“But on Sept. 4, You Wrote About…”
Public Relations people are getting smart… or I should say Google Savvy. Now instead of pitching their press releases, article ideas, and clients for interview to targeted publications, they are pitching ideas via Google search results.
Which, really, is just annoying to this writer/editor.
PR people have a job to do, I understand that. But they waste their own time, and mine, because they are pitching something based on search words.
I wish I saved some of these e-mail conversations I had: I could do a Ken Magill-like piece on some of these exchanges. Like when I ask some of these PR people how their story pitch is even related to Multichannel Merchant and its target audience, and I get a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of reply.
One recent one had to do with Multichannel Merchant being related to Health Care Reform. Why? Because consumers buy prescription drugs.
I’ve even had pitches to do stories about trade show management… maybe because I’ve been to trade shows or included the name of a trade show in an article done at a trade show I attended.
It’s even more annoying when the public relations person says “On Aug. 8, you blogged about the automotive industry. So can you blog about our new product?”
The answer is no. What the hell am I going to endorse your product via a blog post when I know nothing about the product? Am I going to tell the Big Fat Marketing Blog audience that XYZ’s contact center software is the greatest thing since sliced bread when I don’t even use contact center software?
No, because I need to maintain some sort of journalistic integrity.
