When you write blog posts about technical topics, you will receive a bunch of emails from PR people who want you to cover their clients’ products and services. However, most of these don’t usually pertain to the topics that I blog about. This post is free advice to any eager PR folks out there–target your messages to bloggers and opinion leaders that care about what you are trying to sell.
Some examples from my inbox over the last week:
Hello Joel,
The Super Boring Sounding Conference early bird price expires this TOMORROW—register by midnight November 20 and save $550 off the full conference price.
Sorry, I’m not going to be in Phoenix that week.
Hi Joel,
[Insert timely sounding news story blurb]. I’d like to offer the analysis of John Guyyou’veneverheardof, who is a very important research analyst. If you or any of your colleagues are working on related stories, Jim is available for comment.
Wow–I wish I could talk to more research analysts. I have some research to be analyzed.
Hi Joel,
I thought you might be interested in the news from Who’sThat Research. The company has named Bob SomeIdiot as President to help build the company’s new Voice-Driven Research strategy. Bob has an extensive background in consumer market research and will be guiding the company to make the most of its new speech-to-text IVR survey platform.
Maybe you should call John Guyyou’veneverheardof. He’s a very important research analysist, and perhaps he would be interested in doing his research in a voice-driven manner.
Hi Joel,
I know that you cover trends in customer service for the trucking industry, so I wanted to share some super interesting research that shows [some boring stuff]. This is under embargo until Dec. 1, so don’t tell anybody yet.
I have never blogged about customer service for the trucking industry, and do you think that if you tell me that something I don’t care about is under embargo that I will want to tell people about it?
Hi Joel,
An impartial HPC technology intelligence and analysis subscription service will be launched at DR15 by the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) and Blue Spruce Consulting. The NAG HPC Technology Intelligence Service will deliver technology insight and risk-reduction to help HPC buyers and users make better decisions and optimize their HPC investments.
You know what we need? More acronyms.
Eponymous 