How to start a website

So you’re ready to start your own website. That’s great! Your website is how you’ll connect with the ideal audience we talked about in our last post, “Build Your Practice with Social Media: Ideal Clients”, so you can build your practice and share your passion.
And don’t worry—it doesn’t need to be perfect. My website is still a work in progress. The important thing is getting started.

Get a Hosting Service for WordPress

There are lots of website builders out there and probably the easiest one to work with is WordPress.
I absolutely love WordPress. It had lots of free and paid themes to choose from, so you can have a
really professional looking site without going to the expense of paying for someone to build it from scratch.
To set up your website, you’ll want to self-host, which means visitors won’t see “wordpress” in your
site name. It’s the difference between rebeccajorgensen.com and rebeccajorgensen.wordpress.com.
The former just looks more professional, and it’s really inexpensive.
So how do you host a WordPress website? There are tons of tutorials. I googled “hosting and
wordpress website,” and came up with this short tutorial on hosting, and this video on setting up your
WordPress site. Set aside a couple hours, and find a tutorial you like.

Choose a Clean & Professional Template

After you’ve signed up for WordPress, you’ll have the option to choose a template. Don’t worry if
you’re not sure which one you like the most, it’s easy to change. The main thing to keep in mind is
choosing a template that looks clean and professional.
Your website is the image you’re presenting to the world, and you want it to reflect your practice and
your presence. Simple and functional and professional is the way to go.

Highlight You

From the get-go, you want your ideal client to be able to connect with you. So it’s really important to
include a photo of yourself somewhere on the website. I recommend putting it at the top of each page in
your banner. It doesn’t need to be large, just a headshot. People want to know they’re connecting with a
real person, and that real and loving person is you.

And speaking of you, you’ll also want to highlight your experience clearly and with confidence. Make it
easy for your ideal audience to see who you are and what you do. A great place for this is on your “About”
page.

Create a Blog for List-Building

The last thing I want to talk about today is list-building. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s simply a
reference to collecting email addresses. If you’ve ever gone to a website and entered your email address,
your address has gone onto someone’s “list.”
List-building is one of the best ways to reach out and serve your audience. It’s also the very best way to
grow and maintain an audience, to let people know what you’re up to, and invite them to participate in
what you’re doing.
A blog is a great tool for building your list because you can create new content regularly and offer readers
the chance to stay up to date by sending them email copies of your blog.
The more regularly you post and the better your content, the more traffic you’ll tend to get. I recommend
starting out by posting two to four times a month. And don’t be discouraged if it takes awhile to get an
audience. These things often take several months of regular posting.
Start now by watching a tutorial on how to add a signup form, also called an “opt-in form,” to your new
website, and then create a blogging schedule you know you can follow.

Conclusion

I know it can feel daunting to start this process, especially if you’ve never done it before. But the hardest
part is the unfamiliarity, and once you get started, it’s much easier.
If you’re just starting your website or have tips for people who are, I’d love to hear your experience in the
comments below.
If you liked this topic, stay tuned for an upcoming post when I’ll talk about how to use social media to build
your audience.