As far as being approached with the messaging that you’re supposed to comply with the request, I hope that this post didn’t read like that. Bear in mind that the blogger outreach I’ve done (at least for the subject of this post) was for a corporate client, and if you know anything about those types, these posts go through a chain of approvals both on the marketing side and through the clients themselves. It is of everyone’s best interest to provide options versus making demands. If you saw the messaging, I’m sure you’d agree that it was pretty innocuous.

Therefore, yes, I stand firm about the fact that her response was inconsiderate. NOBODY is obligated to take the story, and the copy didn’t read like that. It might be of interest to their readers — but that’s that. There’s even explicit messaging that says that the particular promotion doesn’t have to be on the blog at all.

As far as this particular blogger as well, when something like this appears in the blogger’s disclosure policy/disclaimer, even with all that messaging, I don’t think I’ve overstepped any boundaries: “I am always happy to receive relevant press releases & samples of product, on the understanding that not everything I receive will make it into copy and that I will write my unbiased opinion.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this particular blog post stemmed from one encounter with a blogger. I used her as an example for others. There’s really not much more to it than that. I’m not stereotyping all bloggers as jerks — in fact, I’m isolating one blogger as inconsiderate. I was angered enough by this incident that I tried to turn it into a learning experience for all (but mostly for her). Most people are not like this. Really.

“Essentially” is the key word here, and perhaps it wasn’t the right word to use. I don’t use this blog at all (if you’d read my articles) to promote myself or my business. It just so happens to be a byproduct of it (on a very small scale — and even less because I haven’t been accepting new clients for months). My focus with this blog has always been community. I like having intellectual and respectful discussions with highly intelligent people.

In fact, if you compare the visibility of me promoting my service to his, I think his credentials as a lawyer are a lot more prominent than my credentials as a consultant. But to a newbie, it looks like he’s self-promoting. In fact, this entire parallel was actually mentioned to me in passing by someone who was aware of the conversation that was happening there. Personally, I never explored his website beyond the posts about me.

Thankfully I have no desire to go there again. I do not play well with trolls.

Generally, when homeless people ask me for money on the street and I haven’t got any change, I say, “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t help you today.” I think it’s important to be respectful of people whose lives are probably fairly stressful and challenging, and I’m sure one of the challenges a person like that faces is being constantly looked down upon. But if someone approaches me and acts like I’m supposed to give them money, or that just the fact that they saw me buy a hot dog and know I have fifty cents means that they’re entitled to it, I don’t generally call them “sir”.

I don’t know how the person who responded with the bit about the advertising rate sheet was approached. It may have been a humble, human email that explained why this was a relevant topic for their blog and their readers, in which case she was probably being inconsiderate. But if it was something that treated the blogger like it was her job to receive this email, then the disrespectfulness of the exchange may have started before her reply.

–d

I’d argue, though, that my advice (most of it, really) doesn’t necessarily apply to specific PR outreach but human decency. If someone approaches you nicely in “real life,” and you brush him off rudely, what does that say about you? Even when telemarketers call me, I say “I’m not interested.”

With regards to bloggers versus non-bloggers, the irony of everything that I’ve argued about with Scott is that techipedia.com isn’t much different than his blog. We’re both in the business of business promotion, essentially. I don’t actively do it for clients — I do it to connect with people. Relationships, for me, is what this blog is really about. It’s a nice way to build a bridge.

In any event, I get paid to blog on some avenues and I also blog for free on others. Actually, when looking at my “resume” of blogs, there’s about a 50/50 even split (not to mention the other blogs I don’t publicize which are almost all free as well).

Therefore, I’m a paid blogger and a free blogger. I also, much less frequently, do blogger outreach. As I mentioned in a comment to Scott, I do this type of outreach because I’d like to think that I understand a blogger’s mentality. I mean, I’ve only been there for nearly 10 years (and 5 years in a more public capacity).

