How to Make Writing Your Website Easier

I am currently working on creating four new additions to the Healing Arts Practice Incubator, aka HAPI. And that's going to land in the world around April 15th. More on that in next week's episode!

One of the new courses I'm creating is the Simple Communication course, which includes, among other things, Write Your Site.

Today I want to talk about the most common misconceptions that people have about writing their website, which keeps them from either getting it done effectively, or just getting it done at all.

I work with clients one on one creating custom brand identities and websites, and because I heartily believe that one's brand- and I know it's a word we all hate- but a brand is not a logo, right? We're not looking for the Nike swoosh or whatever.

In our cases, in the healing arts, because our works happens within therapeutic relationships, the whole way that we are communicating about our work: what we write, what we say verbally, the visual aspect, all of that is important and is a part of how our business, (we'll say business instead of brand!) is presented to the world.

Because of that, I don't just like make logos. I also write the custom websites that I make for people. And of course I do that with very hearty input from my clients because they're the ones who are the experts in their fields.

So the way that I come in handy for my clients, besides obviously generally making it a much easier task for them, is that I'm steering them away from the same roadblocks that crop up for everyone around writing their website.

I see these things repeat ,and I want to pass them along to you so you can see if maybe this is one of the things, or all of the things, that you're struggling with around writing your website.

Here are the roadblocks:

First, people believe that they're writing. an essay or a novel. I can also lump this together with people thinking that they are writing their website for themselves.

What do I mean by that? Because the website is for you in a certain sense, right? It's for your business. It exists to make your practice more visible in the world. And because you're the practitioner, it should also be about you. It should feel like you, it should show you, credential you, sound like you, all the things!

But the primary people that we're writing the website for are potential clients. It's for the people who are viewing the website.

Sometimes our current and existing clients view our website, but usually just to pass it along to someone or to get to the book online button, because they already know is.

Your website's most effective use case is to communicate with the people who are trying to feel out: "Do I like this person? Do I like the vibe of this? Does this sound like what I have been looking for based on [whatever need brings them to your website in the first place]?"

So we're not writing an essay or a novel that is personally for us about the love we have for our work. The love we have for our work should shine through, but from the point of view that we're communicating with potential clients it's not as if I were going to sit down and write a book about Rolfing, which is what I've practiced for decades, and not just what it is, but what it has meant to me in my life.

If I were going to write that book there'd be a lot of love in there, a lot of gratitude for the work. It would be very personal about my healing journey and also what Rolfing has given to me as a career. And it would be long! It would be personal and long winded. So, that is not what we're doing with a website.

Roadblock number two: They think they need to convey everything that there is to understand about their work. This is a different version of the roadblock I just discussed, but instead of thinking you're writing an essay or a novel, it's more like you're writing a textbook or a dissertation.

We believe that potential clients, when they come to the website, need to go to school with us to understand what we do. I have so much empathy for where this comes from because we are deep experts in our work! We love our work, and we're trying to convey all that it can do to potential clients.

But they didn't come to our website saying, "Yes, I want to study this", or, "I want to take a continuing education course in this", or, "I'm considering becoming a practitioner". They came to our website because they're wondering if we can help them.

I'm not advocating for being shallow. You're not just going to say cute sound bites and ignore anything of substance about your work. We want the substance to be in there, but from the point of view of what a prospective client needs to know.

Go back to that beginner's mind place. Where were you before you trained in what you do? That's who we're talking to. We're not talking to fellow experts or colleagues.

Roadblock number three: They have been told, there's usually "shoulding" in this one, that they need fancy copywriting skills or to be an excellent writer.

Fancy copywriting skills gets to this sort of salesy place. Maybe you've heard something about how copywriting is a whole field unto itself or you've heard that people command large sums to do copywriting and there's copywriting experts and blah, blah, blah, blah, and corporations hire copywriting editors and da, da, da, da, da.

And so you think that there's this secret world that you need to be led into by acquiring this skill of businessy writing called copywriting. That's one version of it.

The other version of it is being told that you have to be an excellent writer or just internalizing that this is the case.

Maybe you don't like to write, or writing isn't your strength, and the thought of sitting down to write something is a slog.

If there's also this misconception that you need to be a poet or spinning beautiful words together in every line, in every paragraph, it's just going to block you even more from writing.

And it's just not true! I'll get to why, because, yes, we want our websites to sound great. But there are ways to do that without feeling like you need to be a polished copywriter or a gifted poet or whatever it might be.

Roadblock number four: People believe they have a big job ahead of them: "I have to do this big task called writing my website". This usually comes along with thinking that there's a high word count involved. So it's similar to, "I have to write a textbook. I have to write an essay".

But! websites are read at the speed of the internet. Whether we like it or not, when someone new comes to your website, they are in skim mode.

They're on the internet, everything's fast, they're busy, they have multiple tabs open, they have to get back to responding to their emails, so they're in skimming mode.

