Do you need a website for your small business? 8 reasons why the answer is ‘HELL YES’
When I (aggressively) encourage small businesses to have websites, I’m advocating for freedom from your social media in more ways than one (keep reading for more freedom from the scroll), one of those ways happens to be disconnecting your dependence on your social account as the one-and-only source for your sales.
Picture this: you’re a small business owner and you close all your clients in your DMs on social media. Your sales process is a million variations of the below conversation.
The really cute bit here is how you don’t have a succinct description for your service offering, so you always have to type out the bits you remember/have saved in your phone notes. 10/10 for efficiency.Sometimes you close in 5-minutes, sometimes you close in 5-weeks…
And in the meantime, you’re still chatting to your prospect (because you post all this great content all the time, and they keep replying and telling you how funny/awesome/smart/brilliant you are).
Your sales chat scrolls away on a chatty breeze that’s too damn delightful to ignore.
Off it rolls into conversation heaven, never to be reread.
Buh-bye chat, and buh-bye priceless opportunity to coax your potential client away from their distracting social media and pull them into your special small business world, where everything is all about you-you-you and what you do.
Gee, if only you had a place. A dedicated spot, where like, all your service offerings live? And like, anytime anyone wants to know about what you do, or make a booking with you, you send them a quick link with all the information? Oh, and there's a button with payment integration or some shit like that?? LOL??!! 🤣
Read on if you relate to my client below, and you’re not sure why you need a business website because “you’ve never got any biz from having it there.”
This post is a follow up to an Instagram story I shared about a wonderful small business owner I’m working with on a homepage revamp for her coaching business.1️⃣ You don’t ‘own’ your social media accounts
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok whatever your social media poison, these third-party platforms are tools that amplify your small business presence, but the accounts you build on them are not guaranteed assets you can count on.
Let me explain.
Instagram can delete or disable your profile anytime they want to. I’m not trying to scare you. It’s just facts. If you build up a following of 100,000 and tomorrow your social media platform of choice accidentally wipes your account, that effort is gone.
When I (aggressively) encourage small businesses to have websites, I’m advocating for freedom from your social media in more ways than one (keep reading for more freedom from the scroll), one of those ways happens to be disconnecting your dependence on your social account as the one-and-only source for your sales.
Having a website that explains who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and how people can work with you is a weight off your social media that will pay off forever, because (unless Armageddon happens) your website will always be there for you. Promoting what you do.
Do you actually trust this face tho?2️⃣ 84% of consumers think a website makes a business more credible than a business that only has a social media profile
Credibility. It’s a thing.
Any Tom, Deborah or Hafizah can set up a social page and claim they’re a lifestyle coach or a decluttering specialist, or a 6-figure sales coach. It’s not hard to mock-up a lifestyle, we see it all the time in those well-researched Daily Mail stories where Kardashians have photoshopped their bums on their holibobs, and we hate it, don’t we?
How dare they lie to us like that.
Those lies usually start on social media, and they start there because it’s so easy to manipulate the truth of a photo or tell a massive porky in a post.
When you’re a small business, your credibility is one of the most important marketing tools in your business building kit. There’s no room for doubt in your profit margin, so don’t create fertile ground to sew the stuff. Anyone can peddle professionalism on social media. Hell, we’ve all been taken in by a guru or two!
If your social media is the club promoter on the street, then your business website is the nightclub.
Your club promotor reinforces the club mission, qualifies the clubbers who’ll pay for their table at the end of the night, and only sells tickets to cool cats. Your website delivers the promise that your social media propounds. Your website is all the things you said you were. Your website is the original source. It’s where you pitch the goods and make sales. It’s where you confirm to your ideal client that you, my friend, are The Business.
3️⃣ Your website is a forever shop window, clearly displaying all your gear
For a tenner a month, you can buy your small business a shop window that the whole world can access and browse.
A website is the only place you can clearly display what you do, your services, and who you work with. It doesn’t matter how good your social media feed is, and it doesn’t matter how frequently you share; no one is scrolling back 3-weeks to read your last sales related post. So unless you’re relentlessly selling your services on your social media (or have a massive media budget for ads), there’s always a chance you’re missing passing traffic.
