How to Keep Your Website Current

The other day I emailed a potential client and thought to look at my website first. I hadn’t updated it in five months. Ouch. So I spent the morning scrambling to put up some new posts (and back-dating them, shameface) before I fired off that email. Why is it so hard for freelancers to keep our websites current? We’ve talked before about neglecting your website—traditionally we say the cobbler’s children have no shoes. But what if your site doesn’t need a redesign, it just needs current content? You’ve managed to keep your site looking respectable, but now it’s a matter of maintenance. Even though you help other people with their sites, it’s always hard to do your own. You’re busy. You’d rather be making money. You don’t want to talk about yourself. You’d rather be coding. Whatever the reason, it can be hard to keep your website current. Unfortunately, as freelancers, that’s not an option. Well, it is, but it’s an option that leads to not being a freelancer anymore. You’ve got to keep that marketing funnel full and functional. The last thing you want is a potential client visiting your site and your most recent “news” is from last year. Maybe it’s your blog, your portfolio, your social media—whatever it is, how do you make it a priority and keep your website current? So how can you give yourself that swift kick in the pants and get on it? We’ve got a few ideas to keep your website current:

1. Find Your Motivation

One way to give yourself that kick in the pants is to find some motivation. For me, it was simply the pressure of having a potential client likely to visit my site. For you it might be a dwindling bank account as a reminder that you need to book some more work. Of course those are fairly extreme and last-minute (or too-late) reminders. It’d be better if you could keep those situations in mind before they actually happen. Here’s one way to do that: Look at your stats. See how many people are actually visiting your site (or not) and let that be motivation. Go to Google Analytics and check out a couple things. First, how many people are coming to your site? Then, go to Behavior: Site Content: All Pages and see what content people are actually going to. This can accomplish a couple things:

• It might be depressing. If no one is visiting your site, this reality check can be harsh. Sorry. But don’t stop there. Ask yourself why they’re not visiting. Well, if the problem is you haven’t updated your site in six months, that might be why nobody is visiting. If you’re creating content and no one is visiting, maybe your content sucks. Ask yourself some hard questions about what you’re doing and why. Don’t stall out at being depressed. Move forward to action.
• You’ll see that people are actually visiting your site. Maybe it’s not hordes, but that’s OK. Yes, they’re hitting your homepage and then they’re reading about your services. Whoa. You know what that means, right? It’s working. Now maybe they aren’t contacting you. That’s a different issue. But look at those stats and see that you are getting some people to your site. So be motivated for those people. Make your site current and awesome for that group of people (no matter the size). Remind yourself that people are coming and make sure you’re proud of what they’re seeing.

This is effectively what I did to myself by thinking of that client visiting my site. I had a potential client to think of. If you don’t have a potential client in mind at the moment, looking at your stats is a way to remind yourself of all those people who click on your site.

2. Remember Why

So you’re thinking about the people who visit your site. Good. Now remember why you’re creating content for them. What are you trying to accomplish? Because it’s important to remember that it might not matter if lots of people see the content you’re creating. I update my site with company info, basically showing that we’re still kicking. I like to give some examples of what we do and show who we are—but I don’t expect lots of traffic. It’d be weird to have a huge following for your random company updates (I was on a podcast! I build a website! This plugin is cool!). Seriously: you might be aiming for a very tiny, select audience. That’s perfectly OK. Just remember that’s why you’re doing it. And then stick to your guns. Don’t feel pressure to change because someone else is finding success with their manic update schedule. Do what works for you, for the reason that works for you.

