The Blogging Battle Continues - Flack Attack

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By Matt Clark

A few days ago Gina Trapani of LifeHacker published a wiki blacklisting PR firms who pitch spam bloggers. This has kicked up some great social media conversation. How do you pitch bloggers? What’s the best way to work with a blogger? Is a site as popular as Tech Crunch still considered a blog or has it morphed into a credible media outlet?

These are all great questions. At DigitalBlab, we have posted a few of our own thoughts through the past few months (here, here, here and here). Matt Haughey with A Whole Lotta Nothing also posted a few blogger relation tips I found helpful.

Howard Greenstein wrote a great piece on the PR/Blacklist battle today. I agree with Greenstein that this calling out of PR Pros is not helpful. The two industries need to find a better way to work together. Journalists need to be more receptive and PR firms need to better train their staff and the senior executives at these firms need to pass their relationships along to junior staffers.

The main problem seems to be that no one journalist or blogger is alike. A few journalists welcome calls and others prefer emails. Some editors want to filter pitches to their reporters, and others don’t want to be bothered at all. Many bloggers have limited readerships and use the medium as a personal soapbox while others try to inform and educate. Some bloggers use personal email, and others made the investment in a weblog email address.

It’s easy to say “do your homework,” but sometimes it’s almost impossible to properly research every blogger and publication. Blogging and blogger relations are still in their infancy and it will take some time before we all learn how to play nicely. Although I agree many of my PR colleagues are true flacks, 1947 Hollywood tactics won’t work.

This is a problem that I have been thinking about for a while. It’s one of the reasons I started this blog. Perhaps it’s time for me to enlist the help of men and woman smarter than I to really take action.