9 Responses

1. laurent

   16|Dec|2008 1

   Your best practices are basics of good communication. I’ve talked to a few people doing outreach and when I ask them if they make an effort to personalize the pitch, they answer ‘if i have time’. That’s the sticky point I think, it does take time to read blogs and under the pressure of deadline and cost, most won’t bother. Big mistake because to quote Seth Godin on a different topic: “ads that went to people who wanted them outperformed (50:1) ads aimed at strangers”…

2. David Alston

   16|Dec|2008 2

   Hey there Bryan,

   It’s definitely great to see Cision active in social media community. And we are very pleased to be powering their social media dashboard.

   Hope all is well and you have a great holiday break. I promise to get that interview out someday before I retire

   Cheers.
   David

3. Brett Safron

   16|Dec|2008 3

   Bryan,

   Again, it was a pleasure to have you join us in Boston! We present this material often but your participation definitely provided an angle to the PR pros in the room that we are not able to give them. It was apparent by their questions the high level of interest in the subject matter.

   Like we mentioned in that meeting, it is important to remember that many social media contacts were not traditional media journalists before entering the electronic realm. Similar to your own experience, they wonder how and why they are being contacted. Keeping that in mind when contacting them with a pitch can be of great benefit.

   Hope we can hook up again for another meeting sometime soon!

   Brett

4. Steve Mullen

   16|Dec|2008 4

   Thanks for compiling this information. May I suggest an addition?

   *Even if you don’t bother to READ the blog, at least SEARCH the blog to make sure the topic hasn’t already been covered.

   I have a small business advice podcast (Startup BizCast) and I’m frequently pitched by PR people. It’s always amusing to me when I’m pitched, because I am *also* a PR person. I’m open to pitches because, to be honest, they make my job finding guests easier and it expands my network of PR friends. What I don’t like, however, is when someone pitches me a topic I’ve already done. To me, this is almost worse than off-topic pitches. I have covered a lot of ground in the 75 episodes I’ve published (76 this week). If you have an idea, there’s a clearly marked search function on the blog that houses the podcast, and it’s pretty easy to use. Use it!

5. Jeff

   16|Dec|2008 5

   As a PR person, I cringe at this type of behavior. However, while our side of the table certainly has the majority of ill-planned pitches, it is important to remember we deal with our fair share of silliness from the other side. A recent query I saw from a reporter seeking an expert who knew if basketball shooting percentages decreased the further a player was from the hoop comes to mind.

   I think the best thing I saw was your comment in another spot mentioning that you have in the past talked to a bad pitcher and managed to form a friendship. On both sides, it is important to keep an open mind.

   I think when either side gets too arrogant and hung up on their time being “too valuable,” we forget that we are in fact two people, on some level, just trying to help each other out. Sometimes it is just an honest mistake. Maybe not most times, but…

   Finally, here is an entertaining column of the publicist, wrongly pitched columnist, and Bacon’s. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102027.html

6. BryanPerson

   16|Dec|2008 6

   @Laurent: I understand that it’s not realistic to expect all PR people to be regular readers of the bloggers they’re pitching. But I do think they can spend some time (10 minutes?) reading through some of that blog and saving themselves on the pitches that aren’t likely to ever result in a match. In the end, that means fewer total pitches, but it should also correspond to a higher percentages of successful pitches. Of course, some of those goes back to setting the right expectations for the client. “We’re not going with the pray-and-spray approach of an e-mail blast to 500 bloggers. Instead, we’re going to spend more time researching and finding the right bloggers to pitch. That might only mean we contact 30 or 40, but we think we’ll be just as successful — if not more so — by taking a more targeted approach.”

   @David Alston: No worries — and no pressure!

   @Brett Safron: Excellent point on yet another difference between bloggers and journalists. Many bloggers don’t understand why their being contacted the way they are, or that that e-mail addresses might have been added to a datbase like Cision’s. So how can work we work to improve on that communication?

   @Steve Mullen: Good suggestion — although in defense of the PR person who pitches you on a topic you already covered (perhaps more than a year or two ago), what’s to say you can’t cover a similar issue more than once? Perhaps with a new angle? Of course if the PR person does his/her research, he/she can propose as such in the pitch.

   @Jeff: That’s Washington Post column had me laughing out loud! Good one. I do admit to sometimes getting hung up on the the fact that the pitch was so bad, rather than trying to see the situation from the PR pro’s point of view. Other than allowing me to let off some team, that doesn’t really help. So engaging back with pitcher (?) and making some constructive suggestions is certainly the better approach.

7. Steve Mullen

   16|Dec|2008 7

   @Bryan: Agreed. The research is the key part of it. I wouldn’t roll my eyes at a pitch that started out “I know you had a guest on a similar topic in episode 43, but here’s why I think it would be great for you to revisit the subject…”

8. Jeff

   17|Dec|2008 8

   @Bryan: Unfortunately, sometimes it takes getting a nasty response to trigger the respect that should be automatic. You may have made that firm’s “don’t pitch list.” I always appreciate constructive criticism, but I also understand it isn’t incumbent on the journalist to do it.

   I think with blogs, it is a matter of developing respect. I would compare it to the way an agency might treat local daily and weekly newspapers. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard an editor complain to me about people pitching their newspaper without even knowing the towns they cover (never me, of course ).

   That being said, I don’t know what sense it makes pitching a blog you have never read or know nothing about. Considering how editorial blogs are, I would never pitch one without having some idea of the writer’s opinions or beliefs or without some background about who he/she is, not just some broad description of what they cover.

9. laurent

   17|Dec|2008 9

   @Bryan: I agree with your response to my comments. I was just relaying what I see in the marketplace and that I think it’s bad. Online marketing has been dominated by clicks and keywords so far…but with social media and the rise of communities (tribes), people come into the equation. And with people comes concepts like ‘influence’ ‘trust’ ‘respect’ (i.e: communication)