Pretend Your Teacher is Reading Everything You Write

Now that Teacher Appreciation Week is behind us, let’s not put those folks out of our thoughts.  In fact, if you think back to the old, “Does spelling count” question that was often asked in school, that’s a good mindset to have in everything you do in trying to promote yourself, your business, your product, your service; basically, anything you’re doing to try to get paid.

For starters, I hope you didn’t post on social media last week saying, “I’d like to thank all the teacher’s I had throughout my school years” because there’s no apostrophe needed.  And when I see someone whose grammar is bad, I get a less than professional opinion of them.

If you’re a recording artist and you put out a CD and there was a misspelling on there, you’d be pretty upset, right?  So why not take that same care, that same attention to detail, in the emails that you write, in the social media posts you put up, and so on?

Within the last few days something came to me via U.S. Mail that caught my attention.  Yes, I realize it was persuasive writing, but its contents showed me that the sender had taken time to do their homework to improve their chances of getting my attention.  Others like it have been very vague and nothing that have moved me to react other than to walk them over to the garbage can.

I recently mentioned the launch of SpeakerBruceW.com, which is the website for all the speaking that I do.  One of the talks that I give deals specifically with how your (bad) grammar could be affecting your brand.  And during my speaking engagements I’m often heard telling audiences that even something like having a branded email address can make you look more professional and thus be taken more seriously (instead of, say, Google or Yahoo or – the one that musicians seem to gravitate towards, for whatever reason – Hotmail).  You have a website, right?  It more than likely came with an email option, so, activate that.

Pretend that you still have a teacher reading everything that you’re publishing.

I saw posts on social media yesterday with messages such as, “Wishing all the mom’s a day as special as them today.”  Of course, I know you meant to put ‘moms’ but you were in such a hurry to get out the door to your mom’s house and thus the erroneous apostrophe.  C’mon, people, apostrophes show possession.  Remember when your teacher taught you that back in the day?

So, when you write an email and start with, “Hey,” instead of “Dear Mr. Wawrzyniak,” and/or you say, “With this latest release I’ve now released four single’s (instead of singles) in the last year,” I shudder.  And if you think I’m alone in that, count the number of others you’ve written to but not gotten a response from.  Yes, there’s a good chance that they too are turned off by your poor writing.

And why are so many of you saying, “I wanted to write to ask about getting booked as a guest on Now Hear This Entertainment”?  I know you wanted to, that’s why I’m reading an email from you.  Just say, “I’m writing to get booked as a guest on Now Hear This Entertainment.”

I pray that you’re handing out a mistake-free promotional flyer at your live shows.  And, the corresponding email address for it aside, let’s get back to that website too.  Is it littered with mistakes or broken links or is there information missing that people are looking for?  Would your teacher give you a passing grade for it?

Stay after class and get help.  Book a private one-on-one video consultation with me and let’s get you an A grade on your written materials.

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