Why an up-to-date online presence matters

Why does Sunrise Senior Living have a blog?  Actually, it appears to have been updated today.  You might think that a company in the residential senior care business wouldn’t.  And further, Brookdale can be followed on Twitter.   So can JoAnn Jenkins of AARP – that makes great sense – AARP is a content/media company.  So what’s up when you can’t find any reasonably current content, or worse, the site offers up a suggestion to meet up in…2015? Or when the last tweet from a company that is still in business and is doing quite well – but their last Tweet was in 2012?

Online presence builds confidence – especially for new connections.  So let’s say that Mr. Offline Consultant is well-liked among prospective clients, has many repeat engagements based on someone he knows. What if a client replaces his last senior contact with someone new?  It happens – there’s a new sheriff in town, so to speak (as with the Philips-to-IBM-move example).  So Mr. Offline finishes up his get-acquainted meeting, leaves the building, and the new executive searches the web. But finds…nothing new from the past 6 months.  Should confidence in Mr. Offline be shaken? And why?

No online presence signals market disinterest or worse -- out-of-business.   Perhaps your files are filled with material from departed companies.  For their time, perhaps they were great ideas, service offerings or products.  Perhaps these firms thought they could market without channel partners or perhaps they picked the wrong partners. Perhaps they led with a poorly-thought out product description.  Whatever the reason for their exit, future prospects have the right to know that they are gone. Consider Emeritus Senior Living -- online now as part of Brookdale but also immortalized on Wikipedia and elsewhere.  Does it matter that Brookdale tweets?  Of course it does -- it shows that they are still around and view Twitter as the searched environment that it is – that they want their website to be found.  And the redirect from the search for Emeritus?  Ditto.

All market segments depend on search. Whether through Twitter or Google, if in business, firms want and need to be found – and with good and reasonably recent content.  Some that disappear without a trace leave the consumer wondering – what happened?  Remember the Floh Club and Florence Henderson?  Probably not, but that one, unlike Emeritus, quietly evaporated, leaving behind only head-scratching.  But as that article just showed, you can be gone but the Internet never forgets. And if you really want to be remembered right now for your current offerings, fix the site, the tweets, aging marketing, and why not…follow lots of people and offer up a few Tweets.