What works for me is taking some time away from writing, and letting topics come to me. As with writing in general, when you push too hard, you just come up blank. For me, I like to go for a walk, and not even think about writing. When I stop pushing, I tend to have ideas.
I was recently at RooSites’ Dunedin Florida location and was walking along this beautiful old street by the Gulf of Mexico. The street consists of all these gorgeous homes, many of which are over 100 years old. Almost every single one is meticulously maintained. Whenever you walk by, someone is either tending to the homes or to their outdoor space.
Then it hit me!
What is beautiful for one location, may not work for another. These houses are so beautiful as they really fit the neighborhood, they reside in. However, take one of these homes and try to stick it in Boston, New York or other Metropolitan areas, they will look out of place.
Good question!
I was recently working on a new site for an attorney who specializes in helping families with special education. The attorney asked me for some examples that she could look at in order to put together her content. This is when it hit me. Showing her great sites that have nothing to do with her field of endeavor really aren’t helpful, and although some sites are beautiful to look at, they won’t work in her area of expertise.
So as with those gorgeous homes which fit so nicely along the Gulf of Mexico in Dunedin, Florida, they wouldn’t look too good in the Beacon Hill area of Boston or in my current hometown of Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Then as I mentioned, the properties were meticulously maintained. This of course made me think of website maintenance, which as you know is a specialty of RooSites. Although these homes are quite old, their care and maintenance have allowed them to remain standing through numerous storms and other factors which typically destroy homes of this age. Well, I am here to tell you that this is the same with websites. I manage and host many sites which are several years old. Because we never miss a beat in terms of updates, the sites remain viable and have saved their owners a lot of money that they would’ve needed to suspend to build a new website. As with those old homes, a newer replacement would NOT have been an improvement. In my blog post: Sometimes it is better NOT to build a new website we covered this very topic. Don’t get me wrong, there is a point where your site has outlived its usefulness and new technologies allow you to do things better, faster and more efficiently. But you should get years out of a new website, before needing to do a total redesign. Proper maintenance will allow you to have a long lifespan for your website.
When you are thinking about a new website, you tend to look at sites that you like for inspiration. This is fine, but make sure that design also fits your type of business. I typically recommend looking at your competitors, but also look at companies who are similar to yours throughout the county for inspiration. In terms of maintenance, make sure you work with a company who not only will build you a nice site but will also maintain your website, so you can be sure your site is up and running and secure. Unfortunately, a lot of companies like to design sites, but few want to do the maintenance. This is where RooSites can help. We specialize in website maintenance and have service plans for every company’s budget and needs.
One of the main thing clients want is to improve their position and searches. This is a noble and achievable goal. I am a believer (like any sane person) that the content is king and any search engine worth two dead flies wants to give a searcher the best possible results. To do this they are indexing content. They don’t care how pretty your site is, but content and quality content that that is the most important thing.
When you tell clients that, they understand but a typical responses I just don’t have time to write and add to my site. While I understand that time is precious and running your business doesn’t leave you that much time, I will point to the times when it is quiet and you do have time. The other day for instance was a snowy day here in Boston and I’m working on my computer when ‘Blam‘ the power goes out.
My first reaction is to curse as I was in the middle of writing some code. My next thought is, what can I do to be useful on a crappy winter day. Then I thought, I have my phone, I have my iPad and my computer has a couple hours worth of battery. What I don’t have is Internet. So I turned to my friend Siri and I say “Siri we’re going to get some work done today”. I immediately start using my phone and write my next blog post, which funny enough happens to be this one.
I try to write once a week, although even I have trouble sticking to that schedule. But when the chips are down and there was nothing to do I utilized my tools at hand and I have my next blog post ready to go. Before you tell me that you never have downtime, I ask you this are you ever sitting here in your car stuck in traffic? Do you ever sit at your desk waiting for somebody to call? Have you ever lost power as I did the other day? Then you have time to write, use those tools we all have on our phones and iPads and get some work done. With hands free, you can safely create a post in the comfort of your car rather than cursing the traffic patterns. The winner will ultimately be you as your site will have more quality content and Google will reward you with better search rankings.
