Public relations professionals have it hard.
Bloggers are a snarky, unforgiving bunch. When you call us a f*&#%*g bitch, we mobilize half of the internet against you and your stupidity.
Really though, they bring this upon themselves.
In the past month, I was been put on a weird social media PR list. You’d think this would bring a blogger exciting new opportunities. Instead, it just brings headaches, links to piss poor social media research, and offers for guest posts on topics I don’t cover at all.
The only person who ever got it right offered to send me treats for my cat. How sad is that?
So, PR folks, let’s clear this up. Here are some tips for dealing with me and other bloggers.
- Get off Yahoo and Gmail – You want me to take you seriously? Great. But when you use a Gmail and Yahoo addresses for your email, I don’t take you seriously. Sorry, but it’s not terribly hard to set up a yourname@yourwebsite.com email address. Do it. I’ll take you more seriously to start with.
- Don’t ask to write a guest post – Don’t just presume because I run a blog and I’ve had guest posts featured previously that I’m looking to have you write a guest post. I don’t know you. I don’t know your writing. Giving me a list of generic topics like Facebook and Twitter isn’t helpful either. Either send me the article, or try to get to know me in a way that doesn’t promote your half-hearted PR business.
- Stop trying to get me to promote your content – I know it takes a lot of work to promote a blog and make content for it. I do it myself every. single. day. Your piss poor article about “5 ways to use Twitter for business” doesn’t interest me or my readers. And besides, I could write that article ten times in a more dynamic way than you could.
- Don’t waste my time – I have a job. I like to think that I have a life, but who am I kidding about that? Keep your email to the point. Also, don’t get your britches in a twist when it takes 48 hours for me to reply. I’m likely doing something so if we do work together, your efforts will be more successful.
- Don’t Assume – I got an email recently that read “This will interest you and your readers.” How dare you have the gall to know what interests me and my audience? If this is your first email to me and you’ve read one of my posts, you don’t know me or my readers.
- Say My Name – My name is all over this site. When you write “Dear The Anti-Social Media” or “Dear Blogger” you insult me as an author. Stop it. I’m Jay, use my name. Give me the respect I deserve. You wouldn’t write to J.K Rowling and start the letter with “Dear Author.” She’d go all “Avada Kedavra” on you.
Releasing that rage has me feeling better already,b but there’s still more than can be done. What else can PR professionals do better with blogger outreach? Leave a comment so we give them a post where they can learn where they are messing up and the chance to laugh at their own failures. Or if that isn’t fun, we can just make fun of all the horrible things we’ve seen.
Either way, we’ll all learn something about how not to piss off the people who control the interwebs.
[...] e-mail address and a familiarity with the author’s work also are helpful, Dolan writes. TheAntiSocialMedia.com GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); [...]
[...] Before you do anything blogger-related, for a fun take on how to avoid blogger outreach failure have a read of this post and related comments on Jay Dolan’s The Anti-Social Media blog. [...]
[...] Before you do anything blogger-related, for a fun take on how to avoid blogger outreach failure have a read of this post and related comments on Jay Dolan’s The Anti-Social Media blog. [...]