When done well, PR pitching can be almost an art form. If your pitch meets the criteria of the recipient of your outreach, its likely your message will be well received and may even produce the action you are aiming for. The opposite is also true when a pitch is as thoughtless in its creation as it is mindless in its execution. You know the kind of thing I mean, email pitches in particular. What if such pitching were to be automated, where the targets of your pitch weren't individually … [Read more...] about PR spam on an industrial scale
Spam
A refresher on how to write a press release
It seemed a good idea - spend an early hour on a Bank Holiday Monday to get up-to-date with the email inbox. Catch up on those emails that I'd marked to give attention to when I had time. After going through the marker list for the past week, I'm left with a sense of real exasperation. Yes, I got through my marked emails, but it included over a dozen email press releases that are to do with products, services and industries that broadly would fit my interests, yet are so appallingly … [Read more...] about A refresher on how to write a press release
How to report Twitter hashtag spammers
One of the most useful features of Twitter for events like conferences and tweet chats is the hashtag. A hashtag - a keyword preceded by the '#' symbol - enables conference-goers, the event organizer and anyone else interested in the event to see all tweets that include the hashtag. It enables anyone to listen to the conversation and easily participate. As Twitter explains it: People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords (no spaces) in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets … [Read more...] about How to report Twitter hashtag spammers
Twitter hashtags: spam magnets
One of the most useful engagement tools for a conference is a Twitter hashtag. This little device, where a word is connected to the hash symbol (#) - known as a pound sign in the US - is a useful tool for event organizers as it enables anyone to connect to your event and see all the online commentary that mentions the hashtag. Anyone, whether at an event or not, can also be part of the overall conversation by including the hashtag in their own tweets. If a hashtagged topic gets popular, it can … [Read more...] about Twitter hashtags: spam magnets
Extending the debate about PR spam
Earlier this week, I hosted a CommsChat discussion via Twitter around the topic of "What should you do to stop PR spam?", a topic I've written about quite a bit over the past few years and helped focus debate. The discussion took place on TweetChat, a service that lets you engage in real-time online conversation around a hashtag, in this case #commschat. Started by Adam Vincenzini and Emily Cagle, two UK-based PR pros, CommsChat looks at all aspects of communication: PR, traditional and … [Read more...] about Extending the debate about PR spam
Grasping the nettle of PR spam
Spam: a scourge of contemporary life. I'm talking about the digital variety rather than the savoury meat product originating in a mists-of-time, analogue age. Just about the worst kind of spam I see is that which purports to be relevant and representative of good media relations or blogger relations or personal outreach or whatever. In other words, the kind of stuff I get from PRs that bombards my Outlook inbox every day. Take a look at this screenshot of an email I received the other day … [Read more...] about Grasping the nettle of PR spam
Marketers ‘destroy customer relationships online’
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem with PR email, the results of a survey on people’s attitudes to the email that PR agencies and others send them. The survey paints a dismal picture of how email is used in the PR business. Now, here comes an equally bleak picture on what marketers do with email about their brands according to e-Orchard, a survey by London creative agency Stephens Francis Whitson. Brand Republic reports: […] The report claims to have uncovered evidence of … [Read more...] about Marketers ‘destroy customer relationships online’
The problem with PR email
A timely story about that distribution channel so often misused by the PR industry – email. In an article published in Journalism.co.uk (and elsewhere), Iain Fleming, who works for Newslink, a news aggregation and delivery service in the UK, writes about the results of a survey he carried a few months ago on people’s attitudes to the email that PR agencies and others send them. Probably little surprise at some of Fleming’s findings: […] the results of my small survey – including … [Read more...] about The problem with PR email