Death of a Website
Well, its not really dead, but after having a developer make a nice professional site for me last year for my business, I replaced it today with a WordPress site so I could manage it myself.
In last week’s post I mentioned that I am taking an “Audience Business Masterclass” with Firepole Marketing. As part of the class we go through the exercise of getting a domain name, downloading WordPress and choosing a theme. Of course I already went through that when I set this site up, but I decided to concentrate on my business site since after all, it is commercial.
Tony mentioned in a comment a year or so ago that he hoped I would keep this site non-commercial and I intend to do that. There don’t seem to be very many blogs that aren’t affiliated with some brand or commercial site. At the same time, I do have both a business and a book that I want to publicize as much as possible.
The point of the class I am taking is to engage readers and get them to at least consider whatever service you are offering. In some cases, people in the class may simply have a blog that they are trying to increase traffic on for whatever reason. After all, a lot of blogs don’t really offer a service as such, they are just a place for people to let people know how they feel about some subject. That’s where this blog started, I really just wanted to discuss automation-related subjects. Since there is no way for me to tell how many people read this blog (I don’t have any counters or anything) the only way I know if someone actually reads it is if they leave a comment or send me an e-mail. So from an audience engagement perspective this blog doesn’t really work. And it doesn’t have to… I’m not here to sell anything.
My other site is a completely different story. I hope to engage potential customers at least enough to start a dialogue. This means I have to somehow get their attention enough to at least give me their contact information. This is a tougher prospect than it sounds like, its not enough to simply put a website out there and see if somebody calls. My business website was up for almost a year and no-one called just because they happened across the site. All of my business last year came through referrals and word-of-mouth. I guess the main reason I had a business site at all was so that if people asked me what I do I could just point them toward the site.
The other thing I am working on is converting my primarily contracting business (programming and machine design) into a primarily consulting business (solving automation-related business problems). This takes a lot of work. I feel like I know the core subject I want to concentrate on very well, but I don’t know the business side nearly as well as I should. When I want to learn something new I generally approach it by reading as much as I can on the subject and talking to others who know more about the subject than I do. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, but I don’t know many people who are actually in the consulting business. My daughter Yuki worked for Hitachi Consulting for a couple of years and I do know a local business consultant who works in the Six Sigma and Quality Engineering field. I have both on my agenda for discussions on the subject.
Until then, I do pretty much whatever crosses my path in the industrial automation field. If you want to keep up with what I’m up to on the other website, check it out here.
Hi, cool to read about the different focus of each of your sites. I am also looking into Danny’s AB Masterclass course – would you recommend it? Just looking for some impartial opinions, a hard thing to find online these days!
All the best with your business!
Chris
Definitely recommend it, it was a great class! Now if I can only implement what I’ve learned…