When I was a small boy at school, my English teacher said “John how’s your grammar?”
I replied with, “She’s fine Miss, she nearly choked on a Strawberry Bon Bon the other day, but apart from that, she’s doing well. Thanks for asking.”
The old ones are the best!
You might be wondering why I started the email with a bad joke about grammar. It’s because of an email I received this week.
I’m always grateful when our customers reply to the emails I send out… especially when they praise the subject matter.
I’m also grateful when they email in pointing out any errors which they see in the emails… especially when they are glaringly obvious and I have somehow missed them.
Earlier this week a much valued customer did just that.
Not only am I grateful for the ‘heads up’ meaning that I can make a much needed correction, I’m also grateful because it inspired me to write this email.
It’s hard to believe I know, but I do make a few spelling and grammatical errors when writing my emails… but do you know what?
I’m happy with that… and here’s why.
To Err Is Human…
So please forgive me… in fact…
To Forgive Is Divine
Believe it or not, making mistakes is good for business. Firstly it shows that you are human which is always good in business and secondly… this is the best part… it creates engagement.
Whenever you make a mistake, people notice it and cannot wait to correct you.
Before working with us, Andi used to work for another company which did similar things as us and part of his work was to manage Facebook pages.
He told us that one of the tricks they would use was to intentionally spell words incorrectly or use bad grammar simply to get people commenting on the post.
This engagement was great for Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm.
Basically what that means is that Facebook would notice that those posts were getting a lot of interaction (people informing them that they spelled a word wrong and that they were completely useless) and would deem them popular and they would then show those posts to more people.
Whether we like it or not, spelling errors on social media… generate engagement and traffic.
The online versions of newspapers such as ‘The Metro’ do this too. The reason is that it grabs people’s attention.
In marketing this is called a ‘pattern interrupt’.
It stops people in their tracks and for some of them; seeing spelling errors on social media is enough to ruin their peace of mind and can even ruin their day.
Spelling errors to some people is like what Kryptonite is to Superman… it destroys them.
Another reason why I don’t worry too much about speeling or grammatical errors… (I bet that is driving some of you nuts right now!) is that perfection is harmful to profits.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t put out the best product possible or that you should care less about your customers, I’m saying that you shouldn’t obsess about making something perfect.
Not only is perfection relative, people have different ideas and opinions on what is perfect or not, it is also costly to achieve.
Perfection cannot really be achieved but those who constantly strive for it… often fail spectacularly. And here is why…
Many talented artists, musicians and writers never publish anything because they believe that their work is not perfect.
When they think that work is not perfect, they believe it is not good enough for people to consume, so they don’t release it… and they don’t make any money.
Those people who constantly publish content which is considered just ‘good enough’ will always outperform the perfectionist who publishes little or nothing.
Prolific Beats Perfection
To strive for perfection robs you of a lot of time and/or money.
Take these emails as an example.
I spend a lot of time writing and proofreading these emails (yes, I do proofread them, but sometimes a type of snow blindness can take over when you are reading what you have spent ages writing) and time is precious to me.
If it took me two hours to write and proofread an email that still had one or a couple of errors in it, I am happy with that because I can go move onto writing a new email or do something else.
If I were to spend the necessary time and effort that was required to make a perfect email – one which pleased an English professor or the small number of people who find a couple of errors irritating or infuriating… I would get less done and make less money.
You see… I’d rather get two, three, or four ‘just good enough’ articles and emails ‘out there’ than one ‘perfect’ one.
Getting twice, triple or more content out in front of people’s eyes is far better for business than one perfect piece.
The Three Rs Of Marketing
That extra content will be seen by more people and it will repeat, remind and reinforce my message.
Do you want?
- 20 ‘just good enough’ articles on a website being seen by 1,000 people each or…
- One ‘perfect’ article being seen by just 1,000 people?
No 1 wins hands down for me. I want my content being seen by 20,000 people.
Most people can overlook one or several errors. They aren’t deal breakers. They really aren’t.
Yes, if the email or article is complete tosh and badly written from start to finish, then you have a problem.
But one or several errors are not a big problem. They can always be rectified later.
You do need to deliver quality content, that is a given. But quality content can bury a tonne of spelling and grammatical errors.
I recently read a self-published book written by a Michael Killen. Michael makes a lot of money selling marketing funnels to clients. His book showed you how to charge large companies five figures for a simple marketing funnel.
The book has a lot of valuable content which if a reader puts into practice, will make a lot of money. But the book is littered with spelling, grammatical and formatting errors.
He makes me look like an English professor… which I am clearly not. Yet that book makes him a lot of money because some of the people who read it, purchase other products from him because they have been convinced that he ‘walks the talk’.
They see past the errors and mistakes and embrace the information.
Considering that this is a book that is being sold on Amazon Kindle, I was horrified at the amount of errors in it. I would most certainly not have published it without giving it another few proofreads and had others check it over for me.
But, I have always said that you need to get stuff ‘out there’ as fast as you can and if you wait to publish a book until you have it ‘just right’, you may miss out on a lot of money or good life experiences.
Too many people put things off ‘waiting’ until the time is right or the product is right or that they can afford to do a specific something when they could have done a cheaper alternative.
Putting things ‘out there’ which are less than perfect, is a better than not having anything ‘out there’ at all.
As I say, you don’t want to publish any old rubbish which is littered with errors, but if there’s one or two… I wouldn’t worry.
As you know, I can spend up to an hour writing these emails. That’s mainly because once I’m on a roll, I struggle to stop. As I write, ideas feed on themselves and I think of other things to add.
But that’s me; you do not need to spend that amount of time writing emails.
Very often, the emails which make the most money are the simpler ones which take less than ten minutes to write.
I’m going to share with you a video showing our techy guy Andi writing an email in just four minutes.
He also shows you how the email is added to an email autoresponder which will send out the email for you on autopilot.
You can watch that video here:
How To Write A Simple Email In 4 Minutes… An Email Which Can Make You Money!
With or without typo’s, spelling errors or bad grammar, sending simple emails is a fantastic and easy way to make money.
Go check out the video now.
Kind Regards
John Harrison.
PS…The great thing about emails is that they can be written anywhere in the world, at any time on multiple devices including tablets and smartphones and can be set to go out at any time.
Here’s that link again: