Happy New Year – Change the Copyright Date on your Website

• Kate Drinkhall
• Digital Marketing Strategies, Inbound Marketing, Media

Change the Copyright Date and Other Updates to Kick off the New Year and Keep Your Site Fresh

Happy New Year to all our KDROM customers and blog readers.  We wish you a prosperous and successful 2019. 

The first Digital Marketing task to do in 2019 is to change the copyright dates at the bottom of your web page.  If you have one, at least change it to 2019, or the date range, from the date you started it to the current year, 2019.

See our KDROM image below.

Nothing screams “We don’t update our web site” more than a copyright date from a previous year, especially one multiple years old.  Even if you’ve changed nothing, you still want to protect your copyrighted material with the most current date.  More importantly, it’s one of the first user experience cues that you have either new or currently relevant content on your site.  If you have updated new material on your site, this is one of the ways to let your users know.

If you have structured your web site with a ‘footer’ file, bot, or widget/plugin, then it’s simply a matter of updating that footer file and then boom, all your pages are complete.  If you hard coded it into all your pages, you have a little more work ahead of you to get it done. We still highly recommend doing it.  You cannot be sure where a user will land in your site, either from a direct link to an inside page or a search engine link, they all need to be updated. 

If you don’t have a footer or widget, now is the perfect time to add it in, so that next year, it will be a snap.  This also really help if you make changes to a footer for other reasons in the future.  For example, adding in new navigation, or changing your logo or tagline.

Here are some other Digital Marketing task suggestions for a refresh of material for the new year.

1. Add a new page for this year’s press releases and news items.  If you’ve been building material for several years, make it easier for your reader to see the current and relevant ones at the top.  Create previous year’s pages to view last year’s news.
2. Add a blog entry for things for your customer to do in the New Year.  It should be related to their customer journey.  It can be either related to the product/service you sell, or simply a helpful tip. Like this blog entry!
3. Update your Calendar for events happening in 2019.  Do you attend trade shows or conferences? Maybe you hold customer events, seminars, or webinars.   If so list them and that you will be attending.  New price schedule for 2019? Don’t leave the 2018 version out there. Advise readers to ‘check back often’ for updates on where you will be, what booth, or social events.  This is a great reason for customers to come back and stay engaged.
4. Kick off your new campaign, offer, promotion.  Many of your customers may have taken time off for the holidays and are getting ready to go and accomplish great things for the New Year. They may have entirely new 2019 budgets! Be the first on their mind.
5. Create your content creation calendar for 2019.  Or at least for Q1 2019.  Make a New Year resolution to regularly create new and relevant content. For tips on planning a calendar, see our blog article: 5 Reasons to Approach your Digital Marketing Plan like a Training Plan for a 10K Race

For content creation, you are always looking for new and relevant material.  Use the year changeover to create new and relevant content to lure your customers back.  And it’s also a great time to jump start your digital marketing planning for the new year on a fresh note.

As always, KDROM is here to assist in any tasks should you need us.  Please always feel free to reach out.

Thank you to all our readers and customers for a great 2018 and good luck with your Digital Marketing in 2019!