Day 14: Leave a Message at the Beep

Since I’m posting this one on a Friday evening at 10:00pm (yeah, the day kinda slipped away from me), and this week’s challenges have been fairly ‘meaty’, I figure it’s time for an easy one. In order to pass this challenge, all you need to do is look at your front page and ask yourself the question, “If somebody wanted to contact me, is it incredibly obvious how to do so?” If a total technophobe couldn’t figure out how to contact you directly from your front page, then it’s time to correct that.

Throughout the course of my blogging career, there have been dozens of times when I’ve needed to get in touch with somebody directly and been unable to find a means for doing so. There are several very prominent bloggers who do not have contact information for themselves readily accessible. To be honest, I’m stunned by that. If you’re taking the time to publish and share publicly, why wouldn’t you give people plenty of ways to communicate with you as needed?

There are some people who have tried to tell me that’s what comments are for. The only trouble with that is when the message I want to pass along has NOTHING to do with any of the posts on the blog. I hate leaving a comment that is completely unrelated to the post I’m leaving it on. Call it a pet peeve if you will, I call it poor blogging etiquette.

There are a few ways you can rectify this. Some people put their contact information in the sidebar, which is obviously the easiest for people to find. Personally, since I like to provide a variety of ways for people to get in touch with me, I created a Contact page and listed it in my navigation bar. On that contact page, I have two emails, my IM information, my Skype name and an embedded form that will get sent directly to me via email. People do use that constantly as it saves them the trouble of copying and pasting my email address into a mail application. It’s just a plugin I found that works for Wordpress, but there are a number of other solutions. I do consider that to be an ‘extra’, and certainly not required. So long as you have at the minimum an email address for people to use, that’s plenty.

Some people I know are very worried about spammers and spiders grabbing their email address or link off of open web pages and flooding their accounts with junk. This would be particular worrisome for a work or school email account. Personally, I’m not so concerned about it, which is why I keep my address public. But if you ARE worried, stop by the Email Icon Generator. Put in your email address, style it, and it’ll generate an IMAGE that spells out your email address. That way people can see it clearly, but there is no text there for spammers to grab. Sneaky, eh?

You never know when or why people might want to contact you, why make it difficult for them to do so? Check into your contact information and make sure it’s easily accessible from the front page!

30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

7 Comments

mwright103
11/14/2008

Day 14: Leave a Message at the Beep /Teach42/ – Since I’m posting this one on a Friday evening at 10:00pm … http://tinyurl.com/5a9fjp

Natalie
11/15/2008

I used the email icon generator. Pretty cool. Yes, it was a bit difficult for people to find a way to contact me directly. Thanks!

Natalie´s most recent blog post.. Google Rocks…in the Ruins!

Topsy-Techie
11/15/2008

This is such a common sense thing, but I think I might be one of those people that make you go searching for their contact info. I’m trying out a couple new ways to make this easier…thanks for another great post!

Topsy-Techie´s most recent blog post.. Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are!!

Pam Shoemaker
11/15/2008

I added a “Contact Pam” page and used the form template that comes with Edublogs to add a contact me form. I never knew it was there before! Thanks again for all the practical tips.

Pam Shoemaker´s most recent blog post.. Plurkin’ and Lovin’ It

Day 14: Leave a Message at the Beep | My State of Flux
11/15/2008

[...] for day 14 we are supposed to make sure that it is easy for people to contact us. I have a link at the top [...]

Day Fourteen - Thirty Days To A Better Blog « Virtual High School Meanderings
11/16/2008

[...] Day fourteen in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger series was yesterday and asked us to look at Day 14: Leave a Message at the Beep. Essentially, we were asked if it was easy for someone to contact us via our [...]