• A company’s image
• A company’s reputation
• The perception of a given product or service’s quality
• The likelihood that a prospect will respond to a call to action

It’s one of my pet peeves. I’ve hammered the message here, here, and here, and again here and there.

Now, thanks to Sue Anderson-Lenz over at Marketing Lure, we’ve got numbers to back that up.

Sue ran a survey with 163 participants – business professionals largely from the US, “although the survey reached people in 16 different countries.” Note: it is not clear how many respondents were indeed from outside the US.

“One hundred percent of the people surveyed acknowledge that writing errors indeed influence their opinions. Nearly eight out of ten people have eliminated a prospective company — in part because of writing errors.“

And,

“Write‐in responses to one question reveal the impact that writing errors have on company credibility. Respondents said that errors will cause them to question the company and their leaders who permit writing errors to happen.”

Further,

“More than half of all respondents agreed that one error in any print material could be the kiss of death for a prospective company.
Four out of ten people expressed an extremely low tolerance for errors in electronic articles and books.”

Download a copy of Sue’s report from her blog: it’s a must-read -

For clients, as a needed reminder of the extent to which business success depends on good writing (no, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment).

And for professionals of the written word, as actionable data to support your positioning, dialog, and negotiations with prospects.

Wrong.

Take law firms. OK, maybe they are easy to pick on.  I put myself through university working as a paralegal; it’s a context I know fairly well.

At some point, most individuals and businesses need to seek counsel. With your physician, an attorney is the professional with whom you will have the closest – and possibly most dependent! – relationship. Trust, confidentiality, responsibility, reliability – maybe even caring – are as essential as subject-matter expertise.

Referrals and notoriety remain the top ways to gain new clients. Yet, in recent years, law firms have realized it is not enough to ensure durable growth in a highly competitive (not to say cut-throat) climate. They have invested in their Web presence, and some even have business development and/or marketing departments.

Lead generation is the primary reason for investing in a Web site. Web content aims to inform, educate, entertain. Web copy seeks to influence and persuade the reader. Professional services firms’ websites need an appropriate balance of both.

A Web site’s landing page is key to visitor retention. In other words, to get the prospect to click and discover the content of your website.

Are major legal practices’ Web sites speaking with their potential clients or at them?

To answer the question, I picked the top 10 American firms by revenue from the most recent survey available on the Internet (2007 figures) out of a listing on the world’s 100 largest law firms and captured their landing pages. You can see them all here if you like.

Call it a coincidence, if you must, but the No.1 American firm on the list is also the ONLY one to use you or your on its landing page.

The Flash object in the middle of the page presents Baker & McKenzie’s four core values by speaking with the client or prospect. (The only criticism is that this is in Flash, which is not optimal for Web referencing).

The first item in the navigation menu on the top right corner of the page is “Supporting Your Business”. The rest of the global Web site does not disappoint. They’ve made it a point to frame interesting and catchy copy into a conversation with the visitor.*

None of the other sites on the top 10 list speak with the visitor, even if most of them are generally well-designed.

Compare this, if you will, with the landing page of a well-known, prestigious, New York City law firm, which is not on the top 100 list. Correction: it is not even the landing page. The visitor first has to choose whether he wants general information or career information. The entire site is in Flash, leading to clear SEO and accessibility issues.

The copy is mind-numbing.

Passive voice, overwriting and not a single reach out to the reader.  Compelling copy?

What do you think?

*I have neither worked for nor hired Baker & McKenzie and have no relationship of any sort with the firm.

As you master increasingly difficult positions, proper breathing becomes automatic: you are no longer consciously engaged in leading your body’s inspiration-expiration dance.

Writing workshop

Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban’s writing workshop for translators, Style Matters I, held in Paris February 5^th, was an immersion in writing translations for publication.

It offered valuable advice and techniques for those wishing to hone their craft and invited a return to consciousness for those used to leveraging their writing skills to serve their clients’ interests.

Writers and translators rely on proficiency of language to craft high impact texts. They also use their senses and their instinct, just as painters and musicians do to give life to colors and notes. With experience, techniques learned and practiced merge with creative intuition, words flowing together in an artful dance as if graced with a life of their own.

Conscious choreography

Working in a group spurs conscious engagement.

Why did we choose a word rather than another? What awkwardness in this turn of phrase tickled your pen to change it? What effect do you think this change has on the balance of the text or on the message it is to carry? What solutions did colleagues find to transform gibberish into music?

Chris asked me whether I’d found the course useful.

The answer is a resounding yes, for several reasons. It spurred a return to the consciousness of doing, and the satisfaction and enrichment this brings. Watching how colleagues approach a text and hearing the solutions proposed can boost your own creativity. And developing relationships with others who work in similar areas broadens opportunities, as a team, to take on complex projects for demanding clients.

And I learned that, in UK English, an m-dash is an n-dash and it takes a space before and after it.

So, when is Style II coming to town?

As I work my way through 30 Days to Better Business Writing, Matthew Stibbe’s recently published e-book for wordsmiths, several chapters swirl in my head, calling for a client-oriented version.

Maybe even client-oriented versions in other languages. Take Day 7, “Analyse bad writing”, and Day 16, “Manage your writing”, for example.

Selling copywriting services to companies that recognize the benefits of good copy is a relative cakewalk. Selling to those that are the most in need of good writers is often an uphill battle. The are many reasons for mind-deadening copy, but two stand out:

• A lack of awareness of how ineffective the company’s written communications really are (and how they got that way)
• A not infrequent epidermic reaction by the text’s author to suggestions for improvement (often senior in-house staff)

The challenge is compounded when striving to produce compelling copy in another language from insipid source text. If Churchill had lived in the Internet age and perused multilingual corporate websites, I doubt he could have claimed “eating words has never given me indigestion.”

Tweaking some of 30 Days’ chapters to resonate with business writing buyers might just offer the gentle push some companies need to look at their copy more objectively. It would be the perfect companion to Chris Durban’s often cited guide to buying translations, Translation: Getting it Right.

A good team is more important to a successful business than products or profits, according to Lee Iacocca. Including good writers on your corporate team is an essential investment. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere,” he quipped.

In any language.

Do you find yourself staring at a blank word processing screen or procrastinating turning on your computer?

Are you motivated by reward (”quick wins”) or by sanction? Or a combination of both?

Then this little web app is for you. I stumbled onto Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab this morning and am using Write or Die to compose this post. I gave myself 15 minutes and set it to Kamikaze Mode.

I am motivated by both carrots and sticks. Write or Die helps me focus my thoughts so I can keep typing away and rewards me when I have met my word count and time goals.

But should my mind wander off somewhere (“Is there any coffee left?” “Does the dog need to go for a walk?” “Egatz, I’ll never make this deadline…”), it punishes my waning discipline. The sanction in Kamikaze Mode is stiff: your prose is erased, one painful word at a time (there are tamer settings for those times a gentle reminder is enough).

Check out Dr.Wicked’s website and see how his web apps and advice can help you get writing.