Now Is The Time To Work On Your Digital Infrastructure

March 25, 2020

We’re sure you know the adage “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” We all know it means that we are all too busy with our projects to take care of the projects that are nearer or closer to home, in that case our own children’s shoes. So, what does this mean in today’s digital business?

Now that most of us are working from home in some capacity, and telecommuting and out of the office, we should take stock of all the time we are saving by doing this. Less time commuting, less time getting distracted at work, being pulled into meetings you may not need to be in. All that time can be used to constructively do more while we are waiting to see what happens next (assuming you don’t have pets or children, then it’s even more complicated).

Now we’re not encouraging anyone to do more than they normally would, if anything we should be mindful of our families and the people who depend on us more than ever. But since most of us are hunkering down for what could be weeks or months at home, and our clients’ businesses are doing the same, what do we do? It’s time to make shoes for our children.

What does that mean in actual work? Now is a good time to work with our clients on the digital infrastructure that typically gets ignored during the regular day to day of managing messaging and campaigns.

Website: Content

Take the company website for instance.  Does it need new content, case studies, videos, blogs, employee profiles, etc.? Could those all be created while people have more time on their hands? Perhaps redoing it entirely, or at least starting the discovery process.

Website: Technical

Maybe now is the time to perform a technical audit, to see if the hosting package you are using is still up to the task. Testing some new functionality on your development servers or looking through your “Nice to Have List” and seeing if any of them could be worked on during this period. Make sure all your plugins are updated, your PHP version is up to date, WordPress updates, security, etc. Check your forms to make sure they are working correctly; contact is key in times like this. Check for broken links, page speed, spelling, etc. Anything you were too busy to put off during regular work time.

SEO

Work to improve your search ranking with content and keywords you now have time to integrate. Check your SEO plugin to make sure your snippets are most effective. Could any of your URLs, title or meta tags be rewritten to be better? Could your content be made more readable?

Social Media

For social media, switch from PR and selling to enhancing your customer service and allow for more direct Tweets back to your customers. Be more available than before, if only because you didn’t have the time. Customers will remember that you were more present during this difficult time and not sending “30% off” emails to them for products they don’t need.

While we may have to stay in place, it does not mean we have to stand still. Let’s make sure our digital infrastructure is working and use this time of fewer distractions to focus on our foundations so that when things turn around, and they will, you will be ready.