Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

“You only have one chance to make a good first impression.”

You’ve heard that before, I’m sure. So if your first impression with potential clients or customers is in print, you don’t want it filled with misspellings, improper punctuation and lousy grammar. To make sure your communications look intelligent and correct, have a professional proofreader eyeball them before they go public.

Proofreading, like thoracic surgery or window-washing on tall buildings, is something you don’t want to leave to an amateur. No offense, but that includes most people. Heck, you have a business to run. You’re in a hurry. You make a few mistakes.

I worked for a swell ad agency in Omaha awhile back. One of our clients was a local KFC co-op, and we produced window signs for them. As I passed by the window of the production department, I noticed a large KFC sign posted there for all to see. It read as follows:

BISUITS AND GRAVY

I asked the production manager what a “bisuit” was, and when she noticed the error, she blanched. She said, “We just printed 500 of those.” Nobody had proofed it before it went to the printer, and the agency had to eat the cost. Oops.

Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation are vital in every communication you send out. That includes e-mails, postcards, brochures, catalogs, letters, advertisements, TV spots or videos, signs, newsletters, business cards, point-of-sale pieces, and whatever else you use to promote your business.

Let’s put it this way: when prospective clients or customers look on the Web for a service you (and competitors) provide, which business will s/he choose to do business with—one whose website is filled with misspelled, poorly punctuated, poorly written text, or one with perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation? All things being equal, I’m betting the customer will go with the one whose website has perfect spelling, grammar and punctuation.

That’s because taking care with the communications you send out absolutely screams, “Professional!” It suggests you take care to do a good job for your customers.

Does correct punctuation really matter? Look at the difference a simple comma makes in the meanings of the following two questions:

Q1: What’s that in the road ahead?

Q2: What’s that in the road, a head?

Point made? Every communication coming from your business should be passed under the eagle eye of a professional proofreader. Even if you’re pretty good at English, it’s hard to proof your own writing. You miss things. Hire a professional proofreader. It’s relatively cheap, and it’s better than looking like a doofus in print. Right?

Did I mention I’m a professional proofreader? Hmm. Good to know. Call me at 913.236.7595, and let’s chat about your proofreading needs.

What’s the best way to rise in the Google page rankings? That’s the question I get asked. And I always say, “Blogging frequently and relevantly.” So why don’t I follow my own advice? Well, lately I’ve been busy with paying work. But that’s no excuse.

The project of this week may be done next week. The gaping maw of living expenses, like Seymour’s steroidal plant, Audrey, keeps screaming, “FEED ME!” And if you don’t keep blogging or otherwise changing content on your website, new clients might not find you on the Internets. So I say to all freelancers and independent contractors, even if you’ve got paying work today, keep on a-blogging to get work tomorrow.

You remember the familiar story about the ant and the grasshopper. When the grasshopper had collected enough food to feed him for a day, he kicked back under a big tree on a fallen leaf patio chair with a tall green grass Slushy close at hand, and now and then he would scratch out a happy tune on a miniscule violin. While he was hanging out, he observed an ant scurrying around feverishly, out of the anthill to forage, back with a leaf or a bug on his head to the anthill, and then out again to forage.

After observing about 30 of the ant’s round-trips, the grasshopper yawned and said, “Hey, ant. You’ll work yourself to death that way, dummy. Why not chill out, like me?”

The ant came to a halt, the leaf on his head quivering, and addressed the grasshopper.

“Well, grasshopper, I’ll tell you why,” the ant said, in a rather sharp tone. “All of us foragers keep working to gather enough food to feed the ant colony through the winter. When it gets cold, and there’s no food to forage, we’ll be inside the anthill, cozy and well-fed. Meanwhile, you’ll be freezing your fat rear and starving out here because you’re lazy and short-sighted. And that stupid fiddle won’t help you one bit!”

The grasshopper laughed and said, “Oh, fiddle-de-dee! I have enough food for today. I can’t worry about tomorrow, let alone winter!”

The ant scurried away, calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, grasshopper!”

And so blustery winter came, and one day the grasshopper, shivering and hungry, rapped on the anthill door. The industrious ant opened the door, and the grasshopper begged to be let in to warm up and get some food. “Go away, freeloader! I warned you!” screamed the ant, slamming the door on one of the grasshopper’s antennae and snapping it off. Then, just as the ant had predicted, the grasshopper froze his fat rear and starved to death.

Moral: If you have a blog, keep blogging. Because you may have paying work today, but who knows about tomorrow? And you can’t count on ants to help you.

You know that among all the social media platforms, LinkedIn is the most business-oriented, right? You put your professional info into your profile, gather more connections, ask for introductions to people you’d like to know, and so on. You can do a lot with LinkedIn. But as I look at job-seekers’ profiles, I’m betting many are using it only 10% effectively to get recruiters and employers interested in them.

Got one?

What are you saying in your LI profile that will catch the right people’s attention? Unless you know, you’re likely to waste lots of words and get nowhere with your job search. Here are some of the mistakes I see on LinkedIn profiles:

• Too much (irrelevant) information
It’s nice that you like doggies and kitties. But unless you’re looking for a vet tech job, that’s irrelevant. And posting irrelevant content makes you seem clueless or unfocused.

• Too little (relevant) information
Some LinkedIn profiles show no photo and only the barest outlines of educational and professional accomplishments. If you’re just getting started on LI, okay, you can always fill in more later. But be sure to do it. Give employers enough info to see if you are a fit for a position they’re looking to fill.

