And I certainly don’t make it any easier, I know that. Over the past two months, I have gotten caught in a couple initiatives by a publicity company I’ll refer to as XXX Associates. Now, if you’re not hip to how this works: when a media company has a product they would like to sell, one of several arms of what they do is contract out to PR firms, who take the marketing message which supports the media offering and try to “bring it to the streets”, so to speak. Malcolm Gladwell, whatever. So these companies seek out people like myself who are “opinion-makers” or people who have some kind of say-so in whatever sub-cultural demographic would be likely to support the media offering. In this case, the product was some kind of book about gnosticism or something - I think. Funny thing is, I don’t even know. I couldn’t even see what product they were trying to get me to shill for them. All I could see were their flimsy techniques.

I don’t want to name names or quote emails or anything, but I basically asked this individual - who had sent me an unsolicited email advertisement for a product I wasn’t interested in as part of some mailing list of blogs culled off WHEREVER because I fit “the profile” due to some matching keywords somewhere in the almost 6,000 articles I’ve written over the past five years. So I responded to this clear form mail and said, “What benefit would I derive by advertising your product for you?”

As you can imagine, the conversation didn’t go in a productive direction from there. The person on the receiving end of my verbal trap fell into it and I didn’t have a good end game. I just proved a point without making anything especially “new” or “useful” happen and probably just came off looking like an asshole in the process.

The point of the story is important though if you’re a PR firm reading this trying to “bone up” on the most effective use of these techniques. (And I know you bastards are out there lurking and studying, so take note!) The point is, you might trick some low-level freshman year bloggers into pumping a shitty product for you. But you’re not going to derive ANY real or meaningful buzz around your product on a “grass-roots level” from getting people to re-post your press release into their blog. First of all, who cares, and second of all, Google’s ranking algorithm is pretty much designed to seek out and destroy that kind of inauthentic and automatic content re-distribution. So you don’t win by trying to be inorganic. You simply produce inorganic results which go away quickly. And for marketing companies and media companies, this means that these PR firms are rapidly becoming a BIG FAT WASTE OF MONEY, whether it’s yours or your clients.

Instead, developing personal one-on-one give-and-take relationships with potential independent media outlets (bloggers) will buy you friends, compatriots, allies and like-souls which will do more to push the agenda of your overlords. As a PR person, you have to know when to shut up too. Don’t get drawn into arguments and don’t send people stuff they don’t want to see. I’ve gotten into the habit of responding to these companies when they send me something I don’t want, saying it doesn’t fit my “brand” or my “audience” or my current “message” etc (gotta feed them words they already understand), and I include simple tips of fine-tuning their approach in the future, such as “I like to see content which is less like ____ and more like ____.” The good companies respect this and respond to this treatment with care in future missives. The bad companies go out of business, because they don’t know how to effectively target a product and are therefore a waste of money.

And don’t think that sending me a “free copy of your book” will sweeten the deal either. I’ve read one book only that a PR company ever sent me and it was just… okay. I kind of wish I had never read it; I’d like that part of my life back. It was a who-cares book and the others they sent just sat on my shelves.

Recently, XXX Associates sent me an offer of a free book, but still part of a big form letter for something else I didn’t want. So I wrote back to them and suggested that instead of sending me a free book, they should take whatever amount of money the book, the shipping and their time would add up to for interacting with me, donate the money to Wikipedia, send me a receipt and then I would blog about that. Because that to me is interesting. That makes your message and interaction with me “sticky” - but you have to find some kind of twist (value-added bonus) like that which is, of course, “on-brand” for everybody interacting. If nothing else, it ends up being a show of good faith that the PR company wants to establish a diplomatic relationship with you, the opinion-maker and “man on the street” and that you’re willing to allow content blips by them once in a while to come a little closer into your radar.

XXX Associates never got back to me. I suspect they never will, until the next un-targeted form letter, that is!

{Visit Audible Hype for more better DIY promotional info for fledgling media mavens and connectors! TB.}