Creating Content for Your Business Without Getting Overwhelmed

Creating Content for Your Business Without Getting Overwhelmed

Creating content for your business might seem like a daunting task. Many business owners struggle to get started, feeling overwhelmed by the idea of writing. But the truth is, content creation doesn't have to be impossible or intimidating. In this blog post, we'll share some helpful pointers and actionable tips to get you writing in no time.

Have a Clear Goal

One of the most important steps in content creation is setting a clear goal. With a clear goal, it becomes much easier to generate content ideas. Ask yourself: What do you want your content to achieve? Here are some simple examples of clear goals:

  • Increase website traffic: Write informative blog posts related to your industry.
  • Boost sales: Create content that highlights the benefits of your products or services.
  • Build brand awareness: Share stories and insights about your business and its values.

By defining what you want to achieve, you can tailor your content to meet those objectives.

Understand Your Audience

Knowing your audience is crucial when planning content. Once you have a clear idea of your audience persona, you'll find it much easier to create content that resonates with your customers. Consider the following:

  • Demographics: Age, gender, location, occupation, etc.
  • Interests and hobbies: What do they enjoy doing in their free time?
  • Pain points: What problems or challenges do they face that your business can solve?

Understanding these aspects will help you craft content that speaks directly to your audience's needs and interests.

You Don’t Need to Write a Novel

Many people think they need to write pages and pages of content, but that's not the case. Aim for around 1,000 words per post. This is about 7-8 minutes of spoken word, so think of it as a 10-minute conversation. This length is sufficient to cover your topic without overwhelming you or your readers.

Write First and Edit Later

One of the biggest barriers to content creation is the fear of making mistakes. This often leads to editing while writing, which can break your flow and cause great ideas to get lost. Instead, focus on getting your ideas down on paper or screen. Even if the ideas seem terrible at first, write every single one down. You can always edit and polish your content later.

Record It

If writing seems too difficult or overwhelming, try recording your ideas instead. Here’s how:

  • Use your phone: Set it to record and talk through your content ideas.
  • Have a conversation: If you have a friend or colleague who is willing to listen, discuss your ideas with them. This can help the ideas flow more naturally.

Recording your thoughts can be a great way to get started, especially if you find speaking easier than writing.

Transcriptions

For those who choose to record instead of write, transcription tools can be incredibly helpful. A direct transcription allows you to edit your recording into a usable blog post. Here are some tools you can use:

  • Otter.ai: Offers high-quality transcriptions and is easy to use.
  • Rev.com: Provides accurate transcriptions with quick turnaround times.
  • Google Docs Voice Typing: A free tool that can be accessed through Google Docs under the "Tools" menu.

Using these tools, you can turn your verbal ideas into written content with minimal effort.

Creating content for your business doesn't have to be overwhelming. By setting clear goals, understanding your audience, and using simple techniques like recording and transcription, you can make content creation a manageable and even enjoyable task. Remember, the key is to get started and let your ideas flow. Happy writing!

Why Your Website Should Be for Your Customers, Not Just for You

Why Your Website Should Be for Your Customers, Not Just for You

As a small business owner or non-profit leader, it's natural to want every aspect of your website to reflect your personal tastes and preferences. However, the most successful websites are those that prioritise the needs and desires of their target audience. Let's explore why focusing on your customers is crucial for your online presence and how you can make this shift effectively.

The Customer-Centric Approach

It's important to understand that your website's primary purpose is to solve problems for your potential visitors. While you might have strong opinions about design elements or content, the ultimate goal is to create a site that engages your ideal audience and moves them closer to making a purchasing decision or supporting your cause.

Key Focus Areas for Your Website

1. The Role of Design

Design plays a significant role in building trust and credibility. A well-designed website conveys that you care about your business and your customers. However, your visitors aren't there to critique your design—they're looking for solutions to their problems. Ensure that your website's design, content, and layout are all geared towards providing those solutions.

