Maybe it’s the change of seasons, but just in the past week I’ve seen a
dramatic uptick in the number of random and uninteresting press releases
I’ve had spammed at my rAVe [Pubs] Inbox by lazy and careless publicists.

No joke, many of them have absolutely nothing to do with any channel of CE,
and even the ones that do have the square root of bupkiss to do with any
channel, field, or beat that I’ve ever covered or shown an interest in
talking about.

The winner though, and I use the term loosely, was the PR flack who spammed
me with a press release for some social media Facebook game. I neither play
Facebook games nor pay attention to them, although I don’t judge those of
you who do.

What made this PR guy remarkable was the fact that, despite never having
engaged with me nor conversed with me in the past, he had the temerity to
send a follow up email a couple of days later to ask if I had received his
release. He said he wanted to “circle back” with me, and asked if it had
been “lost in the shuffle.”

No, your press release ended up in the Deleted Items folder because I am
absolutely, totally uninterested in writing about social media games.

PRO TIP: Qualify your prospects.

I say that as a life-long salesperson. If you’re going to cold call (which
this is) then make damn sure you know something about who you’re cold
calling.

If I show up on the doorstep of a business without knowing a damn thing
about them beforehand, I’m wasting everybody’s time, especially mine.

The same principle applies if you, the PR person, just scrapes news sites
and blogs for email addresses and blasts out press releases with no thought
to context, nor whether the person on the receiving end even gives a damn,
then you’re just wasting everybody’s time, especially mine.

There’s a reason why PR firms have revolving doors: most aspiring PR flacks
suck, and exit the business quickly. There are some magnificent PR people
that I love dearly (you know who you are), and (you might want to sit down
for this) I actually listen to what they want to tell me.

So if you want to have a long and glorious career in PR don’t be a spambot.
Cultivate relationships. Get to know people in the media. Give them a reason
to actually be interested in what your clients are doing. People who’ve been
in PR for decades instead of months do that, maybe you should too.