I recently arranged for some tradesmen to paint our garden. It hadn’t been done for several years, so it took them a long time to remove the grime before they could paint.
The preparation time was the longest part of the job. It soon became clear that the excessive time it took to prepare the fence for painting could have been saved if we’d had it painted every year.
While the painters were slapping paint on the fence, I conducted a one-day consultancy session for a client in the Netherlands. Before the day began, I was concerned about how I would fill the time they had booked because, before the global pandemic, I had visited them at their lovely offices in Amsterdam.
We had discussed their online options, and when I returned to the UK and checked their internet activity a few weeks later, it was clear they had made significant changes following my consultancy. They had increased their Twitter following from around 25,000 to almost 600,000, which shows that they were doing a brilliant job.
The right approach
I approached our new session with trepidation. I was worried that they would think they were paying for nothing. They had worked hard following my advice, which was successful for them.
After analysing everything, I could only find a few tweaks they needed to improve their current approach. In the end, I need not have been concerned.
We spent the day discussing many elements of their digital operations and activity. We tweaked something here and made a minor alteration there, and before I knew it, our time was up. I asked if the day had been helpful.
They said it was tremendously valuable and would like to book another session in a year to check that they were still on track.
I made summary notes outlining the ideas we had produced. There were only half a dozen critical tasks and a handful of smaller items, which didn’t seem much for a day’s work.
Yet, the client was thrilled with what was delivered! I looked out the office window into the garden and saw my shiny new fence. I realised that my client behaved in a way I hadn’t done with my fence.
Rather than waiting several years to see if their online performance was up to scratch, they were reviewing every year.
That meant the time it would take to deal with changes would be much less than if they had waited several years to consider their actions.
Unlike my garden fence, which had been left to deteriorate, they ensured that their online presence only needed a quick ‘touching-up’ every year.
Don’t fall behind
Sometime later, I received a request from a potential client to review their website. The company was thinking about a redesign and wanted to provide some information to web design companies.
The email told me that they hadn’t done anything to their website for almost seven years, and they had decided it was time for a refresh.
At this moment, I had a profound realisation. I looked at their website and realised it resembled my neglected fence. Much work was needed to prepare their website so the designers could do anything fruitful.
When you don’t reconsider your social media strategy every year, you also leave it to wither, requiring significant investment at a later date.
And if you do not look after your digital footprint annually, addressing the necessary changes in one colossal effort after several years takes more time and energy than is required.
My clients in the Netherlands had the right idea. Regular checks and actions mean that there will never be a massive task in the future.
There is a tendency in business to make significant changes every few years rather than progressive alterations over shorter periods.
If you are a ‘big change’ business, then you are like my garden fence. Leaving it unpainted for so long has created much more work and a higher cost than if it had been tended to yearly.
Ignoring reviews of your online activity for long periods also means you create more work for yourself and raise your costs.
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