I thought of this expression when I received an email recently. It was from a client who I’ve had for several years. They were a bit disillusioned as their web store wasn’t getting any orders recently.
I originally met with them and we came up with a game plan which I felt would give them a very good chance to succeed with their web store.
I told them they needed to do the following:
Well, fast forward years later they never said did anything they said that they would do above. Now, I understand sometimes people busy with other things and don’t have time to spend on their websites. This is why they hire us, but we do need the participation of clients. They need to send us the products to add, blog posts (or at least subjects, we can write posts) and items to post to social media. Now of course we kept up their e-commerce software, all their plug-ins and everything else, we held up our end of the bargain.
I feel bad when a client doesn’t succeed, but it does bother me when people in business don’t even spend a minuscule amount of time. It is the whoa is me mentality. Someone doesn’t want to work hard yet they want to succeed. Let me tell you, this doesn’t work for any business on the planet.
Bottom Line: Hire a good firm to manage your website. Then put the time in and work to see your website succeeds. Treat web tasks as must do’s, not optional.
Nothing Ventured, nothing gained.
There is an strategy attorneys universally follow: Do not ask a question you don’t know the answer to. This is so the attorney isn’t blindsided and actually asks a question which will harm his or her case.
This is good advice, but you’re probably wondering what is a web guy doing speaking about strategy for attorneys?
Good question.
This actually came to me while perusing my email. I receive a weekly email from a popular review site which will remain nameless. They send you an email recapping your past week’s activities. It tells you how many people viewed your profile, and other pertinent data. This made me think of that strategy that attorneys use, as this email actually hurts their businesses and the chances of me spending hard earned money to advertise with them get slimmer each week.
Why?
I will help to tell you. Why would I ever advertise with a company who is telling me nobody views my profile and I get no leads? It’s almost like a reverse IQ test. If I advertise with them, I am probably a moron or want to throw money down the drain. So what I’m saying to you is: Before you put out any content on the web for social media, Ask yourself: Will this help or hurt my business? In my example, they are sending emails to countless thousands telling the recipient that no one looks at your profile on their site.
Now that doesn’t mean that everything you put out there is going to equal instant income. No, in fact much of what we put out our social media is to portray ourselves in a positive light. I like to say that anything that shows me as a subject matter expert is a good thing and will benefit my business in the long run.
It is almost like there should be a Hippocratic oath for web developers & website managers. First do no harm. This is great advice for any industry, though of course the damage I can do with content or social media is not quite what the Hippocrates was speaking of…
Bottom line:
When you’re putting things out on the web, remember these things are there forever. How many times have you seen somebody put something out there that truly harms their career/business. They rush in and delete the post, but it’s out there forever. Someone has already created a screen shot and/or shared with their friends. So before you post anything ask yourself the question: Will this help and can it hurt?
