Contact Information

3.18.09 in personal | 2 comments

If you’re serious about your online presence, your digital footprint, you’ll make your contact information readily available. (I follow my own advice, as you can see, my contact info (several pieces) is in the left sidebar of every page of this site)

This morning I attempted to contact all the contributors to the blog carnival I just hosted, to let them know that I had included their work. A valuable piece of information, a connection, an opportunity. Of the twelve authors, only six had an “easily” (loosely defined) accessible email address on their website. That’s six out of twelve. Half. Fifty percent. Failing.

A few simply had no contact information, some may have buried it deep within the walls of their dungeon-esque websites, and others had needlessly tedious “contact forms” which disguised their email addresses, but assured that you could sent information to them. A bit one-sided, since they ask for a return address.

Here are the common excuses

  • I’ll get lots of spam from bots and crawlers finding my email. Maybe, but probably not unless your site is really high profile. Even then, there are great free spam filters out there.
  • I could have my identity stolen. No. I didn’t say make your credit card numbers and passwords publicly available.
  • Why should I give strangers access to my contact information?Because they’re not strangers, they’re customers (if you’re blogging, your product is information). Contact information is the customer support of your internet presence.
  • I don’t want to deal with all the requests and questions. At least you’re honest.

More importantly:

This is what you’re saying if you hide your contact information

  • There is a reason I’m remaining anonymous.
  • I don’t value what you (my customer) has to say.
  • I don’t make mistakes.
  • I’m better than you, so good that I don’t need the input of others.
  • I don’t want to take responsibility for this work (though I’d love to take credit).
  • I don’t feel comfortable attaching my name to this.

Does that sound like good business, good writing, or good friendship?

-III

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2 comments

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3.18.09 at 1:19 pm

Meg

Meg’s avatar

Interesting post! I do hate it when I can’t find any way to contact a writer or company. However, I don’t think that you need a lot of contact info out there unless it’s for a company.

I have contact forms on my sites, but I don’t give my email out publicly online because of spam. In fact, I didn’t even have spam at all until someone forgot to use the BCC line while emailing multiple people (no doubt one had a computer virus that scanned their email for addresses and sent those to spammers). The email form seems to work well enough, but then I guess I wouldn’t know if it weren’t.

I’ve seen some people give out their phone numbers online, but I really rather people not call me. Not only am I not a phone person, but I have limited cell minutes and no land line (my husband and I cancelled it when we figured out that the only ones calling us were telemarketers & political groups).

And while my physical address — like pretty much everyone’s — is available online, I see no reason to make it any easier for people to find. People can email me first if they want to ship something.