When you run your own business you are going to make mistakes in your content. Guaranteed.
And yes, I’ve made lots of them along the way and every time something happens, the first thing I look at is intent.
If your intent was good, then you need for forgive yourself and look at what lesson there is for you to learn. Once you figure out the lesson, fix whatever system is broken to try and minimize – not eliminate – errors.
Why do I say minimize versus eliminate? Because you will never be perfect so it is time to stop trying.
If you make a mistake and learn from it, chances are the mistake won’t happen again but don’t let that one thing be all you focus on.
Move on!
Pick yourself up, create a new process to try and prevent the same mistake from happening again and get back at it.
No one else is sitting at home reading email thinking, “OMG Lisa sent me an email last week that said ‘Dear Contact Name’, she must be having problems in her business, and I can’t believe she would do that. It’s just terrible!!”
And if they are, well, let’s just say that I’m not the one with the problem, because there are far more important things to worry about.
So, today I am laying all my cards on the table. I’m going to share with you my dirty little secret – All the awful, horrid, really bad mistakes I have made when it comes to my content, because someday, you may make these same mistakes and I want you to know that you are not alone.
Here are 9 Content Mistakes I’ve Made That You Will Likely Make too:
- Reply all when you meant to just reply to the person
- Reply to a BCC email when you weren’t supposed to
- Send your email out to “Dear Contact Name”!
- Accidentally trigger an email you didn’t mean to and sent to your entire list
- Send an email with a broken link
- Tweet a direct message as a reply
- Reply to a tweet from the wrong account
- Spelling mistakes – nuff said especially when it’s words like favor and favour!
- Email your do not mail list by mistake (yes, I did that once at Parlez Wireless)
These are nine simple mistakes that happen that people get really fired up about and, while I agree they are important and paying attention to the details is critical to the success of your business, they aren’t the end of the world.
What you need to ask yourself is: “Is this the norm or the exception?”
If every time you do something it is riddled with mistakes, you have a problem. But, if you are making the occasional mistake, don’t be so hard on yourself. Learn from it and move on.
Time to share! What mistake have you made recently that you need to laugh about? Tell me in the comments below!
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5 thoughts on “9 Content Mistakes I’ve Made”
I recently sent out our email newletter to Dear (Company Name) instead of contact name… Ended up looking a little strange for those companies that are called 1345663367 Ont. Ltd
Typos, typos, typos……why is it that you don’t see it when you proof it, only when you hit “send”. I have learned to be patient and allow someone else to proof before I hit the send button.
I recently had someone go through my sales copy with a red pen! It was quite the experience to see how bad it was through the eyes of a professional editor and someone who also doubles as the dangling participle and grammar police 🙂 Love it tho!
I often post on my FB page late in the evenings, without my glasses on (bad plan)….in the morning, I have had more than one surprising post that made absolutely no sense. Jennifer, wear your glasses no matter what after 6 pm. (In the morning the font on my eReader is normal…in the evening I graduate to XXL – I so love this aging process LOL) Thankfully, the people that are on my page put up with my weird little quirks and find them amusing.
Luckily the only one of these I’ve ever done is tweet out a direct reply as a general message, and luckily it’s never made any sense to anyone so it’s all good. You’re right though, making sure you get it right up front saves a lot of embarrassment.