Perfecting The Social Media Email Signature

In the old days, email signatures pretty much just mirrored business card information: name, company, title, phone, fax (gotta love that 80's technology still hanging on!) and email address. For most people, that's still the only information their email signature provides.

A growing number of Web 2.0-savvy executives, however, are breaking out of the old mold and creatively integrating social networking into their email sign-off. After all, the two purposes of an email signature are to tell the recipient a little about yourself (e.g., your title, company and location) and to give them different ways to contact you. Social networking sites are simply an extension of those two functions, giving other people more information about yourself and additional ways to interact.

Based on my informal research, here are the most popular social media elements people are adding to their Web 2.0 email signatures:

Twitter page, LinkedIn profile and blog link: these are the most popular social networking elements, used in about half of Web 2.0 signatures.

Skype ID and Facebook page: these are used in a quarter of the signatures I looked at.

YouTube, StumbleUpon, Technorati and Second Life: about 20% of Web 2.0 email signatures include buttons for StumbleUpon or "add this blog to my favorites" on Technorati, links to a company's online videos, and/or the sender's Second Life name.

Social media email signatures can also include elements like AIM name, Digg page, Sphinn profile and Ning group.

Here are a few notable examples of Web 2.0 email signatures (used with permission):

Jon Rognerud
An author and SEO expert, Jon's email signature includes:
follow me at http://twitter.com/jonrognerud
reply on the web at http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/jonrognerud
send me a direct message from your phone or IM: D JONROGNERUD your message here.

(BTW, Jon has really got the reputation management thing nailed, as a Google search on his name quickly reveals.)

Christina L. Greene
Christina, an interactive PR pro with The Advance Guard, had the first email signature I'd ever seen that included her Second Life name. She also includes her Skype ID.

Dr. Richard D. Hackathorn
The email signature of the president of Bolder Technology, Inc. includes all of the usual information plus his Second Life name, Skype ID, blog and LinkedIn profile button.

giovanni gallucci (yes, his name is lowercase in his actual email signature)
viewzi evangelist
o: 214.580.20** | m: 469.682.69**
blog: viewziblog.com
video: viewzi.tv
facebook: *****
linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ggallucci
twitter: twitter.com/giovanni

Included in the email signature of a contact from London-based search engine marketing agency Accuracast is:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/accuracast
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/AccuraCast

Brian Critchfield
Brian, the "Chief Navel Gazer" at Navel Marketing, enhances his email signature with his Skype ID and LinkedIn profile.

Terra Andersen
Entrepreneur and Internet Business Consultant

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Matthew Balthazor
This Senior Marketing Manager at TechWeb added his Twitter link and Facebook profile to a standard email signature.

But the best Web 2.0 / social media email signature I've seen so far belongs to...Guy Kawasaki. Here it is, with just a few bits of personal information stripped out:

Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki
Nononina, Inc.
360 Bryant Street, Suite 100
Palo Alto, CA 94301
http://alltop.com/

****@alltop.com (best way to get in touch)
650-838-08** office (you'll never get me here)
650-387-92** cell (Spinvox will convert voicemail to email so I don’t have to listen to people ramble)
650-853-2416 fax (what's a fax?)

http://twitter.com/guykawasaki (if you have no life)
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/ (if you want to see why I have no life)
http://holykaw.com/ (if you want to see how I have fun in my life)

*****

Contact Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com

Comments

Anonymous said…

Tom

This is a great blog, you seem to be knowledgeable! Keep the good work going!

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