Today’s guest post is written by Lisa Gerber.

It’s been awhile, but recently, I’ve been reacquainted with a long lost love.

Yes, media relations.

That long lost love? Media relations.

As the chief content officer for Spin Sucks and Spin Sucks Pro, I have been mostly on the receiving end of pitches, not on the pitching side.

It’s been very entertaining to say the least.

This isn’t another post about bad pitches.

Trust me, I’m shocked at the number of atrocious pitches I get.

My name is not Spin Sucks, it’s not Spin, and pitching me on the broad topics of social media and marketing doesn’t fly. That just doesn’t tell me a thing.

Because the mission of Spin Sucks is to change the perception of PR, there is a huge opportunity for growth by addressing better practices in media relations. Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is written by David Meerman Scott.

I’ve been in and around the real-time news business my entire career, both on the news creation side (working for Knight-Ridder and other publishers) and the PR side of the house.

The transformation I see in the news business right now opens the best opportunity ever for smart marketers to bypass all the spin B.S. and reach journalists when they are looking for what you have to offer.

Speaking of spin, because I write for a bunch of publications I get several hundred pitches a week.

Most suck.

Why?

Because people want to tell me about their stuff when it is convenient for them. The fact that so few people understand how to reach reporters when they need the information is why I love Newsjacking. Continue Reading »

I can hear the wind blowing outside and it sounds like it’s really cold. So I’m pulling together this blog post in bed.

I don’t want to get up!

In some places in the country, wind like this is called a tornado or a hurricane. In Chicago? It’s just par for the course. It is, after all, the Windy City.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t have Facebook question of the week (clap, clap, clap)! Continue Reading »

Alright. It’s time to have a little chat, particularly if you’re in the PR profession.

If you read Gin and Topics last week (or follow the industry news), you’ll know a PR “professional” (I use that term loosely, which is why it’s in quotes) called Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess a really bad name (I can’t even bring myself to type it here; it’s bad).

The background follows.

The Bloggess received the following pitch from a PR professional.

“The Kardashian’s once again show they are right on trend, and this is on (sic) Mommy’s are all going to want to follow.” Continue Reading »

Bloggers’ roundtables have been around for a while. They’re especially popular for book clubs, with the Department of Defense, and among politicians. (One wag even asked John McCain if he knew the difference between YouTube and MySpace.)

Yet roundtables never really took off as a form of outreach. That’s too bad, because as a vehicle for companies to engage many customers at once, roundtables can be as effective, if not more, than their headline-grabbing cousins, Twitter and Facebook. Continue Reading »

In the 1970s and 1980s, Folgers ran an advertising campaign that had hidden cameras showing diners enjoying coffee in high-end restaurants.

The catch? The coffee was actually Folgers and not some hoity toity brand you’d expect in a white tablecloth restaurant.

Many other companies have replicated the campaign, including Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Coke, Pepsi, and now Marie Callender’s.

Last month, ConAgra, the company that owns the brand, and Ketchum, their PR firm, invited food and mom bloggers to a night out with “Ultimate Cake Off” host George Duran and (my favorite) food analyst Phil Lempert. The invitation was to an underground NYC restaurant, Sotto Terra, where they were told they’d enjoy a “delicious four-course meal,” the celebrity chef’s “one-of-a-kind sangria,” and learn about food trends. Continue Reading »

I’m going to be frank. Between two speaking engagements, an earthquake, an airport evacuation, sitting on the tarmac for three hours, and missing my bike ride two days in a row, I’m grouchy, tired, and I look like poop.

So instead of Facebook question of the week (clap, clap, clap or long whistle as John Trader does), I’m going to post the video I did with Steve Farnsworth in Baltimore a couple of months ago.

We talk about the key to starting a successful blogger outreach campaign. It’s not very long, but you’ll notice after he does his fancy ending, there are still a few seconds left on the video. Continue Reading »

Yes, it’s Facebook question of the week time, but all you people have failed me. Minus Ryan Cox’s 20,000 questions, not one of you has asked a single question.

Do you feel guilty yet?

Good! Head over there and post a question on our wall. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Awesome! Thank you!

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Vocus User’s Conference about the PR pro and blogger relationship. Because I sit on both sides of that relationship, it’s pretty easy to say what works and what doesn’t work.

Following is an intro I did about the topic (if you can’t see it in your Reader, click here and it’ll magically appear).

This year, at BlogWorld and New Media Expo, Danny Brown and I are speaking!

Yes, together and yes, it’s going to be legen (wait for it) dary!

Initially our blog topic was “Doucheblogs and Spin Doctors,” but some corporate suit was offended by that title so they asked us to change it. I guess he didn’t want to fly across the country to listen to all of the reasons PR pros suck.

Never mind it suits our personalities and it would have, hands down, gotten butts in seats, but we get that so we changed it. I really hope he comes to our session now!

Now it’s “Common Sense and Collaboration: The Last Stumbling Block for PR and Bloggers” (boooooring), but the content remains the same.

It’s no surprise, if you’ve been a reader of Spin Sucks for a while, that I think the way (some) PR pros treat bloggers is ridiculous. And it’s time to educate bloggers on how to work with PR pros in order to achieve some of your blogging goals.

Danny feels the same way because he spends time on his blog talking about ways PR pros and bloggers can work together.

He and I sit on both sides of the fence. We both are communication experts and we both blog. We know what it’s like to do blogger outreach and we know what it’s like to be pitched (it’s really, really bad in most cases). Continue Reading »

Guest post by David Spinks, co-founder of BlogDash.

Creating highly targeted, personalized pitches is more important than how “engaged” you are with influencers when conducting blogger outreach.

Any knowledgeable social media professional you speak to will tell you that it’s important to engage with influencers (bloggers, tweeters, etc.) before you pitch them.

I have two questions: Continue Reading »