How did you say you spelled your name?

If you're wondering why people aren't inviting you into their social or business networks on facebook or LinkedIn, it just may be because as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you're invisible.

The cure is simple. Check how your name is spelled on the network site.

No, I'm not kidding. Yes, I know you typed it in yourself when you set up the account. Yes, I'm sure you know how to spell your own name. Honestly, I'm not saying this to embarrass you. Just check. Please.

Why am I raising this issue once again? Because yesterday, I stumbled across two people I know on LinkedIn whose names were misspelled. Guess how many people were persistent enough to find them...

You're probably saying to yourself that I'm making this up. Honestly, I'm not. Go ahead and look up the name Aaaia on LinkedIn. That's not his name, but he's a real person and he really did misspell it.

It's really amazing how often people misspell their own name on the web or in email. Obviously, it's just a typo. No one does this deliberately. Unfortunately, this is one place where it can really hurt you.

Just a word to the wise...

RANT!!! How Will They Find You?

I swear I'll never understand how people can overlook mistakes in their very own signatures when they see them over and over and over -- in the mail that they send and then in most of the mail that gets sent back to them. But I see it again and again.

Yesterday I was asked to do some work for a new client, and yes -- you guessed it -- there was a mistake in his signature.

But not just any pedestrian mistake such as a typo in his phone number, which would have been bad enough. Nope. This client of mine had managed to append his signature to an untold number of email messages with his own name misspelled.

Can you believe it?!

How did I find out? Well, luckily, the firm has one of those names that is a listing of its senior partners' names. You know, like Smith, Jones & Papadopoulos. I happened to notice that one of the names in the firm's name was almost (but not quite) the same as my client's name. Since he is a partner, there was a pretty good chance that it was his name, spelled correctly, on the letterhead. So I asked him. And it was.

So I say to myself, "Rochelle, give the guy a break. It's not so terrible."

But it is.

Imagine that you did it. How is a new client supposed to write you back and not make a fool of himself? It's a guaranteed way to make a person feel like an idiot when he finds out that he's spelled your name wrong. And then when he finally finds out, he has to change the misspelling in his phone directory, in his mail client, in his paper filing system, in announcements, in reports, in presentations, and on and on. Talk about annoying!

And how's he supposed to get information about you in Google or Dun & Bradstreet?

Errors in the company name, contact information, or website addresses are just as bad. They lead your customers on a not so merry chase as they try to find you. There goes more business down the drain.

So what's the moral of this story? Simple.

CHECK EVERY PART OF YOUR SIGNATURE VERY, VERY, VERY CAREFULLY.

And don't think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. One of my clients had a business card with 17 errors in it. Absolutely true! It happened three years ago, but he's still talking about it.