Have you ever looked up a business on social media, clicked through to its Facebook page and discovered that its last post was from September 2023?

Perhaps it was wishing everyone a lovely bank holiday weekend, or announcing that they’d be closing early on Friday for a staff event.

You scroll down a little further and find a Christmas message from 2022.

At which point you start wondering whether the business is actually still trading.

The funny thing is, it might be doing brilliantly. It could have fantastic staff, excellent customer service and more work than it knows what to do with.

But if you’re discovering that business for the first time, you’ve got no way of knowing any of that.

I come across this quite often when reviewing websites for prospective clients.

Sometimes the website itself looks perfectly respectable, but the latest news article is four years old, the social media links lead to accounts that haven’t been touched since the pandemic and the copyright notice at the bottom still says 2021.

None of these things necessarily tells you anything about the quality of the business, but collectively they can leave you wondering how much attention it’s paying to things.

And when you’re considering spending money with somebody you’ve never dealt with before, that’s probably not the impression you want to create.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting every business needs to post on social media every day.

Frankly, the world probably doesn’t need another photograph of somebody’s office coffee machine accompanied by “Happy Hump Day!”

And there are plenty of successful businesses that barely use social media at all.

But there’s a difference between not being particularly active online and leaving behind a trail of digital evidence suggesting you’ve disappeared.

If somebody is considering using your business, they’re probably going to do a little research before getting in touch.

They might look at your website, check your reviews or have a quick look at your social media accounts.

They’re not necessarily expecting daily updates or beautifully produced videos. They’re just looking for a little reassurance that you’re established, professional and doing what you say you do.

A recent project, a customer testimonial, a few photographs of your work or an occasional update can provide exactly that.

And there’s a wider benefit too. Keeping your website up to date with genuinely useful information gives search engines and AI tools more opportunities to understand what your business does and where your expertise lies.

Although I wouldn’t recommend simply changing the dates on old blog posts and calling it a content strategy.

So here’s something worth doing this week.

Google your own business and spend five minutes looking at what somebody who’s never heard of you might find.

Check your website, your social media profiles and your Google Business Profile.

Does everything still reflect the business you are today? Are there outdated announcements, broken links or old information that you’ve simply forgotten about?

You might find that a few small updates make a surprisingly big difference to how your business comes across.

Because however good you are at what you do, it would be a shame if somebody decided not to contact you because they weren’t entirely sure you were still there.