3. Make It Easy

Find a way to make it easy to keep your website current. Let’s face it: When it takes too much time or effort, you put it off. It’s just human nature. So you need to make it easy. Set the bar low. Maybe you need to scale back your expectations. If writing a 500-word blog post is too much, aim for 200 words. If finding and creating images is a drag, find a way to do it without images. If creating a video or a podcast is an incredible time-suck and you never do it, then stop pretending you will. All of those examples of content might be great: More words means more SEO juice. We’re addicted to images these days. And video just pulls the eyeballs. Those things are all good. But if they’re holding you back and keeping you from actually updating your site, then they’re not good anymore. What would you rather have: A blog post from last year with pretty pictures or one from last week with no pictures? Tell you what, when the potential client sees you haven’t updated in a year, they’re going to start wondering if you’re still in business. Suddenly those pretty pictures don’t seem worth the wait. So get a post up without all the frills. I figured this out the hard way. I started out with content marketing, creating all kinds of stuff and trying to attract attention. It was exhausting. My clients didn’t care and my site didn’t need to be a destination. So I scaled back and focused on company news—talking about projects, mentioning interviews, bragging about what we were doing. But it was still too much. I was still trying to write full blown blog posts. So I scaled back again. I borrowed the Twitter format and went with one-sentence posts or simply an image as a post. I still have to put it on the calendar and make it happen (more on that later), but by relentlessly focusing on what my content had to do and cutting it back to the bare minimum, I made it a lot easier to keep my website current. That’s what worked for me. Content marketing may be what you need (it worked for Carrie Dils). You have to figure it out for yourself. Here are a few more ways to make it easy:

• Store up ideas. Use Trello, Evernote or a draft post in WordPress to save ideas when they strike and come back to them when you’re ready to write something.
• Create a template. Come up with a standardized form of content where you can fill in the blanks: your favorite thing about a project, one thing you learned from a client or the best feature in the new version of WordPress.
• Repurpose content. If you’re a guest on a podcast or speak at a conference, there’s likely embeddable video or audio you can post. Don’t feel like you need to write about it, just re-post the content and let it speak for itself.
• Outsource it. You’re busy. There’s no shame in hiring someone else to keep your site current.

4. Make It Happen

Of course sometimes it still doesn’t happen. You find motivation, you remember why and you make it easy, and yet you still push it off. Sigh. Now what? Now is when you need to make it a habit. You need to come up with a schedule, a plan, and you put it on the calendar and make it happen. Decide to post once a month, put on the calendar, and make it happen. Sit down once a month and get that post up there. That’s pretty, easy right? No more excuses. It’s on the calendar. Deliver. Once you start to do that consistently, it will start to become a habit. You’ll have to force yourself the first few times. It will be like pulling teeth. But you’ll get there. Just stick with it. After a while it won’t be so hard. The key is to put it on a schedule. Don’t just plan to do it and assume wishing and hoping will make it happen. That doesn’t work. Carve out the time. Force yourself.

5. Think Big Picture

Finally, if you want to keep your website current you need to think long term. You’re in this business for the long haul, right? So think that way now as you’re creating content and doing your marketing. You don’t need to do it all at once. You can build things up slowly. Don’t pressure yourself to create it all right now. A year from now will it matter if you cranked out three blog posts in one day? No, probably not. So don’t sweat it. But a year from now will it make a difference if you had consistent content and kept your site current? Yeah, probably. Think about the stories you want to be able to tell about your business. Look back at your go-to examples from previous years. What are those stories you’re creating today? You might not be able to recognize them in this moment because they’re right in front of your face. But watch for them, and as they start to come into focus, grab those stories for your site. Sometimes it just takes a month or two and you look back and realize that project is a great story or it’s a beautiful image you want in your portfolio. Just because it’s a few months old doesn’t mean you can’t grab it now or tell the story now. It’s OK to play catch up. There’s no rule that says every post has to be immediately current. Sometimes it needs a little time to develop (not everything is at the speed of social media). And that’s OK. Keeping your website current is important, but it can happen at a steady pace at your time. You’re not Buzzfeed.

Let’s Do It

You can keep your website current. It doesn’t have to be neglected and forgotten, a source of shame and then sudden panic when a potential client comes along.

Find your motivation. Remember why you’re updating your site—what’s your plan? Then find ways to make it easy. In the end, you just need to force yourself to make it happen. And finally, think big picture about how these updates will help you in the future.