Considering I spend anywhere from one to five hours a day reading blogs and several hours a week pitching them, I think I’m pretty good at spotting bloggy trends. Trend of the moment? Complaining about bad pitches.
Mommy bloggers do it; PR bloggers do it; Hell, there’s even an entire blog dedicated to it. And you know what? I’m damn sick of hearing about it. (Ok, it’s not like it’s a new phenomenon to complain about, but lately it’s been really ridiculous.)
I’m in “new media relations” and I’m a blogger, so it’s kind of my job to know how to pitch online, but every single time I do, I know it’s a crap shoot. You’re never going to please everybody and when cold pitching, you’re never quite sure how someone is going to react.
Some bloggers like hearing what post(s) lead you to their blog or how you found it. Some bloggers like you to ask if it’s ok to pitch them before you do so with a campaign. Some bloggers don’t like to be pitched at all, despite the fact that they list all of their contact information and do not explicitly state that they want no contact with PR. The bloggers I love state outright how to contact them and what to contact them with.
Granted, there are bad pitches out there. They come mostly from people who A.) don’t read the blogs and B.) pitch with traditional speak and press releases. There’s no excuse for those idiots and they deserve to be flamed. But for someone who READS THE BLOGS they pitch to, it’s rather annoying to see bloggers generalise the industry by saying that every PR person randomly spams his or her contact lists with no regard for content.
I implore bloggers everywhere to state exactly what they want and how they wish to be contacted because even if they haven’t been pitched before, sooner or later it’s going to happen. Just like all bloggers are different, all PR people are different and both camps will only to continue to complain about each other until we start communicating out in the open.
UPDATE: As for me (because I realise I’m being a giant hypocrite by not stating my wishes), go ahead - pitch or bitch. My e-mail is Melanie AT fakeplasticnoodles DOT com. I think I’ll need to update this in my About Me as well, eh?
August 16, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Amen! But you know, I think this trend exists because:
a) it’s easy to complain about and people are more apt to complain about something online, and
b) there must be a lot of bad, bad pitching going on out there. Memorably bad. I’m proud of our firm and the work we do but just because we do good work and have very good relationships with blog-based pubs doesn’t mean the industry as a whole isn’t saturating the blogosphere with bad pitches. BoingBoing, for example, politely reiterated their pitching policy the other day - because they are getting so much unwanted contact from marketers not following the process described right there on the front page under “how to pitch BoingBoing!”