On Blogging and Social Media

Most bloggers welcome contact with there readers, but that doesn't mean we want to put our email address on every page of our site. I know that most of us want visitors to leave comments, but there are times when this isn't really appropriate (e.g. Someone likes your blog and wants some advice or to offer you some work etc.)

Visitor contact offers a great free solution. You can see what it looks like and try it on the left of my site. It looks like this.
Just click on the contact tab and you'll see it opens up an email submission form with contact details that doesn't include my email address and it's spam protected.

How to create a visitor contact form

• This is really quick and easy to set up. Simply go to the Visitor Contact site and sign up for the free service.

• You only need to add very basic information such as email and create a user name and password to get started

• Once that's done you just need to add the details of your site and you email address. You can decide whether you want your actual email address to be visible or not.

• You can then add other information such as address, telephone number and Skype contact if you wish.
• You can also set up an auto response message that people will be sent once they have emailed you.
• Last of all you decide on the colours you want the tab to be and then click on 'Create Form and Get Button' and you are done.

• This will create a code that you then just add to the script of your web page or blog. If you are using blogger, you just go to 'Layout' then 'edit HTML' and scroll down your code and add it at the bottom just above the tag that closes the body .

• Be sure to save your code and then go back to your blog and the contact tab should appear on the left. Click it and send yourself a test message.

Visitor Contact is a great way to make yourself more accessible to your readers without getting loads of SPAM. You can add as many forms as you like to your account, so if you have more than one site you can manage them all from one account. You can also go back and edit your contact form at any point if you change your mind about the colour or amont of information you want to display.

All in all I think this is a useful free tool.

How about you?

• What do you do to encourage reader contact?
• Do you allow comments of your site?

Feel free to leave a comment with your recommendations for increasing contact with your readers.