A lot of times, I am sure most bloggers would love to connect more with their readers. They offer email subscriptions to their RSS feed or newsletters. Or they have plugins on their WordPress blogs like the Thank me Later plugin which allows you to send an automatic email at a later time to invite former readers to come by or subscribe to your feed.
I recently found in my stats that someone asked about if it was okay to take the emails of your users and invite them to social networks like Facebook.
In fact, here was the search
can i use email addresses of people who have bougfht from website to invite them to join facebook?
Unfortunately, their search ended up at my tag section for facebook. My answer – well, this is kind of tricky. On one hand, I would say no harm done as you can simply send an invite. However, on the other hand, it could be seen as spam. You might be inviting a totally brand new person from your site to a place they might not be a member of or they do not have any interest to become a part of Facebook or any other social network. Please remember there are people that still try to hang on to their rights to privacy online.
Now, if the person you are inviting is someone you regularly see on your blog and you think might be interested in joining in on the social network crowd, that is fine to invite. The better alternative instead of inviting is to blog about the site and share why you enjoy the site and how your readers might enjoy a particular social network site. As an example, since I have blogged about Twitter, a lot of my regular and past readers have actually joined. I did not tell them – “hey go join.” I have been talking about Twitter from various angles that I thought were interesting, as well as conveying how you can harness social networks in social media techniques.
What do you think? Is it spammish or rude to use the emails of your readers to invite them to social networks?
I wouldn’t think of it as spammy if the invite were phrased as an invite to become a fan of the company’s site, using the initial example.
Otherwise, it’s opinion I suppose.
The problem is that what is to say you would invite them to more than one place… like several. That gets a bit tedious. I would say it would be better to invite those on your double opt-in subscription list as they are more open to the idea of anything you do.
I don’t think so, but I’m also very good at ignoring spam. So good, in fact, that I end up ignoring most snail mail and email altogether and figure if a friend or creditor really wants to talk to me, they’ll keep trying until they get through. A spammer may keep trying until I block them. Call me lazy or jaded, but that’s basically how I filter the world these days. I sometimes wonder if, in three years, it’ll take a certified letter to even register as a blip on my radar.
I’ve also noticed that I’m immune to hyperbole. Marketers have killed my brain’s last hyperbole receptor. “Limited time!”? I look at my watch. “Didn’t you promise my time would run out six weeks ago? Yeah, thought not.”
“Last chance!”
“Promise?”
“ONLY $47, but act now or the doors will–”
“Slam shut, already.”
I might pay money for a browser extension that acted like a reverse bookmarking utility and let me blacklist sites with nagging sales crawlers and pop-ups demanding I subscribe before I’ve even had a chance to look around the first time – just to remind me why I didn’t want to visit those sites again.
I’d be more inclined to connect on social networks with people who are sociable than to respond to an invitation to “become a fan of ours on Facebook” or “follow us” or anything else that sounds somewhat condescending. I like “connect with us” or “Are you on ? So are we! ” or “Hey, we’d love to see what you’re up to on – connect with us here ” That’s enough of an invitation/hint.