Increasingly, online and offline businesses must have a website. It’s a simple fact of life in today’s world. People look to the web before the check any other places for information and services. Your site should be the hub of your entire marketing plan and for the best results, you need to have the site updated frequently. Studies show the best results are when a site has an article or blog post about 2-3 times per week. Now, you don’t have to start with that, but that is generally the goal.
The nature of many independent business owners and freelancers is that they can do it themselves. This makes sense as they are starting their own business. This “do it yourself” nature is a huge strength. They get things done and power through things that stop many others.
Greatest Strength becomes a weakness
As with most things in life, when we rely on a strength too much, we can get trapped into not doing the best thing. This is what I find most concerning about this group of entrepreneurs when they try to build their own website, figure out SEO, and “doing” social media (whatever that means). Here’s the deal, they go buy some books, maybe some software, and “Google it” and sometimes get good at building their site and understanding SEO, Social Media, and build a following.
These are great learning activities and there is a fantastic sense of accomplishment in being in charge of your own site/social media campaigns. There are even studies that show that learning these skills (any new to you skills in fact) can help reduce the like hood of getting the most common form of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease.
However, do these this newfound skills help them grow their business?
Not very often. Sure, there are the cases that someone does launch a site and hit the mother lode. Or, she takes the skills that she learned from building her social media following and builds a booming business from what she has learned. But those are the exceptions.
Many equate being busy learning new skills with building their business. And this can be true. It all depends on what you are learning and how that helps your business. What is the single most important thing you can do in your business? Make a sale. That’s it.
Everything else you do supports (or detracts from) your business’ single most important function. If coaching people is what you do, then you make money when you are paid by the client. You are paid by the client when you are with them “coaching.” If you are an insurance agent you are paid when the policy is sold (or renews) and a real estate agent is paid when the property sale closes escrow.
When you are building your website is this investment the highest and best use of your talents with respect to growing your business? Are these skills part of your core business model? If not I would caution you to not get so sidetracked in being “busy” with your site that you forget to make the sales that you need to stay in business.
Social media may be a bit different in that by its nature intimate and personal and you are the best person to interact with your followers. Just be sure to tailor your social media campaigns to match your ideal client’s usage patterns.
Making money is not everything there is to being in business. An unhealthy focus on anything in business or otherwise is not a good thing. However, being in business does mean generating revenue. Maybe another way to look at it is to ask, if your business does not generate revenue are you really in business?
Who created your business website? Who is planning your Social Media campaigns (are your you just “doing Social Media” without a plan)? Share your thoughts below.
[...] always rank well in the search engines and your website is a critical part of your business. In fact, your site is the hub of your marketing plan. However, building the perfect site with awesome SEO is not a substitute to networking with [...]