Marketers: Are Your Online Passwords in Order?
Categorized in: SEO
This post isn’t about SEO directly, but it’s a topic that is relevant to all online marketers, including SEOs. An important component of online marketing (or any marketing, really) is to expand the reach of your brand and to be found wherever target audience members are. Online, it means setting up profiles on all of the websites target audience members visit. This includes social media sites, directory sites, local listing sites, niche industry sites, and more. Each of these websites requires a user name and password. Do you have yours?
We’re asking because we’ve found that, over the years, a number of our clients were missing at least some of their log in information to these important profiles. In some cases, they were set up by a former employee who is no longer with the company. When they left, they took the information with them. It wasn’t necessarily malicious, they just didn’t think to pass it along. Or, nobody thought to ask for it. In other cases, it was outsourced marketing firms that set up the profiles and the log ins didn’t get passed along when the relationship ended. Or, they did get passed along but the person who took them didn’t file them properly or, left the company themselves. Long story short, there are plenty of situations in which these log ins go missing.
Which is what brings us here. Don’t let this happen to you! To prevent the loss of your log in information, follow these tips:
Keep a master document
If you don’t already have a master document with every single online log in, create one now and make sure that it lives in a backed up, secure place. List every single online profile or log in you have. Double check that the information you have is accurate by logging in to each. If a user/password combination isn’t working, start doing the investigative work now to figure it out.
Get log ins from employees and outsourced firms
If employees or outsourced firms are creating profiles and log ins on your behalf, make sure they are sending all of the log in information to you as they create it and letting you know when any password change is made.
Get updated information when a relationship ends
If you’re parting ways with an employee or an outsourced firm, make sure to get all of the information you need from them before it happens. Legally, they can’t withhold this information from you since the profile represents your copywritten brand. Hopefully they wouldn’t try to do this, but who knows!
Keep it all under one roof
This is another reason it’s advisable to keep your online marketing efforts in one place, such as one outsourced full service firm. When multiple firms are working on different pieces of your online marketing, that might overlap, you have lots of people with access to your passwords (and online brand) which can be messy.
It’s likely that this isn’t something that you think about often, or ever, until a problem arises. But it’s in your best interest to review passwords on a regular basis and ensure that you have access to (and ownership of) all online profiles at all times.
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