Blog pitches, part II

Posted by Laura Bergells

October 12, 2006

Regarding yesterday’s post on “how to pitch blog writers”….

Here is a cut, copy, and paste directly from my email box:

Dear Laura Bergells,
I wanted to interest you in A new software that has relation
to the Presentation and Powerpoint Realm. I would appreciate any
cooperation you willing to accept.
In princible, what I had in mind is the possibility of
Putting an Article at your Blog, Describing the new software, and linking to a
Download site.

The pitch went on for a few more grammatically incorrect sentences, and ended with a name and email/web address : no phone number or real-world address.

It’s not just that email pitches like these get no results, they actually get a negative return on investment. Because of the unprofessional pitch, I am not going to mention their product. Ever.

Neither will anyone else who has any sense. And personally, I think the company was nuts for hiring this particular PR firm.

Sadly, I know of too many marketing/PR firms that hire inexperienced interns to kick out letters of this caliber to bloggers and media outlets. If you hire a marketing firm to pitch bloggers, don’t let this happen to you!

Make sure you get experienced PR pros on your team to handle not just the email pitch, but the follow-up phone calls. The PR firm will likely want to farm this out to interns, but ask yourself — is blowing your chance of ever getting any media coverage at all worth it?

And if you are going to be charged the full billable rate whether it is intern labor or experienced labor — wouldn’t you rather go with a seasoned PR pro that knows how to raise interest and build relationships with writers and editors?

Go with a pro. You’re more likely to get stories placed and see positive results.