A fascinating post about the love-hate relationship between PR professionals and bloggers is available from
Richard Edelman's blog. Richard is the President and CEO of Edelman PR, a global public relations firm with 40 offices worldwide. Yes, in Spain and Italy...I know what you're thinking...
Richard has been blogging about PR professionals and the bloggers who love to hate them. His post from October 5 mentions the shift taking place in PR strategy in order to successfully pitch to various bloggers. He talks about the need to research bloggers, understand their individual areas of expertise, and write to them with sincerity and respect.
I commented on Richard's blog that the above criteria are not new - they are in my opinion the best modus operandi for effective PR professionals and are also the basic factors to writing a speech, namely: know your audience and tell them something they are interested in hearing.
These are basic elements of human interaction that seem to have been trampled in the need for immediate results - it also doesn't hurt that there are a great deal of people out there who tend to respond to bland general marketing campaigns. As I'm not one of them, I always seem to see through those pitches for what they are. It's like an insincere salesman - you see right through him or her.
I think my best quality when I was a waitress was my sincerity in selling items to my guests. If I convinced you to order the espresso cheesecake, it was because I really loved it myself - otherwise I wouldn't have "pitched" it to you. And my desire to sell it to you came out of a sincere wish for you to enjoy it as well.
It all comes down to respect, to treating others as we would like to be treated. If that is found latterly to be the best way to attract quality clients, then I'm not surprised.
