I was chastised by Chris Faris at Kitestring when I stopped by the other day. He said “Your website is one page! Why don’t you have anything there?”. Lots of web developers (myself included) put our websites last on the list of projects – there’s always one more thing to take care of for a client first, before you’ll tackle your own site.
But really the fact of the matter is – websites are hard. Writing content is really hard, especially when you’re talking about yourself. Most web designers will tell you that the shoemaker’s children often go barefoot.
How do you get over this content writing hump? One way is to lock yourself in a room and not be let out until you have beautiful content for every page of your website. Or, to avoid starvation, you can tackle it in little bits. Work on a page a day. Or ask your clients what they like about your products and services – you’ll be surprised at what they say and it may provide inspiration.
When I work with my clients on websites where a significant amount of new content is required, I will bring a copyeditor into the project where possible. At the very least, working with a copyeditor for the key pages of your website is an investment worth making. If you don’t have content for a page, don’t publish it. There are few things worse than a “coming soon” page on a website.
While writing the content for my website, I asked my clients for feedback and gave myself strict deadlines. For example, I would tell myself that a certain page needed to be done by noon. Or this blog post had to be written in 45 minutes. For me, working under pressure is best. Not every word that pours from your keyboard needs to be incredible, world-changing prose. Just tell people how you solve their problems in simple terms, and you’d be surprised at how quickly the content comes.