Blog Relations… it's time to grow up..

Tom Murphy

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: