In this Era of Social Media, the written word is more important than ever.

Part II of our 2-part series.  Click here to read Part I.

PART II:  Social media, personal branding, and yes people really do notice

For all the Chicken Littles who lament that our kids are being made stupid by the internet, the truth is that the average person today is reading and writing a whole lot more than ever before, both online and off.  

Thanks to Oprah, we're reading more books; thanks to email, we're writing more letters; thanks to social media, we're reading and writing more words - blogs, status updates, online comments, forum discussions, text messages, chat rooms, MMPORGs - than we ever have. 

Has text messaging and microblogging had an effect on language?  Sure - 20 years ago no one had heard of the term 'LOL'.  Have some of those effects become a little annoying?  Sure - see 'LOL'.  Is there a whole lexicon being used by the younger generation ("Plz fone me l8r 2 C if we R goin 2nite") that is both annoying and incomprehensible to those of us over 35?  Sure - but they said the same thing about the Beat Generation 50 years ago;  now we think  Jack Kerouac was some kind of visionary who transformed the modern novel.

There isn't some Platonic 'ideal English language' sitting out there in stasis.  Language evolves, and the 'correct' usage isn't about 'what we used to do when I was in school' but 'what the majority of users agree is most effective in communicating what they want to communicate.'

However.

The question is:  Does this mean you can continue to spell 'commitment' with three Ts, use 'discreet' when you mean 'discrete', and be oblivious to the difference between 'renumeration' and 'remuneration'? 

(Or, to put it another way:  Would you pay money to send your kid to a Montessori school that had this many spelling mistakes on the homepage alone?)

YOU'RE DOING A LOT MORE WRITING THAN YOU THINK 

 We're all creating more content than ever:  Technorati's 2008 State of the Blogosphere report says that there are more than 900,000 new blog posts created every 24 hours http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/ .  That's almost a million blog posts every single day.

You may not realize it, but even if you're not blogging, you're still doing more writing than you did 5 years ago:  You're sending emails instead of having meetings; you're texting your friends instead of phoning them; and you're updating your Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter status instead of going to networking events. 

What's more, you're reaching more eyeballs every time you do:  Emails get forwarded; texting is faster than phoning so you keep in touch with more people. 

Your status updates alone are probably delivering 2000 'impressions' (as they say in media planning and buying) per day (assuming you have 200 Facebook friends, 300 LinkedIn contacts, and a modest 500 Twitter followers, and that you update your status twice a day, you're reaching 1000 eyeballs x 2 messages = 2000 impressions).

Do you still think no one will notice that you don't know when to use an apostrophe?  More importantly, what happens to your personal brand when 1000 people are seeing your spelling and grammar mistakes every day?

CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY, BAD WRITING CREATES BAD EXPERIENCES

We know that people read differently online than offline - we're more likely to skim online text, and formatting (bolding, bullet points, whitespace, etc.) makes a huge difference in how well we can absorb what we're reading on a screen. 

(My blogs, for example, aren't ideal - they're too long, the paragraphs contain too many sentences, and I don't use nearly enough headings.  However, I try to make up for it withclever use of whitespace!)

Studies on reading for pleasure - known as 'ludic reading' (PDF) - have demonstrated that when we read well-written text, reading becomes like an "effortless trance":  we read more slowly, skim less, and absorb more information.

When we encounter typos, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, awkward sentence construction or weird formatting, however, our minds are sort of 'jolted', impeding or interrupting the 'effortless trance'. 

For the Group #1 people (the spelling and grammar fanatics like me), the 'jolt' registers consciously and we're aware of being annoyed by it.  What's interesting is that the jolt is also  registering with the Group #2 people (the 85% of the population who don't freak out over spelling mistakes) - subconsciously.  They don't engage with the material, they do more skimming, and are more likely to abandon the article/piece before finishing it.  Most importantly, they come away feeling that what they've read isn't credible and that it hasn't delivered a positive experience.

In other words, it all comes back to user experience! 

So let us sum up with some handy equations:

Bad writing leads to

Lack of credibility + bad experiences = lack of brand equity

RESULT:  You work harder for less revenue

Good writing leads to

Enhanced credibility + positive experiences = brand equity

RESULT:   More revenue for less work

Want to learn more about how to write better?  Start here.