Over the past few years, just about every snarky marketing blogger has written a post (or two or ten) about poorly done influencer outreach -- sometimes just to shame boneheaded brand or agencies, other times to offer their own set of tips for how marketers can do a better job of talking to those of us who create content.
I wrote mine almost exactly two years ago and although I haven't written much about blogger outreach since, trust me, I get bad pitches all the time.
Just today, I received an email that began, "D------------ear Greg" (exactly like that, with the dashes between the D and the e), and only went downhill from there.
OK. So we all make mistakes.
But the sad truth is that we're already a bunch of years into this social media PR thing and, if anything, the quality of the pitches I see might actually be getting worse. I receive far too many unsolicited, off-topic pitches with no customization -- and you'd probably be surprised if I told you the names of some of the worst offenders.
Well, I must not be the only one noticing because the boys at the Bad Pitch Blog (who have elevated PR faux pas snark to an artform) are running a one-time-only teleseminar that aims to teach attendees how to get PR right. Kevin Dugan (@prblog) and my blogosphere-buddy Richard Laermer (@laermer) know their stuff, so if you're a PR pro, have yet to crack the code on outreach, and/or just want some new ideas that you can use to up your pitching game, you might want to sign up.
According to the teleseminar website, CrappyPR.com:
Call attendees will learn a smart, step by step approach to pitching that includes hilarious case studies and goes beyond that simple email. From looking at the whole pitch lifecycle, including the truth about pitching bloggers and using social media, to tips that will no doubt make you better-informed (and tell you how) plus the keys to pitch inspiration, we'll help you improve your game. Plus we will show you our tricks!
The throwdown goes down on Wednesday, July 29th at 1pm Eastern, so you can listen in while eating takeout sushi at your desk. Admission is $49 but everyone who buys a seat gets a complementary electronic copy of Laermer's Full Frontal PR handbook. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Don't forget to tell Richard I sent you. ;-)
NOTE: I am not affiliated with Laermer, Bad Pitch or this event. Just got a not-so-bad pitch about the event and thought I'd share the info.
