Who ever you are, if you are a regular social media user, chances are you have seen some pretty terrible spelling on social media or online content – maybe event daily!

When it comes to your close friends, relatives or younger adults, this is excusable – but when the spelling error comes from a larger business, we can often come away with negative perceptions of a company. As Forbes put it, “while typos are common and generally forgiven on personal social media accounts, emails, or blogs, brands and corporate or professional accounts are generally held to a higher standard.”

Just a small mistake can make all the difference to your customers, and the more public and the bigger your audience, the more potentially damaging the effects can be.

According to a study in the UK by Global Lingo, it was found that 74% of consumers pay close attention to the spelling and grammar of company websites. Also, 59% said that if they noticed any spelling mistakes, this would cause them to avoid doing business with the company.

Charles Duncolm, internet entrepreneur measured the revenue per visitor to the website, tightsplease.co.uk in order to calculate the economic effect of spelling errors. He found that revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

In defence of typos

Not everyone agrees that you have to be flawless in your spelling practices, in fact some people argue it makes the company seem more human. Author John Higgs wrote an article defending written mistakes in 2014 saying, “there are limits to the amount of mistakes we can handle, of course, and obviously mistakes which alter the meaning of the work need to be fixed. But that does not mean we should aim for the extreme of a zero-tolerance policy to mistakes.”

The implication of this is that if you can fix a mistake, or if it isn’t altering the message of your company, post or values then it can be okay.

Another important consideration is speaking your customer’s language, regardless of grammar and spelling. If your audience mostly speak in text speak then feel free to imitate that in your social media and content writing.

How to sort out your spelling

If you are worried about spelling and grammar mistakes slipping through the nets and accidentally publishing something which may cause negative reactions from your customers there are a couple of things you can do.

1. Check thoroughly- a cop out answer sure but checking everything multiple times will often help to get rid of any massive mistakes.

2. Get another opinion- Create a process of getting someone else to check your posts. This is not always convenient if you want to post on the go, but if you are really worried then this may be the best course of actions.

3. Cheat and use Grammarly– Grammarly is a great tool which allows you to install an online tool which will check your messages on the go. It is by no means perfect, but it is a great way of getting rid of a large majority of obvious errors with ease.

How important do you think spelling and grammar is online? Have you ever seen an unforgivable error which has put you off a purchase? We want to know. Message us in the comments or Tweet us at @Giant_Campus.

Additional note: If you find a mistake in this blog then we are sorry. We are just trying to be more “human.”