A business website means always having a clear reference point for your service offerings, and this is particularly important for small business owners who frequently produce sh*t tons of valuable content marketing but (just as frequently) risk burying their 1:1 services/courses/webinars/events in the mix because they aren’t always creating sales material that clearly signposts potential customers towards purchase decisions.
(Hello, sales pages).
4️⃣ Money pouring into your bank account while you’re asleep
If I had a pound for every single time a small business owner told me they wanted to generate passive income, I’d be at least 332 quid richer.
Apart from hosting your sales pages, your business website can host a little shop where keen beans who love what you do can buy your courses, ebooks, meditation recordings, sassy merchandise, and anything else you fancy flogging.
The best bit? Minimum real-time effort for you, maximum effort from your website. All you have to do is connect your site to a payment gateway and watch the money roll in.
I’m not going to go into the intricacies of creating passive income right now, but I promise I’ll do it one day.
5️⃣ 24/7 employee, and you won’t get arrested for slave labour
You can’t hang out with your ideal clients 24 hours a day, but you know who can? Your business website. Similarly, you can’t hang out on social media drumming up interest forever. Your website CAN.
Running a small business is exhausting enough as it is. But, you don’t need to hire a VA or a PA or the CIA to know that you need all the help you can get when you’re starting on your business building adventure.
Your website is the best employee you’ll ever hire. It will never complain about having to work weekends. It loves the night shift (that’s when most of your customers are scrolling for you), and it never asks for holidays.
Amazing.
*GIRL = WEBSITE 6️⃣ You can make your audience paaaart of your wooooorrrld
Look at this trove. Treasures untold. How many wonders can one website hold?
Great question, Ariel.
A question you’ll never get to answer if you keep insisting that your audience only hang out with you on Instagram.
Every time you post on social media, you get a tiny micro-opportunity to connect with your ideal client. What you don’t get is lots of quality time. That stuff? That happens on your website when they fill out your newsletter form and get on your juicy mailing list. That dreamy Little-Mermaid swirly-cavern-exploration experience happens when they’re on your website, downloading your lead magnet and discovering that you’re amazingly talented, supremely helpful and definitely the right service provider for them.
Remember, your audience's attention span is NOT guaranteed on social media, and it certainly isn’t all yours. On Instagram alone, you’ve got to share that attention with over 25 million other business profiles worldwide!
7️⃣ The full brand experience
Your website is the most ‘you’ part of your business, from the buttons to the hero banners to the submission message copy. Your website visually reinforces your brand identify, confirms your identity and positioning through the copy, and helps people get familiar with the look and feel that is YOU.
And no, your social media templates are not a brand identity. They are only one part of your toolkit. Your website needs to echo that social space. Not only does it make you look professional AF, but it also makes you look a lot more credible and put together, and who doesn’t want that for their business? Amirite?
8️⃣ SEO - supersize your presence and boost your biz traffic
Search engines like Google are the school prefects of the internet. They stalk the halls looking for Ronnie Rule Breakers and Lazy Lucy types that don’t explain themselves properly online.
This looks like:
> making sure Google gets who you are and what you do
> ensuring you’re a credible source of whatever it is you do/provide
> scanning your content for structure, intent, quality, ease of use (mobile-friendly), load speed, keywords etc.
There are over 200 SEO ranking factors that search engines use, and I’m not going to go into them all here. Still, I see so many small business owners carelessly sh*t all over basic SEO because they don’t think they need to consider it.
Well, what if I told you that a good ranking could result in more organic traffic to your site and more clients? Would you be interested then?
Thought so.
Final Thought
We all like a deep and meaningful in the DMs. Hell, I love them. But constantly chatting to prospects is not a sales strategy. It’s a sales tactic.
The best small businesses know how to unite strategy + tactics to create $$$ results.
Being tactical alone is not a plan. It’s exhausting, and if you’re like me, then you’re probably a one-person band who doesn’t have the time or energy to constantly ‘BE’ a business.
A business website will decrease the mental load and free you up to be a better person outside of your business (and that’s where we all really want to be, right? Outside. Doing life. Having fun. Eating shawarma.)
Want me to apply all the above to your small business website? Don’t have a website yet? Need a loving nudge?
My most popular wordy service is the Homepage Revamp. Starting at £1,900, I’ll caress your online space and set you up for a first impression that makes your people wanna press all your buttons.
