From natural disasters, to hacked websites, banned websites, and unexpected life events, a crisis can certainly cripple your small business overnight. Google’s PDF titled Digital Tools and Resources to Help Your Business Prepare for a Crisis is a good start when it comes to preparing for a crisis. They list several things that you should do, several of which involve Google’s services:
- Verify your business with Google My Business to make sure your information there is up to date.
- Store contact information for employees, vendors, and clients online so it’s accessible from any device.
- Create a Google Group so you can contact a large number of people all at once. Facebook groups or a Facebook group in Messenger can work equally as well.
- Upload important documents to the Cloud.
- Download critical documents to your mobile phone for offline access.
Google goes on to remind us that you can edit your hours of operation. Use Google Posts to update your potential customers and customers on the status of your business. You’re not limited to the information you can provide in Google Posts, you’re limited to about 300 words. Use social media and email to communicate with employees, vendors, and customers.
Other Small Business Disasters
Besides natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding, there are certainly other disasters that can cripple a small business. Have you thought about or are prepared with:
- Hacked website
- Stolen domain name
- Failure to renew domain name
- SSL certificate not being renewed
- Negative SEO against your website
- Banned website in the search results
- Online Reputation Management issue
- Social media crisis (bad post, negative posts, etc.
- Public relations nightmares
- Email blacklisting
Those are only a few of the things that can potentially cripple your small business overnight. In the 20+ years that I’ve been in the internet marketing business, I’ve seen and heard of it all. Sometimes we don’t think of these things until a crisis actually happens. Just recently, I’ve seen at least 7 of these things happen to really good, honest businesses that didn’t deserve for it to happen.