You hear the term “solutions provider” tossed around quite often these days. It sounds great, right? A company will study your unique problems and goals and come up with a solution that meets your needs. Sounds great, sign me up.
Not so fast. In reality, typically web development firms will not create a solution that is necessarily best for you, but rather best for them. If you have a meeting to discuss whether to tweak your website or to build a new one, 99% of the time you will receive the recommendation to build a new site. If you tell them you have a $5,000 budget, you will receive an estimate very close to that amount. And if they are a shop that focuses on Microsoft Technologies, they will steer you in that direction, knowing full well that many not be the best for you.
I am always amazed at the short sightedness of companies, going for short term profits rather than taking a longer view. For RooSites, we want you to be a customer for years to come. We know if we do the right thing by you, that you in turn will have us manage your website and refer us to others.
In the past couple of weeks we had examples of “doing the right thing”. I wrote about the first example in a blog post about this on April 2nd, entitled: Sometimes having a client NOT spend money is best. Read Post → It was a perfect example of how we could have pushed the client to build a new site, which would have made us money. BUT he does very well in searches, and his website looks ok and certainly professional. Also he had gained several new patients from his appointment request form in the past few months. So I advised holding off a year or so. Again from a purely profit standpoint, not a great move, but in the long run it should pay off with a happy client and referrals.
The other example was concerning a company’s website where they had a Drupal content management system and a separate WordPress blog hosted elsewhere. One of their biggest issues is that their blog content isn’t being indexed with his main site. As blogging is very important to the company, my first thought was to bring everything into WordPress. (Drupal is a great CMS but if blogging is important I favor WordPress) But after further investigation, the cost seemed too great. So, I came up with a plan to install WordPress directly onto their server, create a custom theme to match his Drupal site, and then import the posts. This would save him 50% or more and achieve everything he wanted to do from an SEO perspective. This was a good example of being a solutions provider, not just shoehorning in a solution that is easy for me or more profitable.
Bottom Line: If you’re dealing with a company that seems to provide solutions which are best for them, and not you, contact us today. We are a true solutions provider.
Sounds easy, right? WRONG. You are a busy professional, and you just can’t seem to find the time to write.
I regularly hear the following from my clients:
Now I understand, setting aside time is hard. So that is why I am giving you an easy tip that will help. Send yourself a recurring meeting invite. Then it will appear on your calendar each week. (or how often you want to post) This will force you treat writing content as a part of your normal schedule. You will get in the habit. As an example, I attend a networking meeting each week on Wednesdays. I am a member of BNI. Each week we all do a 50 second speech. As I know I need to have something to talk about, I set aside time every Tuesday. I write my blog and from that I paraphrase into my 50 second.
As easy as WordPress is, you still have to log in and post. Since we specialize in website maintenance, we typically receive posts from clients and we do the rest. We are happy to, and we know in the long run our clients succeed and perform better in searches. If you don’t have anyone to help you post, or if you have no blog or way to publish content, contact me, I am happy to help.
