I spend a big chunk of my day chatting with business owners on how to make their website dreams a reality. We speak about setting up shopping carts, email marketing systems, content marketing strategies and ultimately how to monetize their passion or expertise.
When tutoring, I start all of my clients with a simple task: Make a list of what you want to achieve with your site.
List all your goals in order of priority and how you plan to achieve those goals. If you don’t know how to achieve a specific goal, that’s where you start to research. (If you are a list maker, try to keep this one under 10 goals)
This task typically spurs a conversation about what the clients are passionate about and develops great ideas for content.
However, content is just part of what is needed. Other areas of interest are advertising through marketing, mastering the tools to establish your presence (your creditability), and site design (of course).
This initial conversation is crucial to making progress quickly.
If you are just starting out with a site and feel like you might be in over your head, reach out and let me know. I am happy to schedule a 30 min call with you to see if you might be a good fit for either tutoring or another solution.
The people I work with who get farther faster are the ones who do research, form a plan and want to test different strategies. For beginners this seems to be were the first major roadblock is. It is this sense of uncertainty that stops them in their tracks.
Get Unstuck.
Lets assume you have the beginnings of a plan…
but to achieve your goal, you need to do a few tasks you have never done before. Things like designing a sharp website and how to work that site like a well oiled machine. Perhaps you want to build your list, but you are apprehensive about setting up all the technical stuff.
You have 3 options to move past these types of roadblocks…
- Learn how to do it your self on your own. Buy some books and watch a few tutorials on the subject. Hopefully at some point you will be able to work it out.
- Hire someone to walk you through how to do what needs to be done. You get an education and the problem gets solved.
- Hire someone to do it for you and hope you never have to mess with it again. The problem may be solved but it might cost extra if there is a problem, and you feel like you have less control of your site.
Obviously I am a fan of option 2. However, depending on the problem and the circumstances, option 1 or 3 could be the best answer for you. Just keep in mind that when you approach a problem with one of these options that your expectations for the short and long-term are set appropriately.
Also, keep in mind where the best use of your time is. What tasks would best serve you overall. If you want to make videos for your site, learning video editing techniques may be a great use of your time.
If you are a creative writer and you are interested in setting up a shopping cart on your WordPress site, perhaps having some one teach you how to set this up and use it would be the best choice as you will be dealing with that part of your site on a regular basis.
Something I learned at Apple that has always helped me is “Know your resources and use them”
Granted, when running a site and a business online you need to be a jack of all trades to some extent. But you are not expected to know everything. There are amazing tools available that will help you track, create and manage all the things you need. Being aware of these tools is step one and knowing when to use them is the most important step of all.