Comments on: If your blog encourages conversation, a contact form says “shut up!”

By: John Wilker

John Wilker — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:24:26 +0000

Totally agree. When i am contacting people or companies about business opportunities or even just to say “Keep up the good work” if the contact form is more than just name, email, and message I bail. I hate the “what type of message is this” stuff. It’s a message read it. If you don’t want messages take the form down.

I won’t even go into the sites/blogs that have contact forms, and don’t reply. weak.

By: socialized » Know thy followers!

socialized » Know thy followers! — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:40:01 +0000

[...] advice these days, so here is yet another piece of sage wisdom: Know thy followers! I posted a rant yesterday about not being able to e-mail a blogger because of Fast Company’s onerous [...]

By: red@b2bcommunications.com

red@b2bcommunications.com — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:22:09 +0000

I’m setting up my FC profile and it IS pretty lame… for one thing I’m supposed to maintain a separate blog there and promote it at my site? Fat chance! Happy to do it the other way around… where my feed updates automatically in the FC profile, but no such option.

DJ is a good one to follow on Twitter too… he’s http://twitter.com/MarketerBlog

By: DJ Francis

DJ Francis — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:25:03 +0000

Hi Joel,

I’m sorry to hear about your trouble reaching me! I agree - forms are totally not the way to go (it’s not the only gripe I have with the FC site). It’s lame and unnecessary.

I’ve since added my email address to my Vcard - which is pretty lame in itself. I never use them, but hey, it’s something. Plus, there was no field for email address in the Vcard area.

I also added my email address to my bio which I had to CODE IN HTML! For real?

This is all to say…this is why I include only blog post teasers on the FC site. Every post links back to my site where I have a prominent About page which does include an email address (http://onlinemarketerblog.com/about-2/) You’re right - it’s not tough and shouldn’t be treated like a state secret.

Anyway, thanks for caring (to read my stuff, to contact me, to post this article) and for advocating for sensible web transparency.

Cheers,

DJ Francis

OnlineMarketerBlog [at] gmail [dot] com
@MarketerBlog

By: Sonia Simone

Sonia Simone — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:19:41 +0000

Sorry, I wouldn’t for one second consider losing a contact form. Using a mailto link on a publicly available page would mean losing my readers’ real email messages in the sea of spam that would flood my mailbox. Putting a mailto link on the Web is the equivalent of falling asleep face-down in the bath house.

Contact forms should be dead simple–email address, name and text, but IMO using a mailto link on your blog is a rookie error.

Completely agree, however, about registration to comment. Lame and unnecessary.

By: michele price

michele price — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:46:35 +0000

Boy do I agree with you!. What do I do, I stop doing business with them. It is as annoying as the recordings we have to go through to get to a real person on the phone with companies. Just a different format BLAH!

By: Mom On The Run

Mom On The Run — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:46:56 +0000

It’s definitely a show stopper for me - there was a long time when I wouldn’t comment on blogger blog posts because I wasn’t on blogger and didn’t have an account to log in with.