Welcome to my new website – plus bonus blog!

And yes, it’s been a while coming. I’ve been the 21st-century version of a shoeless cobbler’s child – a website-less writer-girl – for almost eleven years.

I know, I know. Embarrassing. Shocking, even. I’ll give you a moment to settle your eyeballs comfortably back into their sockets.

Life Truth #246: Writing your own website well is difficult.

Marketing professionals see it happen all the time: A business invests thousands in a shiny new website design, but insists on writing the content themselves. Because anyone can write, right?

This style-over-substance approach typically leads to online fail; rather than clicking through, visitors get clicked off. The expectations you’ve established with your visual bells and whistles aren’t fulfilled with the words, the content, the meat.

Sizzle? Yeah, baby. Steak? Enh, not so much.

And your potential fan moves on.

The fact is, almost anyone can write. But when it comes to your website, not everyone can write it right.

You gotta getta pro. Yeah, like yours truly.

So, if I’m the pro to go to [and I am!], then why was it difficult for me to write my own website? Same reasons it’s difficult for anyone, really.

1. Perspective. Owners are often too close to their own business to write about it appropriately for an outside audience. They tend to either under-explain or over-explain their work [leaving readers either puzzled or bored]. A good writer can adopt the persona of your target audience, and write to what they want or need. For my own website, I created an intimate focus group of current clients, colleagues and friends to check my perspective, and make sure I was giving enough, not too much and the right info.

2. Time. Writing well takes time. And most working joes are too busy running their businesses to write a website full of great copy in their “spare” time. But that’s what a good writer’s business is. For me, I’ve been lucky enough to have fairly consistent client work, and writing someone else’s website content for a paycheck-in-the-hand continually trumped writing my own for two paychecks-in-the-bush, as it were. Until now.

3. Quality. Professionals just do it better. It’s why you call a plumber rather than following a DIY YouTube video, and why the man who legally represents himself has a fool for a client. A good pro has the experience and expertise to write effective, engaging, error-free content with logical flow and consistent voice. I confess, I was paralyzed by perfection for quite a while, but now that I’ve moved forward, I hope I’ve achieved all of that here.

So, the moral of the story is twofold: [A] Don’t put off your best website and [B] Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be. Turn it over to a pro [yeah, like yours truly!] today.