It’s a new year, and I bet you have a few things to do on your website, your clients and your own internal projects. This blog post will act as a friendly reminder of some of those things you should look at when a new year comes.

• Are you still seeing last year date on your website?
• Check for New Potential Clients or Contact.
• Reassess your Objectives and Goals for this Year.
• Catch up on Left Over Work from Last Year.
• Check your Bills and Invoices, and make sure your are up to date
• Follow Up with Clients.
• Get Positive and Announce It to the World

Are you still seeing last year date on your website?

One of the biggest things that people do not automate is the changing of the years in their footer. Right next to the copyright. Does it show “Copyright 2009″? If it does, then it’s time to change it. You may find it to be a hassle, but it shows visitors to your website that you are on the ball when it comes to your web presence.

Here’s a quick fix to automate the process.

Use a single line of code like javascript or more preferred a server side scripting language to show the correct year.

If you are using PHP or WordPress, you can accomplish this simply by changing the last year in your footer to this:

<?php echo date('Y'); ?>

This will get the date from your web server, assuming your web server has the correct date, and display just the current year.

Check for New Potential Clients or Contacts

During those last few weeks of the previous year, you may have checked your inbox less and less. Now would be a good time to go through your emails and see if any potential new clients.

Maybe during the Holiday you met a potential client or contact, and they said would contact you by the beginning of the year. See if they have, if not, reach out to them.

Reassess your Objectives and Goals for this Year

Time to start the New Year off fresh. Take a look at your playbooks and see about ways to improve your business. Identify the following:

• What do we do last year that we can do better this year?
• What areas of our business suffered the most, and what can we do to improve them?
• What opportunities did we miss out on, and why?
• See what items weren’t completed by the end of last year, and see if they are still relevant now.

Catch up on Left Over Work from Last Year

There is always work to be done. Take a look through your tasks and see what the open items are. Now would be a good time to get those items done if they are still relevant to your core business.

Check your Bills and Invoices, make sure you are up to date

This is a great time to double check all of your bills and invoices. Make sure everything is up to date in terms of what needs to be paid out, and the money you should have received from clients. If you have an outstanding invoice for a client, now is a great time to follow up with them.

Follow Up with Clients

This is a great opportunity to talk with your existing client base and see how they are doing. Start the conversation off with “How was your holidays?” or “Where did you go?” or “Did you see family?” It’s a great way to break the ice and make the relationship a little more personal. It shows you care, and you’re interested in what they do outside of work. You might be surprised, you may learn something new about your client.

Take the time to talk about what they have planned for the New Year. Maybe they haven’t thought about it. Schedule a time to follow up with them. Maybe before the call, spend some time to review the work you have done with your client, and come up with some ideas that you can suggest that would imrpove your client’s business. It’ll show that you’ve been thinking about them.

Get Positive and Announce It to the World

Take this time to send out a message to the world wishing them all a Happy New Year and talk about what you hope will come for your business and for others. Maybe you are looking to offer new and exciting services, or plan on expanding your business.

I hope you find this article to be a positive inspiration to you. I now have to go off and do what I wrote about. Happy New Year!

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