Russell Beattie laments that he’s getting inundated with inbound from PR professionals. Russ, I love ya, really. But tough noogies.
I get it too and I am in PR, but now I know what it’s like to live on the other side. Anytime you have a high profile you’re going to get more inbound. It doesn’t matter if it’s from public relations professionals, spammers, students, etc. The fact is the bigger your blog, the more mail you get.
Read: PR “Professional”?
But let me tell you this… if you care about putting up good, timely information on your blog for your readers (and you may not at all, which is cool since it is your blog), then definitely read your mail. I get lots of good tips sent to me. For every 45 tips I get, there’s one diamond in the rough that justifies them all. In yesterday’s case, I found the Yahoo engine in my log. But many other times I “broke news” thanks to emails. I welcome that people want to share information with me. I may not get to read or respond to my blog mailbag as quickly as I like, but I value the offline conversations as much as the online ones.
If you want to delete all the emails from PR professionals, cool beans. But you’re not going to scare us away. Deal with us. Work with us like others do. Look at Anil. He’s suffering the same disease but he decided to be helpful. I only wish you would do the same, but hey it is your blog and you should do what you want.
I also think you went too far in bashing the PR bloggers. If anything, we are about bringing transparency to your profession and helping people really learn how to work with bloggers. Tell you what, you stay on your side of the playground and I will stay on mine and maybe we’ll share a sandwich in the school cafeteria from time to time or see each other on the dodge ball court. I do love ya. I just think you might be new to dealing with the PR tornado – I am too, but I am familiar with it since I live it from the inside.
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