2. The “Wrong” Blue

It's perfectly normal not to like a particular shade of blue or a specific image on your website. However, it's essential to shift your mindset from "I don't like this" to "Does this resonate with my customers?" The color you dislike might be the one that best converts visitors into customers. Conducting tests to see what works best for your audience can lead to better results.

3. Making Your Customer the Hero

Your website should make your customers feel like the heroes of their own stories. They visit your site to find answers to their problems, and it's your job to make it clear that they're in the right place. Avoid filling your site with "I" or "we" statements. Instead, focus on addressing your customers' needs and highlighting how your products or services can benefit them.

4. Sharing Social Proof

Testimonials, case studies, and reviews are powerful tools for building trust. Potential customers want to hear about the experiences of others who have faced similar challenges and found solutions through your business. Make it easy for visitors to find and read these endorsements by prominently displaying them on your website. Additionally, consider gathering and showcasing detailed case studies to provide in-depth insights into how you've helped others.

By making your website customer-focused, you increase the chances of engaging your audience and converting visitors into loyal customers or supporters. Remember, it's not about what you like; it's about what works for your audience. By prioritising their needs and preferences, you'll create a website that truly serves its purpose and drives your business forward.

Is a website audit for you?

Is a website audit for you?

I’m glad to see you’ve pushed past the word “audit” - it’s not a particularly exciting word, and if you link it to “tax” it’s almost certain to strike dread into your heart.

However, when it comes to websites, a website audit is a very constructive exercise with potential for very positive outcomes. If your website is a few years old or you don’t feel it’s living up to expectations, then a website audit could well point out its strengths and weakness, and opportunities for improvement.

Naturally, your best option is to get a professional to cast an experienced eye over your website and pull together a report with recommendations that you can pick and choose whether to follow up. All the same, you can run your own mini-audit yourself to check a few things - keep reading 😀

A website audit can bring a few benefits;

  • Show up better in search engines - Ensure that your key pages are following the ‘rules’ that search engines like Google expect from a well-behaved webpage, and that the important details are being made available to search engines so that they can correctly list and rank your page(s). For example, does each page have a Title that is specific to the page content? So don’t have a title of “Welcome”!
  • Improve the user experience (”UX”) - Have your webpages been constructed with the visitor-reader in mind? Think about how people will actually use the website and its pages. Can they get to and back from pages quickly and easily? Can they find what they’re most likely looking for quickly and easily, eg. your contact details?
  • Boost performance - It’s important that you don’t make people wait more than a couple of seconds for a page and its elements to load, attention spans are very short these days. Measuring how fast a page loads and what is slowing it down identifies aspects that can improve a website's performance.
  • Pinpoint strengths - It’s not all about looking for what’s wrong! As a website owner, it’s good to know what IS working for your website so that you can build on that and be sure not to interfere with it.

Here’s a few things you can do now;

Speed test - While there are many items that contribute to a slow or a fast website, and the perceived speed will vary from day to day depending on a wide variety of conditions, it’s still good to have a feel for whether your site is ‘slow’ or not. A good rule of thumb is that if a webpage is taking more than 10 seconds to load, you have a problem and you are losing visitors because of it. Head over to pingdom.com to get a rating, and also to webpagetest.org. Run a test a few times over a few days to get an average.

Search engine ranking - Have you tried looking for your own products and services, or even your own organisation/business name? You’ll need to put yourself in the head of the person you’re expecting to look for your website - what words/phrases would they look for? What results does the search engine show and where do you appear in the list? Do your webpages even contain those words/phrases so they can be matched to a search?

Content review - It may be difficult to see the wood for the trees, but here again you are trying to see your website and its content (words & images) from the perspective of your visitors who may not be familiar with what you do. Are you explaining clearly without jargon? Are you guiding visitors on what to do next eg. fill in a form, phone, buy something, sign up to a newsletter? Ask friends, colleagues, customers/clients for their opinion, odds are you’ll get great suggestions. Be sure to keep your questions specific though, eg. could you easily find what you wanted?

If you’d like to poke into your website a bit more, be sure to get our free Website Success Guide with 6 key focus points for website success. It also comes with a short sequence of emails that build on what’s in the Guide. Check it out now.

