Public Relations Experts Still Have A Long Way To Go With Bloggers

Chris Clarke over at the Blog Herald has an excellent post up on how PR people are still getting it all wrong when contacting bloggers. PR: Only As Good As Our Weakest Link. He talks about how some PR guy practically spamed his blog with an off-topic, cut-n-paste press release snippit.

I’ve had my share of bad contact with PR people as well.

Last August when I still owned Gadgetizer.com, I got an email via the contact form from a rep from an iconic PR firm. When I say iconic, I mean, these people handle PR for the US department of defense. At any rate…

The email read simply “We have a client who may be interested in advertising on your site. Could you please send along a media kit.”

So I spent half the night updating ad rates, creating a spiffy PDF package, researching the firm and putting together 3 custom advertising packages I thought may be a good fit, etc. I did my ground work because an opportunity to deal with such an affluent firm and their clients could have been extremely profitable, especially for a smaller tech blog.

So I send off the package via email. They replied to set up a conference call.

About 30 seconds into the call I discoverd they were not interested in paid advertising at all, but simply wanted me to write an article on the blog about their client.

My reply was less than professional, one they probably still cringe at to this day… but no less professional than dangling a possible lucerative ad contract in front of me just to get me on the phone so they could pitch their client to me in hopes of free coverage.

They flat out lied to me. Period.

Here’s the deal, PR guys and gals: Be up front. If you want bloggers to write about you and your clients, just tell us. Read our blogs, get to know us and above all, don’t try to deceive us.