Hi, I hope you are well! and other fibs

I made a discovery this week in the form of my spam folder. I know all email accounts come with a junk folder, but because of the layout of gmail, I’ve just never noticed it before because it's hidden under the 'More' option.

I don’t know how many I’ve missed previously as they’re automatically deleted every 30 days or so (or something like that) but when I found it, it had over 40 emails in there and all bar one (a single genuine correspondence) had a running theme of what a crap job I was doing in regards to website design, managing and SEO. Cheers for that!

I’ve already admitted that I’m no expert. I’m learning as I go and as a small business in its first year, it is a huge learning curve. I’m not completely clueless either which is just as well because to see these multiples of people telling me how wrong I have everything... it’s not exactly a confidence booster. But of course that is the point of them.

“I hope you are well!

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

Hi, I was looking at your website...

Hi, I wanted to reach out...”

The ‘reach out’ ones always brings up a mental image of someone suddenly stretching their arm out from their keyboard and singing the Four Tops! My brain goes on random detours sometimes, which is ok when reading, but inappropriate in person and I miss half the conversation.

Regardless of the friendly beginning, the content is always ‘I’d like to help you with your website/SEO/social media content*... (*delete as appropriate).

I’ve even had emails with the same content but from a different “magazine”, offering me a featured prime position complete with full contact details, image and 130 words of text all for the special rate of £120, that will be read by Harrods customers, first class travellers at various airports and occupiers of 5 star hotel rooms. “Turning Dreams into Reality” ......... yeah if that dream happens to be a nightmare of being ripped off.

There are genuine individuals and companies out there that can help you with marketing, SEO and so on, they’re just highly unlikely to be emailing you to tell you you’re doing it wrong and offering to put it right for an undisclosed sum. I’m always tempted to email back with a “Hi hope you are well! I had a search for you but you don’t appear in any of Googles top searches. Would you like some help with that?”

Apart from having no clue about SEO and a rubbish website (according to my spam folder), it’s been a good week of both makes and sales. I also now have permission to have a full blown panic at leisure because my confirmation came through that I have a craft table at a local show next month. I have prepared a decent forest of trees for it as well as other bits and pieces; banner, tablecloth, business cards, flyers and a card reader, although the card reader will end up being table decor if there is no internet signal there to get it working! That isn’t even phasing me because I’m still reeling at the fact I have to be there at 7am. In the morning! I wonder if I should order a blow up mattress...?

❤