Signatures: How to promote your website, hubs and blogs

We all want to promote our hub, blog and websites but many people miss a golden opportunity in a daily activity - sending e mails and posting to forums. Every message you send could contain an automatic promotion, notice and publicity with virtually no further thought or effort on your part - it's called a signature. There are two basic types - e mail and forum.

It is self-designed tailored text and url(s) that is automatically included at the end of any e mail message you send. A signature (sometimes referred to as a "signature block") may be added to most personal mailing programmes including MS Messenger, Mozilla, Hotmail and Yahoo. It does not matter whether your account is POP or IMAP, signatures can be applied to either. Typically, it provides information about you, your job, interests, position and websites. Sometimes it can include essential legal information - my official work signature includes a reminder about the legality of forwarding my messages. Businesses often generate automatic signatures which you can't alter, giving contact details or containing legal disclaimers. However if you have a personal e mail account, it is easy and very profitable to write an e mail signature.

How many times do you send an e mail that is likely to be forwarded? You might think the answer is few - do you ever forward jokes? Jokes provide a golden opportunity to send your urls to a wide range of people. I'm lucky to have friends who send me joke e mails which I then forward. Unless you track your e mails (which I don't recommend), it is impossible to know how many people see a forwarded joke or message. Depending on the number of contacts in your address books, it could be from 10 to 10,000! In any event, it is an opportunity not to be missed. The key to this is simple - always delete existing urls in a forwarded e mail, so it only contains your signature and active links. If you wish to join my jokes list, and have suitable material to foward with your signature, complete my contact form (first of the links below).

Some mail programmes allow multiple signatures, thus providing variety. The pictures show Apple's iMail which has unlimited signature variants. It is extremely useful to be able to switch signatures as you write successive messages - your boss may not appreciate the fact that you're sending jokes! Additionally, some messages require a more somber and serious tone, so I tailor my signatures appropriately. Incidentally, I would have to think long and hard about using my home address - I don't think it is something you should normally consider in an e mail message. Here are a couple of examples:

#1:

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P J D Scott

Editor of hidden Dublin

http://www.hidden-dublin.com

For a hotter experience visit hidden Italy

http://www.hidden-italy.com

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#2:

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Dr Peter J D Scott

Associate Lecturer

Department of Music

University of Nottingham

University Park

Nottingham NG7 2RD

Editor of _Insider's guide to hidden Dublin_

http://www.hidden-dublin.com

Editor of _Hidden Italy_

http://www.hidden-italy.com

Please note that forwarding this message without permission is a breach of

confidence and may infringe copyright.

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Most of us are forum members - this is where you join a user group such as HubPages and provide contributions to special interest forums or message and discussion boards. While HubPages effectively provides a 'signature' through your profile information, many other boards require you to enter the information through your profile or account membership. It is also necessary to check the rules of the forum; many impose conditions on the use of signatures such as a maximum amount of signatures allowed and type of signatures. Some boards require you to post a certain number of messages, or write reviews before allowing you to include a signature.

The object of your signature is to get people to click on your url. Where possible keep your information short - the more lines of text before your url, the less likely the url to get clicks. You can simply include a url as your signature - sometimes it is advantageous to include a dividing line to differentiate it from the main body of message text. I like to include a line of text describing the content of the url; this is useful if your url does not give a clue. You generally don't have to do this with hubpages's urls since content is included.

Always, I repeat, always use the prefix "http://" before your url. The link will then be 'active' once sent. Most web mail programmes such as hotmail or Yahoo will not convert the prefix "www" into an active link; thus you are wasting your time since people will not bother to copy and paste your url into their browser.. Additionally, some urls do not include "www" whereas all urls begin with "http://". If you need convincing, enter "www.hubpages.com" into a url browser line and watch it automatically add "http://" to its opening.

How to know if you are succeeding?

If you are promoting your hub, the 'View Stats' button near the top of each of your hubs provides specific traffic information. Traffic from browser mail programmes appears as "mail.yahoo.com: #". If you have access to your website's traffic, then there will be no problem seeing the specific messages that worked to send people in your direction! Continue to think of fresh ways by which you can send your links - a little bit of imagination goes a long way to make your signature different.