Please stop spamming me, Dawn Rowan

Dear Dawn Rowan,

You don’t make friends in the blogosphere by sending (multiple!) copies of your press release, embedded in an e-mail, to a blogger.

This is especially true when your press release is about a restaurant (!!) selecting an ad agency is its “agency of record” (!!!) to run a new cutting edge campaign (!!!!) that I couldn’t care less about.

Feel free to check out some tips on blogger relations. Cause right now, Dawn Rowan, you are pretty darn bad at it. Much worse than Lucas Dressel. And LT Gay.

Regards,
Steve

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Dear LT John Gay of NAVCENT

Don’t spam bloggers. Especially with 35MB worth of e-mail attachments that end up clogging up their in boxes.

I might have been interested in what you were sending me had it been presented in a more audience-friendly format. Instead, your e-mails got the boot.

Better luck next time,
Steve

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Come on, Bryan

So I thought Bryan from the Center for Security Policy had learned a bit about pitching bloggers since he last pitched the D-Ring (here and here).

Apparently I was wrong.

I just got another pitch from Bryan. And from it, I give you today’s lesson on blogger relations:if you have pitched a blogger before, and have had multiple back-and-forth exchanges with him or her via e-mail, do not re-introduce yourself and your organization in a subsequent pitch. At that point, the blogger should know you and who you represent.

That is the consequence of sending out form e-mails to bloggers. Without a personal touch, they undermine the relationships you have worked to establish.

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My War Diary

I have gotten a second pitch from New Media Strategies about Discovery Channel’s My War Diary series (disclosure: NMS is a PR firm that does online communications work for various clients. I also work at a PR firm doing online communications).

The pitch wasn’t bad (although the guy pitching me didn’t disclose the fact that he was working at a PR firm being paid by Discovery Communications), and I think the concept for My War Diary (a television program completely made up of organic video from theater submitted by Soldiers) is very cool.

So I’m biting. They are looking for more submissions. Videos can be submitted online or by mail.

My open question to NMS though — this is the second pitch for the series I have received in 4 months. Are Soldiers not submitting video?

If you have more questions about My War Diary, e-mail Discovery Communications.

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USJFCOM liveblogging

You might have noticed a new RSS feed in the right-hand column. That is because today, United States Joint Forces Command is beginning to liveblog a homeland security exercise they are conducting: “Noble Resolve.”

From enterprising PAO Spc. Andrew Orillion:

We will be live blogging from the site of the first “Noble Resolve”, a
series of homeland defense experiments using the latest in modeling and
simulation technology. The objective is to examine ways to improve
defense support of civilian authorities before and during man-made and
natural disasters. You can more here
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2007/pa033007.html.

This is a huge event with officials from U.S. Northern, European,
Pacific, Strategic and Transformation commands, the Coast Guard,
Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency among the more than 100 participants attending the event.
Officials from the Canadian and German military will also be present.

Apparently, this isn’t the first time the command has used liveblogging — which is good, because this type of event is the perfect platform.

I’ll have the feed up for the duration of the exercise.

Great job JFCOM in taking an innovative approach to tell your story.

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Top tips for effective blogger outreach

A lot of military organizations have contacted me in the past few weeks for some tips on reaching out to the blogosphere.

I think this great post from Beltway Blogroll (a must read, IMHO) sums it up best:

Washington flacks should read it and ponder what will work best for them. Here it is:

— Church Of The Customer: “Get to know bloggers before pitching them. Build a relationship before a pitch. Introduce yourself to a blogger with an email or phone call. Explain your work and your clients. Ask … if future news about your industry or clients is of interest to them. Seek permission.”

— Emergence Media, which has compiled a guide on how to pitch bloggers: “It’s one thing to know the A-list bloggers; its another to know what mid-tier blogs they read. Just like in regular PR, you may need to hit the mid-tier bloggers (who are read by the A-list bloggers) before you get covered by the big leagues. Don’t be fooled by looking only at Alexa data or Technorati rankings; see who links to them, too.”

— WebProNews: “I’ve been involved in several blogger outreach efforts recently. In each case, I carefully read several posts and comments, along with ‘About This Blog’ details, then crafted an individual message to that blogger. … [M]ost bloggers appreciate solid content they can write about that’s consistent with the focus of their blogs, assuming you approach them correctly.”

It’s all about relationships, folks. So play nice with bloggers.

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USJFCOM joins CENTCOM in online engagement

It looks like the second unified command has jumped head-first into the blogosphere.

I am not the only one who received the e-mail from United States Joint Forces Command (you can read about their outreach here and here), but it is nice to see another major DoD command reaching out to bloggers to help tell their story.

Good work.

If they are really smart, they will dedicate resources to try what CENTCOM is doing on YouTube. Granted, this requires people, time and money, but it should be easily achievable with one or two more broadcasters assigned to JFCOM.

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Much better, Bryan

I’ve been in Chicago for the past few days and just checked my e-mail for the first time since Friday.

One of the e-mails I got was from Bryan at the Center for Security Policy. (Remember? He pitched me earlier this week).

I won’t post his whole e-mail, but I will say that Bryan is a quick study.

That, Bryan, is effective blogger engagement. Much better.

To everyone else, go check out the Center for Security Policy Web site. It is not the prettiest site, but it is one that is being worked on. And once you get past the look and feel, it has some great content.

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Good organization. Bad, bad pitch.

I think that the Center for Security Policy is a great organization. Great mission. Great objectives. Interesting research.

Bad, bad, bad pitching.

Today, I received this from Brian Hill, a research associate from the think tank.

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m underwhelmed already. My name is all over my blog. It’s not that hard to find “Steve Field” somewhere.

My name is Brian Hill and I am the director of the War of Ideas project at the Center for Security Policy. The center has a new website up at http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org and we are beginning to construct the “links” section of our site.

This is their new site? It looks like it is from 1998. Someone needs to tell the Center what a CMS is. And what is the War of Ideas project? Sounds like something I would be interested in… if I knew what it was.

We would like to link to your blog from our website if you are willing to link to the Center from yours. If you are interested, please respond to this e-mail.

Thank you very much for your time.

Regards,

Brian Hill
Center for Security Policy
xxxxx@centerforsecuritypolicy.org
(202) xxx-xxxx

Well, where to start.

1. Has he ever read my blog? I can’t tell.
2. Link trading? Come on. Have good content and you will get linked to. This is just cheesy
3. Are they providing anything to the milblogging community? Or are they just begging for links?

Brian, here are some tips for next time. Get a bloggers name when you pitch him or her. Show your knowledge of the blog by maybe commenting on something they have written or said in the past. Then offer them something (maybe an opportunity to receive the latest studies published by the Center? That would get you links and advance your policy agenda.)

Dealing with bloggers cannot be selfish; it must be about helping the community. It is about giving back. The Center has plenty to offer and seems to have squandered an opportunity.

It is not a surprise that coverage of this think tank is dwarfed by these guys and these guys and these guys.

To his credit, Brian isn’t a professional communicator. He deals in the policy realm. Maybe if the Center had even one communications officer on staff…

But then again, they have more links than I do. And Brian got his link from me. So what do I know?

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Sgt. Star Update – The Pitch

Last time I told you that I would post about the pitch that spurred my last post — what went well (and what didn’t).

As mentioned, I got an e-mail from Lucas Dressel, an account supervisor for Desautel-Hege Communications, a PR firm in Spokane, Washington.

Here is what Lucas e-mailed me:

To: dringblog@gmail.com
From: Lucas Dressel
Subj: US Army Web site’s new interactive technology

Hi there,

The U.S. Army has begun using a new technology from software company Next IT on its Web site GoArmy.com. NextIT’s ActiveAgent technology, in the form of “SGT STAR” on the Army’s Web site, represents a completely new way for humans to interact with technology. Able to recognize natural language input and employing intelligent directive questioning, SGT STAR acts as a virtual expert, helping the Army’s Web site users find information faster and more effectively than before.

• Avg. site session on goarmy.com with SGT STAR is 16 minutes, up from four minutes without
• Nearly 500,000 questions answered since August
• 92 percent accuracy

To interact with SGT STAR, visit http://www.goarmy.com and click on “Ask SGT STAR” in the right-hand menu. Information about Next IT can be found at http://www.nextit.com.

Please take a look at the attached press release for more information on SGT STAR’s initial success and the technology behind it. For more information and to set up an interview with leaders from Next IT or technology analyst Sue Feldman of IDC, please contact [account executive one] or [account executive two] at [e-mail one], [e-mail two] or [phone number].

Thanks for taking a look.

Lucas Dressel

So lets start with what Lucas did well:

1. He decided to contact bloggers. Deciding to engage is always a good thing.
2. He provided bulleted key facts to make it easy for me to see what they essential points were.
3. He was polite.

Here is what didn’t work about the pitch:

1. His hook is wrong. It isn’t new technology; I wrote about it five months ago.
2. He didn’t start by introducing himself. You can’t send one-off pitches to milbloggers like you would journalists. Because I guarantee that hardly any (if any at all) are journalists.
3. He didn’t show any inkling that he knew what my blog was or why I would be interested in SGT STAR or note that I had written about it before for that matter. To Lucas’ credit, I wrote about this one at another domain, so it would have been harder to find. I’ll cut him slack on this one.
4. He had attachments. Always, always send embedded links to bloggers. It makes things easier for them to blog if you have links anyhow.
5. Who is Sue Feldman, and where did she come from?
6. It isn’t new technology. (Did I mention that already?)

I wrote a post based off of Lucas’ pitch anyhow, so I guess that counts for something. But as a take-away, here are some tips for pitching milbloggers:

— Show some knowledge of or appreciation for the military in your pitch
— Link, link, link! Milbloggers will likely use links if you give some to them
— Make sure you have real news and
— Know a little bit about who you are pitching before you pitch them

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