Typos, people, typos

We all know social now plays a huge and important role in an organization's overall marketing these days. We all know the benefits to creating that online, social community around your product, brand and/or organization. This post is not at all about that. Rather, this post is about all of those posts. A rant - my two minutes on the soapbox. Here goes.

We, as social media specialists, have, in my mind, a responsibility to our communities to use proper grammar and spelling. Nothing irks me more than to see typos (intentional or unintentional) on an organization's social post. An unintentional typo means you did not take the time to proof your post before making it live. That is just lazy. An intentional typo means that you are giving into this whole idea of a "new" "texting" language. Please. Please, please, please, please, please. Nowhere, ever, is ur acceptable. It is not acceptable from a teenager. It is not acceptable from an adult. And it is certainly not acceptable from an organization. The other big (huge, really) pet peeve of mine is the non-use of apostrophes. Dont is NOT a word. Stick an apostrophe in there, for crying out loud!

Recently, I encountered two Facebook posts by companies I respect, containing ridiculous typos. The first caused annoyance, because I did not notice the typo in the URL until after I clicked on the link and was taken to a "Page Not Found." Clearly, this company's social media person had manually typed the URL (first mistake -- cut and paste, my dear. EVERYONE knows that!), and then did not take the time to review the post before publishing. To make it even worse, the typo in the URL was within the company's name. Really? Really??

The second one I came across was a common, simple mistake that we have all made one or more times: hte. Yes, reversing the h and the t in the word "the" -- most likely it happened because the individual was typing quite quickly (this happens to me all the time). I can understand this typo, most definitely. I cannot, however, accept it. Again, proof your posts before you publish them!!

My rant is over. Please resume your normally scheduled day.

(Note: I proofed this particular post close to 100 times before I published it! J)