The purpose of blogs is to communicate but too many bloggers ignore one of the most obvious ways, email. Comments are great but email is also a time-honored and effective method for getting conversations going. Yet many blogs don’t list an email address.
I’ve been slogging through blog directories finding bloggers who might like to write on Independent Voter Network.(Email me at bob@ivn.us if you’re interested!) Way too many of these blogs give no way to contact the editor. Therefore, I had to pass on contacting quite a few excellent blogs. They’re missing out on communication and learning about new things. I get a steady stream of email here at polizeros because I have my email address on the About page and sidebar.)
If you’re afraid your email might get spammed, do what I do, forward all email accounts to Gmail, which has the best and most effective spam killer around. Problem solved! If, for some reason, you don’t want people to know who you are, use a special email address for the blog only. But not allowing people contact you seems counter to the point of having a blog. Some blogs had no email address listed but did have contact forms, which to me seem stilted plus someone can type their email address in wrong, and then what do you do?
Tech blogger Robert Scoble makes his email and phone number completely public. Trust me, he gets way more email and phone calls than most of us do. But he says this is the best way to insure anyone can contact him and you can always hang up on the occasional loony phone call. And besides, he got an invite to the White House once because it was easy to contact him.
Bloggers, don’t hide from letting people contact you!
Actually you don’t have to give out your email these days. There are plenty of ways to create a contact form on a blog to which emails you the message somebody writes to you without giving out your email address to do so.
The problems with contact form is they might enter their email address wrong, plus they take longer to do. Email is fast and easy.And unless you do the form right, the email address is there if you do View Source.
Yes, that’s true that if you do sloppy programming that your source code could contain the email address you’re not wanting to give out and some bot or person may be able to parse that out, however if you do it right, then it wouldn’t. Then of course if they mistype their email address you might not be able to contact them back, but seriously how often are you going to mistype your own email address? I’m sure somebody out there has already created a wordpress contact form that works without allowing anybody to know the destination email address (or maybe somebody should make one).
I was simply making a point that the reason most bloggers don’t give out their email addresses is due to spam. They don’t typically want to create a new email account they have to manage just so the public can contact them, which would most likely be riddled with spam. At least with a form, there are ways to prove it’s a person and not a bot, like with a captcha or other verification (including an email verification sent first).
I get at least 200 emails a day and Gmail kills virtually all the spam. It’s just not a problem for me. Yes, I get email inquiries that are junk or silly but also get important ones too.
When I blogged I received numerous hostile & derogatory comments. Life off the blogogrid is best.