How effortless is it to contact you? Blogging Tip # 1

In my one year of blogging, among the other things I have learned, one is to make it easier for readers to approach the blog author.  The simplest way is to include a “Contact Me” page, write your e-mail address over there, and expect readers to e-mail you.  But for a reader to ask a quick question, having to copy-paste the address and send an e-mail requires some effort.  Result?  The reader may skip to some other website.

 A ‘Contact’ page is of course essential on a blog/website – a visitor may want to inquire more, a publisher may want to request permission to print, a sponsor may have a giveaway offer, a blogger may want to ask a guest post.  And someone nice may genuinely want to drop a “hey, just thought of you, wanted to say hello!” message.

While you would display your e-mail address (tip: preferably using [at] for @ and [dot] com for .com to steer clear of spammers), it is also a good idea to create a contact form and embed the contact form on a page on your website.  There are two that I find simple to use and are free contact forms:

(click on images to see full size)

Google Documents

1.  Using your Gmail account, go to Google Docs (or click on Documents on top), click on Create > Form

2.  Write your questions, make them required or optional, choose 'Paragraph Text' for the Message section for a larger box

3.  Save form (top right button) and click on 'More Actions' > Embed

4.  Copy the code it generates and paste onto the HTML of your Contact page

5.  After you 'Publish/Update' your Contact page, test your form

6.  The notification it shows after sending message

7.  Go back to your form and click to see responses shown in Excel sheet format

8.  Click on Tools > Notification Rules and choose how you want e-mail of submitted forms sent to you

EmailMeForm.com

1, 2, 3, 4:  Sign up for free, write in your details, click on the confirmation link in your e-mail

5.  Click to create a form

6.  Choose from the templates, if you wish

7, 8.  Customize to your preferences.  I preferred the simpler version of CAPTCHA and I chose to automatically redirect to my homepage after submission of form.  Save Form.

9, 10.  On 'My Forms' tab, click on Code > I chose HTML only and copy-pasted the code to my Contact Page's HTML

11.  Publish/update page, test form, fill up

12.  That's the e-mail I received with the details

You don't have to do any coding and you don't have to create a new Contact page.  Just copy-pasting the 'Contact Form' part of the code to your page's HTML does the job.  Easy, right?

So, now are you going to add a contact form if you don’t have one yet on your blog?

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