Andy: you’ve proudly hit publish on your latest post and your colleague taps you on the shoulder and says

Louise: Andy, did you know you made a typo in that meme?

Andy: Why are the gods against me? I’m Andy Le Roy

Louise: And I’m Louise Poole, and we’re giving you the insights to help elevate you as an expert in your field

[Elevating Experts]

Andy: I’m pretty sure I know where we’re going with this one Louise, but it does seem like I’m responsible for my fair share of little blips on our road to batch completion

Louise: you definitely know where we’re going Andy, it’s time to sit back and have a little listen to our good friend…

[Sting: Captain Obvious]

Discussion

Louise: hey there Captain Obvious, it’s lovely to see you again!

Captain Obvious: well hello there Louise, I didn’t think I’d see you again quite so soon, what have you done this time?

Louise: No, no, captain obvious, it’s Andy this time… he seems to have a little issue with typos in memes at the moment…

Captain Obvious: well as much as I like the lad, I’m really not surprised. Let’s give him a little bit of education on how to spot those errors

Louise: I feel like it’s really a case of just slowing down and double checking your work, right?

Captain Obvious: slowing down is an excellent piece of advice Louise. If you go a little bit slower while you’re working, you will save yourself a lot of time further down the track. But I’m really not such a fan of double checking

Louise: what? Captain Obvious doesn’t double check his work?

Captain Obvious: No. I triple check my work!

Louise: oh! Now I get it!

Captain Obvious: when you’re drafting your work, that’s the perfect time to triple check what you’ve written. For every line that you write, there’s bound to be a little mistake that creeps in that you don’t spot while you’re in the creative flow

Louise: so why wouldn’t I just double check what I’ve written?

Captain Obvious: on the first time ‘round I would glance over it and see if there are any obvious things that have been picked up by the spellchecker and grammar check. On the next run through I have a very focused read of what’s on the page to see if anything stands out.

Louise: surely that’s enough after you’ve done that?

Captain Obvious: well, you might think so my dear, but Captain Obvious also likes to read it out aloud in one final check. It’s really quite amazing what you pick up on the page when you start to talk it out aloud

Louise: so that’s that, all checked and perfect at that point, yeah?

Captain Obvious: maybe, but that’s not the last time you are going to be working with that text. What about when you copy and paste it over to one of your graphics?

Louise: I’ll double check to make sure it’s transferred correctly?

Captain Obvious: Ahemmmmmm

Louise: trrrriple.. check… got it

Captain Obvious: always triple cheque your work at whatever stage you are, because as soon as you hit that publish button, if there is a mistake you are going to have to go right back to where that mistake originated and correct it and do all of those steps again

Louise: yes, we did have a case like that recently where we got all excited because we’d finished everything, and when we looked at the live post a day later we noticed there was a typo and we had to go back and fix it

Captain Obvious: I don’t want to be Captain Obvious, but I am, of course… so here’s my advice on what to do when publishing your posts

Louise: can’t wait for this bit of advice Captain Obvious! Hit me with it, what is your big piece of advice for when you are about to hit publish on your post?

Captain Obvious: triple check everything. Even though you triple checked it every stage so far, this final stage can also be prone to little errors. Triple check everything before you hit that publish button

Louise: it seems like a lot of triple checking Captain Obvious

Captain Obvious: yes, it is. But if you triple check everything you do at every step of the way, you won’t have to go back and redo things later… think of it as not having to do three times the work down the track, if you simply triple cheque what you’re doing when you’re doing it

Louise: OK… even I’ve learned something here! Have you learned anything Andy?

Andy: yes, thanks Captain Obvious! Leave it to Louise and me to do the recap and we’ll make sure we get it right every time

Captain Obvious: right you are… Bye for now!

Recap

Louise: it all sounds pretty obvious, but that’s what Captain Obvious is all about

Andy: we all know the benefits of rechecking our work before we submit something, it’s what our teachers banged on about all the way back in school

Louise: but Captain Obvious really brought it home for us today!

Andy: when you’re drafting your material, look for the obvious markings from your spell checker, then do a scan for anything that doesn’t read right. Then read it aloud to really make sure the words on the page are what you want them to say

Louise: at the next stage when you’re copying and pasting your words into your assets, always triple check in the same way to make sure that the information you meant to transfer over has made it over correctly. There’s nothing worse than having to go back and edit your meme, then reload it to your server and then reattach it all over again because of one little mistake

Andy: and again, before you hit the publish button, triple check your work to make sure that everything in your post reads exactly how you want it to read. You will definitely save yourself a lot of time by cutting out the opportunity for little mistakes to creep in

Louise: and that will leave you a lot more time to make more great content and connect with your audience.

Andy: We’ll leave Captain Obvious’ simple tips in the show notes for you… but take it from us, they really are obvious!

Louise: Next time on elevating tips on protecting your voice

Captain Obvious says “forget the double check rule! Triple checking is the way to go!”

You’ve probably seen this little treasure floating about the internet:

Correct the
the mitsake

Captain Obvious says not only to look for the little red and blue squiggles your speall and grammar checker leaves, but have a focused scan of the written words. Now slowly read each word aloud, just to be sure. You misspellings, bad grammar and stray words will fade away into the sunset. Thanks, Captain Obvious!