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We Moved! Now Tell Your Social Media Connections

we're moving, moving, office, social media, digital marketingMoving your business requires a ton of logistics and I’m going to add another one: making sure your new contact information is reflected on your social media networks.

Don’t trust search engines to figure out you moved, much less get the correct details. They are much better at finding a typo or link snafu on your site and dinging you back to Page 1000 than they are at discovering you’ve left the actual physical site where you operated a business.

Things today are a little different from when we used to mail a cute change of address notice to our mailing list and make a few calls to our bank and key vendors. I’m sure you’ve diligently told people who need to know you moved: customers, vendors, suppliers, banks, credit cards, and anyone who sends information via snail mail, including the post office, which lets you do the change online.

The Internet, however, will be the last to notice you’ve moved because it can’t see this. It doesn’t know you packed up all your inventory, furniture, files and equipment to a new, bigger, better location.

Not even Google Maps will make a note of this even if the moving trucks outside your door show up on its satellite photo of your current location. You have to explicitly tell the search engines you’ve moved to a new place of business.

Shout it Online: We Moved!

It’s a pain in the neck but you have to go to each and every separate online entity you know you’re listed on and change the information there.

Chances are, your information is listed incorrectly online, somewhere. Google is notoriously slow to correct changes like hours of operation—not exactly a minor detail for you or your customers, but apparently it’s a backburner for Google. (I guess Google never goes to a gym, or the optometrist, or Motor Vehicles.)

If you can make the changes even before you physically move, that’s best because it allows for some time for the information to “sync” in. Once you have a firm move date, get online and change your address. At a minimum, make the changes to your listings on Google, Yahoo Local, Bing, YP.com, Yelp, Angie’s List, and any other local directory you’re listed in. Don’t worry it’s too soon. They won’t be rushing to make these changes.

Treat Relocation as an Online Marketing Opportunity

Make this less painful by looking at it as a digital marketing opportunity. After all, you are updating information about your business, which can be thought of as an organic marketing effort.

You will, of course, have the new location announced on your website home page, front and center. Make sure this is also the case on your social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and wherever else you and your customers hang out online.

    • Update your address and phone number on each network’s About section
    • Make a new Facebook cover photo to feature the new address for a couple of months
    • Do the same for your LinkedIn and Twitter account’s header photos
    • Pin it to your Pinterest page
    • Use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts listing your new address/phone, starting a week before the move through at least a week after, once a day. Or, better yet, include a link to the announcement on your website and give a boost to your SEO

All this is very important if you run a retail business or service that customers visit. You might even want to post and tweet photos of the new location and neighborhood so customers have a frame of reference when they visit you at the new location for the first time. And, to make it more interesting for you followers, if you’re remodeling, share the “as it happens” photos, as this can be great publicity for you and build some excitement around the move.

If you want to reduce inventory before you move, have a Pre-Moving Sale and use it as an opportunity to tell customers about your new location. Print up new business cards for them and include a sentence or two about the new location, such as whether there is free parking or its proximity to a transit stop.

As painful as a move often is, use it to your advantage. Do some marketing and boost your SEO while letting everyone know you're “Movin’ On Up.”

Have you moved recently? Do you have something you can add to this post?

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