The best websites don't have a ton of text. The biggest click away issue is a giant wall of text.

Instead we want to have the right text. The impactful and meaningful words to help a potential client understand if you and your work are a fit for them.

When I write websites for my clients and put it in a Word document before it's in the designed version on the website, I have to always explain to my clients that it will not look like many words, for example, for a homepage. Because it's not! And then when I show them the designed version of that text, it makes perfect sense in terms of how it flows, and how it catches your eye.

Because it's the right amount of text to draw people in so they can actually read it and digest it.

So you don't have to go through some giant high word count project.

And then lastly, the most common roadblock is blank-screen-itis.

You sit down, blank screen, "I'm going to write my website today." And nothing stops us in our tracks quite like the blank screen! It's hard to know where to start.

So, what to do if and when you encounter any of these roadblocks?

When I begin the process of writing a website for one of my clients, I start by talking to them for a long time about their work and their practice.

I want to hear their love for their work. I want to hear what their particular take is on it. I want to hear what they disagree with in neighboring fields or within their own modality. I want to hear what brought them to do their work. And I want to hear it in the actual words that they use. Because there's no better way to sound like yourself than to actually be talking like yourself!

I also ask them about their clients and about the actual words that their clients are using when they reach out to them. Maybe like, can you help me with.... Or this is why I'm contacting you... Or when they express gratitude for working with them, when they're saying, "This has been so helpful because..." or "I'm always so happy to come here because..."

I want to hear the actual words.

I don't research their modality. I don't whip out sales-y jargon or, or wellness-y jargon: "Feel better today!" These are things that everyone has seen a million times, and so it's just this like visual version of white noise. People don't receive it because it's like, "Yeah, I've seen a sales-y sentence before", or, "I've seen a wellness-y sentence before".

And it doesn't tell anyone anything useful about you or your work.

I also don't follow rigid SEO rules. If you've also had people should-ing you about SEO, "Oh, it's so important to have the right number of repetitions of this word." That is not true. Keyword rules were thrown out years ago, actually, in the algorithm.

And it used to be a way of gaming the algorithm to get more Google results delivered to your website. That does not hold anymore, all it does is make you sound like an automaton on your website- If you keep repeating the word "acupuncture", for example, if you're an acupuncturist So you don't have to follow SEO rules or become an SEO expert. Certainly you don't need to hire an SEO expert

Like I said, what I do is I talk with my client. Once I have talked with them, and in my case, because I actually like to listen and type- kinesthetic learner! Any other kinesthetic learners?- and so after talking with my client about their work I have walls and walls of grammatically incorrect, misspelled text. It doesn't look pretty, and I don't expect it to spill out of their mouths as perfect website copy.

That's my job! I harvest the gems- the gems that came out of their own mouths.

And when I show them, because then I do actually pull the gems out of the text, get rid of my grammatical or spelling mistakes, and put it in a new document, they're always like, "I said that?!"

When you talk about your work, when someone's really actively listening to you and wants to hear what you have to say, you're going to say all these beautiful things because you love your work and you know your work.

I harvest the gems that came out of their mouths, and harvest the gems that came out of their clients' mouths.

Yes, I like to write. I'm a good writer. That helps. But mostly I'm just gathering the gems and then polishing them up.

These gems are the kinds of things that come out when you're in a comfortable and enjoyable conversation about your work. It's not the kind of thing that comes out when you sit down to a keyboard and try to write.

That gets you in research paper or essay writing mode. It doesn't feel like you or your work or the way that talking about your work does.

In my Write Your Site course, which is within the Simple Communication course. I give the 25 questions that I use to interview my clients so that I can gather the gems. I also give the site map because it does help to understand how to pull out the right things and put them into the right place. That's going to help people to receive the information.

For yourself, if you're DIY-ing, try talking to yourself! Record yourself talking about your work, ask yourself questions about what you do, why you do it, what's your mission, who do you serve, why did you go into your field... all that stuff. Or have a friend ask you about your work.

With the caveat that it can't be a colleague who's going to take you down deep nerd rabbit holes. That's you starting a podcast, which I welcome you to do! I love podcasts, but it's not for your website.

The questions are actually not fancy.

Or if you are a typer and you can type at the pace of thinking, you can just stream of consciousness type about your work and ask yourself questions about your work.

Instead of trying to create perfect sentences, even if you're typing, even if you're already in writing mode, this is not about the polished up final draft or even anything remotely like it. Just let it all spill out! Then you're going to go back and pull out the good stuff and you'll polish it up later.

Whether you're talking and recording, (which I highly recommend, by the way: If you do it that way, get a transcript. You can do that on Zoom, like there are all kinds of places that have built in transcription now)- or just stream of consciousness typing It really makes it so much easier to get this done if you can reframe what the task is and take it out of that writing brain and put it into a different part of your brain. You're just talking about your work!