Anyone who blogs for free, but is expected to have a certain attitude toward someone who gets paid for emailing bloggers about things they want bloggers to write about, is liable to be annoyed. Expecting professionalism from people who are not blogging as a profession isn’t reasonable, and I can understand why it would come off as entitlement – this is a person who, at the end of the day, doesn’t need you. They can exist and do what they do without any PR emails at all, while the PR person may have a difficult time continuing to draw a paycheck unless they can get blogger attention. When you consider it that way, the PR person is really making their living by asking the blogger to give them something for nothing. It’s understandable, I think, that suggesting that one is supposed to behave in a proscribed manner toward people who get paid to ask them for favors would come off as betraying a sense of entitlement.

The math changes a bit when you’ve got pro bloggers and journalists and pro PR people. At that point, the relationship is a bit more symbiotic – the PR people understand that the ideas and content they provide can directly help the writers pay their bills, and the writers can be expected to constantly be seeking out new ideas in order to offer steady streams of content to the outlets for which they write. We’ll call the people in the paragraph up there “bloggers” (which is probably what Greenfield meant) and the people in this paragraph “content providers”. Bloggers have little use for a PR person, and may resent the fact that the PR person draws a salary for trying to convince the blogger to do work for free. Content providers use PR people to help them generate more content, and so can (and should) treat them as though they’re more valuable.

–d

Further, this is a follow up post to a post that already articulates your point #1.

I appreciate Scott’s comments but he missed the ball and inaccurately portrayed me as a PR person. As I commented on his blog post, which I’m pasting below because it hasn’t been posted yet on his site, he doesn’t have a clue who I am. I actually come from the throes of bloggers. Here’s what I wrote for reference:

Scott, I appreciate your commentary, but you’re missing a few important points.

“No, Tamar is not a blogger, but a public relations person who, no doubt as a public service, created rules for bloggers to be nicer to public relations people.”

This is part of the problem. Bloggers (like you, Scott) make the assumption that I’m not a blogger. Excuse me, but did you bother to read the portfolio on my blog (one of the widgets in the footer)? Here are my blog posts for Lifehacker. Here’s Mashable. I’ve written 1886 blog posts for Search Engine Roundtable and a couple dozen for Macgasm. And guess what? There are more blogs too. The bottom line: Actually, yes, I really am a blogger. I actually engage in blogger outreach because I’d like to think I have a pretty good idea how bloggers think.

Furthermore, you acknowledge that there’s two sides of the coin. Yes, I agree on that point as well. The blog post that you so eloquently wrote about is a follow up to this post which talks about the two way street that you brought up. This was part two, the follow up. I’m going to bet you didn’t read part one.

I appreciate your comments, Scott. I do. But like “PR pros” are required to do due diligence about the blogger to see if the pitch is of interest to the blogger, so too should bloggers make sure to look the whole picture. That post which you quoted linked out to my other post which pretty much nods in agreement on your comments. Yet you have made this specific commentary entirely one sided, indicating that you didn’t look at the other point of view.

It might be in your best interest to read a little more about me, update the comment you made which doesn’t accurately depict who I am, and then reassess whether we’re really working against each other here or actually fighting for the same goals (for the most part).

I blog on an extremely modest scale. Yet I get from 2 to 10 press releases per week and several PR inquiries per month. Most are extremely unsuited for my blog — something that even the most brief examination would reveal. It’s not clear to me why I should view those emails differently than other unsolicited email.

Since you feel free to offer etiquette tips to bloggers, let me offer some to PR professionals (and amateurs) in return:

1. Don’t send a press release, or PR inquiry, to a blog unless you have read it enough to make a reasonably informed determination that it is suitable for the subject matter of the blog. Otherwise you’re spamming.

2. Take the no and walk away. Take the silence and walk away. If a blogger doesn’t respond, it’s very probably because they view your press release or PR inquiry as unsuited for his or her site. They do not owe unsolicited emails a response. If you write follow-ups — particularly ones that suggest an entitlement to a dialogue — you may find yourself the subject of an unpleasant blog post. See, for instance, Scott Greenfield’s take at the Simple Justice blog on this very post.