Up to date
I had the weird experience of walking into a Best Buy recently. The last time I was physically in a Best Buy was back in 2013 when we needed to buy a TV. Over a decade later, I wandered in again.
I used to go to Best Buy almost every week. Searching for the latest NSYNC release, or a new gadget to solve some problem. I remember walking the computer aisle, marveling at how thin the newest laptops were or how fast the gaming PCs had become. I'd read PC Mag or another review article and go over to see if I could get my hands on it to see what it was like.
Still a tech nerd at heart, but just more time constrained in what I pay attention to, I shuffled through the doors of that same store (over a decade later) in the pouring rain. An entirely different store greeted me. Shockingly, they had moved all of the shelves and I couldn't find a CD in the entire place. Some of the brands were foreign to me, and many of the gadgets weren't recognizable. My knowledge was now outdated.
Staying up to date is hard. We must make time, and have the energy and focus to make it work. Many times it comes naturally through a passion or general interest we have. But what happens when we have neither of those, but it's still mission critical?
Take, for instance, the new email requirements from Google and Yahoo to protect users from scams and spam. These rules make previously recommended best practices mandatory, including:
Email authentication via DKIM and SPF
Valid DNS records
Maintaining a low spam complaint rate on Google Postmaster
Adherence to the Internet Message Format standard
DMARC policy for Gmail impersonation
ARC headers for forwarded emails
DMARC authentication
Alignment of "From:" headers
Updated unsubscribe functionality
and
Use of TLS protocol for data privacy.
Still awake? I'd translate that for you, and I tried three different times in writing this. I just ended up banging my head against the wall and my computer was afraid for its wellbeing. In a nutshell, these changes are meant to make sure that it's YOU who is sending the email. If Google and Yahoo can't confirm that, they'll block the email.
I don't care about DMARC or ARC headers. I have no interest in valid DNS records or the TLS protocol. I have no clue what the Internet Message Format is. But I do care about client's getting our emails. So, putting on my business owner and email marketing hat, I have to care. I have to force myself to sit and weed through blogs, help articles, and tech support chats to make sure we are compliant.
Staying up to date meant being subscribed to helpful business blogs and podcasts. It meant knowing just enough to know what's relevant to us and what is not. Sometimes it's passion that fuels that. Sometimes it's necessity. As a business owner, it's often more of the latter than the former, and we have to be ok with that.
Otherwise, we'll be out of date.
