July 18, 2005

"This feature is not to be used for advertising or excessive self-promotion."

Blogger seems to have introduced a new feature just now. Immediately after publishing that last post, but not the previous post, I got a window saying "Email Post to a Friend" -- all set up with the text of the new post, my email address, and a place to type in the "friend's" email address. There's also this warning:
The information you provide on this form will not be used for anything other than sending the email to your friend. This feature is not to be used for advertising or excessive self-promotion.
I love the phrase "excessive self-promotion," which so clearly suggests that a little self-promotion is in order. I think certain people can expect to start receiving a lot more email.

5 comments:

Mark Daniels said...

Blogging in itself is probably excessive self-promotion. The "warning" is like telling an alcoholic to only take a little drink.

Mark Daniels said...

I know because I'm a blogaholic.

Bruce Hayden said...

Well, just figure, Blogger was free last I looked. I put up with this sort of thing to get free stuff.

Now, as long as they don't introduce this those commenting on your posts - shouldn't have mentioned that, as it is an obvious revenue generation idea.

Ann Althouse said...

MarkT: People who already receive email from bloggers promoting posts -- high traffic bloggers who can give high-traffic-producing links.

Ann Althouse said...

Mark: It is appropriate to send out email promoting a post, but be selective. Wait until you've got an especially good one and email the text of the post plus the URL to high traffic bloggers who link to that sort of thing. Put a very short personal note at the top -- like "I thought you might be interested in this post about X." And it would be good if the blog itself is consistently good so that when you do get traffic on one post and some people look around they might come back on their own sometimes.

The problem with self-promotion comes when people send out email too often or on posts that are especially interesting or to bloggers who don't link to that kind of thing.