Bad PR: Is it too much to ask that you look at my site before contacting me about it?

This isn't so much an example of "bad" PR as it is "lazy PR" - and 'lazy blogger syndrome" too, if I'm completely honest.

Over the last couple of months, our beauty blog, Hey, Dollface, has been going through a bit of a growth spurt, and this has led to an increasing number of enquiries from PRs, all of whom are keen to have their products featured on the site.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm happy to hear from these people. We're always looking for new products to feature, and I have to say, the beauty PR industry are very on the ball when it comes to dealing with bloggers. They seemed to realise very early on that a mention on a popular blog could really benefit them in terms of selling products, and so they've been much quicker to reach out to bloggers than many other industries.

But they don't always seem to bother to actually look at the blog before sending their enquiry.

Over the last few weeks, I've had innumerable emails from PRs, all asking for the address to send product samples too. I wouldn't mind this either, if it wasn't for the fact that the address is on the blog, under the "About/Contact" section. That's the section they have to go to in order to get my email address, incidentally. Our postal address is above our email address on the page, so these PRs are actually scrolling past the information they need in order to find our email address, which they then use to ask us for our address.

If this only happened once or twice it wouldn't matter, but I seem to have spent a large part of the last two weeks interrupting my work in order to type out my address and, to be perfectly honest, it's getting old.

In order to try and streamline the process, I've taken to just using a stock email (Which contains a link to the 'Contact' page), but I'm still having to take time out to read the PR emails and reply to them. It may sound like a small thing to complain about and, indeed, in the great scheme of things, it is, but the fact is that dealing with email can be a huge time drain, especially for bloggers, who tend to get a huge amount of the stuff.

This week I've also had a lot of very basic questions from PRs which they would have been able to answer from themselves if they'd spent just a few seconds on the site - much less time than it takes to find my email address, send me an email and wait for me to respond.

So, pretty please, PR people: we love you, but is it too much to ask that you take a very quick look at the blog or website you're pitching to before dashing off an email asking for information that's right there in front of you?

Comments

[Amanda Nicole]

Oh my goodness, YES.

I get people emailing me saying that they came across my site (my online writer's site/portfolio), and have some work for me to do. But what are my rates? My rates are stated on the site from whence they just came and, fair enough, I do say on the site to contact me for a specific quote. I usually give a small discount, since they did go through the trouble of contacting me. But then they're BLOWN AWAY at my quote, like they were expecting a 75% discount or something. So, it's not just PR's who are lazy at reading information that's right in front of their faces. It's pretty much anyone needing something of you.

[Alistair]

Apologies if I've been guilty of this, but I have to mount a defence on behalf of my industry.

I always double check addresses when sending out samples, because I've been caught out before when people leave old details up, or I may be working with a media database that's unreliable to a small degree.

In the past I've caught hell for sending out an expensive sample, and having it not arrive, and then missing out, and my (extremely evil, but now thankfully ex-)boss asked 'did you check the address?'. Sample's missing, never to be seen again, coverage is missed, and the clinet has possibly been billed for activities that don't happen, which they're understandably not going to be happy about.

So, yeah, I always ask. You'd think magazines run by large publishing corporations would update their website info regularly, but they're some of the worst culprits. Mentioning no names there coughfuturecoughipccough...

Also - when it comes to getting quotes, poor minions like me are *always* told by the management never to accept initial rates and these are just a starting point for negotiation. Blame advertising rate cards for this. They're so at odds with what you actually pay, whether it's up or down, that it's easier just to ask, and after a while this gets drilled into us.

So, sorry about this, but it's not our fault! Honest!

[Amber]

Alistair, thanks so much for explaining that! I have to admit, that does make a lot of sense: I was just surprised to be asked for my address repeatedly by the same people (and no, you're not one of them!) but of course the PRs have to cover their backs, too.

I'm shocked to hear how bad some publishers are at keeping their contact details updated, though. A pretty important thing to neglect, I would've though!