Your window says one thing and your profile says another

Somebody sees content about your business, gets interested, looks you up and finds information from two years ago. Or the other way round: they walk past, like the look of it, check the profile and it seems closed down.

That mismatch is the quietest leak there is, because it does not generate a complaint: it generates a customer who never arrives and who you never hear about.

What to check before any collaboration

Opening hours, everywhere they are published. It is the detail that goes stale fastest and costs most: someone who turns up to a closed door does not come back.

Address and phone number. It sounds obvious; it is still the most common error after moving premises.

The photos. If you refurbished a year ago and the old ones are still up, whoever arrives does not recognise the place.

What you actually sell now. Plenty of businesses have changed half their offering and have not mentioned it anywhere.

Why this comes before the content

A collaboration sends people to look at you. If what they find does not match what they were told, you have paid to create doubt.

Half an hour checking this pays off more than any campaign, and it costs nothing.

The practical bit

Before agreeing a collaboration, run the test: look yourself up as if you were a stranger, from a phone, and see what comes up. What you see there is what everyone arriving through the content will see.