couple of times.
For more tips on how to proofread like a pro, check out this article on Thought.co. Or if you want to hand the reigns of your marketing campaigns over to a professional marketing agency, get in touch with us today.