Typos and Domain Names.
Typos, everyone does them, and depending on what it is you are writing is what will affect the final outcome. If it is a simple text or informal letter people are understanding and with a little banter will soon forget it, but if you have to write a business document or an article, typos can be deemed as unprofessional.
Nowadays you have software that highlights the misspelled words, as I have for all my WordPress sites. But when it comes to editing images Photoshop and Grammarly do not seem to work together.
Someone such as myself suffers from cognitive impairment because of my diagnosed cerebellar atrophy, I sometimes muddle my words or omit them entirely out of sentences even though I am adamant that I had recited the entire sentence in my head but what results looks nothing like what I wrote.
By coincidence this week I had a ding dong with a marketing competitor on Linkedin who pointed out a typo for a local pizza guy domain name. I wrote about this to air my opinion on my other site: https://marketingagency.cymrumarketing.com/2022/04/26/disagreeing-with-your-competitor/
Typos won’t ruin you but can be costly.
When you have for example merchandise or advertising banners as in the case of the ‘Pizza Guy’ one cannot go back and complain when the typo was in plain sight before it went to the printers. I keep referring to the pizza guy who had the letters SH#T in his pizza domain name. This is similar to Gerald Ratner saying the word CR#P about his jewelry not in good light, only to lose his millions literally overnight.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/mar/07/gerald-ratner-interview
Mistakes Can Be Costly!
Depending on the situation and typo that has occurred will determine the death of your marketing campaign.
As I said before I suffer from cerebellar atrophy and cognitive impairment and similarly to dyslexia, I can see the word in front of me and in my head it looks correct but in reality it is wrong.
So when I did my marketing campaign on Linkedin and shared it with all the social media channels it was only after I had slept on it and shared it again that I noticed many typos.
I was promoting a portfolio of domain names and it cost me a lot of views.
The thing was once you upload it to LinkedIn I could not find a way to edit and replace the image without deleting the post and starting over.
As a consequence, it cost me my time and possibly any potential inquiries because I had misspelled the domain extensions.
The problem was I was editing in Photoshop and although I have Grammarly, it does not work on Photoshop so did not pick up the error and my proofreader by coincidence is away this weekend.
“I literally wanted to cry”.
For content that has a short life, a typo might hurt or harm engagement temporarily if one can rectify the typo quickly.
However, if you are registering domain names and you misspell your domain after it has gone through checkout, you are then left with a worthless domain and a few dollars/pounds lighter in your pocket for not noticing the error. Yes, I am guilty of this also and I sometimes do not have a proofreader on hand when I spontaneously buy domain names.
A typo can hurt your brand if you have paid for all the marketing, advertising, and merchandise branding. If the public gets wind of the typo they will laugh at the error just as they laughed at “Gerald Ratner’s” joke about a prawn sandwich lasting longer than his jewelry, but the damage has was done and in the case of Gerald somewhat 30 years later his mistake is still talked about.
Spelling and grammatical errors or in the case of the pizza guy someone thinking it funny to share a photo of a market stall with the domain name, highlighting the letters, and then sharing it across social media was done in bad taste (no pun intended).
This PR stunt made by a marketing company in the same city I am from would have gained a few clicks but because the marketing agency did not link the pizza guys’ business and only shared the image showed me they were not marketing the company and only taking the p#ss for their own advantage.
If they had used their two penneth they could have reached out to him with another domain name. He would still use his business name as the slogan or tagline but have a shorter domain that people would not laugh at.
Mistakes such as audible innuendos or typos can make your company look unprofessional and drive potential customers away.
The definition of a typo.
The definition of a typo is a typographical error made either handwritten, typed on a computer, or printed in the form of a word document, image (infographic), or branding. It can also be a spelling error in the domain name.
Are typos a big deal? Depending if the typo is a massive advertising branding campaign rather than an informal note, email, or text message will determine if the error can be rectified without costing the company money and losing credibility.
I always tell people every opportunity I get about cerebellar atrophy which I try to educate people about. I have got a mini bio on most of my about me pages that I suffer from this and how it affects my life.
If you do not have a proofreader you can usually find someone on Fiverr providing you are not in a hurry as I was yesterday posting my article which I now have a problem rectifying. Hopefully, people will visit the link within my article and will see the amendment. It is time-consuming, frustrating, and disheartening knowing you have made all this effort only to spot a typo a few hours later.
Here is the rectified image, if you compare it to the LinkedIn post you will see the difference, not that it matters now, we are only human after all.
#proofreading #typos #spellingerrors #prooreaders #fiverr #domaintypos
