It’s Your Business, So It’s Your Responsibility

Generally on this blog we write about marketing. But today I wanted to write a little something different. But it is still business related and I think…very important.

Most of us in today’s world are very busy. And it is easy to forget that things are our responsibility. Especially when it comes to certain aspects of our businesses.

If you look around and listen to anyone that has been in business for a long time you will see and hear people talking about outsourcing. Or depending on the business they will talk about hiring employees.

The reason for these employees or for outsourcing in general is to lighten the load of the person in charge. And I agree 100% with this practice.

We have 2 businesses and on one of them we have been outsourcing for quite some time and in the other one we have recently started outsourcing some of our daily tasks. It is wonderful. It is really nice to be working on something and magically have something else just…done.

But there are certain things that no matter what will always be my responsibility. Some of those things include:

• Setting up new accounts on various sites for various tasks (social networking, affiliate accounts, video marketing accounts, article directories, etc.)
• Keeping a record of ALL usernames and passwords.
• Checking ALL email accounts.
• Creating systems that outline exactly how I want things accomplished and what the results of each task should be.

These are just some of the basics.

Now some of these things you might be thinking, but I can (and do) outsource those things. And if you are lucky enough to find someone that you 100% trust with your business that is wonderful.

But I have my reasons for wanting the initial control over these tasks.

Let me give you an example:

Someone I am connected to on Facebook recently started posting all over on every venue he could to please “re-Follow” him because his fan page was going to be taken down later that day. Mind you the notices started going out in the morning the day the page was coming down.

All day he posted requests and asked his current fans to do the same.

Now this was not your average person. This is a recognized best selling author with 1000′s of fans.

So what had happened?

After much proding from his fans he finally admitted that his “former” business manager was pulling down the page. See that business manager, during a time of complete trust had created a Fan page on Facebook for this person. But…the person who originally creates the fan page ALWAYS has ultimate control over that page.

So it seems there was a falling out and…you can probably guess the rest.

So this famous person rushed into his own account and created a new fan page, gave his new manager a secondary admin control over it and frantically began trying to get his hard earned fans to move. But in the future no matter what happens with the new manager, he will always hold ultimate control over the new page.

Here is another example:

When you allow someone else to set up accounts for you, you need to make sure you have the login address, the email account associated with that account, the username and the password for the account.

I talk to may people each day who have their website suddenly go down. The reason…their domain name expired.

Yep it is that simple.

The issue is, they don’t know where their domain name is registered. Now to me this us just strange, but I guess it happens all the time.

Generally I believe the situation happens when someone hires a web design company and they have that company register the domain name. The company has access to all of the registration information, the site gets completed and life goes one. But then something happens.

Maybe you want to switch providers. Maybe that company doesn’t make it. Maybe you have a falling out with that company. And now…even if they would have been willing to give you the information, they didn’t keep track of it either.

They may not have seen it as their responsibility, after all it was your site, it is your domain name.

So by keeping track of ALL of the information regarding your online real estate and your desired procedures you are always prepared should something change and you need to move things, login somewhere and make changes, train a new employee or outsourcer, etc.

And, don’t get mad at those extra people that you interact with for your business if they don’t have the information you need.

It is YOUR business, so it is YOUR responsibility…

About The Author:
Cindy Clemens is a mom, author, speaker, marketing consultant and Co-Founder of Your Marketing University. Her goal is to teach marketing in a simple easy to understand format that businesses can use to help gain marketing ideas & market their businesses to boost sales.

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