Chlo?'s 3 Things: Old Tricks / Robots.txt / Email Management

Hello!

Happy Friday.

Despite it being conference season I've managed to spend the WHOLE week in the office (although I did do 2 webinars and 1 virtual summit - so definitely still conference season!).

So this week's 3 things are pretty practical.

This week's 3 Things:

1. Old Tricks ?? Remembering something that worked really well in the past that you've forgotten
2. Robots.txt ? a confession
3. Email Management ?? what do you with an ex-colleagues email address?

Let's get stuck in...

Thing 1: Old Tricks ?? Remembering something that worked really well in the past that you've forgotten

Regular readers will know I'm DEEP in the recruitment phase for our epic Episode 500 celebrations (join in here).

Last week I spent some of my train-time thinking about other ways I could source some insightful answers...

It was time well spent, as I came up with several good ideas.

Including... remembering a great tool I used to use LOADS to find podcast guests.

It had been so long since I used it I wasn't sure if it still existed, or if it would still work.

Readers, it did!

Sourcebottle

It's a global PR source hunting tool called Sourcebottle find it here

How it works:

• Go to website, click on "Find a source now"
• Write your pitch/request and submit
• They email it to their database within about 24 hours
• You get responses

It's got us about 10 more tips - all of which (at first glance) appear to be spot on, and mainly from retailers - so double gold star there. ??

And (so far) zero spam.

Can't believe I'd stopped using it!!

Hunt down the old tricks

Clearly I need to build Sourcebottle back into our normal set of tools, and explore their full offering again.

Which is a win in itself.

But also, how many other great tactics from the past have I forgotten about?

I'm definitely going to spend some of my summer-sprint re-visiting old plans and to-do lists to find those golden nuggets.

Why re-invent the wheel when it's gathering dust in the shed?

?? Any old tricks you've re-discovered? Or do you have a method for not letting them become old tricks in the first place? I'd love to know - comment please!

Thing 2: Robots.txt ? a confession

OK, here's where I admin to something that's pretty embarrassing for a business owner.

Double embarrassing for a business owner who's an online marketer.

Triple embarrassing for a business owner who interviews SEO experts, used to sell SEO services, and has a whole chapter in her best-selling book about SEO.

?? 3 of my websites had broken robots.txt files ??

One of the sourcebottle respondents Destiny Flaherty alerted me that the eCommerce MasterPlan website had a robots.txt file that was set up to disallow ALL crawlers.

??????

To be completely honest, I didn't believe her.

So I went and checked, and she was completely right (sorry Destiny).

So then I checked the Keep Optimising and Chloe Thomas websites...

Neither of them even had a robots.txt file.

????????????

That is now fixed ?

Thank you, Destiny!

Which got me thinking... ??

How much other basic, foundational stuff have I just been assuming is set up right?

Or assuming that because I set it up right 8 years ago, it's still right now?

Probably loads of stuff.

My summer-sprint now also includes "build a checklist of the bloody obvious foundational things that need to be checked at least once a year".

So far on it are:

• SEO basics / Search Console etc - i need to flesh this list out
• Social media logins and integrations
• Team access to files and things
• My bio
• Welcome emails and other marketing automation
• Tag manager

I'll probably share the whole list once I've got it.

?? Do you have one of these I can steal? When did you last check your robots.txt file? AND...

?? If you've noticed something obvious that I've not done, or done wrong - please do let me know ??

Thing 3: Email Management ?? what do you with an ex-colleagues email address?

[Any one feel like this 3 things is turning into a confessional...?]

In my ideal world all boxes would be ticked, and everything would be tidy and lovely.

Every email in my inbox would be read, learnt from, dealt with, and filed.

Every DM in my LinkedIn inbox would be read, learnt from, dealt with, and filed.

(which is maybe why I limit my comms channels!!)

Ex-colleagues email addresses - how I do it

That means my natural inclination is to monitor all ex-colleagues email addresses for at least 12 months to check for any quality emails that present opportunities for us.

I'm not so crazy as to redirect them to my own inbox (cue massive overwhelm!), I have a separate inbox that we check weekly and funnel all those email addresses into.

That email address also has a goneaway message:

I'm probably overly diligent with this - and probably should do a 3-6m cut off then just kill the email address and let the 550 bounce messages do the job for me.

And it leads to good stuff:

• Opportunities for marketing and sales
• Tech tools I didn't know we had
• Super interesting newsletters I didn't know about

But turning the email off the day after the person leaves is clearly crazy

We have a sales database that I occasionally send a mass gmail mail merge email to.

There are about 500 odd email addresses on it, and I send about once every 3-6 weeks.

The number of 550 bounces FAR outweighs the number of "I no longer work here" messages.

Leading me to assume that the 'normal' process is...

• person leaves
• following day Gmail/Microsoft etc account turned off

Now I know that's going to save a few $s, but surely leaving it live with an out of office to contact X, and having a colleague check it for 1-3 months would be a good idea?!

It especially strikes me as mad when it's a partner manager - so someone who's job is to build connections in the industry.

What's the right balance? ??

I think I've probably gone to far one way, but I think immediately terminating the comms channel is a far worse offence.

?? What do you think?

That's it for this week, I'd love to engage with you in the comments, so please do add your thoughts below.

I'm at eTail for basically the whole of next week, so I would assume we'll go from practical-3-Things to big-picture-3-Things for next Friday... but who knows.

And if you're at eTail - let me know we could do a real-life chat.

Have a great weekend everyone!