A list bloggers: keeping the little guy down?

Good idea. People sometimes give commenters flak for pitching their companies in the comments, but I’ve always found its makes the post better. I often miss stuff.

I dont have the problem, however, I have a comment. What if all the PR guys stopped sending you email and only wrote comments wouldn’t that give you the same problem?

I mean then it would just be your comments you wouldnt have the time to read.

My point is. I dont think its about the medium… Be it email, comments, phonecalls or something else. You also make your phone no public. Do you get tons of calls from PR people. If not, I’m actually a bit suprised.

I gues it just comes with beeing a public figure. Maybe you shold get an assistant to manage all that stuff. As I see it only other solution would be not to have a public email or phone… or maybe have one public and one private of both email and phone.

Robert,

If someone set up a site where these small companies could pitch themselves to people to you, Mike Arrington, and some of the other “A-list” bloggers, would you subscribe to its RSS feed?

Perhaps if people knew that you were watching something like this, they might use it to get noticed rather than email you.

Kasper: >>What if all the PR guys stopped sending you email and only wrote comments wouldn’t that give you the same problem?

No. Because then my readers could see all the pitches and I wouldn’t need to get involved at all.

The fewer intermediaries there are between you and the people who build products the better.

The thing is, PR folks don’t like a disintermediated world. They don’t get paid if you only need to leave a comment on a blog post.

I see the paradox, you are one person with only so many minutes in a day. Then the flood opens up. Some smart filtering sematic web application may work in the future. I helped fund some things at Nervana (ex MSFT research) that would work on the inbox flood. Not that I like the CEO much, but the idea was there…

The video editing is also a time killer. Its like you need to have a small army to help. Interns. Interns. Interns. But some pro-interns. Or a big fat upload pipe to the Bollywood cut and chop house.

Mmmm, TEK.

Kasper: I don’t get that many phone calls. But I don’t always accept phone calls either.

Assitants cost money. Only worth doing if there’s a chance of getting that recouped. I might be able to, but at the expense of other things in my life. I’d rather go and do more photowalking shows than try to compete with CNET or TechCrunch.

Tim: yeah, eventually we’re going to need more video editors. For now, though, I’d rather learn Final Cut Pro just so I can tell you how badly it sucks as an editing environment. But mostly cause I want to do certain things with my shows, particularly the photowalking segment I was working on tonight. Damn, is it 4:21 a.m.? Off to bed I go.

Comparatively few people read comments. And one problem with making comments is that it’s an invitation for bad press as being a spammer (one can get that sort of bad press from email too – but with comments, there’s many more people who might decide to try to score a little attention for themselves by calling out a supposed spammer).

“If you have a product or a blog or something else you want my readers to try out (or for me to try out) leave a comment here…”

OK then. Here it is: http://www.consensusbest.com and http://consensusbest.com/blog.php?cid=0

No press releases or other spam to follow. Thanks!

So you want me to pitch http://www.blinklist.com here? Come on, you know as well as I do that this is not a way to promote any website.

However, I have to agree with you that companies should also not try to flood your inbox. I guess this is one of the curses of being a blogger on the A list. You will get pitched all the time. Worse then flooding an inbox is to start bitching and moaning. I just wish people would focus more on delivering a quality product than to worry about who ends up writing about them or not.

Mike

If you have a product or a blog or something else you want my readers to try out (or for me to try out) leave a comment here, do NOT send email!

You don’t want PR firms to impose on your space (your inbox), you want them to impose on your reader’s space (the comments section)?

Hmmm, strange.

MS

You may want to check out the Social Media Press Release initiative. Its early days but think about structured press releases with metadata running through a smart front end that manages the whole discovery, contact, informing process.

More here: http://www.socialmediarelease.org/2006/11/02/elements-of-the-social-media-release/

It has been an adjustment for most PR people to figure out how to “pitch” bloggers. Particularly, the mental adjustment to pitching via comments: Do I feel like I cheapen a client such as Podcast Ready with a naked pitch that everyone can see vs. a private email in hopes of a “neutral” blog post (ok that link was gratuitous– it’s in my blood)?

