Still more on Bloggers vs PR flacks
Stowe Boyd wades into the stormy seas between bloggers and PR flacks and as usual, he gets it right:
The root cause here is the delusion on the part of the clients that this sort of PR carpet bombing works, that mass media messages embedded in a press release or press release-ish email work, and that we, the bloggers, actually react positively to this junk.
Stowe argues that bloggers need to stand up and say “no mas” and then be explicit to PR folks in how they want to be pitched. He’s got a point, but I would flip it around and put the onus on us, the PR folks in the trenches.
We need to get ourselves smarter. And we need to get our fellows smarter. And we need to keep getting even smarter. We have to understand that public relations is about relations and if you wouldn’t ‘relate’ to your friends or loved ones that way, why on Earth would you ‘relate’ like that to some blogger or journalist who could make or break your client.
In Olden Days
PR vs The Bloggers part XXVII
Every year the New York City Press Corps lampoon the shenanigans of New York’s political elite at the Inner Circle Dinner. You may remember the pictures of Rudy G in a dress. What I remember most are the lyrics of the closing number. The assembled journalists address the audience of New York’s greatest movers and shakers with a rousing chorus along the lines of “You need us, we need you.”
Yep. Journalists telling politicians (and their assembled flacks) that they need each other. Because without the politicians, the journalists would be out of their jobs.
So the latest dust up between A-list bloggers and PR flacks has taken the form of Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker, against a rouge’s gallery of agencies she’s decided to blacklist for the sin of, among others, emailing her directly instead of using the editorial email address.
So for the crimes of a few ACs, she’s blacklisting whole agencies.
Gina, do you honestly believe that nothing good or on topic will ever come from Edelman? Or any of the other agencies you have blacklisted? And is the onslaught of email really so bad that hitting ‘delete’ is too difficult?
What Gina, and most other full-time bloggers, have to learn - assuming they want to be treated like journalists - is that they are always going to need sources for good stories. Those sources don’t grow on trees - some of them might even come from PR agencies.
In the meantime, good luck writing all of those blog posts every day.
Bonus link: More smarts on the subject from Geoff Livingstone and Jason Falls.
Is there a doctor in the house?
Permit me one more blog entry about Twitter. Ok?
It’s 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.
Now With Fewer Pedophiles
Sales Spider, the leading small business social network, announced today that Canadian office solutions company Grand & Toy will leverage the Sales Spider platform to build its own social network for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Members will gain access to the many features that Sales Spider offers with additional information built specifically for SMBs.
Hopefully they won’t have the same problem Dunder Mifflin had with their site.
