Blogs and thought leadership articles are a vital component of any business’s content and marketing strategy. If you want to stay on top of trends and engage with your clients, you need to establish yourself and your company as an expert in your industry. Whether you’re running a construction firm or a hair salon, an entertaining blog with tons of useful information is the gateway to your audience.
Even if you’re a qualified professional in your field, keeping a business blog can be challenging. You have to follow trends, find interesting topics, and make it work for search engines. In addition to all that, you have to make sure the text is free from typos, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes. You also need to hit the right tone and word choice to hook the reader and convey your brand message.
We believe that no business owner should put themselves under pressure by trying to check all these boxes single-handedly. As in all cases, it’s always better to hire a specialist.
In this article, you’ll learn how professional proofreading services can help you:
- Make accurate and high quality linguistic choices.
- Achieve a faster, cheaper, and flawless final product.
- Build credibility and authority with your audience.
A Good Proofreader Equals Better Language
What constitutes good content? No matter if it’s a digital content piece or a printout, it needs to be impeccable. Grammatical mistakes in a blog article, non-localized expressions in an outreach piece, and typos in product descriptions won’t make your brand look like an authoritative source. Below are a few aspects of all your textual content the proofreader will polish.
Typos and Minor Errors
Even the most perfect text can have minor errors and typos that you and your clever text editor AI didn’t notice. In general, the longer you look at the same document, the more numb you become to the small inconsistencies. Professional proofreaders have a trained eye for this.
They also use various techniques like reading aloud, reading backward, drastically changing the font size, and printing out the document to catch mistakes.
Grammar and Punctuation
On a more technical level, proofreaders look at the correctness of your text. They hold your writing to specific rules and ensure that everything is up to standard. There should be no spelling errors, all commas and columns should be in the right place, and all the sentences should make sense.
Style and Consistency
Grammar, punctuation, and correct sentence structure are critically important. However, proofreaders also work through less obvious stylistic issues in the text. Is the bullet point formatting consistent? Are there too many repetitions? Is the text too conversational or overly formal? Does it speak to the audience you’re addressing? How does the text sit within the overall tone of your content strategy?
A professional proofreading service will consider all these factors, and more, to ensure that your copy meets the highest standards.
Right Word Usage
Differentiating between words that typically get confused is yet another skill in which proofreaders are trained. While a specialist in the automotive industry might know how manual and automatic transmission systems work, they might not see the difference between “its vs. it’s,” “there vs. their vs. they’re,” or “accept vs. except.”
Ideally, these should be fixed during the editing stage. However, if a field expert produces the content, skips the editing, and passes the text to the proofreader, the latter should also pay attention to the word choice. They should still be able to catch and correct any mistakes.
Here is where content proofreading services will come in handy. Honing specialized content to perfection is their specialty.
Localization and Spelling
In a globally connected world, we very often forget how a single language can evolve to include various dialects, accents, and unique nuances. For example, English is a widespread language that unifies many cultures. At the same time, it’s spoken differently in various parts of the world.
Once you decide on your target audience, the next step is to ensure they get the content in the intended localization. For example, there are distinct differences between American, Australian, British, Philippino, and other English grammar varieties, and a trained specialist will be able to recognize and capture these nuances.
Additionally, idioms and cultural expressions are yet another layer to dwell on. Proofreading agencies may offer content localization and translation services too.
Readability
Even if a text is technically correct, it can still come across as heavy and convoluted. When that happens, it’s considered a readability failure. Content proofreading services typically try to keep the text on the reading level of a ninth-grader or, if possible, lower.
Proofreaders use special software that gives out the readability score and to catch any hard-to-understand sentences and convoluted passages. Some common errors that can affect readability include:
- Long sentences.
- Unnecessary repetition.
- Overuse of jargon and hard-to-read words.
- Excessive passive voice.
Expert proofreading services can catch these errors and correct them, making your content easier to read and understand.
A Proofreading Agency Saves You Time, Money, and Frustration
Are you still asking yourself if you need to hire a proofreader?
Let’s say your business has an in-house content team responsible for the blog, social posts, and printed media. Who should be accountable for the final product? If it’s the team leader, they might not have professional proofreading training. If you decide to let each member proofread a colleague’s work, it will waste valuable time that they could be spending on more important projects. Additionally, each one will have their own opinion and standards, which means the results will be inconsistent.
The solution? A professional proofreading agency.
Even if you have a content team, you can benefit greatly from outsourcing to a proofreading agency. Finding errors and linguistic issues in a text is a time-consuming process for an untrained individual. As a result, your company will lose time and get a less representable product.
