What to do when your details change

When something changes, the work is not the change itself. It is remembering every place the old detail is still printed or listed. Here is the list.

Everywhere your details live

• Your social profiles
• Your chat profile and away message
• Your listing on map and search services
• Printed signage, cards, packaging and receipts
• Invoices, quotes and your email signature
• Any leaflets or menus still in circulation

The ones that cost you customers

Printed material and map listings are the two that keep sending people to the wrong place months later. A poster with an old number will be on someone's wall long after you have forgotten it.

Why one link makes this smaller

If your printed material points at a page rather than at a number, you change the number in one place and everything already printed stays correct. That is the main practical reason to print a link rather than the details themselves.

Do the map listing the same day

People trust the map more than your own page, so a wrong listing overrides everything else you fix.

Keep a note of what is in print

A short list of what is currently printed, and how many, makes the next change a ten-minute job.