Now blogging is getting big enough to attract PR flaks. When you focus on a particular obsession, hobby, or pet peeve, you show up in Google…and within a few days, you start getting pitches for “incredible” stories about “world-class enterprise-wide total solutions.”
B. L. Ochman, who hosts the I-PR list, advises PR folks how to get past the Delete button. Her advice gives you an idea how hot blogging is, and how clueless most PR folks are in the blogosphere. http://customers.mediamap.com/articles_1.asp
Highlights:
Address the blogger by name. Comment: My eyes glaze over when I get email starting “Dear Sir or Madam.” A blog is personal, for gosh sakes. But clearly the PR folks still think of leafleting every possible reporter, rather than talking to each one individually. They don’t get that the Web demands conversation, not lectures.
Don’t send a canned press release. Comment: The more press releases I get, the faster I can spot the standard all-purpose drown-em-all approach. If a blog is unique, why send a mass mailing?
Cut or reduce the jargon. She recommends running the text through Bullfighter, the b-s detector from Deloitte. http://www.dc.com/insights/bullfighter/index.asp Examples of b-s detected by the Bullfighter:
· "A value-added, leverageable global knowledge repository."
· "Repurposeable, leading edge thoughtware that delivers results-driven value."
· "A future-proof asset that seamlessly empowers your mission critical enterprise communications."
Comment: Phrases like these emerge from all-day off-site meetings of the marketing team. Putting together the most popular terms on the white board, the group has glued together an all-purpose all-encompassing summary of the various benefits they want to communicate. Only problem: by the time all the details have been stripped out,t he generality stinks. And, naturally, none of these slogans sounds like something a human being would say.
So the PR and Marketing teams will have to work harder if they want to influence real bloggers. How? Oh, by getting personal, writing to the individual, sounding like a real person. Impossible, you say? Why, even journalists have managed it. Surely their cousins in Public Relations can turn the trick.
8:50:48 AM 
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