Today I'm writing about how important it is to treat your website as an entity that has vitality. A living creation that functions through a flow of energy. Because, of course, if you don't devote any energy or attention to your website, sure as anything, no one else will. The three vital ingredients, then, are: responsibility, energy and focus.

** Taking responsibility

There's a real danger, particularly if you're not technically minded, of jumping ship at the first possible opportunity. By that I mean that a lot of coaches imagine that all they need to do is find a capable website designer, and then they can hand the whole project over without having to involve themselves any further. Yes, it's definitely a good idea to find yourself a capable and helpful designer who displays plenty of initiative. But no, it is not a good idea to abdicate responsibility.

I encountered a coach recently who had committed a large amount of money to working with a well known, top notch designer. Despite her financial investment, though, she wasn't seeing any results and was feeling pretty upset about it all. On closer questioning it turned out that she had handed everything over to the guy and was just passively waiting. She said over and over again: 'He's the expert, I thought he knew what to do'.

The problem here, of course, is that while designers are experts in design, they are not experts when it comes to your business and target market. This particular lady thought that by spending money she could avoid having to take responsibility for something she felt insecure about. As it turned out, her abdication of responsibility was causing her a whole lot more discomfort (and debt) than stepping out of her comfort zone, taking responsibility and getting involved would have done.

** Energy flow

It's the same in the virtual world as the real world - wherever energy stops flowing, stagnation occurs. What tends to happen with coaching websites that have been dumped in hyperspace and left to fend for themselves is that they go stale. I'm still not sure how the process works, but it's very easy to spot a stale website when you land on one isn't it? It doesn't even have to contain obviously out-of-date information for you to be able to sense its lack of vitality.

So to keep your website smelling sweet and attracting visitors, you have to keep the energy flowing. The more attention and focus you devote to your website, the better the results it will achieve for you.

** Offline as well as online focus

It's easy to assume that, because your website is on the internet, all the active energy you devote to it must also be focused online. Yes, you do need to keep your website content fresh, but obsessive fiddling with wording and layout isn't the answer. That is what I call confusing busy-ness with business.

What you really need to be doing is finding ways of getting your website in front of your target audience. And this can be achieved very successfully offline too.

The kind of real world actions you can take range from simply making sure your web address is on your business cards to writing articles that contain your web address published clearly alongside your name. You can place inexpensive classified ads. If you give talks, you can tell your audience about your free report and encourage them to visit your website and sign up when they get back to their desk. You can even pass round a form for them to give you their name and email address right then and there.

None of these actions takes place online, but they are all examples of taking responsibility for the success of your website and keeping the energy flowing.