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You are marketing people. You are blogging or have a Web site so that people (potential customers, current customers, prospective employees, the media, etc.) can learn more about your organization, and if you catch their attention, they might want to talk to you or even buy what you sell. Right?

So why in the name of all that is holy do you NOT have your e-mail address on your Web site or blog?

Some of you are laughing, but I challenge you. Physically go to the blogs in your feed reader. Or pay attention to the Web sites of 10 businesses you deal with every day. Can you get to either a “contact us” form or an e-mail address from the home page?

You will be astonished at how many business Web sites or blogs give the reader absolutely no way to communicate with the author, except in the comments section. (And some don’t even have one of those.)

And even in this day and age, be sure you give them options. A phone number that will get them to a real person. A physical mailing address. And a link to an e-mail account that is monitored and answered every day. I should be able to find all that information with a single click from your site’s home page.

And don’t give me the spam or spider crawl excuse. If you are worried about bots scanning your content to harvest your e-mail address, there are ways around that. If you have to, spell out the e-mail address with the word “at” in place of the @ sign. But for the love of Pete, give us a way to start a conversation.

Isn’t that why you’re on the Web in the first place?

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2010 Jeffrey H. Gitomer