The Intersection of Online and Offline

Like a rabid dog with a with the mailman’s leg, I just can’t seem to let go of the whole hand-wringing scenario about media and public relations “professionals” doing bad pitches. In the old days, I have noted, as a young buck in the PR agency side of things, I reporters would screen my calls or just hang up on me. And it was over. I’ve been rejected more times than Kate Moss at Weight Watchers meetings (and I won’t even get into my dating life back in the day).

Now you have things like the “Bad Pitch Blog,” designed to bitch-slap mostly junior or clueless individuals who don’t know how to pitch properly. The tag line is “read our wrath.” That’s telling. I won’t mention any of the creators by name, but you need to get over yourselves. Has anyone keyed your car? Stolen your iPod? Assassinated your penguin? You don’t kill a fly with a sledgehammer, and this site reeks of new media hubris. Bad karma. I loved Jason Falls’ “Friday Frustrations” post in which he stated:

“A-list bloggers have an awfully bad habit of blowing smoke up each other’s asses. I’m probably guilty of it, too, though I don’t consider myself an A-lister, but for chrissakes people, you’re not celebrities so stop acting like them.”

Amen, brother.

I swear this is the last time that I am going to say this, but somehow, I am not that irritated by bad pitches. I either ignore them or have even created a folder in my email programs that pick up on key words, stores them there and I go back and read them when I have time. Maybe I am a softy in this regard because I have been both the pitcher and the pitchee, but I think that most people complaining about this just need to get over themselves (see above).

But in the spirit of “can’t we just get along?” here are just a few fundamental tips that I would provide to people who pitch either in the offline or online environment. Good communication is good communication if it’s a ten page fax or a 140 characters.

1. Identify your target audience. If you are looking to reach a target audience via a publication or blog, your first step should be making sure that the outlet matches up with the audience that you are attempting to influence. Otherwise, as Shel Holtz calls it, it is just “shovelware.”
2. Think about your objectives. Why are you communicating with this audience? I know that in the agency world you are communicating because your client thinks that he/she should be above the fold in the Wall Street Journal, but if you spend some time thinking about the benefits NOT to your client or organization but to the people receiving or potentially reading the information, you’ll go a long way towards happy, shiny people reading what you have to say. And if you work for an agency, the best consultants know when to say “no, this will be a waste of your money.” Courageous conversation for sure, but things will end up better.
3. What messages are your target readers likely to want? Knowing this will make you happy and, provided that you select the right people to pitch, it will make the writers/bloggers happy too.
4. List the types of questions that individuals may ask or additional information they may want. This is how your are going to write your pitch, your press release, or if you are doing it right, putting together your interactive press release. Answer these questions in advance and reflect it in the way that you present your information.
5. What do you want to achieve? Think about this in two ways. If you send a pitch to a blogger or print reporter, what is the action that you want he/she to take? Visit a link with more info (good call). Read an attachment (bad call: Esther Schindler has correctly noted that “attachments merit the death penalty”). If you have spent all of the time and money getting something placed, I am no fan of the statement “raising awareness.” In the age of interactivity, there has to be some action that people reading your information can take besides merely processing it.
6. Surmising that you accomplish your objectives, then what? If a reporter calls you back, you had better have your act together (no “ummm, uhhh,” or putting reporters on hold while you look for your cheat sheet with talking points on it) . And for God’s sake, list your cell phone number on your voicemail. If a reporter/blogger calls you back and gets your voicemail, it drastically reduces your chances.
7. Push vs. pull. Regurgitating information all over people who may or may not want it can work, but a largely ignored pitching vehicle is simply putting information where you want reporters or bloggers to get it. Think: ProfNet, SEO, Peter Shankman’s “Help a Reporter” listserv and Web site. If your information is waiting for people who want it, your chances go up dramatically.

I could go on and on, but given the fact that I keep promising that this will be my last post on bad pitches, look for my next post on bad pitches.

Mark

A couple of weeks ago, I jumped in on the ongoing fray/snit/pissing match between media pitchers and pitch-ees. I have been on both sides of the professional fence, but have probably done more agency-based pitching that I have been pitched.

My puzzlement was — and continues to be — why so many bloggers are getting so angry about bad pitches while members of the print media would generally just hang up on you and move on. Maybe it’s just the fact that bloggers can hit back in a very public way, whereas members of the print media are more constrained because they have to be. I suppose that the editor at Business Week can’t write an article about all of the terrible pitches he’s gotten.

So when I first blogged about the topic, I quoted Esther Schindler’s “Care and Feeding of the Press,” a funny, acerbic and dead-on analysis of how to communicate with members of the media. My contention was, and continues to be, that if you get it right offline, for the post part, you’ll get it right online.

To my pleasant surprise, Esther found my post and commented on it, and more importantly, let me know what she had updated her thinking in a May 2008 article for CIO entitled “How Social Media’s Changing Public Relations.”

Here are some of my favorite quotes/analogies her updated piece:

…[Twitter] is like entering a noisy, crowded stadium and saying, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’… The entire stadium quiets to silence and everyone sits down except for four people that raise their hand and say ‘I can help!’… It’s that powerful and can provide a whole new lifeline of resources to draw from….

…For example, it doesn’t work to e-mail thousands of press releases and to hope that three of them land well; why will it work any better to tweet about what a client did or to post it on digg? The stadium with 50,000 baseball fans and including four doctors is happy to step back for one life-threatening emergency, but they’re not going to stay quiet if there are 30 not-really-emergencies during a game.”

More good advice. And Esther, I promise never to send you an unsolicted email with an 8MB attachment.

Mark

I can’t do it. I just can’t let this one go. After listening again to Media Bullseye’s Roundtable with Jason Falls, I am still a little perplexed — and steamed.

As a PR agency veteran of more than 11 years, I can’t help but wonder why bloggers feel so aggrieved that they are being pitched — incorrectly, I understand — by some people who are clearly inexperienced in doing so.

I am “old school,” so much that I have pitched more offline PR than online PR. You have to have your act together and do your homework no matter who you are pitching. Early on in my career, I got hung up on or blown off by numerous print reporters. And it was over.

My final word, as it often is, is that there are people who are much smarter than I am. And since this blog is about the intersection of online and offline, I have reached back to Esther Schindler’s “The Care and Feeding of the Press.” I first read this in Shel Holtz’s book, “Public Relations on the ‘Net.” It talks about offline pitching, but the basic tenants are still the same, including:

• Do you need to send this document?
• Making a press release worth our time!
• Let’s make this clear: unsolicited attachments merit the death penalty!

Please read Esther’s tips because I think they are funny, timely, worthy and truly represent the intersection of online and offline.

Mark