We all know how it goes. Spending hours upon hours searching for bloggers, journalists, editors, publishers and other content creation people to contact so your client can gain more exposure. And out of all those leads, you eventually get one or two positive replies. Brilliant! Link building can be tough on the best of us, and you know the big bosses will be happy with this news.
So you eagerly reply (while trying to keep your cool) that "the idea sounds great, how can we move forward?" and click send. And then you wait. And you wait…
You try to think of excuses why they haven’t replied: that the email got lost, that they’re off sick or maybe that they’re away on holiday and forgot to turn their out of office on. A week later, and you still haven’t heard anything.
No response. Nothing.
Even though they were the ones to express interest in working with you. Personally I don’t think it’s a particularly crazy idea making sure every email I receive gets a response within 48 hours, maximum. Surely this is the norm. So how can so many ‘interested’ parties convince us that they truly are, when they don’t email back?
It’s not exactly hard to tell me you’re not interested any more – I don’t even mind if you’re not, because that way I can move on. Maybe your editor doesn’t like the idea and hasn’t approved it? Again, that’s fine. Maybe it’s just that you’ve got too much on right now, but you will get back in touch in a few weeks? Bish bash bosh, once more, that’s fine. All in all, I love it when people are honest with me: deadlines are made to be pushed back.
We’re all so busy in our jobs, it’s no wonder these things slip through the net sometimes. But please, journos, editors, publishers and content creation people, just don’t lead me on only to leave me hanging.
Elena Lockett is a marketing assistant at FM Outsource
