- Readith what we write before thou contacteth us. (It always helps to knoweth the name of our dog.)
- Calleth us by our actual names (do not call me Mr. Ochman, for example)
- Call us not “dear blogger”
- Contact us only when you have something relevant to say. Before you contacteth a blogger, ask thyself “Who cares?” and “So what?” Haveth answers to both these queries. You will need them.
- Be sure thy pitch is not mundane. Verily, one must stand out among hundreds of other hopefuls.
- Snooker us not. Since many bloggers are bullshitters, we have excellent BS radar.
- Sendeth not any unsolicited email attachments, for they soon shall be trash.
- Pitch not in Twitter direct messages. Thou wilt instantly be blocked forever.
- Disguise not your pitch as a blog comment.
- Don’t tell us that you knoweth we’ll want to cover XYZ. Thou does not.
- Keep thy pitches short and pithy, but be not perky.Pitch not! Inform. Don’t call us, we’ll call thee.
- Bring us thy pitch before you give it to everyone and her dog. Recognize that embargoes are stupid, and likely to be ignored.
- Do not pretend that thou are not a publicist.
- Tell not any lies. You will be found out and flogged on Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed and Scoble’s blog.
- If thou behaveith truly foolishly, or in a way that annoys Loren Feldman for some reason, thou may end up as a puppet character in a 1938 Media video.
- Providith an email address from your company, not hotmail, yahoo, or gmail; and include a phone number so we know thy company truly exists
- Begin not thy pitch, or include in thy press release “We are excited about….” Of course you are. We’re not.
- Remembereth that bloggers know each other and sendeth each other silly PR pitches for sport
- If thy company hath made a mistake and we note it duly in a post, respondeth in an honest manner.
- Be sure thou doth not demand retraction, although one may politely request a correction.
- Say what thy company will do to correct its mistake, and by when.
- Thy blogger outreach person should be a big cheese, not a lowly flak.
- Answer issues in the medium in which they occur. Answer blog posts in blog comments. Answer YouTube videos in YouTube. Be certain thy responses are direct, have verity, and soundeth not like corporate speak.
- Maintainith, always, thy senses of irony, absurdity, and humor.
- Forget thee not, that what goes on line, stays online.
Make haste in initiating your response. Two days is the equal of one year in Internet time. Ask not for whom the clock ticks. It ticks for thee.
Great! Perhaps the humor of your post will help more people ‘get it.’ My fav : Snooker us not. Since many bloggers are bullshitters, we have excellent BS radar.
I think the real lesson for today? Making your outreach in old-timey English.
If you do…I’ll write about whatever you send me on general principle.
What is it with the word Manifesto that stops me in my tracks and makes me read everyting that has it in it’s title. It all starts so long ago with Cluetrain, now I have collected about doz. on recession, living, diet, etc. Your’s lives up to the highest standards of a manifesto thank for writing it.
Really good and witty list, B.L., but what has always astonished me is that any of this needs stating in the first place.
As a PR practitioner of a grizzled 25 years experience, I am ceaselessly gobsmacked by fellow practitioners who seem lost in this so-called brave new world. If all along they had treated their media contacts as you prescribe, they would have no need to learn and follow these commandments. (I wrote about this on our blog recently: http://inmedialog.com/index.php/archives/whaddya-mean-its-a-brave-new-social-media-world/)
The only real change is, as you wonderfully put it, today’s targets can and do trade “silly PR pitches for sport.” Please keep doing so; together we shall cull the herd.
This is fun – and sharp. Your next one should be done in pirate.
Yarr, me heartie! Y’er blogger will dutifully follow ye advice fer the next un. Luck be with ye.
I’d like to read a pirate version…
This is all good common sense stuff. I think it’s a shame when common sense gets forgotten.
I’m with Francis: what has always astonished me is that any of this needs stating in the first place….
Well done, BL-matey
Why dost Benny looketh so happy? Didst he lick the Manifesto?
Excellent ! I think we should provide internet marketers and PR firms with some sort of an exist strategy from their jobs since its seems that all the ones that send out those crappy outreach attempts, thats about most of them actually, need a new career. So maybe they should start blogging about how shitty their works is ?
Thou doth make me roll on the floor laughing. Actually, the gentledog is not Benny. It is his friend, the handsome Bogie, the Airedale.
It’s nice to see a reminder every now and then about how to pitch the media, whether they be online or traditional media.
Media relations is the single most important part of any PR professionals job, we all need to understand how to do it well. Every time I read a blog about pitching, I bookmark it and take a look at it prior to pitching anyone (it’s particularly important to re-read these kinds of posts when pitching the blogger who wrote it). Pitching is important, doing it properly is imperative.
There MUST be a site somewhere that chronicles the silly PR pitch favorites among bloggers. As a marketing student, this could be used as a learning tool for what NOT to do…or just for a great laugh!