E-mail Signatures: How Long Should It Be?

I wear many hats and take on various roles in my life both personally and professionally. Right now, I have one e-mail address that I use for business and personal purposes. I was told that your e-mail signature is an important part of personal branding: you should have one that says constant.

Well that’s great but what if you want to be perceived differently by different people? For example, I am the VP of Public Relations of my local Toastmasters club. I don’t need people to know about my Twitter account, blog or LinkedIn account. They couldn’t care less frankly because that’s not why they e-mailed me in the first place, they just wanted information about Toastmasters.

Say if you were to have an e-mail signature, what would it include? Your LinkedIn profile? Twitter name? Facebook profile? Blog? Visual CV? Phone number? E-mail? Fax? YouTube account? Google Profile? Not to mention all of the other social networking sites.

When does it become too much? How do you choose what goes on your e-mail signature?

Comments

[SEO Services]

Interesting information ! If you want to achieve a different image through personal branding then email signatures builds a huge impact .

[Kimberley Mosher]

I am in the same situation; I have both personal and business going in and out of one email address. I find at the moment, I leave my full name and phone number as my signature, and if something comes along, that could benefit from specific additional information, such as twitter, linkedin or my personal blog, I add it to my signature as a reply.

Ultimately, your personal brand it up to you, and the more comfortable you are with your brand, the more you will include and potentially benefit from.

[Andrew Ballenthin]

The rule I go by is that if you work for separate companies then yes, a seperte and tailored siganture for each company is a must. However if you are the brand and consulting to multiple companies, one signature will do for all.

In order to grow loyalty people need to know where they can find you over time. Time being the key factor; they may not pay attention to your signature the first 20 times they see it but they may act on it one day. Should they find your content valuable you've deepened that relationship exponentially without additional effort.

However, when in doubt, keep it simple.

[Julie Tyios]

GizaPage is one way of solving it, like Craig mentioned. I learned long ago that it was best to divide my online activity into several different email addresses. I use my company's domain addy for work-related business and anywhere else I want to promote my work. Naturally, that signature includes all my business contact info (title, phone number, Twitter, web site).

The other email addresses I use include general contact info such as my cell and some professional titles. I think one of the worst things you can do is bombard people with a lot of information in your signature - it becomes too confusing and too intimidating. I believe keeping it short and simple is best.

[Craig M. Jamieson]

One link to GizaPage. I too get tired of providing, and looking at, multiple links :) http://craigmjamieson.gizapage.com/

Thanks!

Craig