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Trying to write your site? Stop looking around

Trying to write your site? Stop looking around

There’s a pattern I see when entrepreneurs try to write their own sites.

You start out by looking at others in your field. You find someone who has a great website, and you decide to use it as inspiration. You want to create a website that is similar to your competitor’s, but you still want it to be original and unique.

So you pore over her words and try to figure out how to express the same ideas, but with your own spin. You try to write your copy, but find the phrases and words you love have already been taken by your competitor. So you try to tweak and re-tweak, but it never sounds as good.

Before long that website has gone from inspiration, to suffocation.

It feels like everything you want to say, has already been said.

It feels like your competitor is so much further ahead than you, that she must have the market already sewn up. She already has a huge following, she’s written blogs on the topics you want to explore, she has a heap of fabulous testimonials and you’re starting to wonder, what’s the point? How can you possibly compare?

You’re going round and round in circles, wasting a huge amount of time, and going nowhere.

If that sounds familiar, I have four words for you:

Shut. That. Browser. Down.

STOP looking at your competitors.

Seriously. Step awaaaaaay from that website. Unfollow them on Facebook. Click unsubscribe.

All that focus competitor inspiration is damaging your originality, your creativity and your ability to develop your own core message.

When you’re starting out, competitors’ sites can be a useful guide to packages, prices, and the kind of information clients might expect to see on your site.

Gather that information and get out.

Constantly looking at your competitors keeps you trapped in a cycle of compare and despair

There will always be someone further ahead than you, more knowledgeable than you and with a bigger audience than you.

The internet is a vast and infinitely expanding thing. Even if your competitor already has a successful brand, there are MILLIONS of people who have never heard of her.

The truth is, there is no one way to do your work. There is space for many voices, many ways of working, many different product offerings and services even in the same field.

If you create a site just like that of your competitor, then you’re missing an opportunity to stand out, to do things your way, to set yourself apart by being exactly who you are.  To find those clients who are looking for someone exactly like you.

So stop looking at the competition and focus instead on your message, you point of view, your gifts and strengths and the body of work you wish to create in this world. Only then can you go forward and create your site – and promote your business – with confidence.

If you’re ready to develop your core message, click here to download my FREE Write to the Heart of Your Message Workbook

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