Taking my own advice to do as I say, not as I do
It’s a common conundrum among those who develop or work on other people’s websites and web presences: we neglect our own.
I’ve spent more than 15 years working on other people’s, and most of that time I’ve had to say “do as I say, not as I do”. If not out loud, than implied by reality, where I urge people to develop a regular pattern of posting to their blogs and to social media, and generating content and revealing themselves to their audience…meanwhile, I post sporadically (that’s being generous), and most of my “revealing myself” lately conists of adding cute photos of my 4 year old to her photo album on Facebook for my friends and family only.
To be fair to me (a.k.a., this is the excuse I lean on)–in the years before I put out my freelance shingle, I had been posting like mad, and revealing myself pretty exhaustively on the web. My main blog had ~2000 blog posts by 2003. And I had been community manager of a large forum site for years, posting hundreds of times there. And before I had my own one of those, I posted hundreds more posts at a prior community site. And I had sites on Angelfire, and Tripod, and GeoCities even before all of that. (Not to mention MySpace and Friendster.)
So I’ve walked the walk. But ever since I started encouraging others to walk the walk, and spending my time focused on helping them do so, I’ve walked it a lot less. Like, a lot.
I have other excuses beyond “been there, done that”. Procrastination, prioritization, relocation, distraction–pretty much the same issues plaguing many of my clients. I am human after all, just like they are. (You probably are too!)
Perhaps my best excuse is this: Since 2005, I’ve worked almost exclusively based off of repeat business and referrals. I’ve never had to advertise or do any marketing at all and have had pretty steady business most of the time. Though I’ve had a few relocations that have thrown that formula off over time (mostly due to my own lack of follow-through to keep clients on board through and after the move).
That almost sounds like a legit reason: if I don’t need to generate business, then I don’t really need to do the steady drip-drip online marketing stuff…right?
No. Not right. I’ll address why in part 2.