Having waxed lyrical in my last blog post about how to keep your blog updated, I have failed to follow most of my own advice by neglecting to post anything new here for just over four weeks.
But while I have failed to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard, I have thought a lot about this blog, and I managed to jot down a few ideas, so I have some new ideas to share with you this week.
Be your own web content critic
I received a telephone call recently from someone who was looking for help with his website. I will call him Sam.
Sam offers a range of professional services and his website has been up and running for a while. When he first set up his website, Sam wrote all the content himself.
Recently, he took a long and critical look at his website and decided that it could do with an overhaul. By his own admission, he’d written it using very academic language and it wasn’t hitting the spot, and his business was not benefitting.
Being your own web content critic isn’t as difficult as you may think and it can be a very useful starting point for seeing how you can give your web content a boost. Reviewing your own web content some time after you have pulled it together – even after a week or a month – is a great start because that ‘distance’ will automatically make you much more objective.
Get an expert view
One of the things Sam told me when he first contacted me was that he had spoken to a web designer. While I shared with him the ways I could help him by revamping the words and related areas of his website, I realised I had struck a chord with him. He said that the designer had touched on some of the areas I had mentioned.
Sam’s discussions with me and the designer gave him the confidence to know that he was being given useful information that would help him to get his website to where he wanted it to be. It also reassured him that the professionals he was talking to knew their stuff and really could offer something valuable.
Getting an expert view is something I would always recommend. It’s your way of sense checking your own ideas or gut instinct, against the skill and knowledge of your chosen expert. The expert you speak to will almost always give you new ways of looking at things and provide you with a fresh perspective.
Post written by DEBBIE THOMAS on 24 August 2011.