Day: July 7, 2005

It’s fair to say that the PR blog authors you see listed on the left hand column of this page, regularly defend our profession against claims that we are unethical, lazy, unprofessional and dim. This blog often takes a stand to try and educate people that PR isn’t all about spin and Tom Cruise. It’s often a difficult pitch.

For as long as I can remember, and that’s quite a long time, journalists have bitched and moaned about the inadequacy of Public Relations. They are inundated with badly written, badly pitched, irrelevant stories and ideas. No matter how much they give out however, it never seems to change. That’s not to say there aren’t fantastic pitches taking place every day – there clearly are – but there are just as many poor pitches.

As blogs continue to proliferate, it should be no surprise that the art of poor pitching has migrated to the world of blog relations. We regularly read bloggers giving out about poorly thought out pitches. Furthermore, these inept PR pitches are potentially far more damaging than their media counterparts, because bloggers often name and shame the perpetrators – wouldn’t that fact alone make you think twice? Obviously not.

Anil Dash has written about a recent episode and has provided some guidelines on how to pitch a blogger effectively. It would be great if we all took the message on board, unfortunately I imagine the only people who will listen were the same people who would prepare a proper pitch in the first place. Maybe we should encourage an environment of name and shame?

Steve Rubel, David Parmet and BL Ochman have commented further on Anil’s post.

For anyone interested, here are some assembled links to more guidance on how to pitch a blogger:

• Don’t be a bad pitcher – Anil Dash
• How (Not) To Pitch A Blogger – Jeremy Wagstaff
• The Dos And Don’ts Of Dealing With The Press Online – Jeremy Wagstaff
• Another PR Mis-step – Jeremy Wagstaff
• How to Pitch Bloggers – Alice Marshall
• Pitching Blogs – Lloyd Trufelman and Laura Goldberg, Trylon Communications
• Links to content on Pitching Blogs – The New PR Wiki
• Pitching Blogs – Darren Barefoot
• Heath Row on Pitching Blogs – Topaz Partners
• Tips for Pitching Blogs – Elizabeth Albrycht
• A leaked PR Agency Memo on pitching bloggers – Nick Denton
• A positive PR pitch – Steve Outing
• Blogging for PR
  – Rich Ord
• 
  Gadget blogs gain in popularity and PR begins to take notice – PR Week
• Elevator Pitch on PR and Blogging – Kevin Dugan
• Blogging: PR’s True Claim to the Internet – Robb Hecht
• We are better than this – Matthew Podboy
• 
  Blog Relations: Lesson 201 – PR Opinions
• Blog Relations… the gift that keeps giving – PR Opinions
• 
  What happens if I hit your kneecap? – PR Opinions
• There’s no easy answer on the future of PR – PR Opinions
• You don’t actually need to bottle stupidity… – PR Opinions
• Measuring Blog Relations – PR Opinions
• Ethical Blog Relations – PR Opinions
• 
  Blog Relations… Lesson 201 – PR Opinions
• Blog Relations…. yes Blog Relations again. – PR Opinions
• Blog Relations… three chords and the truth – PR Opinions
• 
  Here we go again…. PR gone bad… – PR Opinions

Following yesterday’s post on changes to Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, ARmadgeddon has posted some thoughts.

While we’re on the subject of analysts, Alice Marshall points to research firm CMS Watch who cover the content management and enterprise search markets. They guarantee vendor neutral research and advice by their committment:

To retain our independence as a vendor-neutral analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never for the vendors we cover.

It’s an interesting departure. Research Firms would be well advised to re-evaluate their business models and how well those models are serving their customers – be they end-users or vendors.

In the past,James Governor at research firm Red Monk proposed the idea of Open-Source Research.