Sarah Gilliland: Hey everyone! Today, we are talking about “Own Your Stuff: Why No One Should Have Total Control of Your Marketing”. I’m Sarah Gilliland, Director of Digital Marketing and we want to tell you that with one click, you can lose your entire online presence. Today we’re going to show you how you can prevent this from happening to your business.

Glyna Humm: Hey, everybody! Welcome to our broadcast today of “Marketing Mix”. Every week, we’re going to do a different type segment that will highlight all kinds of marketing. We may do some interviews, some Q&A, some tips, trends, do’s and don’ts, I don’t know, Sarah. We just never know what we’re going to pull up!

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. On the fly! Whatever comes.

Glyna Humm: Well, I do want to remind everybody where they can find us so we want to throw that up really quick. We do have a new podcast channel called Marketing and a Mic, and it basically is a culmination of our Biz Talk series and the Marketing Mix series. You can find us there. We’re live on Facebook and YouTube during these broadcasts, but you can find the replays everywhere else. I don’t think there’s any way that you can’t find us.

Sarah Gilliland: Exactly. We’re covering everything. Let’s get started! We want to talk about, and this is so important, to have control of your marketing. What does that mean? Well, we talk to people all the time and they have no idea about their passwords, their logins, or any access whatsoever to the critical pieces of their marketing. Let’s get started. We’ve got five key points that we want to talk to you all about. Let’s get with the very first one, which is, “Let’s Talk About Your Domain Name”. What is your domain? That is your dot com. We’re FusionOneMarketing.com. Some people call it their URL. Technically it’s different, but a lot of people it’s a name association, is your URL. But you always, always, always want to buy your own domain because you need to know who owns it and if you don’t, find out. I mean, really, I’m blasting it today. That’s the thing, if you’re sitting there right now and you don’t know who owns yours, hey, guess what? Want a tip? You can find out! Glyna, pop that up and we’ll talk about a great way is whois.net. What that is, is that’s going to show you, as you can see right there, fusion one marketing is already registered. What that will do is, you can plug in your domain and see who is the registrar. So ours is GoDaddy.com and that tells us where it was purchased from and how you got it. We love GoDaddy. It’s tried and true for domains. They’ve got a great reminder system, which is really important because when you go on and you buy your domain, you have to renew it. What does that mean? When you do purchase it, make sure that you remember the email address that you used to purchase that domain. Why that’s important is because they’re going to use that email address to send you reminders when it is time for you to renew that domain and it’s very important that you renew it. Why is it important? Because if you don’t renew it, you could lose it.

Glyna Humm: Yes. I know people are like, “Yeah, sure. I’m sure that’s happening. I’m sure somebody is sitting there waiting for my domain to expire and hoping that I don’t get it.” Hey, Kelsi!

Kelsi: I’m really sorry about that.

Sarah Gilliland: Kelsi, you’re in the wrong broadcast room!

Glyna Humm: Now she’s got me laughing. But it does happen, Sarah. I’m promising you. It does happen. I want to give you an example and this is a really wild example and I’m going to back this up just a little bit.

Sarah Gilliland: Yes.

Glyna Humm: Remember this name. Remember this name. I’m getting to the point here. All right. But we want to talk about this. Let me see, let me get… Let me stop sharing. I’m really good at this screen sharing, Sarah. I’m glad that you picked me to do this. Alright! There we go. Alright. Remember this name? How about that? There’s a certain pest control company in Tuscaloosa that had this problem. We all have our competitors and they have theirs for sure. One of their biggest competitors is Bama Exterminating. Okay? If I look over here, I just Googled this pest control company and I go over here, here’s their Google listing and everything. I’m going to just press on their website because I want to see what they have to offer. Let’s just see.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, this is-

Glyna Humm: Hmm. That wasn’t who it’s supposed to be, is it?

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, that’s not Warrior!

Glyna Humm: That’s not Warrior Pest Control. It just happens to be their biggest competitor. Obviously what had happened is they let their domain name go and guess what? I mean, that would be horrible and they’re not going to get it back. I mean, they have to go out and find a brand new domain name. Instead of the ever-popular dot com like you want to have, they had to settle for dot net. Anyway, it does happen, unfortunately. Along those lines too, Sarah, you’d never want to let a marketing company buy your domain for you. You always want to have control. Even if you need help, have them help you buy it but you want to make sure you have the login to GoDaddy so that you can at least, I mean, if you have to fire them, you could at least change the passwords in the login before you fire. I would think that would be number two tip. I don’t know which number we’re up to now, but make sure that if you are sharing it that you want to change it before you change marketing companies.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. That’s really important. I mean, again, it all goes back to just having your login information, having control of it. We just saw that example with Warrior. They didn’t renew it and Bama stole it and they grabbed it and they took it.

