04 AugDid You Forget?

Pensive by Peter Castleton. Photograph.

The internet has been pervasive in our culture for quite a few years now. I bet you’ve been using the web for more than ten years. And in that time, you’ve signed up for a few things. Email addresses, social media accounts, newsletters, accounts on retail websites, etc. Many of these are forgotten about, especially for those who started using the internet as kids because they’ve grown out of many sites over the years. But for everyone, really.

Yesterday, I discovered just how useful these years of internet use could be. And now my to-do list includes a day to go on a web search, looking for all the places I’ve forgotten about. What did I find? Well, I happened upon a blog I used to run but stopped posting on about a year ago. I had completely forgotten this blog and the other one I had been keeping. And when I checked the stats, I was shocked to find the daily traffic for each of these blogs was higher than the daily traffic for my current website!

All the people seeing my old blogs are just lost. I haven’t left a post telling them where they can find me now. I haven’t forwarded any traffic to my new site. There’s not even an opt-in box in the sidebar. Yep, I just completely forgot about this potential marketing source.

And then I started thinking about all the other places I don’t market. All those websites I’ve made accounts on over the years. Sure, my email accounts might not do any good (I’ve got to delete one or two of those!). But the forums on that artist site? Yes, I should at least have an updated profile with a link to my website.

So I challenge you to ponder your web presence. Where are all those sites you’ve signed up for over the years? How many of them could be updated (or deleted) and used to help bring customers to your shop?

Action Step: Take 2 hours this week (go put it in your calendar right now!) to update your profiles across various websites and social media platforms.

- Laura