What happened when I ignored my own rules about good writing
A traumatic house move offers some hard lessons about the need to look harder at how businesses pitch themselves
The untidy prose was a clue
I recently moved house. That’s famously a stressful process; and moving a big house 350 miles north was only likely to increase the stress levels.
So I chose a company called Daniel Adams based in Milton Keynes – ‘TAKING THE STRESS OUT OF YOUR MOVE’. They were very expensive, but this was a big move so I decided the premium must be worth it. I was reassured by that strapline, too.
This is not a property blog, still less a chance for me to vent about the nightmare that followed that decision. I could go on about the snapped chair leg and the diesel oil on the cashmere jumpers, the jewellery thrown in with the toothpaste and everything chucked into an unmarked fleet of white vans. A month in, we are still trying to reunite left with right shoes, leads with record players, what we thought we owned with what was eventually dumped in the shed at the new place.
Spot the pearl earring
However, this is a blog about words. And on that front, I’ve only myself to blame. If I’d have taken more than a cursory glance at their website I’d have thought twice about employing this bunch. But a cursory glance and a single thought was all I gave it, and them.
I fleetingly took in words like ‘experts’, ‘results’ and ‘raising the standard’. I didn’t factor in the random punctuation, the strange capitalisation, the basic lapses (‘Send us a message or ask for a callback, and one of our man will be in touch with you shortly’).
If I did dimly notice such things, I probably thought, well, as long as they have plenty of bubble wrap (they didn’t) and kept their promise to treat the white leather Eames chair with special care (they didn’t), does it matter if they don’t know what a semicolon is for?
It does. If a company is careless in the way it presents itself to the world, it’s a pretty good bet they will be careless in other areas too. And if they are not prepared to invest even a few quid in the most basic proofreading service, where else are they cutting corners?
And the journalist in me was also half-asleep. ‘Are you looking for the best Nationwide Moving Experts?’ asks Daniel Adams. Of course I am, Dan! I didn’t ask, why are those words capitalised? Have they won some big award? I didn’t check. (I have now. No award).
Halfway through the move, I wrote an article about my ordeal.
The owner sent a note reminding me of my duties as a writer. Perhaps I should have reminded him of his duty as a business not to make exaggerated or unsustainable claims. “Are you looking for the best Nationwide Moving Experts?” “Best Rates in the market today”.
Those capital letters were definitely a clue.
China in their hands
When SEO means BB: ‘Buyer Beware’
Remember Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? Of course you do. There are plenty of agencies and individuals still making a mint out of it. In fact, the only Daniel Adams employee linked to the firm on Linked In is, indeed, an SEO consultant.
We – or rather the algorithms – have moved on from the really dark days of SEO, when writers were simply ordered to repeat the key phrase as often as they could physically manage with the space available.
But that’s where Daniel Adams– or Milton Keynes based House Removals Company Daniel Adams, providing top-notch Moving services in Milton Keynes, a Milton Keynes removals service that does not believe that people should sacrifice high-quality services in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire because they are a well known, respected moving company based in Milton Keynes – still is: SEO’d to the hilt.
You’ll struggle to find much else about them online. In About Our Team, it says Our services are conducted by fully trained, certified, and highly skilled professionals. But we don’t learn what the training was, where the certificates are or (in my case) when the highly skilled professionals are going to show up.
Compare this with the removals company I should have gone with.
Note to self: if an organisation is invisible on social media, if its site is full of unsustained assertions and repetitive SEO-friendly phrases, carry on scrolling. And don’t bang on about standards, in writing or anything else, if you’re not prepared to spend your own money on organisations that uphold them.
Here’s a checklist
The British Association of Removers has a handy checklist for choosing a company that does adhere to some standards, albeit in an unregulated industry. In that spirit, here’s a quick health check for organisations which rely on web traffic to attract customers and drive traffic:
Is the copy decently written and free of obvious grammatical errors?
Are the claims they make for the excellence of their service backed up by evidence?
Do the employees and owners have a presence on Linked In and other networking sites?
How easy is it to interact with the company on Twitter, Facebook etc?
Is the copy they write heavily reliant on repetitive SEO techniques?
Does it offer a proper, in-depth description of the business they do and the way they do business?
What’s the balance between assertion/claim and proof/evidence?
There is a better way
Whatever business you’re in, think hard about the words you use, the messages you send out and the substance behind what you say. Above all, get someone in to give you an honest appraisal of all three. At the very least, invest in a decent proofreader*. But if you’re aiming for more – persuasiveness and credibility as well as accuracy, we can help.
* Forthwrite’s favourite decent proofreaders
If your business could benefit from a proofreader, think of this as a public service announcement and here are some of the best subeditors we have worked with over the years…
Olivia McLearon (Tatler, British Airways’ High Life, Glamour, Stylist)
Lucy King (Vogue, Marie Claire, The London Magazine)
Tom Allsop (Guardian, Time Out, Iberia)
Samia Qaiyum (National Geographic Traveller, BBC Good Food, Conde Nast Traveller)