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Online Marketing – Don’t Leap Before You Look

by Jennifer Beever

Research before You ActA lot of online marketers want to rush in and solve issues, but they don’t take time to research and analyze first. The result is that opportunities are lost, and sometimes valuable data and history.

There’s a lot going on in social media and on websites. Problems arise and many of us know to look for solutions by Googling keywords and phrases. But if you don’t carefully sift through the results and weigh the options, you could make some big mistakes that are impossible or difficult to reverse.

In one of my client situations, a marketing department wasn’t sure of the login for their website statistic tracking account. After many emails back and forth without a solution, one person threw up their hands and proposed restarting the statistics tracking. I knew that others in the organization (a vendor and an internal technical person) felt that an account already existed, and had for some time.  With some patience, technical assistance (and resetting of a password), we were able to access the existing account and the months and years of accumulated data about their website.

In another situation, a client had both a Facebook Business Page and a Facebook personal account. The Facebook business page was pretty much empty of content and the owner had set up a personal page as if it were the business (this is against Facebook’s guidelines and can get a profile taken down). This situation is difficult, because you can port your photo and friends from your personal profile to a business page, but it must be a new page. Now the business has two Facebook Pages, and when people enter the name of the business, they do not get the new page with over 1,000 likes, but the old page with only 4 likes and no information.

So, online marketers, slow down. Do your research. Evaluate the options. Look before you leap. (And document your account login information.)  You might save a critical aspect of your online marketing by doing so.

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