DigiDigest

Dying Online

I read an interesting article a few years ago on what happens to your ‘web presence’ after you die. Cheerful? No. But it got me thinking. Just how many virtual versions of you are there? How many presences do you and your brand have online?

When we started out in web, a ‘web presence’ tended to refer to an entity’s public website. The old ‘dub-dub-dub’ site. Build it, upload it. Count the hits.

Online marketing is much more complex today, although the principles remain the same. Eyeballs. Who’s eyeballing your brand or entity online?  Who’s looking at you, when and where? And what are they saying? Once you answer those questions, you’ll quickly realise that your online presence has the capacity to stretch well beyond your painstakingly worded, carefully designed, search engine optimised website.

Youtube. Banners. Facebook. Twitter. Forums. Blogs. Pay per Click campaigns.  [Insert more each day]

Every time we analyse a client’s web statistics or prepare an online campaign, we appreciate how much traffic is worth, how much effort goes into attaining it, and how much value it brings to our clients. There is even an attached cash value to each click, visitor and conversion. When this is the case, it’s staggering how careless some people are with these web assets. Strangely you insure your underpants and socks with contents insurance, yet the ‘free’ perception of the Internet seems to leave people thinking they can just leave their web assets out in the weather, so to speak.

Companies, at least the ones we cross paths with, tend to spend an increasing proportion of their marketing budget online. Investment that can simply waste away if not tracked, monitored and optimised.

Just like your financial assets, your online assets need to work for you. Optimise and reap the rewards.

Start at the top - Your website. Optimise it, promote it, tune it. During this process, your web expert will look at your traffic sources. This is the most painfully obvious example of your online assets. Your Google rank is probably your single highest ranking asset (If you don’t see it that way please contact me and I’ll explain). How many visitors did it bring to you this week? What are you doing to tune, focus and capitalise on that source of your traffic, which after all, is ultimately your business?

Reviewing our (JSA Digital’s) stats, notable sources of traffic are: our email marketing campaigns, our Google adword campaigns, Facebook, Twitter and this blog, all of which we control, and which deliver a substantial amount of quality traffic to us.  These sources of traffic are well worth reviewing. An increase of just 1% of traffic to our site, typically would result in 10 more enquiries to our business. Now that’s a return your bank offer you.

I recommend you complete an audit of your web assets, just as you do of your financial assets.

Start with the basics:

• Domain names: Keep track of them all, and make sure your contact details are up to date.
• Inbound links: These are vital to both your visitation and Google ranking, and you need to make sure the addresses they refer to are maintained.
• RSS Feeds: How many subscribers do you have to your RSS Feeds? Are they declining or increasing?
• Are you on Youtube? Although you might not be getting direct traffic from Youtube, it is technically, the number two search engine in the world. What’s your exposure on Youtube? Have you branded your Youtube ? Are you auditing public comments on your YouTube assets?

The list goes on…

In the same way we maintain our physical property, we all need to maintain our web assets. Until someone can guarantee you a steady 10% return on your web assets (which as we all know no one can do on real estate anymore), speak to your digital marketing guru or digital agency about optimising and guarding your online assets.

PS: After my little rant, I found the original article on online life after death. BBC. Of course.

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