Clueless PR

The other day Anil Dash linked to list of MediaMap blog profiles, which was followed by Matt Haughey ranting about getting product pitches from "clueless" PR folks. (At the Canadian Public Relations Society conference last month I heard a MediaMap rep mention that they were covering blogs. It was the only mention of blogs at the whole conference--not a huge surprise since PR is usually several years behind these trends.)

The MediaMap blog profiles are interesting for their lack of important details and their presentation of bloggers as a kind of journalist. First, anyone acquainted with weblogs would easily notice the major omissions in their profiles. These are the few I pulled out:

• Adam Curry's Weblog covers current events, entertainment, technology, and international news.
• Lileks covers current events, society and cultural issues, and consumer issues in his blog.
• Boing Boing covers new technology products, the Internet, computer software, networking, and government news... Frauenfelder covers new technology products, computer software, networking, the Internet, and government issues in his blog.
• David Frum's Diary covers media news, politics, international relations, and current events. (Okay, without going into every little detail, before you sent David Frum a pitch you might want to know that he's Canadian, he's a former Bush speechwriter, he coined "axis of evil," that he's the smarmiest living human. At a bare minimum.)

But the big mistake these profiles make is treating bloggers like journalists. (It's true that some journalists like Frum maintain weblogs, but I'm excluding them from this generalization since journalists so rarely shed their reporter/commentator persona when they blog.)

For most people, a blog is not a publication--it's a personal space. Yes, it is in a sense a public space, but that doesn't make it less personal. Asking someone to post your press release on their blog is like asking to put a sign on their lawn. Expect them to say no, unless they love your product, cause or candidate. And you can't really know how they feel about your stuff unless you talk to them first--not as a flack or pitchman, but as a person.

Good PR looks like a dialogue (this, by the way, was known in the public relations industry long before the Cluetrain Manifesto). You have to respect and understand the people with whom you're talking, especially--especially--if you want them to repeat your messages in their personal space. And you have to join and participate in the community if you want to have an influence. (Shel Holtz, the author of Public Relations on the Net is a somewhat intermittent blogger. There are others who get it.)

It's shameful that so many people (armed with tools like MediaMap, no doubt) practice PR as cluelessly as they do. But like I said, it'll take a few years for them to catch on.