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Ah, the good old days. PR pros bombarded reporters, news directors and radio jocks with their pitches, releases, and freebies.
But it’s a new day my friends and suddenly PR firms, publishers and business owners have decided that blogs are as viable as the daily paper, when it comes to getting out the word about a new product, book or idea.
All that is well and good. When it’s done right. But most often, I get e-mails like this:
Hello Drewsmarketingminute,
I found your site http://www.mclellanmarketing.com/ and I wanted to
know if you could Blog or write an article about XYZ (changed because I am a nice guy)! You can write your own article; alternatively you may use this recent press release below. You also take a look at the XYZ samples and information on our site at http://www.XYZ.com Thanks!
This guy has never read my blog. He found me on a list or technorati search. He didn’t use my actual name (unless I have become Drewsmarketingminute) and he insults my integrity, suggesting that I would just run his release verbatim.
I get several of these a day. I ignore several of these a day.
Ogilvy PR has the right idea. They’ve created a bloggers outreach code of ethics. I, and many other colleagues think they’ve got the right idea. I hope that all of us who live in the marketing world and may be pitching bloggers take note. If you want to reach out to a blogger…this would be a fine primer to study before you make that first contact.
- We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.
- We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.
- We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.
- Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.
- If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.
- We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.
- In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.
- We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.
- We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.
- You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)
- If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.
- If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.
- Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.
What do you think?