The Importance of Editing for Business Writing

Content marketing is critical to the success of a business. However, it’s not enough to just publish average content; you need to stand out by ensuring that your content is great. Fortunately, the difference between good and great can often be fixed simply by putting your content through a round (or two) of editing. 

Considering you have 15 seconds to grab the attention of a reader, you need to make sure your content adds credibility to your brand instead of detracting from it because your copy is riddled with errors or you don't have a convincing hook.

In fact, research shows that typos, spelling errors and grammatical errors can have a significant impact on your sales. A 2013 study in the U.K. found that 74% of those surveyed noticed spelling mistakes and grammatical errors on websites and in marketing materials. 59% also said that they "wouldn't trust" a company with bad grammar and spelling and would not use them.

That’s why you need business editing. A business editor will edit, review and revise your business writing while keeping your audience in mind and making sure your output is consistent in voice and tone. Business editors not only review blog posts but also reports, ebooks, promotional materials, white papers and other forms of business writing.

Why you need business editing

• In most cases, business documents are a product of multiple writers which can often lead to inconsistencies in voice and tone. Editing helps you develop your brand voice by unifying different voices. Business editors may even work with you to create a brand style guide for all your business writing. This ensures consistency in voice and tone and furthers brand building.
• Competition is tough and even the smallest error can detract from your professionalism. In fact, in a 2014 survey by Standing Dog Interactive, 58% of consumers admitted to being bothered by website copy errors. Error-free writing leads to better perception of your products and services and editing is critical to achieving it.
• Content that focuses on your audience's needs generates more leads. If you want to push customers down the funnel, your content needs to be useful and actionable depending on where they are on their customer journey. Business editors keep this in mind and ensure that the content fits the audience.
• Businesses sometimes focus on features instead of benefits while writing copy. Instead of telling your audience what you can do for them, you should show them how you can help them. Editing increases the impact of business writing by helping you show rather than tell.
• Each piece of business content you generate has a reason to exist. It could be an ebook that is being served as a lead magnet to help you grow your email list, or you may want to issue a whitepaper that establishes your expertise. An editor understands these goals and gives guidance on how to improve the content so you can get the results you want. 

Running your business writing through an editing process will not only elevate the quality of your content but also contribute to your bottomline by helping you generate more leads.

What will an editor do for you?

Correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is only a part of the editing process. Editors do so much more to improve business writing.

• An editor will check if your content is correctly positioned for your audience and suggest ways to improve it. Through comments, they will highlight the blind spots in your business writing and share ideas on how to make the content more useful.
• Your content should follow a logical structure and flow. It should take the reader on a journey of discovery with each line flowing seamlessly into the next. An editor will move sentences and paragraphs around so they fit together neatly like pieces of a puzzle.
• Writers often get attached to their words and sometimes, this comes at the cost of clarity. An editor will trim content that serves more as a distraction and doesn't add value to the audience.
• While you may be familiar with all the jargon used by your industry, your audience may not be. An editor will simplify jargon as well as make your content more accessible by fixing run on sentences and breaking down long complex sentences.
• According to Usability.gov, almost 75% of those surveyed admitted to judging a website's credibility by how the content was presented instead of the creator's expertise or reputation. Editors ensure consistency in voice, tone, and presentation by adhering to a style guide (internal or an external one like Chicago Manual Style). This is particularly important if you have multiple authors writing for you.
• Once all the content is finalized, editors do a round of copyediting to fix typos, spelling errors, and grammatical errors and to make sure sentences are succinct and clear. This is often followed by a final round of proofreading to make sure no errors were missed the first time around.
• If you are always on the look out for ideas for your content, an editor can help you since they are familiar with your entire content output and not just a blog post or an e-book. Based on their understanding of your audience and goals, business editors suggest topics you should write about. They might recommend removing an entire section from an article because it requires a deeper dive and should be served as an ebook. Or, they might propose that you convert a blog post into a series.

Conclusion

Business editing will help you take your content marketing game to the next level by making sure that all your written materials are consistent and contribute to brand-building. If you want your content to go from good to great, you'd do well to include editing as part of your content marketing workflow. You could outsource it or hire someone in-house depending on the volume of content you generate. Either way, editing is well worth the investment.

This is a guest post by Devanshi Jain from EditOps.

If you need help with content marketing for your business, Letterdrop's platform can help. It takes care of content marketing all the way from idea creation to publishing on your blog, newsletter, and social media. With Letterdrop's collaborative editor and project management tools, it's easy to collaborate and work with freelance writers and editors. We've partnered with EditOps to bring professional editing right into your editor - it's as simple as clicking a button!