Glyna Humm: All’s fair in pest control, I guess.

Sarah Gilliland: Yes. All right. Let’s go on to number two, which is your email and it’s really your email system. You really want to know who your email system is and if it’s connected or tied to your website, or if it’s tied to a different company like Microsoft. You want to know what it’s tied to, and you want to have administrative access to everyone’s email. That’s so important because if you don’t lose it or something happens and your website’s down, you don’t have access to it, it can be a big problem. We have seen it.

Glyna Humm: Yes. Unfortunately, we have seen it. We learned early on in our marketing company’s career that if your emails are tied to your domain, so ours is fusiononemarketing.com and my email is Glyna@fusiononemarketing.com. If that is the case, there’s a possibility that it’s tied to your website, and what that means is if you change marketing companies and they put a new website up for you, it can completely wipe out all your emails. It may not be quite as common as it used to be because most people are using Microsoft 365 or Google to put their emails through. Just make sure that you have access. I also want to back up and talk about something that a lot of people think, cheaper is better or even free is better. Having your friend, supposedly friend or your supposed employee take care of something because they’ll do it for free may not be the thing to do either. We had a situation happen where we were working with a company and they came to me and said, “Hey, we have an employee who can do this hosting and stuff for us for free and we just want to have him do it.” So it’s like, “Okay.” I mean, it saved them a little money. We did warn them that they need to make sure that they have all the logins before that they added this employee. Apparently they didn’t listen to us and three weeks later I get this frantic call. Like, “You’ve got to help us. You have to help us.” The employee got fired, got mad, and he pointed their domain, their dot com, to a… Let’s just say not a very nice site. Every time they pulled up-

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. You can use your imagination.

Glyna Humm: I mean, yeah. It was a roofing company and if you typed in there such and such dot com, it went to a place that you definitely do not want your domain going through. Again, what’s our point, Sarah? You better have control of this stuff.

Sarah Gilliland: Yes. Have access to your stuff. Even if you’re not actively using it, make sure you know your login and have complete control of it because as Glyna just said, you’d give it to an employee who, “Hey, I know how to do a website. Let me do it.” And then things don’t work out. Guess what? They get you messed up.

Glyna Humm: Yes. Bad. It can be really bad.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. Not good. That’s leads to websites. We need to expand on that a little bit more. Again, know who your website company is and how to log into it. Maintain administrative control. You can always give lower access to anyone who needs it, so you just want to make sure that you stay at the top. Again, as I just said, even if you are not actively planning on going in there and making all the changes, you have to have control over it. You’ve got to do that and you’ve got to have access to who logs into it. Again, you just don’t want to get yourself into trouble that way.

Glyna Humm: A lot of this seems really technical. I would say, I mean, it’s no joke, probably 80% of the people I meet with, first of all, they don’t even have an idea that there is a login to the website. Once I convince them that there is, they have no idea what it is. Again, it could be a very sticky situation. If you’re with one marketing company and you’re dissatisfied and you want to go to a new marketing company, it’s really hard to get that administrative access back from somebody. It’s just, always have control over it. If you have a website and you’re listening to us and we keep saying it over and over and over, so think about it. Do you know how to log into yours? I don’t know.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, it’s so true. You just don’t want to give someone total administrative control. I mean, it’s really important. You can get yourself into big trouble. We have seen it. We have dealt with it. We know.

Glyna Humm: All the time, unfortunately.

Sarah Gilliland: All the time. That also moves us into number four, social pages. Again, this is something that’s so important. You need to know your login information for all your social media channels. Again, you should be the admin. Be the main admin. It’s really important. Let’s take Facebook for example. Facebook and Instagram, you can control all of this through their business manager section on your page. What that does is you can click in there under business manager and you can click under admin and you can actually assign the people who can go on and you can assign the actual tasks that they have control over. If you’re not planning on doing your social media posts, or you have somebody, that’s great. But just know your login information, because then if you don’t, we talk about this again, you lose control.

Glyna Humm: Yes, most definitely. Again, we see this every day. We have a lot of people coming to us and they’re usually with another marketing company or they’re coming to us because they’re dissatisfied and they want a different solution. Just as an example, I’ll tell you a couple of examples. This week, I had one company that basically none of them were on social media, but it ended up being okay because they had a whole book of every single login that they’ve ever used for anything. Whoever set that up at least had their login book. I mean, that seems simple and simplistic, but it was helpful because it allowed us to get into those things without any trouble. Now, on the other hand, we had a company that again, none of them were on any of the social media channels. This other marketing company was working with them. That other marketing company was the only person that had ownership of any of their social media. So, you want to talk about a convoluted thing that we had to do? I had to actually talk somebody through getting on Facebook who’s not even ever been on Facebook. We had to get them on as admin. Then the little secret is Facebook says you have to be an admin for over a week before you can make any changes or delete anyone, so we had to wait a whole week. Anyway, long story short, it was a disaster. I mean, it was a complete mess. I know we’re harping on it, but you guys, this is simple, simple stuff.

