Like many out there, my inbox is flooded with social media whitepapers desperately waiting for me to open. To be honest, having read a lot of them over the past year or two, a lot of these whitepapers say very similar things to me. Today, I was somewhat interested in taking a look at one that talks about how to improve service through social media.
Is it just me or are these companies making it way too inconvenient to download these whitepapers? I clicked on ‘Download’ and it brought me to a page requesting for my info. “Just 3 Easy Steps” it claims. Unfortunately, I think it’s “3 Steps” too many. Don’t they already have my email? Why are they asking for it again? If another company’s whitepaper is featured, perhaps it’s time for a re-examination of the privacy policy and allow us an option to transfer our permission to third parties to access our information. I’ve gone through this process too many times and today I decided to go against it. I closed the email and deleted it. I didn’t feel it was worth my time to do it all again, to read information I most likely have read already or can get easily elsewhere.
Now they’ve lost the opportunity for me to share information with the rest of the team. I’ll tolerate signing in with existing information to view the information. I’m also willing to sign up from scratch where I haven’t before. That’s fair game. Making me sign up again and making me answer the same questions from the same place? Not acceptable.