Changing from one-to-one communications to many-to-many is a big deal for traditional PR people. But it’s a conversation, and the new era of disclosure means we’re all out in the open– or should be, and we have to get used to it. If we’re not, we’ll be found out (hello Edelman) and hung out to dry in public.

Robert, this is a nice discussion (as is the Arrington one) that we all need to be having– all over the place.

Robert,

As I commented to Mike Arrington, the fact that you are overwhelmed is a monster of your own creation. To an extent, you just have to deal with it.

However, as you point out, you are not trying to compete with CNET and TC, so we (PR folks) should recognize that and not put you on the dreaded ‘target list’.

Now, I imagine what you get overwhelmed with is not only PR pitches. In those cases, the basic rules of blog engagement – listen, think, find common interests, respond thoughtfully – should apply. (Actually, aren’t those the basic rules of HUMAN engagement??) Getting back to you “dealing with it”…you shouldn’t have to deal with garbage.

Leaving a comment in the regular entries could be a problem. What if 5 more entries are posted after the one with the comment?

Each blog should have a separate ‘Inbox/Suggestions/Notes for the blogger’ section. People can leave their notes and details for the blogger& the readers attention there. If the blog host itself doesnt provide such a feature – you should post an entry that reads – “Leave your suggestions, new product notifications and links you would like me to check out”. This could be your ‘blog inbox’. From here its a matter of subscribing to this blog entry.

If the host provides such a feature it should also have the option where readers can mark it as spam.

Wouldn’t it be called spamming if I were to put up a link to my website? Unless it’s relevant, I delete those comments. Please don’t encourage spamming comments… that just makes it harder for the rest of us to keep our comments clean.

Sorting through comments is really a problem…Most people don’t take the time to go through them because they vary so much in quality and content..Its almost like boiling ocean…This makes the conversation typically one sided (blogger to readers)…Now readers really want to hear from other readers in similar situation as them (case in point is the poularity of the Amazon.com product reviews http://karmaweb.wordpress.com/2006/10/31/amazon-reviews-rigged/)

What is needed is a way to sort out the mess and to rank the comments in a community ordered order of usefulness.

“Robert,

As I commented to Mike Arrington, the fact that you are overwhelmed is a monster of your own creation. To an extent, you just have to deal with it.”

He does deal with it, Jesse. By ignoring people. That’s how I deal with it, too.

thatdeguy: it’s not spam if I ask for it. On the other hand, maybe we should only do it once a week and only allow pitches in that one post.

Scoble: That’s why I’m up at 2:40 a.m. editing videos.

Arrington: I stay up at nights thinking about how to do the right thing. (and judging by the time on his comment here, that’s true)

OK, just an observation, but maybe people need to get more sleep.

I’m serious, are A-listers getting enough zzzs in their bid to feed the monster of daily postings to keep up interest in their properties.

Big Media journalists are getting 10 hours a night, I bet.

So A-listers really aren’t A-listers. They’re like Big Media’s lackeys. Doing all the work for a tiny piece of the audience and none of the sleep.

This is like the pot calling the kettle black, but taking this sleep deprivation theme further…

Exercise. How much are A-listers getting? Sorry, Robert, but you’re not sporting a Tour-de-France physique. Neither, from what I can tell, is Arrington.

And diet? What are you guys eating in front of your monitors?

Here’s the equation: too many hours in front of screens + lack of sleep + high-calorie diet = serious health issues.

This is ably illustrated by the photo on this page Hint: “Little guys” and Big Media journalists are on the left, A-listers on the right.

A-listers keeping little guy down? Only until the A-listers keel over.

Dominic: I don’t get enough exercise. Diet is actually pretty good, but could get better. I generally don’t eat in front of my monitor.

I’ve actually been losing weight lately cause I’ve been running all over the valley interviewing people.

Seems like any company that wants a blogger to write a post about them, might do better having their own corporate blog, or better yet, hiring a blogger on their payroll. The amount of time they waste sending these emails could be better spent just learning how to do it themselves. I mean, if I can figure it out, anybody can.