One thing about blogging that’s taken me a while to get used to is the amount of Email I receive, specifically, the amount of public relations requests from PR firms to assist in promoting a product, service or website.
Truth be told, I love receiving PR requests.
They make me feel important (ha!) but the simple fact is that I can’t participate or even respond to all of the PR requests I receive just because of the sheer quantity. I have noticed a distinct categorization of requests from public relations firms and what appears to be a varying level of skill or knowledge between each firm when it comes to their social media abilities.
I’m not going to name names for the good, bad or annoying Email solicitations I receive from PR firms.
That would just be bad PR on my part.
But I will point out some of the tactics and methods that I find effective, ineffective and just down-right annoying. First, the good stuff.
The Good in Public Relations – Authors
I seriously love PR requests to review books!
Why? Well, for a couple of reasons, actually. As an author, I can appreciate the struggling author’s desire to publicize his or her works.
I’ve written tens of thousands of words before myself as well and I want nothing more than for people to see and appreciate the effort I put into writing that book. I want people to connect with me through my book and my experiences and stories.
Promoting your own books can be a LOT of work – quite honestly more than one person could do on their own, therefore I appreciate and accept as many book review offers as I possibly can.
The Bad in Public Relations – Ambiguity
One of the most frustrating types of Emails I receive ALL.THE.TIME from public relations ‘professionals’ is one that doesn’t actually ask me to do anything.
Copying and pasting a press release without any call for action or request to do anything seems quite pointless to me.
Ok, I’ve read your press release (or not). Delete.
Next!
To effectively engage me, you have to ask me something – and preferably offer something as well. By offer me something – I don’t necessarily mean give me something for free but at least offer promotional materials, interview opportunities, review copies or SOMETHING.
That is what a PR firm’s reason for contacting bloggers is, after all, right – to engage bloggers?
The Annoying in Public Relations – Glaring Errors
I received an email last week from a public relations firm seeking to promote a popular new TV series from a wildly-popular cable network on various blogs and social media channels.
I should get excited about these emails. I don’t.
Photo: by DoktorSpinn via Flickr
The message was pretty well-laid out and contained information about the series along with images that could be used for promotion, program schedule information so that I knew when the show would air and a suggested Twitter message that I could simply copy and paste if I wanted to help promote the show.
The problem?
The Twitter message was 165 characters long, whereas Twitter’s character limit is set at 140 (160 – 20 reserved characters). OOPS.
This is fairly common knowledge and absolutely should be something that is known by PR professionals – especially those seeking to promote their clients in social media. I found this to be so utterly annoying I deleted the Email and will likely dismiss any subsequent requests from that firm simply because I don’t have the time to ‘check their work’ before I act on it.
What do you find to be the good, bad or annoying about PR requests that you may receive? How often do you respond? Do you find the Emails you receive from public relations firms to be overall effective or ineffective?
Update: I just received another PR request from the 160 character Tweet faux pa sender. The good news was that the tweet was updated and passed Twitter’s 140 character limit.
The bad news?
Not even so much as a thank you for pointing out their error. Professionalism be damned I see.
There Are Currently 35 Comments on this Post
Quite honestly, you are one hundred percent correct. I have noticed all of the common flaws that you detailed plus many spelling, punctuation and grammar errors. I am not talking about small errors either. Not only that, I get so many e-mail from PR reps asking me to do a review on them for free. Your website is very interesting, I will definitely take a deeper look into it. Thanks for the great information.
Oh, the PR sharks… can’t live with them, can’t live without them
And it’s annoying indeed that sometimes you miss a great deal just because you had too many deals to look into and couldn’t cover them all. I totally understand you on this one.
Smart post! I appreciate your willingness to help out other authors with book reviews. I’m currently promoting my first novel, and it has been wonderful to connect with others who share your view. So helpful!
I’ll touch base with my publicist and make sure she’s not sending any of that “For Moms Only” crap!
I’ve been out and about doing promotion recently and it didn’t occur to me to bloggers and webmasters to review our book… Seems obvious now that you say it. Thanks for sharing, ecellent idea. Be Amazing,
JR
Those PR people should get to a social media class.
attention-garbing post Daniel. I even notice also some peolpe do that. thanks for posting
Really liked this post! I’ll definitely be pinning this on pinterest!
Thanks for your comment, Ralph and a big thanks for passing it along!
