Know Your Stuff

Whatever your business is, and whatever stage it’s in, you probably have at least a few properties and tools used exclusively online; social media accounts, a website, web apps.

Do you know all of your account credentials? Do you know when your hosting re-ups and what it costs? Can you get into the back end of your website? How about all of your social accounts?

If you answered, “My employee/vendor has that information.” That’s great! And I’m sure you’ve chosen to employ and work with awesome people. But you really should have a handle on all of this information as a standing best practice. Not out of distrust for anyone, but so that you can update billing accounts, eliminate things you’re not really using, or provide information to new staff and consultants you choose to engage without a mad dash.

The free idea today is to put a recurring quarterly event in your calendar to inventory all of these accounts from the Creative Cloud subscription you pay for but don’t use (“my designer does that”) to the domain name registration of your website and sites you’ve parked (“my web company does that”).

“Really? Quarterly?” Yep! First of all, you should probably be updating your passwords with more regularity than you are. But mostly; things happen in the course of a project. You, or someone on your team, can forget a password and need to do reset steps. It’s a busy day, the steps are followed, you’re back in and you go-go-go to meet the deadline. But you might forget to make a note of that change. And that’s only one scenario!

Using a password management tool (I like LastPass) is a great idea, but even it needs to be maintained. So still set that calendar event and keep your credentials tidy as a matter of course. You won’t regret it.

Message me if you’d like a sample inventory of accounts and information I find clients struggle to provide most often. It might be a helpful starting point for building this best practice into your routine.