360DigitalInfluence

Next weekend at the SXSW show in Austin, Texas, Virginia and I will be co-running a “core conversation” all about the best ways to tick off bloggers. As bloggers ourselves, we are on the receiving end of lots of bad pitches, clueless emails and irrelevant announcements. Some are misplaced, and some are just plain idiotic. This is a pain other bloggers probably know all to well. Working within Ogilvy PR, we also realize the PR “pros” are likely guiltier than most when it comes to being the culprits behind these reviled emails.

So, like any good group trying to be transparent, we are turning the lens on ourselves and other communications pros to try and raise a bit more awareness about what really ticks off bloggers. To that end, we have asked all the members of our team to reach out to bloggers they know and ask for some of these horror stories. We already have some great ones. The aim is to compile all of these into an “ebook” of sorts that we can share with people who attend our session (you can rsvp on our Facebook event page), and also distribute online to help foster even more discussion about the lessons that all of us as PR pros need to understand about the dos and don’ts of contacting bloggers.

So if you have a blog, please share your stories with us and help us create a resource that we can share with our team and others in the PR industry. The only way these pitches will get better is if we share some best practices with each other. We are looking forward to having this conversation with all of you.

Note - Rather than post your bad pitches as long comments on this post, if you would like to email them - please send them to rohit [dot] bhargava [at] ogilvypr [dot] com, and if you happen to be going to SXSW, we hope to see you at our session Sunday the 9th at 11:30am in Austin.