Moving a pebble is easy - Part 1

Welcome to Week 19 of my adventure as a member of the Marketing Plan Group. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a website copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning from my group experience.

I have a tendency towards all or nothing. But this marketing journey proves to me, more and more each day, that slow and steady wins the race. Regular effort gets you where you want to be. And most of the time, you don’t need to move the earth… you just need to move a pebble.

On this week’s Marketing Plan Group call, we looked at each other’s websites. We shared questions and suggestions for making them better, and it was so helpful. It demonstrated how little things make a big difference.

Here are a few tips that I got from the call that can help you improve your website:

• Find outside inspiration. Stumped on how to make your website most effective? Not sure how to best display your portfolio? Fortunately, self employment is not like high school! You’re allowed to look at the paper of the kid next to you. There is a plethora of really great websites out there, and we have free-reign to learn from them all. Look at the websites of other businesses in your industry to get an idea of how they say and show things. It might give you a good idea for your own site.

• Get outside input. We all know when you’re too close to something, it can be harder to see. If there’s one thing I’m learning during this group experience, it’s how important it is to have a confidant (or 5)… having eyes and ears you can run things by and ask for input. Our group call was great because by opening your marketing (in this case your website) to others, you immediately broaden your learning and gain new ideas.

• Make it aspirational, not historical. I smiled from ear to ear when I read Ilise’s latest Quick Tip about this topic. As someone who is relatively new to self employment, I don’t have 20 years of experience and tons of work examples to show for it. And sometimes, this can be easy to get hung up on. In the tip, Ilise says it’s ok for your website to be about the future, not the past. Who do you want to work with in the future? What can you do for them?

So, when was the last time you made your website a little better? Is today the day?

If you’re ready to move on your marketing, but need support, there’s a new Marketing Plan Group starting Feb 12th.

And if you don’t have a website yet, but you need one fast, check out the new Website in a Week group. The next one takes place from Feb 15-21.

P.S. Tune in next week for more tips on making your website as effective as possible (without doing an overhaul)!