• Too much information altogether
One person’s LI profile listed every job she’d had since high school, with a five-line paragraph after each job title. And the verbiage simply told what her duties had been at each job. If your duties don’t relate to a position you’re looking for now, either try to make them relate or forget all the exposition. If I have to scroll twice to see all of your employment history, you’ve got three times too much content.

Summary: Keep it brief and relevant to the job you’re seeking.

More tips to come…

Here’s another one of Guy Kawasaki’s five tips for personal branding success (again quoting from that BNET blog post I linked to in my last post):

Make Meaning, Not Money. If you’re into personal branding with the goal of making money, stop now. You will attract the wrong kind of people into your life. Instead, start with the goal of making meaning. What better way to align all your actions with your long-term goals. What kind of meaning will you make? Kawasaki suggests two ideas for inspiration: 1) right a wrong, or 2) prevent the end of something good. What will you do to make the world a better place?

“Life is empty and meaningless, and it doesn’t mean anything that life is empty and meaningless.”

Guy Kawasaki didn’t say that. The leader of my Forum weekend did. That’s the first cosmic two-by-four that hit me in the head at The Forum, an introduction to the Landmark Education curriculum. It sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? But all it’s really saying is that life has no inherent meaning — it’s a fresh, new canvas you can paint any way you want. Whatever the meaning in your life is, you choose it. You create it. You live it.

Early in my career, my life was all about getting together a great portfolio and winning creative awards so I could get more money at the next agency where I worked. These days, of course, I still need money, but winning awards is no longer what gives my life meaning. What does, though, is being in integrity with my own values and helping people create their own successes.

There’s more to meaning than what you do for a living. There’s the spiritual thrill that comes from seeing a great work of art or hearing a Mozart concerto played by splendid musicians. The warm feeling that bubbles up when you’re giggling with a toddler. The expansive feeling when you’re admiring the beauty of mountains or the ocean. The satisfaction you feel savoring a superbly prepared meal. Or the tender love you feel for your parent, your child, your mate, or your best friend. All of this has meaning on a personal scale.

On a broader scale, working for a cause in which you believe can imbue your life with tremendous meaning and the feeling that you’re making the world a better place. You might teach someone to read, coach a kids’ softball team, join an organization that champions the rights of the disabled, work for candidates whose views you share, join the choir at church, or serve on the City Council.

To me, the greatest exemplar of meaning-making is Mohandas Gandhi. His long-term goal was “to become a complete zero.” That meant reducing his ego desires to zero and acting as a purely selfless human being. He held no elected office and sought no fame, yet world leaders sought his counsel, and he commanded tremendous power — through nonviolent civil disobedience — to lead the Indian people in a symbolically important strike against the salt tax imposed by Great Britain. See the 1982 movie, if you haven’t before. Wow. Did he ever give his life — and the lives of his countrymen — meaning! Gandhi died in 1948, having lived to see India achieve independence the previous year.

Gandhi righted a wrong — the exploitation of the Indian people by Great Britain — and made the world a better place by peaceful means. Probably none of us will become the meaning-maker Gandhi was, but all of us, in our own ways, create meaning in our lives.

What gives your life meaning? I’d love to hear from you.

If there’s anyone in the world who knows a thing or two about personal branding, it’s Guy Kawasaki. He’s written a book called “The Art of the Start,” in which he suggests five principles of successful personal branding.

One of them, quoted in a BNET blog post, particularly intrigued me:

Make a Mantra. In three words or less, what are you all about? Kawasaki believes that mission statements are useless. He says, make a mantra instead. FedEx stands for “peace of mind.” What do you stand for, in the simplest terms?

At networking events, people are asked to give their “elevator speeches” or 30-second commercials. Most people describe what they do for a living. But a mantra is not about what you DO; it’s about what you’re ABOUT.

Okay, what you do is sell life insurance. But maybe what you’re about is “helping families be financially secure.” Or maybe your mantra is about an even higher level of consciousness, like, “to embody the peace I wish to see in the world.” That mantra, if it’s truly what you’re about, will infuse your every action and thought with an intention to create peace. The more meaningful your mantra is to you, the more you will internalize and reflect it.

When I was working in community theater, which I loved, my mantra was “creating community.” The community theater experience brought together everyday people, some with acting training, some without, some with family and social connections, some without, to put on a show. And as they worked together, they made fast friends. And they found that their contribution, as small or large as it might be, was valued. By working together, they could complete a puzzle with real meaning. That truly inspired me.

Now, what is my mantra? Well, right now, it’s “creating a lovely home” — for someone else, a potential buyer. I’ll keep mulling over my essential mantra during the process.

Can you get your life’s mission down to a mantra of three or fewer words? Try it. You’ll deepen your understanding of yourself and strengthen your presence in the world.

Why should we build our personal brands? So when someone hears our name, they instantly think, “Ah, that’s the person who (does or is something specific).” Like, “Ah, Jane Frogge. She’s the one who helped my friend get a job last fall.” Or, “Ah, John Jantsch, that’s the guy who created Duct Tape Marketing.” Or, “Susan Gorman, she’s the one who pitched in to help with my son’s bake sale for Haiti relief.”

Oscar Wilde said, “The only bad publicity is an obituary.” But short of that, there are plenty of so-so or unfocused (even negative) “reviews” of you out there for people to hear, unless you’re consciously building your personal brand around positive attributes, accomplishments, or emotional values. What value can you be to others? That’s the question your personal branding should answer.

In this article, seven experts share their secrets for building their personal brands. Well worth reading.

On the other hand, I have a love-hate relationship with the word, “branding.” So many people use it to mean “a logo.” But it’s so much more than that. In this article, Josh Kaufman says “branding” is an overrated buzzword. But then he offers several tips as to how to improve your reputation, which is really what it’s all about.