[Mistakes #4] Five Common Contact Page Mistakes … and How to Fix Them - DailyBlogTips

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[Mistakes #4] Five Common Contact Page Mistakes … and How to Fix Them Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:34 AM PST In this part of our Mistakes series, we're looking at Contact pages. You may want to read the previous post on About pages first. Your Contact page will probably be the shortest page on your blog … but it could potentially be the most important. Imagine that an influential blogger stops by, having read one of your posts. They want to contact you and ask you to guest post for them (the start of a relationship that could eventually lead to a joint venture) … but you don't have any contact information easily visible. It'll be very easy for them to simply move on to someone else. Even when your contact page is easy to find, there are some mistakes that will put readers off getting in touch. Here's what you need to look out for: Mistake #1: Not Having a Contact Page Don't bury your contact information in your footer or at the bottom of your About page. Even having it in the sidebar is often not enough – readers will look for a Contact page in the navigation menu. Fix it: Add a contact page! Simple enough. For now, don't worry about the other mistakes, just create a page with the line To contact me, email [your email address]. Mistake #2: Only Including a Contact Form Contact forms are great. They make life easy for your readers, who don't have to open up an email program to get in touch, and they allow you to collect useful information (e.g. by asking readers to select answers from a dropdown menu). Not all readers like contact forms, though. Some will prefer to email you directly, and a form on its own can also seem quite distancing – it makes you less approachable. Fix it: Always include your email address on your contact page. If you're worried about spam, write it out as name [AT] domain.com instead of name@domain.com. Mistake #3: Having a Broken Contact Form One big reason to have a contact method other than a form is that forms don't always work. Sometimes an update might break them, or you might make changes and accidentally break them. Whatever the reason, a broken contact form is frustrating – readers may not see any error message, and you'll never know that they were trying to get in touch. Even if they suspect their message hasn't reached you, they may not know how else to get in touch. Fix it: Test your own contact form regularly – at least once every few months. It only takes a minute or two to check it's working. Mistake #4: Outdated Information You probably don't visit your own contact page very often … and that makes it easy to leave outdated information in place. Perhaps your contact page says you're accepting guest posts when you're not (or vice versa), or you have a message like "I'm away on vacation" months after you've returned. (Many thanks to DBT reader Raspal for pointing out this very mistake on my own contact page on my Aliventures site…!) Fix it: Check for any outdated information when you test your contact form. If you put a temporary message on your Contact page, make a note in your diary to take it off once it no longer applies. Mistake #5: Not Linking to Your Social Media Accounts If you're active on social media, your Contact page is a great place to add links to these accounts. Sure, you probably have buttons in your sidebar – but readers aren't always as attentive as you'd like! Fix it: Simple enough: add in links to your Twitter profile, Facebook page, and so on. You don't need to list every account you have – just the ones where you're reasonably active and likely to reply to readers' messages.   Have you spotted any contact page mistakes to add? Let us know in the comments…   Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

A Visual Editor for Your Widgets: The Black Studio TinyMCE Widget Plugin Posted: 26 Dec 2013 07:22 AM PST For ages, I've had a small but annoying issue with WordPress: it has a visual editor for posts, but not for widgets. This doesn't bother me with my own sites (I can write HTML so I just use that for my widgets), but it's a pain when I set up sites for friends and family who want to be able to create visually interesting text-based widgets – e.g. an "About" widget with an image, links, bullet points, bold text and so on. While I was looking for a good solution to suggest to members of our Get Blogging course, I came across this plugin: Black Studio TinyMCE Widget This adds a visual editor to your widgets, based on the standard one (which is called "TinyMCE"). As the creators explain: This is intended to overcome the limitations of the default WordPress text widget, so that you can visually add rich text contents to your sidebars, with no knowledge of HTML required. It simply adds a new widget type to your "Available Widgets," like this: To use it, just drag that widget into your sidebar and open it up. It looks very similar to the regular posts / pages editor, and you can add images and formatting in just the same way: (Note: it doesn't replace the standard "text" widget, which you can use for plain text or for HTML code.) If you don't know HTML, or if you'd simply prefer a quicker and easier way to create rich text widgets, give this Black Studio plugin a go! Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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