The other day, I was looking at the profile of a LinkedIn connection. I was caught off guard… something wasn’t right about his headline. Then it dawned on me – he misspelled a key word: Guranteed Marketing Results. And the misspelling was on his headline nonetheless. Oops!
I chuckled to myself and thought, “How can you guarantee me results when you can’t even spell it correctly?!”
Of course, being the career coach that I am, I pointed out the misspelling to him.
I didn’t feel awkward or nervous about pointing it out, but that’s what I do. I point out things that aren’t the best they can be. Just like I would tell you if you had a booger in your nose at a networking event, I’m going to tell you if there’s a misspelling.
He was REALLY grateful that I did point it out to him. Citing his bad spelling as the source of the problem.
Here’s a tip to avoid misspellings on your LinkedIn profile: First write out your content on a Word document. Then check it there for spelling and grammar errors. Once you know it’s correct, you can easily cut and paste from the Word document to your LinkedIn profile.
My reputation is built on telling people what they need to hear… which isn’t always what they want to hear. So, when these situations come up, I make sure to be true to my reputation… and it helped a LinkedIn connection to protect his reputation as well.
What are you doing to stay true to your reputation today?