Recently in PR/Marketing Category

A few weeks ago I met, in person at a social event, a PR professional who sends me press releases for Consuming Louisville. I have occasionally written posts based on information sent to me in this person's press releases but for the most part the releases go to the trash. Why? Well let me quote from the Blog Pitch Policy on Consuming Louisville.

Emails that sound like press releases, press release attachments without actual email messages and other communication that could have just as easily been sent to and from a robot do not hold my attention. Since I'm a real person and you're a real person I'd encourage you to make our interaction person-to-person conversation instead of an email blast to a marketing list. I like people, I don't like email marketing blasts.

Can you guess what kind of contact I get from the PR professional? If I were scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for content maybe I'd be interested in email marketing blasts. If I were one of a staff of many maybe I'd take the time to wade through all of the press releases I get that seem uninteresting at first glance. If I were a print journalist maybe I'd want to be on the email marketing blast list and get the exact same impersonal press releases.

After a couple drinks the PR professional wanted to discuss the frequency, or lack therefore, of posts relating to information he had sent me. He also took issue with my blog pitch policy. He was a little aggressive when he said "why do you have to have things differently than everyone else? All the other publications want it this way." Well see, there's the problem. By "all the other publications" he meant "all the other print publications." I'm not a print journalist. Consuming Louisville is not a newspaper or print magazine. It's a blog. It's a blog I take as seriously as a newspaper writer takes his daily paper but it's still a blog. So stop pitching me like I'm a print journalist. Let's have conversation, let's build a relationship. You, Mr. PR Professional, are one person, sending information to me, one other person. Remember that and plan your communication accordingly. 

My good friend and fellow Social Media Club Louisville board member Jason Falls was recently interviewed and had some interesting thoughts on pitching bloggers versus pitching traditional journalists. He agrees that pr folks shouldn't be pitching bloggers like pitch journals, instead he says they should be pitching print journalists like bloggers:

11. @jaybaer: Do you advocate distinctly different outreach methodologies for bloggers and traditional journalists?

• @jasonfalls: Absolutely NOT. Problem with most PR is they've been reaching out to traditional media wrong. Bloggers are teaching us that.

12. @jaybaer: Very interesting. You're saying treat journalists like bloggers, not the other way around? Relevant, focused pitching, etc.?

• @jasonfalls: Damn straight. Key to blogger outreach is relationships, same as traditional media. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

As always, Jason Falls cuts to the heart of the issue.

You might think, that after meeting me in person, and chatting with me about these issues PR professional would have taken a step or two toward building a working relationship with me. No go. The same old press releases and canned emails are still going to the same trash bin.

Last week I wrote five tips for PR/marketers pitching bloggers. I had two objectives for writing those tips. The first was completely selfish, I'd really like to see a decrease in the number of irrelevant, uninteresting pitches I receive. The second was more altruistic, I want to, in my small way, help ease the relationship (and potential relationship) between bloggers and marketers.

The relationship between bloggers and pr people is so new the boundaries, rules and codes of conduct aren't set yet. Some bloggers want to be pitched, some don't. Some think press releases and pitches are potentially interesting pieces of information they might want to pass onto their readers. Others think pr pitches are nothing more than spam.

I've had my share of bad pitches and even pr spam but as fun as it is just to complain about bad pitches and watch from the sidelines as bloggers and pr folks spar it doesn't really improve anything does it? While I'd very much agree that it is the responsibility of the PR industry not to spam bloggers it would benefit bloggers to be more proactive in helping the PR industry figure out what is and isn't spam, what is and isn't appropriate in terms of pitches, etc. I'm willing to bet if you lay out your ground rules for being pitched most in the PR industry will respect them.

So I encourage bloggers to implement Blog Pitch Policies and very much encourage PR folks to respect them.

Here is my very brief outline and the Consuming Louisville Blog Pitch Policy. Do with it as you will. 

Social Media is a brand new world for many experienced pr and marketing world people. They can't count on all the old rules and procedures that have always been in place. Bloggers aren't newspaper writers, they aren't magazine editors. They are a new, unique entity all their own with different protocols and etiquette. It's rude not to mention inefficient to complain about bad pitches or bad pr people and not try to help them learn to be better when dealing with bloggers.

In the spirit of helpfulness here are five tips for marketers and pr staff to keep in mind when pitching bloggers.

1. Know why you're pitching a specific blogger
Read the blog. I don't mean read the three most recent articles, I mean spend some time in the archives, subscribe to the feed, become familiar with the writer's style and her subject matter. Don't just pitch her because she's a woman and your company or client wants to sell products to women. If you can't figure out a specific reason to pitch this blogger other than she fits into a certain demographic box then don't pitch her. And I'm talking a real reason here. If someone writes about Apple products almost exclusively then she isn't a generic tech blogger and doesn't want to hear about your new software for Vista. If he's a vegetarian food blogger interested in the slow food movement he probably doesn't want to hear about your client's new line of frozen dinners.

Simon Blint is the Director of Visitor Relations for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  He is also a man who until last week had a very small online footprint. Until last week if you Googled Mr. Blint you might have found his Facebook profile and little more. That exercise now will bring you many, many results all discussing his alteracation with a photographer in the museum. Very few, if any, of these discussions put Mr. Blint in a positive light. IN fact most of them make Mr. Blint appear petty, controlling and absolutely not someone you'd want as the director of visitor relations. I say these conversations make Mr. Blint "appear" because neither Mr. Blint or the SF Moma is talking. He might have a perfectly logical explanation for kicking a photographer who was following the letter of the museum's photography policy but since he isn't saying anything we don't know that.