Blogger Relations Hall of Shame

My thanks to all the bloggers who share their good and bad pitches with me. This series of posts would not be possible without  you.

Last time, we talked about how to develop a good pitch and I gave you a few general guidelines. It should come as no surprise that bad pitches ignore nearly all these best practices. For fun, today I’m going to share some recent ones received by me or other bloggers within the last two weeks. None of them are unique — we’ve all received similar ones many times in the past.

And that’s the real shame.

When you have that temptation to do a holiday related pitch? Stifle it. Unless your product really is a great gift for the relevant holiday, your pitch will fall flat. Even if your audience normally loves your product. For example, a company that makes a  BPA-free baby bottle recently sent a Father’s Day themed pitch suggesting that the bottles would be a great gift for the new father. Umm. No. Last we checked, most dads were actually able to drink out of glasses.

Next common flaw. Addressing the blogger by the blog name, not her name. It is NOT that hard to find a blogger’s first name, even if she protects her surname. Better not to use email blast software at all, but if you do, make sure you aren’t sending your pitch to:

or

Because nothing says personal like a database field that hasn’t been filled in properly.

Or sending the same pitch to the same blogger multiple times. In the same day.  I got this press release twice Tuesday. No cover note. Not exactly sure why I got it at all. At least the personnel announcement release — the next pitch below — had a cover note. Still not relevant to my blog though.

 I almost have no words for this one:

Except to say that the only response is to advise the sender that this is information the blogger provides to advertisers only. What level of sponsorship would you like?

There is a special place in blog hell for companies that pitch over and over and over. About the same thing. Even though they get no response. In the real world, we’d call this stalking. For example, this pitch for a self-help book, forwarded to me by more than one blogger:

I think it borders on rude.

Not only do they spam bloggers incessantly with offers for the book, but also they invite us to spam each other. Check out the PS on the email:

As varied as these pitches are, like our good pitches, they too have something in common. They make absolutely no real effort to connect with the blogger. They are looking for hits. And all they do is miss.

Tags: bad pitches, blogger relations