WordCamps are a great way to learn new skills which help us to help small businesses with their websites. Mike and I had a very enjoyable (and educational time) at WordCamp Bristol at the weekend – a whole weekend of talks and activities for WordPress geeks like us. There were some great people there, and the organisers did a wonderful job. Held at The Watershed on Bristol Harbour, it was interesting to watch all the activity on the water whilst taking in all the latest developments in Search Engine Optimisation, Google Analytics, CLI, Twig, Hosting etc. We attend events like these a couple of times a year to keep our knowledge up to date.
Imposter Syndrome
Being a WordCamp, there were plenty of deeply nerdy experts in very niche fields. People who work on nothing but Google Analytics all day every day. People who know everything there is to know about the latest Data Protection regulations. And people who know far more about PHP, HTML and JavaScript than me!
I chatted to Mike about it on the way home, and mentioned that I felt a bit inferior compared with some of these geniuses. It’s commonly known as imposter syndrome – when you feel like you don’t belong in such esteemed company. It’s easy to feel inferior when you’ve got the world’s leading authority on symlinks in front of you.
The importance of being an all-rounder
But Mike made a very good point. Our customers don’t want us to be deep experts in everything. Most of our support customers run small businesses, and we are the only web developer they ever use. So they want us to know about a range of different subjects, including search engine optimisation, marketing, writing for the web, server configuration, website speed optimisation and of course WordPress itself.
What’s important to our customers is having a web developer who can help them with lots of different things relating to their website. They don’t want to have to go to an SEO specialist for one thing, a WordPress developer for website changes and a Google Analytics expert to find out about who’s visiting their website and what they are doing there.
The benefits of having a single web developer that can help with all aspects of your website
Our customers tell us that what they really value is the frequent contact they have with people they enjoy working with. And that they love the way we can help them with so many different things. We make it our business to know about a wide range of different things that help them to get the most out of their websites.
What’s more, we’re honest with our customers – we never bluff or pretend to know something. If we don’t know the answer to something, we go and find out. And if we can’t find out, we have an excellent network of contacts who will be able to help. In fact, many of our contacts are specialists that we have met at events such as WordCamp.
Understanding your business
Whilst there’s undoubtedly a market for niche experts in highly technical fields, they are generally employed by larger companies which also have budgets for a range of different consultancy services. Our WordPress Support Package customers really value our wide knowledge and the way we can explain things in simple terms if necessary.
By working with our support customers every month, we get to know their business in detail. We regularly catch up with our support customers to find out what the priorities for their website are. They also receive a detailed report every month so they know what we have been working on.
Some examples of the WordPress development work we do for our support customers
We help small businesses with so many different things. Over the last month we have helped our support customers with lots of business-focussed solutions including:
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Google Analytics interpretation
- Content Marketing
- Podcasting
- WordPress training
- Plugin installations and configurations
- Taking deposits via the website
- WooCommerce product display configuration changes
Applying our knowledge
Having spent the weekend in the company of some excellent specialists, we certainly learnt a lot. We’re really looking forward to applying this knowledge to help the businesses whose websites we look after. A big thank you to all the speakers at WordCamp Bristol who so generously shared their time and knowledge.
