Are you contacting me because you want to see if I’ll blog about your work/book/study? Awesome! But as you pitch me, please keep these guidelines in mind:
1 – Refer to me by my real name. It’s ‘Mack’. Not Mark, not blogger, or my favorite, ‘To Whom It May Concern’.
2 – I don’t do book reviews. If you want to contact me about sending me an advance copy of a new book to keep, fine, but don’t expect me to review it here, because I won’t.
3 – Please pitch me on topics that I am interested in. For example, if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know that customer evangelism, music marketing, and blogger outreach programs are some of the topics I am interested in. I’ve never written about Agency X winning the GM account, so I’m probably not going to start if you pitch me on that story.
4 – Please don’t say you read and love my blog, then pitch me on something that I never cover here.
5 – Please don’t email me repeatedly if you don’t get a response to your original pitch. You probably aren’t getting a response because I am extremely busy, and your original pitch was extremely bad.
6 – If you have a study into social media usage, or really marketing in general, definitely let me know about that.
7 – When you pitch me, don’t think ‘How can I get him to blog about this?’, think ‘Is this something that his readers would be interested in?’ That’s how you win my attention.
I’ll be adding to this list as time goes by. If you have any questions, please leave comments and I’ll be happy to help clarify!
Mack (not Mark or blogger ;-),
This is brilliant! you must get a lot of rubbish in your email inbox!? A very good problem to have.
As a blogger myself (no I don’t get any pitches 🙂 I can appreciate you need to manage your interactions. And this seems mainly directed at people who spam people with pitches?
I’m interested to know if you are actually open to pitching at all? No, I’m not looking to pitch. I just can’t see what you are interested in being pitched to about, besides being given information.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for great post and Ideas!
I dont like…
Please don’t email me repeatedly if you don’t get a response to your original pitch. You probably aren’t getting a response because I am extremely busy, and your original pitch was extremely bad.
Do visit my music blog which is about: make beats for free
Haha, I like number 4 — I regularly get pitched on providing text links to gambling sites, while I write about travel in India, yoga and meaningful travel. #FAIL.
Do you mind if I copy a little of this for my own use Mack? BTW: It’s been forever since I’ve seen you. Holla when you’re back in the ATL. 🙂
Mack,
Your point is well taken. I don’t know what it is that persuades people to relate to me through an interest alien to me. Perhaps its our individual centric society. Nonetheless, its been my experience that putting your own interests aside is a better way to experience others. If they exist, mutual affinities will naturally come to the fore, if you let them 🙂
Dean
Mack,
I am not a blogger by any means…just someone who really likes your attitude! Thanks for all the info you put out, it really helps us newbies.
Laurel
Mack,
I enjoy the honesty of what you wrote. I get much the same when I am talking to people about my passion which is food since I am a personal chef and caterer. Keep up the honesty for your topics and don’t let anyone disuade you from them.
Thank you Timothy!
Hi Mack, you certainly tell people how it is! I found your blog because I typed “my first blog” into google – you came up number 1. I like your suggestions, thank you. What I would like to know is: How did you get that number 1 google ranking? That’s an achievement in itself really.
Cheers
Hi MARK,
It looks like it’s been quite a while since you’ve reviewed blogs on #BlogChat. My friend Michele Pliner had her blog, “Sporting the Small Stuff” reviewed there, and she got a lot of good feedback. Perhaps you might consider do a few more, months and years later. I found good ideas from those chats and it introduced me to some interesting blogs.
Thanks,
Deb Costello (@costelloland)
Deb, please read #1 in the post 😉
Hint: My name’s not MARK.
^ I’m sorry but that’s too hilarious not to laugh!
I thought if I violated a rule and used caps to draw your attention to the humor, of it, you might respond… (Which worked…) You know I do have a book I’d like you to review… (Kidding) … I just love your blog and read it all the time… (Not really) … But I am interested in your specific blog reviews on #blogchat because looking a real blog rather than a tips post does demonstrate what works and what doesn’t I concrete ways…
Thanks
Deb we might do reviews again but what I found was that too many people weren’t taking time to review the blogs beforehand and a few people were leaving snide and snarky remarks that were upsetting some people.
Not doing homework and snark… I guess every party needs a jerk to spoil the fun… Sigh… Thanks…