A few people (mostly people selling courses) have been pushing the boundaries of signatures recently, with signatures that are essentially ad copy, often four lines or more, with attention-getting multicolor text and links, sometimes with emojis. What's worse, these same people tend to also post a lot, apparently in a cynical realization that the more they post, the more their blurb for their courses will be seen.
That's bad enough, and I probably should have made some new rules sooner, but then we got a report yesterday of a guy who had a 600x300 png in his signature, which was an ad for his MIDI packs. Full color and everything, including a coupon code for us lucky VI-Control members.
This is not what signatures are supposed to be about. They're supposed to be "Here's who I am," or "Here's a fun quip" or some other thing that's interesting for the membership in general. They're not supposed to be guerrilla marketing opportunities.
Many of us do have businesses, of course, so a simple link for that is cool, since it's nice to know who's associated with which companies. You can even include a few words describing this company or channel or product, but please refrain from sales pitches.
For anything commercial, don't use colors, bold, italics, larger fonts, or emojis. (That should maybe apply to regular members, too, but for those people, let's just say, "Please be tasteful.")
Also (for commercial operations), if it's more than one or two lines, there should be a good reason, like you have legitimately different companies. Not just three or four different ways to access your courses or product.
Note that these are mostly intended for people with commercial ventures (including selling in the Classifieds), so for regular members, don't stress out over your own signature. Also, long term members (even commercial ones) have much more leeway. I don't want to take the fun out of signatures, I just want to calm the marketing down.
As always, I'm open to other thoughts on this.
That's bad enough, and I probably should have made some new rules sooner, but then we got a report yesterday of a guy who had a 600x300 png in his signature, which was an ad for his MIDI packs. Full color and everything, including a coupon code for us lucky VI-Control members.
This is not what signatures are supposed to be about. They're supposed to be "Here's who I am," or "Here's a fun quip" or some other thing that's interesting for the membership in general. They're not supposed to be guerrilla marketing opportunities.
Many of us do have businesses, of course, so a simple link for that is cool, since it's nice to know who's associated with which companies. You can even include a few words describing this company or channel or product, but please refrain from sales pitches.
For anything commercial, don't use colors, bold, italics, larger fonts, or emojis. (That should maybe apply to regular members, too, but for those people, let's just say, "Please be tasteful.")
Also (for commercial operations), if it's more than one or two lines, there should be a good reason, like you have legitimately different companies. Not just three or four different ways to access your courses or product.
Note that these are mostly intended for people with commercial ventures (including selling in the Classifieds), so for regular members, don't stress out over your own signature. Also, long term members (even commercial ones) have much more leeway. I don't want to take the fun out of signatures, I just want to calm the marketing down.
As always, I'm open to other thoughts on this.
) First, five is a lot. A whole lot! Second, that section is intended for sincere people looking for advice on how to make their pieces better. Or the *occasional* piece from someone with a lot of experience and skill.
