Don't Be A Flack ... Why Bloggers Need Personal Pitch Guidelines

As a blogger for now nearly five years, I get my fair share of pitches from PR people and companies. So when I was updating my website and adding a top navigation bar and new pages with information about speaking, media and other things … I knew I would want to address the topic of getting pitched and how I'd like that to happen. Quite frankly, as someone who works in a PR environment, I wish more bloggers did this. So I created my "Blog-At-A-Glance" page as an easy introduction to my site for first time visitors and included the following information about my philosophy on getting pitched:

I don't believe I'm too good or popular for your pitch, and I never "out" PR people for sending me something, but there are a few things I have never written about and are a total waste of time for you to send me. Those include "news" about hiring someone and announcements about something that has nothing to do with marketing or no connection to something I would reasonably write about. If you send me pitches like that, I may not share your name publicly, but I will privately think you are lazy and/or an idiot. And your reputation should matter to you more than that – especially in an industry like ours where the people you "pitch" today could be your colleagues tomorrow.

If you're new to pitching blogs, you might want to check out the suggestions that our team at Ogilvy follows in our Blogger Outreach Code Of Ethics. Stick to those and you should be fine, even when approaching bloggers that are way "snarkier" than I am.

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