‘I’m not a techie’ is no excuse

Jerry L. Kennedy | TLT Social Media Marketing October 2015

Learn how to access your Website, domain name and email accounts.
 

Come on. You should have at least a basic understanding of how the Internet works.
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IT HAPPENED AGAIN. OUR CLIENT, A LARGE NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION, was finally ready to take its new Website live, but the staffers didn’t have a clue about who had the keys to their domain. It seems that a board member had purchased the domain and then subsequently quit the board. He was difficult to contact initially and, once they did track him down, was kind of a jerk about transferring ownership of the domain. It all worked out in the end, but our client came very close to having to choose a different domain name than the one desired.

As often as I’ve encountered this situation, it still surprises me every time it happens: folks who no longer know, if they ever did, how to do something as fundamental as accessing the domain for their Websites, who don’t know the difference between where their Website is hosted and where their domain name is hosted, who have no idea how their email gets to their inbox. Most alarmingly, these are folks who don’t realize the marketing opportunities they’re missing.

I’m just going to go ahead and say it: It’s 2015, and you should have at least a basic understanding of how the Internet works.

I’m not talking about server protocols and programming languages and scripting. I’m talking about a rudimentary grasp of the essential functionality of the World Wide Web. As someone who markets a product or service in the 21st Century, you should know that a Website is just a collection of files housed on an Internet-connected computer, and that a domain is the address that helps other computers find that collection of files. More importantly you should know where the collection of files that make up your Website live and how to access them, you should know exactly where the domain name is registered and how to access it and you should know where your email accounts live and how to access them.

At this point a lot of business owners will say, “Well, I don’t need to know that stuff. I have people who handle all that!” Fair enough, but do you know who those people are? Are the people who know it still in your business? If not, did they pass the information on to whoever replaced them? Do you have a file with all of this information in it? Do you know where that file is? Do you have a backup of that file? Do you or someone currently on your staff know when your domain names, hosting accounts and email accounts expire and how to renew them?

I’ll never forget the client who called in a panic because her domain name had expired and she had no idea until she started getting comments from customers that her Website was down. She called her Web guy, only to learn that he not only was no longer in the business but that he moved out of the country. After a little detective work, we were able to track down where the domain was hosted, but by then someone else had purchased it and the new owner was not interested in selling it back to her. It turns out her Web guy had purchased the domain originally, and when he quit the business he stopped paying attention to things like renewals. The client was out of luck; she had no choice but to settle on a new domain name, and it cost her dearly in lost traffic to her site.

The moral of the story is simple, really: No one, and I do mean no one, is going to care more about your business than you. This includes all the parts that make up your business, up to and including your Website. If you don’t care enough to understand the fundamentals of your Website, don’t expect anyone else to either—and don’t expect your Website to be anything more than a pretty picture somewhere on the Internet that no one ever sees, instead of the powerful marketing tool that it most certainly could be.


Jerry Kennedy earned his stripes as an operations and sales manager in the lubricants industry. He is currently the co-founder of CDK Creative, a digital marketing agency that brings his real-world sales and operations experience to the world of online marketing. Learn more or request a consultation at http://cdkcreative.com. Email him at jerry@cdkcreative.com.