You can start your website adventure by pressing this one 👇👇👇
Blogging Bootcamp: How to write a blog post in 7.5 simple steps
This is the exact template I use for every single client blog post I write. This simple how-to template is more flexible than a level 3 Pilates instructor and can be adapted to any damn topic you please.
This is the exact template I use for every single client blog post I write. This template is more flexible than a level 3 Pilates instructor and can be adapted to any damn topic you please.
This post is a follow up to an Instagram tutorial I gave on blog writing. (you can check out the original story in my highlights under ‘Blogging Bootcamp’).
This piss-easy, step-by-step blogging guide is for you if you:
😍 want to whip up a blog for your business but can’t figure out how to write a blog post
😰 have been staring at a blinking cursor on a blank Word document for over a week
😩 don’t even enjoy writing that much but can’t afford a wordsmith right now
🙃 will slap the next person who offers to sell you a blog writing course
Ready? Here we go.
👉 Research: resources, references + inspiration
This is the 0.5 of a step you need to take before you dive into your writing adventure, and it’s all about your topic research. Find out what you’re up against, find out what else is out there. Who’s writing the best blog posts about your topic? What’s missing from their blog post? Can you explain the topic better? These are a few nuggets you should consider in your planning.
Blogging is not a pub crawl. You don’t knock-back 32 Google searches and throw up everything you’ve read the next day. You sit back and uncork each resource you find, then you slowly absorb each piece, taking in the primary aromas and letting the flavour, memory and feeling of all your researched words colour the post you want to create.
Research is a quality-over-volume process. Don’t spend longer than a few hours on research; you’ll end up overwhelmed off-topic, and probably knee-deep in dancing cat videos. Done well, the research stage of blogging might even take longer than the actual writing. Solid-ass research is the foundation of (fast) quality content creation.
🔥 Pro tip
Set up Google Alerts for the topics you’ll write about most. Anytime there’s breaking news about that thing, you’ll be the first to know about it. Google Alerts mean you get the freshest content about your topic, and you can use this fresh juice to fuel your content machine, so you aren’t up-cycling stale insights and advice for your audience.
Now that we’ve laid the foundation, it’s time to do battle with the blank page of doom. I shred an average of 850 - 1200 words with this guide, so kiss your white page goodbye and maybe order another keyboard because your keys are about to get battered like the peeps in that hallway fight scene in Old Boy.
👉 Title: give your reader an idea of what to expect from your blog post
You don’t have to create your title first, but for me, it helps to have a working title before I begin. The important thing about the title is that it sets the expectation for the reader. Your title must represent what you end up writing about, so if you say you’re going to write ‘3 ways to get rich quick’, you must deliver three ways to get rich quick.
Don’t confuse your reader with a title that doesn’t relate to what you write about, and don’t disrespect your reader with deceptive clickbait. Remember, you’re trying to build credibility with knowledge. If you fail to deliver what you promise in your title, your audience is very unlikely to give you another chance. There’s a whole internet of bloggers out there, and you’re not the only person peddling words.
🔥 Pro tip
Blogging doesn’t have to be hard. Pick one of the below popular blogging titles as a prompt, and run with it. You can figure out how to be a maverick of originality later:
💡How-to guides (like this one)
💡Why you need to…
💡The best/easiest/quickest way to do something
💡*insert number* reasons why/tips/tricks/steps to…
💡Interesting/funny/weird questions
💡Mistakes to avoid
👉 Intro: give your reader a reason to read on with a hook
Once you’ve got a title (or not, this isn’t an IKEA instruction manual, you can start wherever you like and I promise you won’t end up with a wonky BILLY bookcase), you need to come up with a captivating first sentence that’ll hook readers and get them to read on.
🔥 Pro tip
💡Use short sentences
💡Use shocking/surprising statements
💡Use a real story about your life
Example: If my topic is ‘3 tips to get rich quick’ I could open with a scene-setting slap in the face that says ‘hey, I’m living proof that you can get rich quick’:
“A year ago I was making £100 a month. Today, I’m making £10,000 a month, and I’ve got an Italian coffee maker worth more than a family car. Here’s how you can make bank too.”
