Introduction to Email Protocols

Promotional Skills for The Chronically Amateur
(How to Get Your Message to the American Sheeple)

Part 7: Introduction to Email Protocols
by Shonda Ponder

© 2002, Shonda Ponder

Okay, now that we've spent time highlighting some important pointers about how to make your web site promotion-friendly, now we are going to talk about how to make recruits work for you. Once you have mastered the art of managing all of what we have covered so far, and a few more pointers we will cover, please be advised: your journey in the promotional arena is far from over.

We will discuss many more ways to promote your messages, and we will offer you many ways to enhance your skills on these subjects. But, for now, if all you are hoping for is a good solid web site that works at the grass-roots level, what you have already learned is sufficient for that. This section will help you to enhance that effort and make the grass-roots promotional quality even better.

Once you have your web site up and running, and you have laid out all the points of communication and interraction with your potential recruits, you will want to find a way to make that potential even stronger by putting your recruits to work. One way to do this is through the use of email. Most, who are amateur recruits in this area, simply will copy and paste your message from your web page onto their email and then send it to everyone in their address book. This is great for promotional value, but it also tends to open up other potential recruits to problems that they would rather not have.

For instance: most people who are likely to talk to other people about your work do not want their email addresses publicized for the world to see. If other recruitERS see that email address, they are likely to abuse it by adding it to their lists without permission, simply because the message may be in line with their own, and they make the assumption that the person who received that message is also an active recruitER. This may sometimes cause potential recruits to ask to not be sent any more messages from this person, and could cause them to drop out as an active player completely.

So, when sending emails about your message to great numbers of people you will need to have followed certain rules of thumb in order to keep the peace and to gain the trust of any potential recruits that may come to help you in the future. You must always be mindful of their privacy. You must always be thankful for their efforts. And, you must always work to make sure they are representing you in the best way possible so as not to cause any future misconceptions about your message.

It is virtually impossible (no pun intended) for you to know who your many recruiters are on the World Wide Web. So, here, we are going to discuss some wasy to cover your own behind in light of certain problems that may or may not arise in the future.

At Friends of Liberty, from time to time, I'll get emails that ask me to stop sending them emails from my lists. Sometimes, these are from people who are not even on my list. In order to insure that I am not violating any laws against spamming, there are certain rules that I must adhere to in order to be assured that no interruption of my networking ability will occur. We will speak about how to go about this as well.

This is Part 7 of "Promotional Skills for the Chronically Amateur"

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