Our online persona

The VA forum I participate in regularly has had a spate of threads regarding VAs and other professional’s online appearance, most notably that involving grammar, spelling and punctuation. Most agree that if your website, blog, professional correspondence and forum postings are poorly written, it reflects badly upon you and your abilities.

Too many newbie VAs come bouncing onto the forums full of questions that are riddled with poorly-written text and spelling errors. While I agree that it simply isn’t possible to write perfect text all the time, I believe a genuine effort needs to be made in every instance. If your writing includes a link or a signature to your business, it must reflect the image of that business that you are striving to achieve. If you want to look ill-educated and lazy and you don’t care, then, by all means, don’t bother. But, if you want your clients and potential clients to respect your abilities and view you as an expert in your field, then care must be taken.

I can’t emphasize it enough, proofread, proofread and proofread again. There are some tricks that can make it easier. If you use Firefox, it has a built-in proofreader and can catch some of the more obvious typos when making forum responses. Copy and paste your text into a Word document and spell check it. Read it backwards. And if it’s a really important document, ask someone else to proof it. If you can’t be bothered to take the time to put your best written-self forward, then why should your clients think you would do any different for their businesses?