Sarah Gilliland: Well, and it takes a week. If it takes a week for you to take that other person off as admin, a lot can happen in a week.

Glyna Humm: A ton.

Sarah Gilliland: If you’re trying to get rid of someone who has access to your page, and then all of a sudden you’re trying to eliminate them and they’ve got to week until you can get them off. I mean, a lot can happen.

Glyna Humm: Yeah. People aren’t usually happy if you’re firing them as a marketing company and trying to go with somebody else.

Sarah Gilliland: Right? Exactly. If you’re trying to switch and go with another company, they’re not going to make it so easy for you. Oh, boy. Okay. That leads us to number five, which is Google Properties and Listings. Okay. Google. Google My Business. I mean, it really is the heart of SEO. It’s really where you should start. It’s how your business gets started and searchable online. It holds all your company information, including customer reviews. It is a big deal.

Glyna Humm: Yeah. Huge.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. This is why I would just say again, always maintain the login for Google properties. We’ll show a little bit about that. But again, I mean, you’ve got to know it. If somebody else has it, they are in the driver’s seat.

Glyna Humm: Yes. What’s even worse is if you’re with a marketing company and you’re paying them for SEO or for you to be found on the internet and they’re doing a really horrible job and you want to move to somebody else, I mean, it takes a lot of money to show up on the internet. If they have created this, what we call the Google listing or Google My Business, and you can’t get control of it, there’s all kinds of things they can do. They can mark, like here’s ours for fusion one marketing, they could actually mark you permanently closed. They could take the listing down. There are lots of things that we could do. If you are a business owner, you know how hard it is to get Google reviews. You would be locked out. You can’t respond to those and you could possibly lose all of them. Anyway, I know we’re driving the point home or we’re hopefully driving it home over and over and over. But it’s very, very important. If you don’t have this Google login, not only does it affect your Google My Business, but there are other things that you can log into all the time that you’re not going to be able to get into. It’s not just Google My Business, even though that’s the main thing that we want to worry about. It can just cause problems all over the place.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, it’s true. It really is a matter of one click and they can completely delete you out.

Glyna Humm: Absolutely.

Sarah Gilliland: And you don’t know the login and you can’t get in and it’s-

Glyna Humm: Yeah. Because without Google, I don’t know who’s ever tried to do SEO without Google being part of it. It’s just not going to happen.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. We’ve explained all the no-nos, all the things that you, and all the things that are very important that you do. We also have a recommendation. We’ve got a really good solution to all of this. What we recommend is LastPass. LastPass is amazing. It can really solve everything. It does a few things. First of all, it keeps all of your login information, all of your passwords in one spot so that you don’t have to rely on the old brain here to keep everything, or jot it down, and then where did I find it? Where did I put it?

Glyna Humm: Yeah. Where’s that login book? I mean, that’s good to have, but…

Sarah Gilliland: It keeps everything in one spot and it gives you access without, this is the beautiful part, is if you do give admin to others and you want to give them control of what they’re doing, you can actually give them access without handing over the actual logins. That is huge.

Glyna Humm: It is huge. It’s huge for your marketing properties. It’s also huge for just being an employer in general. You don’t have to give, especially if you have a lot of employees and you have a lot of things like we have so much software that we have to get into, it would almost be impossible to give everybody a different login. Plus the fact, if they have to leave for whatever reason, we don’t want all of our stuff going down the tube. Yeah, Sarah made a great point. They never have to even know what the login is. All they have to do is click on it and go to the place that they need to get in. Anyway, that’s our way of getting around all of this, just to make sure that we don’t have to worry about passwords. I’ll tell you, I can’t remember passwords. I have a different password for everything.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. No, I can’t remember. This is the greatest thing. I just love the feature that it had that ability that you can have employees get access, but they don’t see the password so it’s just double protection.

Glyna Humm: It’s everything.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah. That’s everything. That is everything.

Glyna Humm: If you did not listen to us and did not hear us say it 20 times, own your stuff. That’s a good, nice way of putting it and make sure that you know how to get into everything and have all those logins. I think that’s about it. We really should give you that tip today.

Sarah Gilliland: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. We’d like to thank you all for tuning in and watching. Don’t forget, we’ve got a brand new BizTalk on Friday with our guests, Kim McCulla with Whiskers and Wags, and we are very excited. Thanks for tuning in and we will see you all next time!

Glyna Humm: Yeah. Thanks. Bye!