As a blogger, it is SUPER IMPORTANT that you make yourself readily available for potential opportunities from other bloggers and peers, whether it's just a warm hello or a business opportunity. This past week, I took the time to reach out to a lot of bloggers we know to thank them for their continued support and to introduced our new brand. Do you know how annoyingly frustrated I was after looking through all of those blogs! I was frustrated for the simple fact that a lot of these bloggers didn't have any contact info which made it very hard for me to accomplish my goal.
Bloggers...if anything, contact info is the most important, yet the SIMPLEST element to add to your blog. Just by putting your email address, you have a direct line for interested people to communicate but more so invest their time into you. Many bloggers however fail in many ways to have an effective contact method including:
NO CONTACT TAB/NAVIGATION BUTTON
Companies are not going to search up and down on your page looking for a way to contact you. If the info isn't there, they won't bother looking.
CONTACT INFO IN THE ABOUT ME TAB
This is definitely a good place to put this information, but if you don't have a separate "contact" tab. then your efforts could go to waste. When I'm looking on a website and I want to contact a company, I don't necessarily think to look in the "about" tab. The about tab, in most cases, gives background and company history, and where potential clients and customers look LAST for contact info.
BEING "EXTRA" WITH YOUR CONTACT INFO
I don't know what "expert" some of you guys are listening to when it comes to what to include in your contact info, but I'm here to tell you, you've been steered wrong. PLEASE STOP PUTTING:
thislooksstupid{at}wtf{dot}com. It's a pain in the ass to copy, paste, and fix this retarded bullshit you call a "creative" way to display your email and once again, major companies won't take the time to do that. Also, PLEASE STOP PUTTING your personal mailing address as your contact info! I don't mean a PO Box, or a business location, I mean your home, where you live, your parents live, your spouse, or your kids. Like...do you not know how easy it is to get murked out here, so why would you put that sensitive info on the internet? Don't give spammers, hackers, or dangerous people any reason to do harm to you, and I can guarantee you don't need to use your home address for blogging purposes.
The best piece of advice I can give to steer away from all of these no no's is to have a simple contact tab with one or two email addresses as a contact method. One simple email can go A LONG WAY. Don't make it more complicated than it has to be and potentially block those opportunities that are trying to come a knockin'!
The best piece of advice I can give to steer away from all of these no no's is to have a simple contact tab with one or two email addresses as a contact method. One simple email can go A LONG WAY. Don't make it more complicated than it has to be and potentially block those opportunities that are trying to come a knockin'!
