After The Lawyers, Can We Kill All PR People?

Overhype

from the publice-service-announcement... dept

I would really like to believe that not all PR people are this bad, but I’m beginning to lose faith. Last year, I wrote up a longer piece about PR people who don’t understand blogs and tried to do things like trick bloggers into writing about the companies they represented. I mentioned, in passing, that some PR people submit press releases to the site, even though we clearly say not to do so. I can certainly understand it if a PR person didn’t happen to catch that post. However, if you’re going to be in PR, and you’re going to try to get blogs to write about the companies you represent, we should set some ground rules. First: Read the damn site. If we never talk about highly technical things like a new computer fan, do not try to get us to write about a new computer fan. You’re wasting our time, your own time, as well as the money of the company you represent. Second: Read the damn submission page. If you’re not going to understand what the site is about, at the very very least (we’re not asking for much) you could read the page where you submit the press release, because it says (in bold) not to submit press releases. If you can’t even bother to read that page, why should we bother to read your press release? Finally: If you’re going to ignore both of these fairly simple rules, do not then claim on your own website that you are somehow “A High Tech PR Agency” or that you have “the broadest high tech PR experience of any Public Relations Agency.” It’s not true. If it were true, you would know not to do what you keep doing. Also, don’t claim that you “did online PR before the Internet.” You didn’t. The internet was there before you were. This isn’t difficult, but bloggers are not traditional press. While some of them may accept press releases, the fact that you can’t bother to take the briefest amount of time to figure out what kind of publication we are suggests you’re not so tech savvy after all.