John Zagula and Rich Tong are ex-Microsoft marketers behind the Marketing Playbook blog which is a useful resource for anyone with an interest in marketing – which should be everyone in Public Relations :-).
They’re launching a new book this month called, funnily enough The Marketing Playbook. The book offers five marketing “plays” and draws heavily from their experience in Microsoft – no bad thing given Microsoft’s marketing success.
I’ve only read over a draft so I can’t in all honesty give it a glowing review but the pieces I read were interesting and tied back into actual marketing campaign examples – which I’m a big fan of.
John obviously pitched a lot of bloggers with the book and a few bloggers took umbrage with it.
I’m not one of those. The pitch that I got was relatively personalized and was similar to the majority of pitches I get every day from people looking to promote something. The problem of course is that every blog author is different and to placate the potentially more “sensitive” bloggers it is important that you tie the pitch to something they’ve written about or are passionate about.
Blog relations really isn’t that different to good media relations. Know the title, know the journalists, understand their perspective and tailor your pitch to make it appropriate. Anyhow, I think some bloggers were a little harsh on John, but then maybe it’s because as a PR person you can sympathise!
Murphy's Law 