The value of PR for bloggers
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008If you’re in the PR profession you may have seen the wiki recently created by Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani where she calls out and blacklists PR agencies that have “spammed” her.
Her wiki lists some big names in PR she says have continually sent pitches to her personal email address to which she specifically requested that no pitches be sent.
Like the list made last year by Wired editor, Chris Anderson, Trapani has added repeat offenders to an email blacklist that gets delivered directly to a spam folder.
And once again, the entire PR industry is being painted with broad brush strokes and labeled as “spammers” intent on making editors and bloggers lives miserable.
Happily, MoPR is absent from both Trapani’s and Anderson’s blacklists. We like to think it’s because we have tremendous regard for bloggers, whether they are journalists by profession, corporate CEOs or anyone else with enthusiasm and a brain who takes the time to write something meaningful.
We’re bloggers ourselves and have also been pitched by PR practitioners, and as such we’ve learned that working with bloggers takes some extra care and feeding that is a bit different than more traditional, news-oriented media.
As more businesses and PR agencies recognize the importance of social media and blogs in reaching their audiences, we are likewise noticing online anti-PR chatter getting louder while more blacklists keep cropping up. While it may be true that many PR pros need to sharpen their skills when dealing with bloggers, we also want to urge some practical thinking for these frustrated bloggers.
Believe it or not, bloggers, PR people play a vital role in the information value chain. Virtually everything being reported today in mainstream press, trade press or blogs – particularly in the tech world – was handled first by someone in public relations. Even though they may be biased toward the clients they represent, responsible PR people are deeply entrenched in the markets, technology and trends affecting their clients. Once you decide to work with the people in PR, you’ll quickly understand how valuable a resource they can be for you. And no, I’m not kidding.
Most bloggers are not Chris Anderson, who has assistants, a staff of researchers and another staff of writers who can provide him the information he needs, when he needs it, so he can write on the topic he wants to cover.
Most bloggers we work with are individuals (or small teams) who do everything on their own and are passionate about what they write. It’s simply not possible for the individual blogger to know everything about a market, a trend, a technology or anything else. PR people are devoted to providing that information to people who will write about their clients.
If you need a market stat, an interview, an analyst reference, a customer, a picture, a copy of a white paper, who better to turn to than someone in PR? Good PR people will know that providing market and trend information on background, even when their clients aren’t mentioned, is also good practice.
Many bloggers are experts in the subject they cover. Likewise, PR people need to be experts in the subjects they represent. And, chances are if you have been pitched by MoPR, then we’re reading your blog. Not just to ensure you’re a good fit, but to learn from it for our own education. It’s a two-way street.
On that note, we’d like to offer some tips to bloggers on getting the most from their interactions with people in PR. Here are some ideas to get a conversation going:
Include an “about us” page.
A quick paragraph describing what your blog’s mission is and what your content is about can help you in preventing needless pitches that waste your time. Experienced PR pros won’t take the “about us” at as a standalone descriptor of the blog, but will also read posts before pitching to ensure that whatever information we have to share is in fact a good fit. But not all pitches come from experienced PR pros, so the more information you can provide in your “about us” page, the better your interaction will be from the outset.
Let us know how you want to be pitched.
Hate press releases? We won’t send them. Would you rather be contacted with a 140-character Tweet? We can do that. Prefer getting news through an online submission form? Tell us. We don’t want to send you useless information any more then you want to receive it. Coming right out and sharing your preferences with us makes your job easier as well as ours.
Make it easy to contact you and list your name.
When we want to send a note to a blogger we always prefer to address them by their real name verses, “admin” or “editor.” But unless we are already a close friend of yours, we probably aren’t going to know your name unless you tell us. We want to build a mutually beneficial relationship with you, and sending that first introduction email to admin@ or editor@ isn’t a good start for either of us.
Fellow Oregonian, Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb had a great post last week examining the “Five Tools Everyone Working Online Should Have.” His No. 5 is “A Blog With Your Name and Contact Info.” In support of his opinion that everyone working online should have a blog of some sort attached to their name along with contact info, Kirkpatrick writes:
I put my phone number on my personal blog, and I write for the 11th most linked to blog on the web. I get maybe three unwanted phone calls a week as a result. That means that just about anyone else should be able to put their phone number and IM on their blogs as well. It’s so convenient to be able to get a hold of people in a hurry. When an opportunity arises, do you want to be easy to reach or do you want that opportunity to be taken by someone else who is? Undoubtedly this is a calculation that’s clearer for people less subject to harassment based on gender or race, but except in complicating circumstances your personal contact info should be available online if at all possible. Bad things are unlikely to happen.
We couldn’t agree more.
Want us to stop pitching you? Tell us. Go ahead. We can take it.
The last thing we want to do is waste our time and yours. Good PR practitioners are tenacious, and silence merely invites us to try and contact you again. A simple “no thanks” works wonders. But you know what works even better? Dialog, which leads to the next idea:
Start a dialog with PR people.
Even when you aren’t interested in what a PR agency is offering at the moment, it can often net you some other content that will be of interest. If we send you something that isn’t your cup of tea, consider taking a moment to let us know what would make it relevant to you. Sound far too time consuming? Well, we ask that you consider that PR agencies represent many clients and thus have new news on a pretty regular basis. If you take just a few moments to let us know why something isn’t a fit for you, or to tell us what you would be interested in hearing about or story ideas that are top of mind, we can rally to support your requests. Remember, we want to help you. From our personal experience blogging we’ve had a lot of success redirecting off-target pitches to get information we did find of interest.
Put all this information in one post or create a specific page for it. Many print publications have specific pages with instructions on how to send press materials. Once we read a blog to see if there’s a fit, it would work wonders if all this information, even a checklist, was in place to follow. Again, this might take some upfront time on your part, but will end-up protecting you from the “spam” and misguided pitches, and hopefully result in more on-target, relevant info, delivered according to your personal preferences.
You will always get pitched.
If you are getting pitched, it’s because your blog is easily found and has content that’s worth reading. Take it for the complement it is. Unfortunately, you will continue to get pitches not related to your core audience and topic. The better agencies and the PR people who understand your blog and your interests will rise to the top. Build relationships with them and they will offer value for a long time to come.
In her latest update on the prspammer wiki, Gina Trapani says:
I’m very happy to see this conversation happening. Thanks to everyone who has written about this issue. I look forward to the conversation effecting change.
So do we, Gina.
If you’re not familiar with the movie Snakes on a Plane (
About a year ago word got out that Samuel L. Jackson was committing career suicide by signing up to do a movie with the laughingly simple title Snakes on a Plane (a title that later became a Hollywood joke: “So-and-so can’t get a movie made, but New Line is making Snakes on a Plane”; “they’re already in preproduction for the sequel, Snakes on a Train”; “it’s a trilogy, the next movie is Snakes on a Submarine”).
Lets not forget the first movie to become an actual Internet phenom: The Blair Witch Project. In 1999, before there was a blogosphere, a $25,000 horror movie shot like a documentary was marketed almost exclusively via the World Wide Web until it could find a major distributor. Many people who saw the movie read the story on 
