So tell me, have you ever Googled your name?  Come on, I know you have. Who doesn’t?  It can be pretty interesting and even entertaining to see what’s out there – both what you have authored and what others are saying about you… both the informed and uninformed. And as I recently made another cruise through the pages that donned my name, I was reminded of something very important:

Content can live forever on the Internet.

This is a critical piece of information, especially for those who are new to the web and haven’t practiced restraint when they have decided to spout their opinion, weighed in on a hot debate or maybe surfed the web and contributed something when they were a little less than coherent. Or perhaps wrote and published some articles that had wrong information in them. It happens. But, do you really want this stuff following you around for the next 50 years?  I think we all agree that when you publish something on your blog, on a PR site, on Twitter or wherever, its critical to make sure its reviewed a few times… by a couple different people… before you launch it to the world.

But what I really want to stress are the benefits of this “forever available” online content:

1. Continues to make you an authority long after the expected life cycle of the piece
2. No ongoing cost to it “being out there”… see if a print magazine would give you 2 years of free ad space.
3. Can continue to pay search engine ranking dividends for your blog, corporate site and/or social media presence… love that!
4. Can continue to provide new sources of business from new readers… that’s low cost lead gen.
5. If it’s good… Helps people learn, grow and prosper… forever.

Eric Friedman at Marketing.FM recently made some interesting points on this topic.
He talked about how the Social Web has helped content “live forever”. He is absolutely right.. Of course, this isn’t true for everything you publish, but when I get a call from a new account who referenced an article I wrote five years ago… that’s pretty amazing. The article is still converting!

He also mentioned how important it is to have a system for monitoring what’s being said out there about you, which I totally agree with. Take a look at http://socialtoo.com/
This is a cool little site that can help.

Bottom line is this: If you haven’t already done so, put together an editorial calendar for all the content you will publish for the next six months. Make the content interesting, informative and about your audience. And remember when you are writing it, that what you say may follow you forever. Make it good!

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