Believe it not, the biggest delays we experience when completing a website results from website owners struggling with content. Everyone wants to showcase their business, their products, their services in the best light but not everyone is a professional writer and tons of people have difficulty coming up with the right words to convey their message.
The Struggle is Real
Writing content is usually a lot harder and takes a lot more time than most people think. I’ve literally seen projects get held up for YEARS due to lack of content. I have a few tips I’ve gathered over the years to help you get your content created.
- Start NOW. Don’t procrastinate. There’s a good chance it’s going to take longer than you expect to get it written, so do it now.
- Plan to set aside time to do it. Trying to fit it in between meetings or other work tasks is going to cause delays. Figure out when you can find a block of time, write it in your schedule and stick to the plan.
- Do the easy pages first. Don’t start with the longest, hardest pages of content. There are plenty of pages that will be easy to get done first. Start with your contact page, which just needs a little content to go with your form. Then move on to the next easiest. If you start with the easiest content first, you’ll build momentum and the task won’t seem as hard.
- Get help. Have other people on your team? Why not collaborate and have everyone work on sections, then trade and evaluate. Many hands make light work.
- Use a copywriter. You don’t have to struggle with content! This kind of work can be hired out. Copywriters are trained to research and write on many topics and can help polish what you have or write all your original content.
Don’t wait for perfection
I know you want to give your website visitors the best impression by providing them with perfect content from the first visitor on. But more often than not, that leads countless revisions and nit picking that winds up delaying the project. Keep in mind that your website content isn’t written in stone. It’s not a brochure or flyer that will be sent to a printer for thousands of copies. You can edit it every day until you get it just right.
It’s better to get your content done and pushed out and make edits later than wait for perfection with every word.
Humans make typos. It’s okay.
Don’t freak out if you find a typo. It’s really okay. You are human and humans are fallible. Chances are, you are going to make typos or mistakes. But that’s the beauty of a WordPress website, you can go back and fix those typos.
How many jobs will you lose if you have a typo? How many jobs will you lose if you don’t have a website?
Not having an online presence is going to be much more detrimental to your bottom line than finding a typo or grammatical error down the road. I’m positive that if you read through my blog posts you will find typos or errors. Sometimes my fingers get moving so fast on the keyboard that I lose track! It’s okay. Having a typo isn’t the worst thing that can happen to your website. Not having a website, or delaying a website launch for months or longer is much, much worse.
Get it done, edit later. Making changes over time as real people visit your site will allow you to evaluate how your content is doing and adjust it for better results. This is the beauty of a website. You can make changes any time and hopefully see positive results of that change.
Amy Masson
Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.
When I first moved into marketing, my boss taught me two very important lessons. The second one — “you don’t have to love it, you just have to be able to live with it” — has saved me a lot of time over the years.
That’s excellent advice.