So, what is a Website Care Plan and why do I want one?

So, what is a Website Care Plan and why do I want one?

Watch an animated video of this article

Hopefully, your website will be a great asset for your organisation. Be it bringing in sales, generating leads, providing information and education, whatever you’re trying to achieve, the investment you’ve put into your website should be giving you a positive return. Even if you don’t ‘sell’ directly from your website, it still positions your organisation as someone that the visitor can trust.

Websites depend on software, and there’s a few levels. Let’s compare to a car. Just like your car, your website needs regular maintenance to itself. For a car, think of the weekly tyre-pressure checks, oil-level check, top up of windscreen washer, look for oil leaks, make sure the tyres aren’t bald or rubbing, check lights all work etc. For a website, maintenance comes in the form of software updates, security updates and performance optimisation - preventing the bad guys getting in and keeping things running smoothly.

Other levels of maintenance would be akin to the roads that we drive on. Do you fix the potholes? Probably not. Do you manage the webserver that powers your website? Probably not. But someone needs to. Road maintenance is outsourced and handled by someone else, and for your website, what we’re talking about is webhosting. Typically, you’ll be paying a separate fee for webhosting (annual or monthly), and that should include making sure the server is maintained on your behalf.

However, where the website is concerned, it is up to you to handle maintenance - or contract with someone to do it for you. Just like a car, if you don’t look after your website, you run the risk of a breakdown. This could cause you to lose revenue through lost sales or enquiries, never mind the waste of time and the aggravation of getting things fixed up.

You also need to remember that there are unfortunately some bad apples in the world. It’s pretty common for most websites to be targeted by multiple automated hacking attempts each day. Yes, that will include your website, regardless of what it does, sells, provides or contains.

Attackers look for weaknesses that they can exploit. If an attacker gains entry, you could suffer from data loss, malicious content being uploaded or even just a defaced website. All very unpleasant actions that can be very damaging for your business.

As a web marketing expert, we understand how important it is that a website stays secure and up to date. This is why we offer Website Care to our customers.

A Website Care plan is a monthly service where we look after your website. We keep it updated, install security updates and ensure that it’s performing as expected. We also make sure there are frequent backups in case things somehow go really wrong, so we can get you back online quickly. And we monitor the site 24/7 to be notified straight away if it isn’t working as it should.

The whole process is designed to give you peace of mind. We want you to feel comfortable and happy in the knowledge that your website is in good hands. This allows you to focus on more important tasks in your organisation.

You may even be on a Care Plan with us now. If you are, then you’ll already know about the benefits of keeping your website secure.

There are a few myths when it comes to Website Care though:

Myth #1 - A Website Care plan is just a way of you making more money

We provide Website Care to protect businesses like yours. The damage to a business from a hacked website can be extremely expensive. Anything from lost sales to stolen data will cost you time and money.

The worst example of this would be if your website was hacked and the hacker was able to steal credit card data from your customers. Damages at this level can be difficult to recover from.

Being completely honest with you, Website Care also brings predictability to our business. Your payment means we can focus our attention on helping you and keeping your business safe. It’s a partnership, not a profit machine. We know your website, we know it’s up-to-date, we can tailor advice and suggestions better.

Myth #2 - I don’t need you, I can update my website myself

Firstly, if you have the skill set to look after your own website then you absolutely can look after it yourself. It’s definitely possible.

However, you may not possess this skill or knowledge. You may not know how to keep your website updated. You might not understand the different threats that your website faces.

In this situation, it would be unwise to attempt to go it alone. It only takes one mistake or one unlucky moment to cause you a headache and an expensive problem.

Myth #3 - I don’t sell anything on my website, so it’s not important

If you’ve invested money in a website for your business, then it should be considered an asset.

You don’t need to sell something directly from your website in order for it to be important. Think about why you have a website in the first place, and the value it provides to your website visitors. Your visitors may be at different stages in the buying cycle, with only a small percentage ready to purchase your products or services. Or they may be seeking knowledge, advice or guidance in your area of expertise.

