Please Stop It...Please...

It has come to this...I am now begging.  During the course of any business day I communicate with hundreds, if not thousands of people.  Some are clients or employees of clients, some are readers of this, or our other publications, some on Twitter or from our radio show...the list gets long.

But, sometimes the simple act of communication is difficult.

Some companies I want to communicate with set up barriers.  They make guests coming to their websites fill out a number of questions.  Their goal is to mine data.  Our goal is simply to ask a question.  If your website has this type of system...you've got to stop...please.  You are hurting yourself and your company.

The latest example is this painful communication between me and "Polly". 

I do a radio show about small farms,acreages and the rural lifestyle.  I often search out guests for the show and I came across the BLOG/Site, Your Organic Gardening.  Seemed like a natural!  After all we talk about this topic with experts from all over the country.   So I click into the "Contact Us" page for Your Organic Gardening.  You can go there too...here is the link.

Notice the...(gulp) form?  I mean we're talking organic gardening...not Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles for cryin' out loud!  

The bottom line is this (Polly...forgive me it's just that yours was the most recent example.) Take a hard look at how you communicate with visitors to your site.  If you are putting information "out there" you might want the feed back?    Asking your "guest" to fill out a form to be able to "Contact Us" is....old school?     Please stop it.  Please...  I'm begging you.

Quick side note:  I did fill out this "Contact Us" form but in the Twitter exchange we had later...Polly told me they never got...  And, nope, I don't think she wants to be on the show...she told me she isn't into the "Rural Lifestyle".

Yikes!

Michael P. Libbie - Insight Advertising, Marketing & Communications where we just want to get along...