Recently I’ve tried to find contact information for a couple of people and failed miserably. I found it terribly frustrating and began to wonder why someone would make it so hard to be found.
The first was the guest of a teleseminar I attended. He was talking about using LinkedIn and invited participants to connect with him. Since I was impressed with what he had to say and use LinkedIn extensively myself, I naturally tried to connect. Notice I said “tried”.
The problem was he had his LinkedIn account set so you can’t find him or contact him unless you have his email address. Little strange for a social media expert, but I was undaunted. Since I am connected with the host of the teleseminar, I’d ask her to send an introduction via LinkedIn and we could connect that way.
Imagine my surprise when she wasn’t connected with the guest. Strange … she’s a good enough contact to do a public teleseminar with, but not quite good enough to connect with on LinkedIn.
Being a persistent sort, I decided to check out this guy’s website. I could get his email address and connect with him that way first. Hmmmm… yes, you guessed it – no email address on his website.
Still only slightly daunted, I did a Google search and found another of his websites. After several minutes of search on the site I found a contact page. No email address – just one of those annoying contact forms. I filled it out and guess what? Never heard from him. Guess he has enough contacts, connections and clients. Doesn’t need any more. Lucky guy.
The other instance was for a client. He wanted to get in touch with a journalist he’d met before. A journalist should be easy to locate. They really need their connections to locate new story ideas. Wrong.
We did a Google search for him. Found a number of references to articles he’d written and reviews of his books. But the only email address I found no longer worked. Tried social media but he’s nowhere. We’d try the phone book, but we don’t know where he lives and he’s got a fairly common name.
Finally we resorted to sending a message to an editor at one of the paper’s that publishes his work. But we don’t really expect her to pass along the message.
My question is: why would these people make it so hard to be found? If you are in business, don’t you want potential customers, colleagues or joint venture partners to find you? I find it hard to believe that these people have so much business that they just don’t want any more.
And few people would be as persistent as I was. If they can’t find contact information quickly, they’ll move on to someone else.
It’s not difficult to make yourself visible. I just did a Google search for “Andrea Stenberg”. Nine of the top ten links were to me. And seven of those links include either my email address or a link to my website which does have my contact information. I’m also on four of the top social media sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Myspace. If someone wants to get in touch, they won’t have any trouble.
Now yes, I do get SPAM. In this day and age, you can’t avoid it. However, my ISP (internet service provider) has a fabulous SPAM filter that gets rid of most unwanted emails before they even hit my inbox. Next, I have a SPAM filter/virus checker on my computer that also does an okay job. If all else fails, I’ve programmed my email program to automatically send any emails that reference a certain “blue pill” or improving particular parts of the male anatomy straight to the trash.
So really, unless you don’t want any more business, please make it easy for people to find you online.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Oh, by the way. When I say please connect with me on social media, I mean it. If you send a personal message with your invitation that mentions you’re a reader of The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, I will ALWAYS accept your invitation.