Usually, your visitors are either researching a problem that they’re facing or looking for a solution. A potential customer can visit your website to learn more about how you can help them with their problem. It provides trust and shows your expertise.

Your website is almost always more important than you think it is.

If you’d like to learn more about our Website Care Plans and how they can help you keep your website safe, check out our page here.

You might like to download our free guide to understand how to keep your website safe and learn about the regular maintenance that your website needs to stay secure - it comes with a short series of emails that build on that guide too.

Finding your brand personality

Finding your brand personality

What is your brand personality?

Although it might seem like a silly question, the truth is that you have one. Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, everyone and every organisation has a brand personality. Whether you think about it or not, people will be forming an opinion about your business based on how they feel when they experience your products and services.

Being a successful organisation isn't just about having a professional logo or a responsive website - those things can definitely enhance your visual identity as an organization, but they don't make you who you are as a brand. What makes you stand out from the rest is an outline of your brand identity and communicating that to your customers in a way that represents who you are as an organization as well as connecting with them as people through any pieces of content you decide to share. This connection helps build relationships, which in turn will lead to engagement.

Key points in building a brand personality;

What makes you different?

Take some time to think about what makes you different from other organisations. What is it that you really offer your clients? Not so much in terms of the specific programs, offerings and services but the characteristics you want your brand to convey. Think of things like friendliness, belonging, growth, achievements, self-worth... In other words, what would make people want to interact with your organisation?

Explore adjectives

"Brand personality" is simply your company's character - the traits that define it in everyday people's minds. We all want to develop a brand personality for our organisation because it helps potential clients understand what they can expect when dealing with us, and how we interact with them during their experience. Our advice when it comes to building your organisation's personality is to be playful. Be fun! There are many different adjectives that one could associate with your brand depending on the emotions you would like to drive home when marketing with words. A good tip for using adjectives is by keeping a list handy. When you're thinking about branding, jot down a few words that will help define the organisational voice you'd like visitors to read on your website, in your emails, or in your printed material.

Know your audience

To ensure that your branding and communication strategy succeeds, you need to know exactly who your target audience is. Try to identify what kind of communication preferences they have and how you can put them right at ease with a branding tone that resonates. What do they like to read about? Where do they hang out online? Are they in their teens or middle-aged adults or seniors? And more importantly, how can communication mirror - or better yet, complement - the experience the target market member already has while interacting with your product?

Set your tone

Keep your tone playful and upbeat by synthesising humour with the choice of words you use to talk about your organisation or product/service, or making it personable - avoid creating an overly formal tone (i.e. too stuffy), as users will tune out immediately. If you let your voice shine through positive affirmations like “we love” or lighthearted exclamations that include words like “best” or “never,” customers feel more comfortable interacting with you than they otherwise might.

Get visual

Sometimes integrating all of your brand's visuals can be daunting, but you'll find once you've got it done it makes everything so much easier. Whether you're looking to design your very first logo or it's time for an image update, picking out colour schemes, finding the right fonts and so on will be essential to finishing the package off. We highly recommend enlisting the services of a professional graphic designer to help you put together a branding guidelines package. Make sure everyone in the organisation has it, refers to it, and uses it all the time.

Of course it goes without saying that if any additional promotion is needed, web design layout is also a great asset - marketing wise at least! The internet has indeed changed how we advertise our brands, but just because crowds hit websites in masses nowadays doesn't mean graphic design only has space online. It still holds true that strong logos and graphics are some of the best trademarks an entrepreneur could hope for when they're looking to put their name across. A consistent look and feel is essential, wherever a client comes into contact with you and your organisation.

Conclusion

When it comes to your brand, it is important to think about how you want your organisation to be portrayed. In order to do this, you need to work on defining your brand personality . Your brand personality is essentially the way you want your customers to feel when they interact with your brand. You want them to feel that you offer a great service and that you care about them and the problems they are facing. To help demonstrate this, we've put together these aspects that we think can help you start developing your brand personality.