Well I love the PR request for the most part as it is a bit of an ego stroke, but ignorant PR firms and their mass press releases are my pet peeve too. These usually are not even read and deleted in a flash.
WI recently posted..Symptoms and Diagnosis of Autism
really unique and great post, thanks for sharing.
I love getting them. It helps to refine and teach what one should or should not do when making contact with a site owner who may be able to help with a promotion.
What get’s my backup the most, is their assumption that they are doing me a favor by contacting me.
And it’s normally the usual stuff for me… Promote this product on your blog and earn thousands of $$ in commissions… No mention of a review copy to check out. I guess they feel I should just pay over $97 for writing a review for them? Alternatively, just make one up and hope for the best.
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You’d love the email I got today then. The first 3 words of the subject were “For Moms Only”.
Um…what?
lol, that must have a place in the top ten of the worst email subject line ever.
Closely followed by this one I received.
Is this still a good email address for you?
I very nearly sent a reply saying, sorry no it’s not. I did not receive it.
Steve recently posted..Using Your Affiliate Marketing Links Offline
Hahaha that’s a great one, too. If that was a tactic to garner a reply I don’t think it’s a very effective one!
For moms only? LOL. That’s funny.
It’s just like what the Uncle of spider-man said, with great power comes great responsibility.
If your blog is getting popular, that’s what happens.
Andrei McBreak recently posted..How to Get a Short Term Collateral Loan with No Credit Check Required
I like that – great point!
Thanks for sharing. It did gave me the idea. Oh wait, you can contact admin through the contact form right. Will it be okay not to include a contact form? If not, how can I reduced the number of email I receive?
oops sorry for the 2nd comment, I didn’t notice the twitter option until it was
too late. This is awesome to have right on your site, thanks!
Hey you can send some of the pr emails my way I love getting them.
I do skim & delete a few but I still like receiving them. I know what you
are saying some of them are just worded 10x to long and terribly written.
I need to write a post about this myself as I could do a super long one.
Chuckling at this rant as I know a few people that will be applauding you for it.
On the plus side, I love the small theater invites. Feel the same way about them that you feel about books, although I love books too.
~ Emme
Emme Rogers recently posted..I Felt Safe & Welcome in Cairo, Egypt
I realize I’m going against the tide here, but I have had fantastic experiences with PR reps. I’m not kidding, they have been amazing, putting me in touch with CEO’s and providing me with helpful background information and images for my articles. They have always been on point with my topic (personal technology) and have been responsive to my requests. They haven’t asked me for a thing and have been very respectful in their communications. I see my interactions with them as a partnership: they want to get word out about their clients and I want to get interviews with top executives at up and coming tech companies. Win/win.
I didn’t realize how fortunate I have been in my experiences until I read this article. Thisarticle and the comments have been an eye-opener.
@wonderoftech It sounds like you have been somewhat fortunate if the majority of your interactions have been positive. The majority of mine have been very spammy at best. I’m not sure if it’s somehow industry-specific, but most of the PR I receive is focused on parents and is VERY unprofessional. I guess I was just a bit surprised given someone is paying these PR firms to represent them and they’re clearly not getting their money’s worth (or perhaps they are!).
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Thanks for this, good to know it’s not just me that gets upset. Much like previous comments, I get really annoyed with PR agents who have obviously not even bothered to look at my blog. My blog is all about chocolate, NOT holidays, meat, cigarettes or politics (well perhaps chocolate politics) – grrrrr!
When I get a request to review something appropriate, it makes my day – sadly, this doesn’t happen very often.
Enjoyed this post, and the comments!! PRs are unbelievable. Had one that *pretended* to be their own small business client, with a very personal plea to me via my blog, only they could not figure out how to disguise their own email address properly, and replies got auto-bouncebacked from the PR firm. Wow, enough money to hire a PR, when you are asking for my help because you are *small* & *poor*. I vowed not to fall for sob stories ever again…
PR firms often run themselves as if they are disorganized charity cases for multinationals who have huge advert and marketing budgets, yet most of them expect you to spread the word just because they think all bloggers have stars in their eyes over brand names. I do not work for them and see no reason to help based on a generic press release which they expect to take space on my space. There are so many pitches for junk, which I couldn’t promote, even if I was being compensated. I respect my readership too much. On those rare occasions when I am approached to review a quality cookbook or product which intrigues and meets my baseline standards, I always negotiate for giveaways for my readers and permission to reprint a recipe that I have kitchen tested fr/ a cookbook, no matter what the ultimate outcome of my review. And I always include an F.T.C. statement in these posts regarding material connection. PR clients want more reach; well, so do I.
