Top WordPress Struggles If You DIY

Doing it yourself is such a great thing if you’re a natural learner, tinkerer, or curious soul. You can lose yourself in learning something new. You can have the power to manage and update your website. You can save a few bucks along the way.

But alas, brave as they are, many coaches who cast off on the WordPress ship as seafaring trainees hoping for fertile new lands, instead get swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle, taken captive by pirates, or devoured by the Kraken.

It’s a quick trip to Davy Jones Locker as the job of building a great website for your coaching business can be quite a task.

Here are the top three struggles I see DIYers face and a few tips to getting past them …

Struggle 1 – Overwhelm!

There’s a lot going on.

There are all kinds of technology to think about: plugins, themes, setup, browsers, mobile devices, landing pages, and on and on.

There’s also the whole website design process to figure out. Which comes first? The chicken, the egg, the domain name?

And if you’re not so tech-savvy, the fun learning curve looks more like a treacherous Mount Everest climb.

Even the technically inclined will spend lots of time getting the jist of things.

Here’s what I’d suggest to quickly get control of the helm and sail past the overwhelm.

• Go find a simple course to learn WordPress or pay a coder to sit with you for a few hours at Starbucks to walk you through it. Coffee on you!
• Get someone who has gone before to mentor you. This beats reinventing the wheel.
• Get good information, materials, guides to teach you instead of searching randomly online – there’s an insane amount of info out there. Learn what a COACH needs to know.
• Figure out WHAT kind of site you want to create and figure out HOW it fits into your biz goals.
• Get a deadline going and get accountable. Get your coach to crack the whip. Or even grab a coach friend or two and make it a group adventure. Or, just post your launch date on Facebook and promise everyone you’ll give them $10 if you don’t do it.
• Also, when it comes to themes (think of them as cool templates), go simple and try not to change it much because you’ll only make a mess. Instead, try to use the theme as is “out of the box”.

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Get control of the beast! I’ve organized The Coaching Site Guide to lead you through the website process in orderly steps, going from content to visuals to setup to launching. You also get tips to do it fast if you’re doing it yourself or hiring someone. Don’t go at it blindly and waste months to years (yes years) on this. Get online fast and start working with more clients.

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Struggle 2 – Struggling to create content.

Some coaches just aren’t good at writing.

Some can write but just can’t do it in a way that’s interesting.

Many have idea overload and can’t seem to sort it all out in a simple way.

Most don’t know how to write from the client’s perspective.

Here are some tips to create good content.

• Keep it simple and write less to start with. Start with less content and expand if needed.
• Get a few clients to brainstorm with you and give you feedback about content. This is a great move.
• Find some people you’d love to work with and ask them about their challenges. And then write content that speaks to those pains.
• Find someone who knows about good content and ask for help from them. Get coached on content.
• Oh, there also some great books out there on copywriting. I’ve seen quite a few go by, but here’s one I personally own from wayyy back. I still use the principles in it today. The Online Copywriter’s Handbook. (I may get laughed at because there are so many good ones these days, probably better.)

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Content is so crucial that I made it a huge part of the website for coaches book I wrote, The Coaching Site Guide. You’ll find formulas, examples, and diagrams to get you thinking and writing like a marketer. When customers of the book use this approach, they get leads from their websites.

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Struggle 3 – No strategy to generate leads.

This is a biggie and almost always overlooked.

Coaches tend to want something visually nice, with sliding images, and other eye candy and rarely pay attention to strategy.

There’s no relationship building, no conversation-starting, nor calls to action that turn visitors into leads.

Here’s some advice:

• There needs to be a path of actionable steps that leads people from first hearing about you, to then arriving at your website and engaging with you, and then getting on the phone with you. Figure out that path.
• Consider putting free stuff on your site to help you bring traffic.
• Consider an email list as a  way to get people to stay in touch and engage with you on a regular basis.
• Consider crafting an invitation to talk to you (a compelling call to action). Be sure to sell it. Highlight lots of value for getting on the phone with you.

Can we grow a list of the top struggles in the comments section? Where are you stuck? What are you struggling with? What have you discovered? I’d love to know.