Bacon’s reaching out to bloggers
October 27th, 2005Author: DialogueMedia
Stephen Baker is talking about an email that’s floating around this week from the folks at Bacon’s Information, asking for some contact information clarification and interests for use in a directory that the company distributes. Baker is looking at it from the side that bloggers will begin receiving more and more email from public relations firms – which he’s right on about – but I’m going to have to say that at the very least, this is better than Bacon’s just taking all of our contact information, which most bloggers leave on their sites for all to see, and dropping it in a book without ever letting “us” know it’s there.
Some will surely opt out of this, while others might see it as a solid opportunity to get more content for their blog(s). Of course, PR pros have a lot of work to do when it comes to crafting pitches to bloggers – namely knowing the audience, not going on and on (and on and on) about “my client this and that,” and work to cultivate relationships with these individuals just like they would with their “top” journalist contacts that they work best with. Until PR people stop seeing blogs as “just another opportunity to send our press releases” and more of a “trusted source” for many readers, we’ll be the bane of their existence. For me, I get to toe the line (and I use ‘toe’ specifically) leaning between both sides, which will hopefully be very helpful for my colleagues here at MWW in understanding what this whole new world is all about. It’s no overnight solution, of course, but the middle ground does exist – it’s just going to take some time to reach it.
In the meantime, let’s just give a little credit to the team at Bacon’s who is behind this effort, as at the very least they’re attempting to pick out bloggers who might be interested in being considered “media” and trying to get us all engaged in a solid conversation. Baby steps, I tell you, baby steps.
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Tags: Blogging
