A Guide to Accessing Your Online Properties

Just about every business, no matter how big or small, has an online presence. The question is: do you know what online properties your business has, and more importantly, can you access them? It’s very important that you can so we’ve created a Guide to Accessing Your Online Properties.

We’ve broken it down into five general areas:

Web Domains
Website Access
Google Properties
Social Media Accounts
Other Online Listings and/or Marketing Tools

Domains

Your domain is your URL, the address link to your website. You can have a domain without having a website. Once you have a website, though, it needs to be hosted somewhere. You’ll need access to that too. It’s also important to know who manages your domain so that it doesn’t expire and continues to point to your website.

Website Access

Most of the businesses we work with have their websites built on one of the following types of platforms.

Self hosted content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Concrete5
Cloud hosted CMS like WordPress.com, Wix, Squarespace
Ecommerce site Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace

These platforms allow you to edit your site content.

Google Properties

There are LOTS of Google tools designed to track traffic to your website, run ad campaigns and make sure your business is found on the web. There are other search engines out there too but this guide will focus on Google. Be sure you can access your Google Analytics, Search Console and Ads Manager. Claiming your Google Business Listing and utilizing the tools that come with it is also important and something you should be able to access.

Social Media Accounts

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are great ways to stay in front of your audience. Make a list of the URLs and tags for each social media property. Then make sure you have the login info AND who else has access to the account.

Other Online Listings and Marketing Tools

Depending on your business, you may have listings on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor or Apple Maps. Claim these listings so you can be in control of your presence in these places.

You may also use tools to manage your email marketing like MailChimp or Constant Contact. Others like to use tools to manage their social media like Buffer or Hootsuite. In any event, be sure you know the login info for these too.

Why This is Important

There are lots of reasons to make sure that you have access to all of the above. First, and foremost, when it comes to things like your domain, you don’t want it to expires. Second, you always want to make sure that you are in control of your online narrative. It’s yours!

To make it easy, we’ve put together a quick guide that you can download.