I am going to say this over and over and over and over until I’m blue in the face. You must be in control of your website.
Here’s what we normally do. We order a website like we order stationery. And this was me as well, when I didn’t know any better, back in the old days.
See oh I need letterheads, I need complement slips, I need a business card. I need to put an ad in the yellow pages.
Obviously I’m going for the old days. Oh, I need a website, and that kind of thing. Well it’s not like that. Because quite often what happens is you end up with a brochure online.
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Now of course it’s the modern era and you are going to talk to and people are going to show you their portfolio and so on. And they are going to convince you.
This is the best thing. You are going to spend a couple of thousand pounds or dollars or maybe more. And yeah obviously I know people spend 15, 20 thousand pounds depending on size of the business, size of the project and what it does.
However you get a website and it’s done. Quite often it has some latest news. Then when I look at those websites again in a few months’ time, they still say latest news, and they are the same latest news that were from back then.
It doesn’t have to be like that. You should be in control because this is the era of customer control.
Customers Want to Know More About You
They are going to rely on reviews, on opinions, on what you do. They are going to use social media. And so with your website, you need to be making updates.
When I say updates, you might be innocently scared or thinking, ‘oh gosh, he’s going to make us go on a course and learn how to be a website programmer.’ But just listen to me for one second.
Making an update on a modern website is the same as writing an email or using Microsoft Word. They use what’s called Whizzy Wig.
What you see is what you get. There are buttons that say add media and media might be a photo or a video. And that video can be straight off your iPhone or your Samsung.
That photo can be straight out of your images. And if you think, “but it’s the wrong size”, the system resizes it. It’s all been thought off. It was never this easy years ago. It’s, you’ve got no excuse.
What Do I Write About?
You’re going to say, ‘oh what do I write about? What do I update?’ What about the latest job you did? What about success, what about a customer who gave fantastic feedback?
Why not interview a customer with your phone? Hold it there and interview them, telling you what they thought. You can ask them if that’s okay with them first of all. But generally they’ll be pleased. If you say, I’ll add a link to your website, you don’t need any expertise.
If you don’t know how to do this, first off the easiest websites to update are WordPress websites. Go onto YouTube and say how to add a new post on a WordPress website.
I guarantee you this, it’s going to be a million sites come up. It’s so so easy. Now I know you are thinking, oh it’s easy for you Jon. But I really mean it. Honestly.
Once you update it, you can keep people in the know. You can add something. You don’t have to add something every day. It doesn’t have to be a long post.
You don’t have to be a daily telegraph reporter. When you speak to people, to your clients, has anyone ever said to you, ‘oh gosh I don’t like the way you speak. You are not posh enough. You are not clever enough. You don’t speak with the correct grammar.’
No. and that’s the same in writing. When they are reading it, they are imagining you saying it. You can also support it with a video.
This if you are watching the video, this is me sitting on the chair on the terrace. Luckily there is nobody else around, and I’ve just got a tripod and a microphone, but you don’t even need that.
There’s really no excuse. You could do this, and you could, whatever you are going to write, you can say it. Speak into the camera like this.
And then if necessary, you can get it transcribed. Get someone on fiverr, cost $5. 3 pounds 50. Get it transcribed. There you have an instant post.
You can add images, you can talk about anything. You can talk about latest industry even.
Once you are in control, it’s yours. You suddenly realize you don’t have to go back to the web design company to add a new page.
Or when you’ve added a new product or that product that you don’t sell anymore. Or that product that’s got the wrong picture because it’s not their anymore.
And they are not going to show you how easy it is because they have to make a living selling websites. And quite often, here’s the weird thing, quite often they are using the same technology that you can use for free. Yes.
When you create a website with WordPress, there are templates and they will use those templates and they will redesign them.
I mean they do them very cleverly. Some don’t even redesign them much. But there’s a million templates, you’ll never see another website looking like yours. Different colors and logo and everything. But that’s all they’re using quite often, if they are not they are going to use something that will be out of date soon.
Because the beauty with a WordPress one is that it updates. The people who write WordPress update, and then you’ll just one day you’ll login, it will say update needed, click here to update.
And you’re just updated. Now if you have something fancy made by a web company, when it updates it may break. If you just use the standard ordinary, it won’t. It all works. Oh, yeah. I, honestly.
Free Time With Me, Jon!
Why not take up, look go online, go to my website and grab one of the free 30 minutes slots. So go to www.MarketingForOwners.com/freetime. And there’s a calendar there.
You can grab a 30 minute, one on one with me. No obligation, nothing going to sell. Not going to sell anything. I can’t make you buy anything. Don’t you worry.
But you get a half hour with me, and I will talk to you. And I will explain how this works. I’ll explain the correct type of WordPress, I’ll explain any costs that are associated with it. I always say this is going to cost under $100. And it’s about 70 pounds. Well actually at the moment 80 pounds. But to make a website. Seriously, honestly. Yes.
Now I know how to do this. I’ve got to have some updates done to mine. You know I’m getting my friend, guy I know who is in Romania, who’s going to do the updates for me, because I’ve got better things to do.
I can put you in touch with him. He’s not associated with me, I pay him. But I didn’t, doesn’t get me anything. He’s just great. I can put you in touch with loads of other people.
You’ve probably already got a website, and you think oh it’s a bit late. It can be converted, just hardly any cost, hardly any. We’ve just converted one of ours, and we had 500 pages on it. And we’ve just converted it over. Yeah.
Okay, anyway enough of that. Get on that call with me and I’ll explain. If you want to know, if you’re scared get on that call with me, I’m quite nice. Honestly.
Book Recommendation
It is Monday. It’s time for a Book for the Week. Today we are going to recommend Brad Burton. Now did you listen to the Brad Burton interview on Friday?
The guy is great. But he’s written some books and his latest one is called ‘Now What’.
So go to his website at www.BradBurton.biz/NowWhat I think. But anyway you can look up, you can google. Brad Birton, Now What. And you’ll come across the book. It’s superb. It is to inspire you.
The guy went from nothing, went through all sorts. Drug addiction, depression, everything, near divorce, all of it. Broke, broke, broke. Now he’s doing okay.
He explains how you can do the same. Fantastic book. Really really good fun. The guy is great. Anyway go read it, and I’ll give you some updates later from this event.