Monday, January 10, 2005
How to Pitch Bloggers
Technoflak will be teaching the How to Pitch Bloggers Workshop at the New Communications Forum. Obviously I have my own ideas about this, but I would be interested in what my readers think. Are you a blogger? What pitches did you use? What gets your delete button? What gets your PR hall of shame?
Have you successfully pitched a blog? What are the differences between pitching a journalists and a blogger in your experience?
Edit-
Ed Cone has some advice that goes to the heart of all PR pitches, “think less about what I can do for you than what you can do for me.”
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2 comments:
Thank you. This reinforces my own views, but adds some additional insight.
The top failing among PR agencies and vendor marketing/PR pitching my site (Tekrati Industry Analyst Reporter) has been in sending me items that are clearly outside my editorial scope. It's particularly annoying to get a personalized email from someone who clearly never looked at the site. I do not reply to or acknowledge those emails.
Given the sudden rise of directories of blogs, I fully expect to end up on many more PR distribution lists compiled without validation.
The number 2 failing is in not trying to convince me to cover their client's research initiatives, which are outside my editorial beat but very closely related. No one has tried to engage me in a conversation about the value of covering analyst reports or teleconferences sponsored by their vendor clients. So, of course, I continue not to cover them. This situation amuses me, because their clients pay big bucks for integrating the analysts into marketing collateral and lead generation. What other editorial coverage will they get? I guess I would label this as a missed opportunity -- perhaps a lack of understanding of the more fluid and inspiration-based approach to editorial in new Web media.
On the more pleasant side, the winning tactics are used by people like you: a concise, personal (as opposed to personalized) email that describes the proposed content in a way that enables me to see immediately why the item is of interest to me. I give these people my direct email address and encourage them to send submissions at any time. And, I assume two things: these people are validating their blog/new media outreach lists carefully; and these people understand that being less formal is not the same thing as being less professional, when contacting publishers.
On a related note, I'm preparing to convert one of my standard news columns, "AR Scene", to a true blog, and am looking forward to learning from you and the others at Blog U. This will be the first content area of the site that I open to reader comments -- a touchy feature when you cover industry analyst research -- and to my own comments.
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