And if you'd like some help with conveying your brand through your website, be sure to get in touch to find out more!

Your 5-point checklist for website project success

Your 5-point checklist for website project success

The importance of being on the same page can be the difference between a website project that succeeds or fails. Not being aligned can lead to miscommunication, ambiguity, reworkings, wasted time, and even unsatisfactory outcomes. But there are ways to avoid these common pitfalls so you can set yourself up for success.

At Winch Websites, we make use of a number of tools to help smooth and guide the transfer of details, information and ideas, to keep everyone in the loop, and to provide feedback. These include (among others) templates for processes, templates to gather data and directions, and easy-to-use commenting right on the website project pages.

Here’s our 5 most important areas to focus on, to ensure you get what you desire from a website project.

Roles and responsibilities

A clear understanding of roles and responsibilities is key to a smooth project. When there's a breakdown in who's responsible for what, projects tend to go awry. Make sure you're clear about the role/responsibility of each team member before a project begins — and don't pick up tasks you're not supposed to be doing!

This might translate into;

  • who is ‘the voice’ for the project on your side, to be the main conduit to the website creator, the graphic designer, or the content writer?
  • who makes the final decision to move to the next stage, or if there are differing opinions?
  • who will be reviewing and assessing what’s been done, and suggesting changes/improvements?
  • who will write the words, source the images & photos, decide the colour-scheme, design the layout?

Vision

It's a good idea to have a clear vision for your startup before you begin. It can be difficult to make progress without some kind of guiding principle. If all of the people on board with the project know what the mission is, they can keep each other on task and moving toward success.

This could be making sure that all concerned know what the ultimate objectives for the website project are - is it to sell online, generate leads, build an email list, or create awareness? How will you know you’ve achieved your objectives? Putting numbers to it makes it easier for people to see where the project is headed - for example, a 50% increase in online sales.

Budget

It's always good to have a budget prepared. But the budget shouldn't be so specific that it cuts off potential opportunities or unforeseen expenses. You should have enough wiggle room to make changes to the project's direction if necessary, but try hard not to change it willy-nilly. Everyone involved in the project should agree on the budget beforehand for transparency and clarity among all parties, and aim to stick to it.

If significant changes look to be beneficial though, be ready to adjust the budget accordingly. You’ll definitely want to avoid expectations that the scope and size of your project can simply adapt as you come up with new ideas, without impacting the budget and the timelines.

Timelines & Scope

Speaking of which... the biggest challenge of any web development project is setting realistic timelines and milestones. A project should have clear timelines even before the start of the work. If anyone plans to get involved in the project or if there are any challenges that could come up, update these timelines immediately. If you update it often, there should be no scope creep and everyone will be aligned with timetables.

The last thing we want is someone expecting a website to be launched on Day X when it’s been pushed back due to agreed changes in scope - particularly if that person is telling others it will be ready!

You and others involved in the project will likely have plenty of other stuff to do besides the website project. Be sure to allocate appropriate resources and time of your own to keep up with what you are expected to do in the agreed timeline. No point getting stressed because you can’t fit in what people need you to do - it’s better to over-estimate the time required than under-estimate. Everyone loves to come in early on a project! 😀

Scheduled Check-Ins

Scheduling check-ins is one of the most vital parts of running a business. Communication is key to success; you can't manage what you don't know, and regular check-ins are excellent opportunities to share and listen.

By setting up check-ins at certain intervals (weekly, monthly, or quarterly), you can ensure everyone concerned is on the same page and any potential roadblocks are identified before they become problems.

At Winch Websites, we provide a project update email every Friday; what’s been done, what’s being done next, and what you need to give us in the next week. And of course, phone or videoconference calls can happen on top of that if there are particular aspects to discuss further.

Like A Bit More?

If you found this quick overview interesting and useful, you might like to download our free guide to learn the secrets to a successful website project, featuring tips that you can implement straight away. It expands further on what’s above, plus you’ll get a series of bite-size emails to build up your awareness and capabilities even more.