Outreach, PR firms, and Blogging

Since starting this blog I have been getting an increasing amount of PR firms pitching various products, promotions, companies, and more. My information is easy enough to obtain, or you can even fill out a form and I like being this reachable.

Lately it seems that the quality of these email “pitches” has gone down. It is not that I write about them in the first place, but it is as if they do not even read blogs to begin with (let alone actually reading this blog).

It is possible that I have been writing long enough simply to have my email on some PR blast lists (annoying) but even if this is the case, the quality “requests” have gone way down.

Below is my list of greatest offenders, offenses, and examples of what not to do.

1. Ridiculous news story happens and CEO of X Co. would be happy to discuss it
2. New product announced that has literally NOTHING to do with my blog or audience
3. Interview available with person X but no context given for a reason
4. Product or service announcement with no link and usually 8-10 paragraph description
5. Feature launch for a company I did not know existed – PR firm looking for a follow up article
6. Paid links in an article
7. Paid links on the homepage
8. So called “sponsored” posts – pay per post
9. Outreach by a unqualified individual
10. Mail merge failures
“Hi :namefield: I enjoy your :variable: blog, and wanted to discuss….”

I can’t tell you how many times I get an email with something from the list above. I sometimes write back to give advice or feedback on the so called “outreach” and offer tips (seriously) and I have never ONCE heard back. I know these folks get the emails as I have feigned interest in later emails and gotten a response.

Either way this is simply a rant on the state of outreach and the so called “social media experts” that are everywhere.

Like always the personal and eloquent connections and outreach work 10X better than spray and pray but I have to assume there is some success rate as the volume of these inquires is increasing.

Tags: Public Relations, Social Media, Spam