For the casual person, the more emails you receive, the more popular you are: normally be a boost to your ego. You’d expect that popular bloggers will be thrilled by this as a recognition of their popularity but 300+ “PR Spam” emails a day can be a little much.
Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, is one journalist/blogger that has got fed up. In addition to filtering and blocking out emails, he has made the addresses and domains of these ’spammers’ public in the bid to shame them. This sparked a wave of imitators the most recent being a wiki of PR Spammers by Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker.
Tom Foremski has announced he will only accept pitches via Facebook as has Robert Scoble. Both went as far to say they’ll only listen to their list of friends on Facebook. Bad news for hopeful PRs. On the other hand short ‘twitpitch‘ messages on Twitter are being hailed as the new way of getting bloggers attention without infuriating them.
Stowe Boyd, who coined the idea term twitpitch, has certainly found it effective for him during his recent visit to Web 2.0 Expo. Together with Brian Solis, they are pushing for the idea of MicroPR, where PR and marketing pitches get more personal.
The trend suggests PR will have to change tack in getting their message out. As Jeremy Toeman observes, “relationships are more important than ever”. Knowing who to target with your message will be key to the success of future PR campaigns.
