Earlier this week, my friend Catherine posted a Tweet about her mother’s new web­site. It was a ges­ture from a lov­ing and proud daugh­ter — this was her mother’s first foray into so­cial net­work­ing and Catherine wanted to give the web­site a lit­tle ex­po­sure. The re­sponses from Catherine’s fol­low­ers on Twitter and Facebook were wel­com­ing, kind and gracious.

I re­mem­ber how ner­vous I was when I pub­lished by first blog post. Unlike post­ing a note on Facebook, it was out there for the whole world to read and com­ment on. I over­came my fears be­cause: a) I had con­fi­dence in my writ­ing skills; b) I have a thick skin that makes me im­per­vi­ous to trolls; and c) I had a great net­work of friends and col­leagues that sup­ported and guided me.

But if you’re a 60-year-old woman who lives in a small town and is un­fa­mil­iar with so­cial net­work­ing, start­ing a web­site can be a daunt­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. It cer­tainly doesn’t help when your first ef­forts get slammed by a stranger.

The fol­low­ing is an email sent to Catherine’s mom that same evening.

From: pete@xxxxxxxx.ca
Subject: Hi Helen.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009

First, I know am prob­a­bly go­ing to re­gret this. I just know I will. My apolo­gies up front!

It gen­er­ally hap­pens when I poke my nose in where it does not belong.

Ok, that be­ing over with — here is the scoop.

Your daugh­ter whom I have never met, but see on that stu­pid thing called Twitter some­time, just an­nounced that your NEW web­site was up and running.

GOOD FOR YOU!!!

Well, I went and had a peak.

Here is where I will start to re­gret all this …

First, my back­ground is on­line. I have built well-over 1000 sites. They (who ever the heck they are) say I am an ex­pert in this stuff and have been on­line from day one, in truth
well be­fore the web was in­vented. I am also a writer and a pho­tog­ra­pher and a musician.

I am happy you have a site. We should all have sites.

However, and I am not sure how to put this, yours is horrible.

I am sorry, I am not try­ing to be rude.

And I am not talk­ing about look and feel or de­sign al­though it is not as good as you de­serve — there are sim­ply things that have been done in­cor­rectly and will more than likely di­min­ish your brand.

Here have a look …

http://​www​.xxxxxxx​.ca/​h​e​l​e​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​tml

I did this in 10 min­utes. I used a sim­ple tem­plate I had sit­ting around — there are a lot of tem­plates just like this. http://​www​.styleshout​.com/​f​r​e​e​-​t​e​m​p​l​a​t​e​s​.​p​h​p​?​p​a​g​e=1

I am not sug­gest­ing you use what I have done. There are prob­a­bly dozens you would like better.

This site is built prop­erly. Meaning peo­ple can nav­i­gate through it and it will be found buy search en­gines and a bunch of other stuff I will not bore you with.

I tried to get hold of your daugh­ter to see if I could get her to bridge this — but she did not get the mes­sage (the Twitter thing is use­less at con­tact­ing peo­ple — prob­a­bly a good thing)

Anyway — please ac­cept this mes­sage in the spirit it is intended.

Your daugh­ter seems like a great Gal and more­over you seem pretty amaz­ing your­self. You need a bet­ter on­line presence.

I just hate see­ing peo­ple do what I con­sider is the wrong thing.

And if you want this work I did — I will hap­pily com­plete it of course — this was 10 min­utes work so I would add your gallery and what is miss­ing. It is no charge.

Cheers

Pete

[Business con­tact in­for­ma­tion re­moved.]

I can’t even be­gin to list all the things that are so wrong with this email. I won’t go into the ob­vi­ous, but here are a few that stand out:

1. The un­so­licited sales pitch. Yes, this was a sales pitch, al­beit a very poor one. I don’t care how care­fully you choose your words or try to be friendly, when you list your CV and of­fer your help at “no charge”, you are sell­ing some­thing. If you are truly in­ter­ested in help­ing some­one, with no self­ish mo­tives, then start a con­ver­sa­tion. Don’t be a spambot.

2. The ca­sual tone of the email. Pete has never met Catherine or her mother, yet he thinks it is per­fectly okay to speak to and about them as if they’re friends. And don’t get me started on the “great GAL” comment.

3. It’s never a good idea to in­sult the per­son you are try­ing to help/sell to. Hard to get buy-in from a per­son whose web­site you de­scribe as “hor­ri­ble”. Hint: look up “fi­nesse” in the dictionary.

4. Was he that anx­ious to tell Helen how “hor­ri­ble” her site was that he couldn’t wait one day to hear back from Catherine? Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, Twitter IS a good way of con­tact­ing peo­ple you don’t know. Just don’t ex­pect an in­stant re­sponse if they don’t know you per­son­ally. (And if you think it’s a “stu­pid thing”, then maybe you shouldn’t be on it.)

5. Just be­cause you call your­self an ex­pert, doesn’t mean you are one. “I just hate see­ing peo­ple do what I con­sider is the wrong thing.” Pete should have taken the time to find out the pur­pose of the web­site be­fore mak­ing this ar­bi­trary call. The site is clean and easy to nav­i­gate; it’s a fo­rum to show­case her work to friends and col­leagues. What is so “wrong” with that?

6. If you think you are be­ing rude, and if you think you’ll re­gret what you say, then don’t say it. Stating it up­front in your email does not mit­i­gate the dam­age that will follow.

To the un­fa­mil­iar and unini­ti­ated, the Internet can be quite in­tim­i­dat­ing. Some of us put aside our fears and dive right in. Others pre­fer to dip their toes in to get a feel for the tem­per­a­ture — let’s in­vite them in, and not push them un­der the water.