{"id":1292,"date":"2008-12-23T11:56:58","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T18:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2011-12-10T19:23:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-11T02:23:12","slug":"dear-pr-rep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/23\/dear-pr-rep\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear PR Representatives…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caveat:\u00a0 If you’re not interested in the swirl that is new media, click away. How about an old post? Something about, oh, Vienna<\/a>? Now, below the jump, rambling about PR and bloggers.<\/p>\n

Last night I sat in on #journchat on Twitter. I couldn’t look away. Admittedly, a lot of what I saw went past me – acronyms used in the PR industry, discussions of ROI and metrics – PR folks spend time thinking about things that aren’t completely familiar to me. That’s okay, I get what they do on a very basic level: They get coverage for their clients – in the press, in magazines, on blogs.<\/p>\n

I’m on the receiving end of a lot of that stuff, I get press releases and email pitches every day. Some of the PR folks do a very good job – they know my name, they know what I’m interested in, they know what I’ve done in the past. I get focused, personalized messages about new travel related books from Holt, the people from Hawaii are just plain awesome at staying in touch because they know I’ve written a guidebook and can’t wait to get back to the islands. And there are a handful of others who have actually taken the time to crack my blog before they contact me. I love hearing from them and while I wouldn’t go all crazy and say they’re my best pals, they are real people to me. They do the work that PR often talks about, they’ve built a relationship. I genuinely enjoy hearing from them.<\/p>\n

There are also lots of people doing it wrong. I get pitches for properties in New York, Los Angeles, New Hampshire, anywhere but where I am. They’re not invitations – “Hey, we’d love to have you come out and see our destination” – they are straight pitches for a place that I haven’t covered in the past and don’t have plans to go to in the future. “Awesome for you, ” I think, but that stuff just isn’t going to end up on Nerd’s Eye View. Delete.<\/p>\n

I also get pitches for the latest and greatest in photo and travel gear. “Cool,” I write back, “Can I try that out?” More often than not the answer is “Um, no, we don’t have any product to send you.” Not “Let’s see what I can do to get you samples.” Or even, “Wow, we have no more to send out, but can I get in touch when we do?” Just “Nope, got none.” Well, thanks for letting me know that the USB powered TSA approved espresso maker exists. Um, okay then! Delete, again.<\/p>\n

In these cases, I think the PR rep thinks I’m lazy and that I’ll just rewrite\u00a0 – if I can be bothered to do even that – the press release and put it on my site. If I was more sensitive and unaware that some bloggers do just that, I’d be insulted. I’m not insulted.\u00a0 I know there’s a bit of fishing with dynamite going on here. I get that there’s a mailing list with 4 billion names on it and that it’s probably not even tagged by subject matter. But I also keep hearing “How do we reach bloggers?” and “Where are the bloggers?” and “What do the bloggers want?” and “We know we need to work with bloggers, but we don’t understand them.” I can’t answer for every blogger, but here’s my two cents.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I wish PR understood about working with me:<\/p>\n