Notary Newsletters Coming Out Of My Ear

You want to increase your visibility as a notary.  You want to create traffic, establish your reputation, show that you're knowledgeable, and show that you're a leader in the industry.  And you decide one of the ways you can do this is to develop and distribute a newsletter.  Great idea.  Those are some of reasons I've been doing this blog for almost 4 years. 

But what I've seen too often lately, what is just totally unacceptable, is signing people up for a newsletter that they didn't ask for.  Suddenly, many of us have been inundated with notary newsletters.  And a few of them may actually be decent, but that doesn't matter.  You don't sign people up if they don't request it.  Otherwise, it's called SPAM.  At the very least, it's highly annoying and tacky.  And at most, it's illegal and can land you a nice hefty fine for every instance.

So, you want to do a newsletter?  Peachy. But don't swipe your colleagues emails from Notary Rotary, Active Rain, Notary 123, Merchant Circle, LinkedIn, or anywhere else.  Ask permission, post it on your website and other listings, and create a Facebook page and ask for "likes," (which is what the American Association of Notaries did, and I happily accepted).  Otherwise, it's just more unwanted noise.