How easy do you make it for people to connect with you via your blog? Do you display your contact information on the home-page? Do you prefer to keep that information private and use a contact form? Do you link out to your various social networks? Ultimately, I think that how easy (or difficult) you make it for people to connect is going to determine the number of opportunities that present themselves through your blogging efforts.

Some people websites/blogs make it easy to connect via social networks:

This is a neat idea. After all if you’re making yourself accessible via different social networks you probably want to make it easy for your site visitors to connect with you on those social networks. Right?

The problem here is that if this is all I see and you’re authoring a business blog, it’s a bit of a problem. This was the only “contact information” I could find on a real estate blog.

Some people display their contact information prominently on their sidebar:

Some people display their information rather prominently on their websites and blog. For example, this is what you see when you visit homebuysblog.com authored by Real Estate Agent Ted Mackel. What I like is that it gives me information “About the Author” and he tells me that he’s a Real Estate Agent working with both buyers and sellers. If I need to reach him, there’s his phone number and email address.

It’s simple. If I need to reach Ted, he’s made it incredibly easy for me to do so.

Some people prefer a contact form:

Most people have some type of contact form or registration form on their websites and blogs. We do this in large part as a way of pre-qualifying leads and that’s fair. But there is such a thing as taking it too far (in my opinion). What I’m referring to is when you ask/require too much information up-front. So much so that your prospect gets inundated with questions and decides to run off instead. In the case of contact forms, I believe that less is more.

How do you do it?

Do you display your contact information prominently on your website/blog? Or do you try and filter out leads and qualify prospects via a contact form? Do you link out to your various social networks? Or do you think that technique is a good way to turn traffic away from your site?

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosenfeld Media