You might think about hiring a dedicated proofreader to solve the issue. Keep in mind that hiring a dedicated resource hire will cost you a lot more than just a salary. Hidden costs like employee benefits and resources will affect your overheads.
If you team up with a proofreading services agency, you don’t need to pay these additional fees. Instead, you’ll likely work on a word-count or per-article basis. Additionally, they’re always available due to the pool of employees ready to take up work at short notice and will deliver a top-notch final product.
Everyone can agree that the internet is a brutal place. We’ve all experienced those nervous tingles you get before clicking the “Publish” button. It’s like public speaking, but on a much larger scale, and no one wants to give the crowd a poor performance.
Once content is out there, it’s hard to take it down. People have become extremely nitpicky and politically charged about the information they consume. Thus, it would help if you were 200% sure about whatever you’re publishing. Content proofreading services will give you that extra 100% of confidence.
A Proofreader Adds Credibility
In the current digital age, having an expert opinion is no longer enough. Many blogs, websites, and businesses are competing for the same audience, and it’s critical to stand out. Your work needs to be discoverable and credible,search engine optimized (SEO), contain accurate information, and resonate with your audience.
Trust and Reliability
How do you establish a trusted report with your readers to turn them into conversions? The answer is simple: accuracy and reliability.
Errors in the text are a foolproof way to annoy your audience, regardless of your expertise on the subject matter. Grammatical mistakes or even a minor misplaced comma can diminish the value of your copy. Consequently, you may lose a valuable conversion, affecting your bottom line and revenue generation. It’s extremely easy for a potential customer to think, “If they have a word misspelled in a post, what else are they doing wrong?”
If you don’t want to lose clients down the line, hiring proofreading services is a must. Accurate, edited, and polished high quality content will elevate your business to the heights it deserves and will prove your expertise on the subject matter.
Better Communication
Proofreaders are, first and foremost, specialists that have mastered the most intricate nuances and details of a language. They can use words to influence buying decisions, establish credibility, or convey a particular message. It might sound like magic, but choosing the right expression in the correct spot in the text can spur a reader into action, turning a viewer into a buyer.
Establishing this emotional connection with your audience makes it worth hiring a proofreading agency for your brand.
How to Choose the Best Proofreading Services?
Searching for a proofreading agency takes a few steps, but once you’re partnered with a good one, your life will be so much easier. Let’s discuss how you can hire the best proofreading services and what you should look for during the process.
Request a Sample
Any quality agency should be willing to show you samples of their work and complete a test request. You can choose one passage or an article and test the same one with various proofreading services. This should make it easier for you to compare the results and ensure that your final choice can capture the voice and style of your company.
Don’t Compromise on the Price
Freelance proofreaders need to undercut professional proofreading agencies so that they can get publishing credit. They’re more likely to sacrifice on quality, since it might not be financially worthwhile for them to invest time in your project. If you can find somebody who gives top-quality service at a low rate, it’s gold. However professional proofreaders won’t offer cheap services for quality work.
Don’t Compromise on Time
Proofreading isn’t just reading. It takes time and extreme focus. Our minds can play tricks on us, and excellent proofreaders use specific techniques to avoid pitfalls and spot mistakes. Each sentence is examined closely, reviewed, and then verified during the final check. The work takes time, and if somebody offers you unreasonably fast turnover, they’re either a genius or simply not a proofreader.
Choose Professional Services
If you find a dedicated freelance proofreader who promises to deliver and doesn’t, you can’t get back the time and resources you’ve lost. Reach out to a professional content proofreading service to ensure that you work with a partner that’ll meet and exceed your quality standards.
Sign a Contract
Once you’ve decided on the supplier, make sure to get a contract from them and seal all the details, including:
- The full scope of services.
- Detailed pricing breakdown, including revisions.
- Timelines and deadlines.
It’s always better to confirm your agreement in writing, to protect both you and the agency with which you decide to work.
Final Thoughts
Clean, concise, and error-free content excellent readability can influence your business in many ways. The primary goal of content should always be to establish yourself as an expert in your field, capable of educating customers and providing them with valuable information. Your copy should set a bar for your competitors while helping consumers make informed decisions.
Professional proofreading services can help you keep clients engaged while avoiding costly mistakes that can affect your bottom line. It’s not just a valuable service, but a necessity, particularly if you intend to use your copy to sell yourself, your brand, and your services.
At Captain Words, we prioritize building a relationship with our clients, enabling us to understand your unique individual needs. In turn, we provide excellent proofreading services to transform your content, align it with your goals, and fine tune it for your target audience. Book a demo with us today.
