When reaching out to bloggers, don't ask for them to write about you!

Lately I've been getting dozens of pitches a week from PR people who want me to write about their stuff on this blog. Most of the pitches are just spam, with the PR types using the exact same techniques that they have used with journalists for years.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. That's what PR people do to bloggers now. And then at the end of their email they basically say: "please write about me."

Here are portions of actual emails I've received recently. (I've paraphrased or modified to remove the identity of the people who contacted me).

"Would [this news] be something you are interested in covering? If so, when would be the first time you could publish something on it?"

"Are you going to be able to post something about...? I can send you suggested copy."

"Can I send you [the new book] so you can review it on your blog?"

(It's not just me. Other bloggers I've spoken with have the same problem with PR people.)

Here's the thing. Bloggers are not the same as journalists. We don't have editors telling us what to do. We write about what interests us and we are always on the lookout for things to share. But it is not our job to write about you and your stuff.

Here is an important point missed by virtually everyone - bloggers have other identities and can help you in other ways:

> Would you be happy if I talked about your stuff in front of the 20,000 people I speak to at conferences and events per year?

> Would you like to see your stuff profiled in my next ebook? (The last one has been downloaded 100,000 times in three months).

> Want to be in my next dead tree book?

> How about if I wrote about it in one of the magazines I write for?

> What if I mention your company the next time I am on the phone with The Wall Street Journal?

> Or perhaps I could write something in one of the other blogs I contribute to such as The Tuned In blog?

> What about a tweet on something you did?

It's OK to share things with a blogger that you feel they might be interested in. Just don't spam them with broadcast pitches and whatever you do, don't ask for coverage. We all know why you contacted us -- don't belittle the information you send and embarrass yourself by begging.

Want the good news? I'm always looking for things that are of interest to me! I'm happy to have you send stuff my way. (Other bloggers are too). But don't ask me to write about it on this blog. And don't send me the same pitch that you sent to dozens of others.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's bonus information for alert readers like you. I am currently looking for interesting examples of online viral marketing for possible use in an upcoming hardcover book I am writing that will come out in 2009. If you have a great example of reaching people online, go ahead and send it to me via email. Hey, maybe I'll even write about it on this blog too.

Comments

[Rick Weiss]

A lot of PR professionals haven't even begun to "get" the social media space. Like you said, media relations and social media relations should be treated differently, because they're very different beasts.

I'm lucky enough to have been exposed to social media at school, and as I establish myself in the field you can be sure I'm not going to send you a canned pitch that you care nothing about.

[Lou Covey]

I think we need to have a differentiation between public relations and publicity. A publicist works to get mentions of clients in various media without much concern for where it shows up. A public relations professional builds a relationship with industry influencers to provide the latter with perspective in what they communicate to the audience.

[Wendy Van Parys]

Back in 9/07 you pointed readers to Mark Hinkle's How to Pitch a Blogger post, and later followed up with a post reminding PR folks to let the blogger know to which of his many hats the pitch was directed. Apollo moon artifacts blog? Squidoo lens?

BTW- for those readers who haven't heard you speak - David will turn your thinking around 180° - I heard him at a PRSA meeting, bought + read the book, put the tips to work and moved a client's organic Google ranking from non-existant to p1 on their most important keywords.

[Scott Hepburn]

Great post, David. Most of us are accustomed to thinking of spam as consumer-oriented commercial rubbish. How easily we forget those junk e-mails when we turn around and push out e-mail in our roles as PR pitchmen.

As anyone who has read your "New Rules of PR" eBook can attest, press releases find amazing life online. I suspect some of us become spoiled -- and lazy -- when we see how easy and effective an eRelease can be. It's no surprise some of us lapse into expecting the same great results when we spam bloggers.

[claudia]

Great read! Thanks for sharing the knowledge. I'm new in this line and am always learning and hopefully improving. Will sure be back here for more useful knowledge and posts.

[Ken Kadet]

I hate to tell you this, but that list of all the things you do is just going to get you more spam, not less. :-)

As a PR pro, I agree with what you're saying -- it's really no different than what the journalists have been saying for years, despite the fact that it's their job: read what I write, send me interesting things, don't call me, don't bug me, don't tell me what to write -- if I'm interested, I'll call you.

Unfortunately, the number of blogs out there exacerbates the problem. Just when the best agencies stopped making inexperienced kids make ignorant pitches to massive media lists, the blogs come along and make the experienced media relations folks think the kids know all the secrets of social media ... so they send the kids after the bloggers.

On the other hand, as you note, there *are* things you want to find out about ... so every so often, unfortunately, even a ham-handed pitch is going to work...

[Yifei Zhang]

Hey David,

You might be interested to hear about a girl's Facebook group that spread to 600,000+ people in little more than a week - and is still growing. The girl's name is Monica Rockle, and there's growing debate about whether or not her "marketing project" was actually an experiment by an advertiser.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25097279304

In unrelated news, thanks for the fantastic presentation at the BU PRSSA conference today! I really appreciated your input on my Digg.com fundraiser/Seth Godin internship application. I'll definitely let you know how it goes. Thanks again,

Yifei

[David Koopmans]

Hi David,
Since I reviewed your book http://tinyurl.com/22eu87, I get requests from PR people fairly regularly to review their authors' books.
1 - I want to hear from the author, not their PR person
2 - When I write back that I'm happy to do that, but that I will write exactly what I think of the book, they don't return my email. Interesting, no?
BTW, I enjoyed your podcast interview with Jon Hoel from PR Junction.