I’ve been blogging for about 6 years, so I have a few PR connections. Which means my inbox is full (overflowing!) with pitches from PR companies everyday.

I can tell when a pitch is personal and I can tell when it’s been copied and pasted and sent to 1000s of other bloggers. If the pitch is personal or I have a long-standing working relationship with you, the more likely I am to respond.

This news article from SocialMedia.biz caught my eye. It’s entitled “How not to treat bloggers and how not to pitch blogs“.

Here are a couple of no-nos when it comes to pitching a blogger mentioned in the article:

Start off your pitch with “Dear Blogger”. I get these a lot or other forms such as Dear Staff or Dear Entertainment Bloggers. It’s nice to open your email with a pitch and see that they actually know your name. I’ve even had pitches sent that included the wrong name somewhere else in the email!

Formatting that is off. This always makes me laugh. I’ve received quite a few pitches that you can tell they copied and pasted the email from somewhere else. The strange mix of fonts and weird spacing clues you in.

As the author mentioned in the article, many times PR firms are understaffed, juggling too many tasks, do not have the proper training or are just starting out and haven’t acquired the proper tech skills yet. Which is why they sometimes come up short when it comes to their style of reaching out to bloggers.

Do you have any annoyances when it comes to a PR person reaching out to you?

For those of you who are new to working with brands and PR agencies, a couple of great articles to read are 28 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Working with Brands and Setting Up Your Blog to Work with Brands.