At 9:00 p.m. tonight, President Trump will take the stage before Congress and deliver his first State of the Union address. The speech is a tradition as old as our nation itself, originating in Article III of the Constitution, which declares that the President "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."
It's an important speech, an overview on current progress, plans for policy and visions for the future. It's the kind of thing that every American should take a keen interest in.
It's the kind of thing that shouldn't be overshadowed by typos.
According to reports by CNN, at least some of the tickets to this year's event were released with an error that misspelled the name of the event. That's a small error, the kind a lot of us have made in an e-mail or even a blog post. You probably felt a little sympathy for the person who was responsible for those tickets as you read the article. After all, if you and I make those errors in the course of day-to-day business, it's easy to imagine the same happening when there's a whole country to be run.
Unfortunately, that only raises the stakes on the quality of the content and the news that any mistakes will generate. And as of this morning, Google delivers almost 2 million hits for "state of the union ticket typo."
That's a lot of eyes on a very simple typo.
So what's the lesson in all this for your business? It's far too easy to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Even worse, once a careless error is picked up, whether that's by your competitors, your customers or even the media, it's going to dominate the conversation.
That's why every piece of content you create, from blog posts and landing pages to articles and ebooks (and yes, even tickets if you're hosting an event), needs to be carefully edited and proofread. If you or your content writing services provider aren't reviewing every bit of text before publishing, take the State of the Union ticket typo as a warning: sooner or later, an error will come back to haunt you.
Need tips on how to avoid your own typo scandal? Check out a few of our recent blog posts for editing and proofreading strategies that can save your brand a lot of embarrassment in the future. And if you're still worried about the dangers of typos, consider our content packages. Our team includes experienced editors whose only job is to watch over the state of your content.