I enjoyed your post. I too hate these press releases without any guidance as to what they actually want. Do they seriously think we will actually post these instead of our own work and be grateful?
I also hate when the PR has obviously not looked at my blog. I write a veggie blog and yet get request to try out meat products and yesterday I was asked if I would like to test drive a new car for two weeks. As lovely as that would be, how does it tie in with a food blog. However, saying that, there is good pr as well, some very honest and friendly peeps. Make such a difference.
I hate when they lie and say they’ve learned a lot from my site and have been reading it for a long time. Just be honest. Naming one or two posts you enjoyed is honest. Pretending that you’ve been following my blog for months on end is not.
Another thing that bugs me is not responding to my questions. If I’ve taken the time to review your request and respond with questions, you should answer, PR people.
Oh, yeah, leaving comments on the Contact page instead of emailing me with the email address clearly provided is the top annoyance. No, wait a minute. The TOP annoyance is calling me a Mommy Blogger! I don’t have kids, don’t plan to have kids. I may write on kid-friendly subjects at times, but that doesn’t make me a mommy blogger. Pay attention.
I hate that they use the contact form on my site to coduct their business. I hate that they start out telling me what my readers need to hear about, their clients business or event.
We had so many PR reps sending us traditional press releases that our bloggers would not respond to, that we finally gave in and developed a template that they have to use when pitching the bloggers on our wire.
It VERY CLEARLY has an ‘offer’ section where they must state what they are looking for from the bloggers and any requirements they are looking for i.e. ‘cooking blogs’ for kitchen product reviews. We also require that they list their FULL contact details so the bloggers can reach them (even a phone number).
Great post
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I literally have a PR rep that is stalking me. She had emailed me several times and when I responded I heard nothing back. Then one day she actually responded and told me she was sending me a product to review. I never heard anything about it again.
In the meantime she continued to send me requests to post up “funny videos” for this company which I wasn’t about to do because I’d never used their products and couldn’t attest to their quality. Email after email came and I got more and more annoyed. I finally emailed her and questioned her about the review product she was sending and told her my baby had grown and was now 10 months old instead of 6 months… and she had the nerve to say “Oh sorry about that. Hmm I don’t know what happened. .. maybe you could post up this video for me instead?”. I responded and told her that I would not be be posting any videos, or offering my readers a t-shirt with the companies logo on it, or anything else and to please take me off her list. She wrote back and with a different video link going on and on…
After that she started sending the same requests over and over. I didn’t respond. Not long after she announced a “giveaway” of the VERY PRODUCT she was supposed to send me months ago…. Oooh a surprise giveaway on twitter… ..
I have saved all her emails. She even has her own tag in my gmail… and someday soon I’m going to print them all out and send them to her client, along with a review I wrote for their biggest competitor who’s PR reps are absolute professionals when dealing with bloggers.
I find it very annoying when my name is spelled wrong or it is addressed to someone else entirely. One time is a mistake but every time you send me an email?
Thanks for writing this! It’s the second situation that drives me nuts—where the PR pitch is just lame. Worst are the ones trying to get us to write about a product or service that we’ve never heard of, let alone never used. Did you bother to read our PR/Media page? Obviously not.
FWIW most of these that we get in our inbox these days seem to be written by someone identifying herself as an intern… Not necessarily an excuse for not knowing how to do your job, though.
I love that one about the 165 character Tweet – that is classic! My favorite is when they start emails to me with “As a very influential Mom blogger…” You would think the name “Dad Does” kind of gives away who writes the blog.
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Yeah, no kidding. “Memoirs of a Single Dad” should be a giveaway too. Like Tatter said, they’re just copy-pasta and not putting any thought into the Email. I understand they’re trying to get the word out to as many people as they can but they’re seriously missing the mark with basic mistakes like this.
Interesting blog post, Daniel. I’m most annoyed when it is a copy & paste email without them even bother reading my About Me page or my PR tab. I clearly stated that I’m not in the States so I have to shot down a lot of offers but it gets annoying when these people clearly doesn’t even bother to read.
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