Over the past few weeks I’ve been working with a friend who launched a new business this week and wanted to make sure his personal website and online presence were both ready for the launch. This is a great exercise for everyone, no matter what your business is and making it a task at the beginning of the year is perfect!
If you feel you’re too close to your website and content, then ask someone else to take a look at your site and answer some of these questions. Overall, take some time to read everything on your website. Look for grammatical errors, updates, out of dates and everything in between.
Your Website
Homepage
Can you tell right away what you do? Sure, your business name or book might be on the homepage, but does it specifically call out what you do and who you are? This isn’t where your bio will go, but it should be clear when someone lands on this first page who you, what you do and what you offer.
About Page
THIS is where your bio should be! Is it updated? Is your headshot included to welcome visitors? If you’ve listed features in your bio, are they hyperlinked? Add a button to your Media/Press page to easily direct people to where you’ve been featured.
Media/Press Page
Are your features and interviews updated? Are they hyperlinked and open to a new tab? This is great to ensure that you don’t lose website visitors when they click on your past interviews. Bonus points if you’ve embedded your podcast playlist from Spotify! Make sure you name the outlets you’ve been on and not just the title of the interview or article. Include your “Official Bio” and “Approved Headshots” with photographer credit to make it easily downloadable.
Contact Page
Have you given visitors a place to contact you? You’d be surprised how often I find this left out. You don’t have to put your email address, you can add a contact form. Just be sure that there’s an easy way to get a hold of you.
Double Checking and Triple Checking
Read through everything. Click on every link. Check on a desktop and a mobile device. Certain website hosts/templates default to showing a different view on your mobile device, therefore it’s important to see how it shows up on both and that everything is where you want it to be.
Media Interviews & Features
When was the last time you Googled yourself? I do it almost weekly and yes, I am aware at how narcisstic that sounds, but it’s actually good practice. I also have alerts set up on my name.
Stop read, open a new tab and go set up your alerts. Create a Google Alert and a Talkwalker Alert. They are both free and save you time from Googling!
Now, go Google yourself. Do you have a spot to house all of your past interviews? I use Trello because it’s already where I track my pitches, so everything is in one place.
Podcast Interviews
Your podcast interviews are hopefully already housed on your Trello board (or at least in one spot), but let’s also make sure you have a Spotify playlist of them. I think having a Spotify playlist of your podcast interviews is not only smart and useful but also really freaking cool. You can embed the player on your website (see media/press page above), add it to your LinkedIn profile (under your current job, there’s a media section you can link it in) and embed it in your pitches and on your media kit.
**Create Playlist Cover Art in Canva using the Instagram post size!**
Social Media Bios
Take a quick look at your bio on Instagram. Now head over to LinkedIn, Threads, Facebook, X…all of the places you’re showing up. Do they all say the same thing or did you update one and forget another? Consistency is key, so make sure they are say the same thing and point followers in the same direction.
