Whether you’re writing service page copy for your e-commerce business or product page copy for a client, you must deliver compelling work that drives action and connects with your audience. It’s more than putting words on a page. It is about crafting copy that ‘sounds’ right to the reader’s ear. Proofreading can help you with these goals. It can help you connect with your copywriting audience.
If you’re curious about how successful copy proofreading can help your audience build an affinity with your brand, this article will help. Here, we’ll examine the three ways proofreading works in your copy’s favour when connecting with an audience and the best practices you can use for successful proofreading in your copywriting career.
What Does Proofreading Copy Involve?
Proofreading copy involves re-reading copy to spot mistakes and fix the mistakes as required. Mistakes may be minor errors that eagle-eyed readers spot instantly or glaringly obvious mistakes that put your audience off. Of course, no copywriter is perfect when writing copy. Mistakes do happen. For this reason, proofreading is important and needed.
When proofreading, you’ll typically focus on a few types of errors. A few examples of corrections you may make when you’re in proofreading mode include the following:
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Punctuation
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Spelling
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Formatting
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Grammar
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Inconsistencies
Proofreading copy isn’t always an easy process. If you aren’t sure how to proofread effectively, read this guide on 5 Effective Ways to Catch Errors and Improve Your Copywriting.
3 Ways Proofreading Helps Build a Connections with an Audience
Proofreading can lead to successful copywriting, but it goes beyond this. If you want to coax your audience into reading your exemplary copy from start to finish and take an action, you’ll need to proofread. Here’s how proofreading helps you build connections with your audience.
1. Enhances Your Credibility and Increases Trust
Proofreading can enhance trust, credibility, and connections from the perspective of your audience in many ways. It shows that you are a skilled writer, enhancing the reliability of your work and reducing the bounce rate or chances of readers leaving your page after noticing mistakes in your writing.
Just by proofreading, you can retain your readership. You can keep your readers returning to your error-free work because of the trust and connection you build with them.
2. Helps Meet Audience Expectations through Your Brand
As you proofread, you can resolve flow issues and inconsistencies, which helps build a unique connection with your audience. You typically read the copy aloud when proofreading to spot any inconsistencies, such as phrases that do not sound right or sentences that might be unclear.
For instance, you may catch an incorrectly used adjective in your luxury food-related copy. It might sound too colloquial or lack the adjectives required to inspire readers to purchase high-quality products.
Awareness of inconsistencies and flow issues and keeping these elements consistent can help you build a connection between your brand and the audience. They’ll know what to expect from your website, and with the right consistency, you will elicit your readers' intended emotions and connection.
3. Ensures Your Audience Takes the Intended Action
After proofreading, your copy will be easier to read. Each point you intend to communicate will be easier to understand. Phrases will include less passive voice. Calls to action will be direct and clear.
Readers who understand your work without struggling to interpret your meaning will be more driven to take the intended action. For example, you might notice that your call to action lacks a clear verb that tells the audience what action to take. Resolving this issue during proofreading can build a connection with your readership by prompting them to take action.
Key Fact
Spelling and grammar errors can affect your rankings. This decline occurs because Google uses natural language processing methods, which rank your authoritativeness. Poor spelling translates to poor authority.
3 Proofreading Best Practices to Consider
It helps to follow proofreading best practices if your goal is to deliver flawless copy and connect with your audience. Here are three proofreading best practices to consider.
1. Read the Copy Aloud
Perfect copy doesn’t happen by accident. It requires copywriters to listen to the words they craft and ‘hear’ if they sound right. When proofreading, these actions involve reading the copy aloud, which can tell you if the flow, grammar and punctuation are correct.
While reading your copy out loud may sound awkward, remember that the connection you build with your audience relies on tone and flow. Your readers will read the copy with their inner voice or even read it to someone else if they are sharing your insights with others. It makes sense to read the copy aloud to catch errors and get it perfect.
2. Focus on Formatting
Even if you use tools like ProWritingAid, you will not get the formatting support you need when proofreading copy. The best practice you should consider is using a checklist to focus on formatting. Consistency is key here, so ensure formatting choices are maintained throughout the entire copy.
Some formatting choices you must be consistent with and tick off your checklist include line spacing, capitalisation, header tag sizes, numbering styles and font type. When in doubt, refer back to the style guide to check the formatting requirements for your copy. It will outline all these requirements and keep you on track to create the perfectly formatted copy.
3. Take Breaks from Proofreading
We may have proofreading and copywriting deadlines, but organising our time and delivering pieces that resonate with an audience often requires us to take breaks. This best practice is especially important for maintaining focus when proofreading copy over a long period.
Without taking a break, you run the risk of missing errors. Even when using Grammarly for proofreading success, if your focus diminishes, the errors can go unnoticed, or you may approve a grammatical change that is not warranted. Make sure you take breaks. Your focus will also return once you return to the copy, and you’ll spot the mistakes more easily.
Creating Connections Through Proofread Copy: Key Points to Remember
Your copy is a powerful piece of writing that can inspire your audience to take specific actions. Just by proofreading, you can enhance trust, elicit the intended emotions from your readers, and, most importantly, build a connection between your readers and your brand. It will match your brand to your audience’s expectations and help you retain your readership for years.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Comes First: Proofreading or Editing?
Editing always comes before proofreading since proofreading is the last stage in your editing process. Editing digs deeper into the copy and looks for incorrect styles, wordy syntaxes and problematic grammatical errors. After the editing stage, you will proofread the work for surface errors, such as punctuation and spelling.
What Are the 5 Proofreading Strategies?
The five proofreading strategies include reading the copy aloud, reading very slowly, following a checklist, taking breaks from proofreading and double-checking each sentence for one error at a time. You may also make your list of errors related to specific errors you make and focus on correcting them.