Twist the curiosity dial up to 11, and watch how readers stick around despite themselves. When I’ve got readers who don’t even care about my topic engaged, I know I’ve done a good job.
👉 Idea 1: give your reader context with history
I like to help people really contextualise the subject matter by giving them some background information. So if I’m talking about the history of getting rich quick, I can talk around the subject and mention side hustles, fraud, cash-in-hand jobs and other things people do to get rich quick.
I see the blog post’s history the same way you’d see a literature review for an academic paper. You wouldn’t dive into a study about wealth inequality without some background on how wealth inequality came to be, because no one would understand the point of your research. Don’t assume your reader knows your topic as well as you do; context warms your reader’s brain up, so they’re primed and hungry for more.
🔥 Pro tip
History doesn’t mean ancient history. It could be recent events in the media or a famous example of someone getting rich quickly. Make it interesting.
👉 Idea 2: give your reader a reason to believe you with science
Including science in your blog post is the easiest way to include proof that what you’re talking about is accurate. So if one of your get-rich-quick tips is ‘make investments’ then include a statistic or numerical fact from a recent research paper or reputable media source like; “roughly nine out of 10 US households that earn over $100,000 own stocks.”
🔥 Pro tip
Don’t use statistics older than two years, the fresher your claim, the more relevant to your reader. It’s vital not to link or reference dodgy/suspicious links. Google will penalise you for this. Including external links in your blog post helps build ranking power, and this is an essential part of SEO.
👉 Idea 3: give your reader a solution to take with them
Solve it! The best thing about writing a blog post is that you’re helping people solve problems or create solutions for themselves through what you know about. So for example, if I’m a wealth coach, and my ultimate goal is to help my audience get rich, then the key takeaway for my blog post is to convey how they can action what I’ve taught in the post, and implement it in their lives so they can get wealthy too.
🔥 Pro tip
Actionable, solid advice helps you establish yourself as a thought leader and authority with your audience. A well-written blog post allows you to confirm your authority because you’re talking in-depth about a subject. The worst kind of blog post is a vague, fluffy bit of writing that doesn’t leave you feeling smarter or better off at the end.
You never want to waste your precious reader’s time.
👉 Conclusion: give your reader a summary and wrap it up
You don’t want to be writing forever, so you’ll be pleased to know this is where you get to wrap this thing up. Take this opportunity to recap all the points in your blog post, and embed your main ideas in your conclusion (in our example, this is our 3 ways to get rich). You can also provide additional resources for your readers so they can get even more valuable information about your topic.
🔥 Pro tip
If you’re old enough or American enough to remember the Jerry Springer show, you’ll recall how at the end of every episode he’d share a ‘final thought’ to validate the 43-minutes of carnage he’d created. Your conclusion is the perfect spot for a ‘final thought’ moment. I like to embody Jerry and leave my readers with an opinion that shakes them out of their existing views or asks them to consider something new.
👉 CTA - give your reader somewhere to go
Woohoo! You’ve made it to the end and before you push ‘publish’, you need to make sure you add a call-to-action (CTA) to your piece. Whenever you publish content online for your business, you want to make sure your audience’s content journey doesn’t stop abruptly like a train on a bad bit of track (whaddup, Snowpiercer).
Show them where else they can go to be with you. Is it booking a free consultation? Or a newsletter sign-up form that promises more of the same incredible content that you’ve just shared? Think about why you’ve written your blog post and how you can maximise your words’ impact and shelf life.
🔥 Pro tip
Blog posts can have an incredibly long lifespan online. Their impressive digital shelf life (up to two years) means people might stumble across and read your post years after it’s written, so don’t forget to revisit your blog posts once in a while and update outdated bits.
Final Thought
If you’ve read through this absolute dream of a blog post without immediately dashing off to write a 5000-word-strong blog-a-tron, then I’m impressed. We’re done now, so you’re free to release your fingers from the tiny straitjacket they’ve been restrained inside and set them loose on your keys.
If you’re still struggling to blog after reading this life-changing guide, that’s okay. That’s why I’m here. I don’t write done-for-you blog posts, but I do have an excellent lil workshop that’ll teach you more in-depth tricks, tips and tactics to help you kickstart writing for your business (whatever you need to write). You can buy this cheap-o, practical workshop below.