It’s often said that everyone has a novel, painting or sculpture inside of them. Yet, we also know that these hidden talents, once brought to the surface, might not match up to the imagination or expectation. In other words, it’s not possible to be great at everything.
In business, it’s also true, even if the skills are present, that there simply isn’t time to enjoy mastery of all tasks. One of the ways that it pays to gain professional help is surely in crafting and managing a consistent and impressive web presence. A few years ago, a simple website to tell the world about a business was what many settled for. Nowadays, consider the multiple internet access devices, each requiring different web hosting and design skill sets. Add to this the fact that the explosion of social media means its management needs have greatly increased. Then add to this time for effective email marketing and more…
So, the first danger of trying to completely create or manage your own web presence is in getting left behind, simply through a lack of time to cover all requirements. There are three others to consider, even if you could devote the hours needed, and had all the skills necessary to succeed in producing that powerful and unique web presence. Each could be said to be connected with what one entrepreneur called ‘working inside the business’.
Many companies focus their web design on ‘selling outwards’ by using their own depth of knowledge to tell people what they feel they should know about a product or service. However, accessing through web searches, potential customers are ‘buying inwards’. They are looking for answers to their problems, or products or services to meet their key needs. Simply put, this can mean the SEO content created by a business simply doesn’t effectively match the terms used by those searching.
The second of these three areas concerns the terminology used. Every business has what you might call its own private language. This comprises industry jargon, or phrases and abbreviations used as in-house short cuts. Being fluent with the use of these terms, it’s easy to forget that a proportion (often the majority) of prospective customers don’t have this level of expertise – particularly if they are new to a certain market. They can find the language used foreign to them, making it much less likely that they will take their interest any further. These people often return to the search results and try elsewhere. The result? A business loses a potential customer it never even knew existed!
The final area is in the inadvertent error. Again, through inside knowledge of a business, it is so easy to take facts for granted. Compare it to asking, as a stranger in an area, for reasonably complicated directions from a local. They are likely to provide an incomplete guide, simply because their mind takes knowledge of some of the key points for granted. A wonderful old story once told of a stranger in Ireland who stopped his car and asked a local farmer for help in finding his destination. After a pause, the farmer replied: ‘Well you certainly don’t want to start from here’. It’s easy, through familiarity, to miss key information in web content or social media postings.
In summing up, there are many technical and skill reasons for using professional web, SEO and social media experts, like our superb team here at Heitz Digital, to craft and help manage a powerful web presence. The fact that this means fresh pairs of eyes are looking from the outside at what needs to be said, and how, could be construed as a truly valuable bonus for your business!
Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community(52)
