It might not feel like it yet, but spring has officially sprung! Everybody is gearing up for some much needed spring cleaning to reach the parts of the home that often go neglected, such as dirty windows and clogged gutters. But don’t forget, your business needs spring cleaning too.

Much like windows and gutters, websites and inboxes can easily be forgotten during the busy year-end season. The time has come to spiff up your digital office space. If you’re now envisioning yourself buried in spam emails and old passwords, don’t worry! Take a minute to review these tips to help you get started on your digital spring cleaning:

Email Editing

Busy inboxes and long contact lists can easily become disorderly. Try creating multiple labeled inboxes. This way, once emails have been read and responded to they can be neatly sorted away instead of sitting in your primary queue forever. Your email lists should be updated as well. While we keep our fingers crossed that every contact transforms into a lasting client relationship, there are always a few that slip away. Remember to remove these contacts from your mailing list or sort them in a separate list to contact only under special circumstances. Sending emails to people who have made it clear they no longer want them is bad for business and makes your emails more likely to be marked as spam, harming your email sender reputation.

Website Work

We all know how important websites are for growing and sustaining a successful business. However, simply having a website is no longer enough–without regular maintenance, your content will become stale or even worse: inaccurate! Shake off those cobwebs and make updating your website a priority this spring. An easy place to start is your home page. First impressions are precious, so it’s important that your front page is accurate, user friendly, and helpful. Tell customers about new promotions, show them any new products, and post photos of recent events. Check other important areas of your website as well, such as your About or Contact pages. Update any contact information or price lists that might be outdated and introduce customers to new members on your team. Lastly, make sure each page of your website has at least 300 words of content–this will help search engines crawling your page know what your site is about and serve your site to users looking for information.

Password Precedence

Stop ignoring the security reminders and update those old passwords! It is easy to keep the same password for years, but unfortunately it is also very unsafe. Similarly, updating your password too often can also be unsafe. When business owners and employees update their password too frequently they can be drawn to using the same phrase or word and just changing the numbers within the password. That can put the account at risk because if you know the word or phrase, it is very easy to decipher the rest of the password. Find a happy medium and update your passwords once or twice a year, plus any time you think there might be a security issue. Also, consider using a sentence or series of words instead of one word. Finally, make sure you are safely storing passwords–preferably offline. If you have a hard time remembering passwords, write them down on paper and keep them somewhere only you have access to.  

Server Straightening

It’s possible that with the busyness of a new year, you may have forgotten to separate old files from the new. If you haven’t already, create a 2019 folder on your business’s server or drive. If you know where your business is headed in the next year, try to plan for it. Create project or client folders ahead of time so all of your content will have a digital home once it’s created. Clean up old folders or homeless files as well. If you have any working files or old drafts that you know will never be revived, consider cleaning them up permanently so you conserve server space and make it easier to browse files in the future.

Time Tailoring

If you’re anticipating a busy spring, now is a great time to take a look at your calendar and reprioritize your time. Whether you are currently over booked or under booked, consider what you will be doing, what you could be doing, and what you should be doing instead. If your weeks are full of unnecessary meetings with the same people, consider consolidating them. Make progress meetings weekly instead of daily, and stick to only discussing these items during the meeting instead of different times during the week unless necessary. By doing this there will be more time available to complete other projects. If your deadlines are approaching faster than anticipated, create a tighter schedule and stick to it. On the other hand, if you feel you have more free time than you’d like, step outside of your comfort zone and learn a new skill that would make your life easier or open new opportunities for you in the future

Of course, it’s never any fun working in a dirty office, so clean up your desk space too. Dust, reorganize, and consider buying a plant, which has been shown to purify the air, reduce stress, and increase productivity.  

Spring is the season of rebirth, so revive your business’s online presence, organize your data, and prioritize your time. Do you need help giving your marketing a spring cleaning? We can help! Contact the Pulse Marketing Team for a free 30-minute consultation.