Six questions to ask before you pitch a blog

Kevin Dugan, director of marketing communications for FRCH Design in Cincinnati, is also the writer of the Strategic Public Relations blog and the co-writer of the Bad Pitch Blog. As such, he is on the receiving end of plenty of pitches—good, bad and just plain useless. As a PR person himself, Dugan knows what it takes to successfully pitch a blogger, and how to avoid annoying the heck out of them.

The acceptance of blogs as a pitching target means that media databases now track the contact info and coverage areas of many bloggers. Unfortunately, says Dugan, this access has made it too easy to lob misdirected pitches at blogs.

“People have the press release done and approved by legal, and then they do a keyword search—and then I come up, so they send me the release,” Dugan says. However, like many bloggers, Dugan covers a narrow and well-defined subject area, so these out-of-left-field pitches go nowhere. Since bloggers are quick to slam PR people who don’t understand their content, the cost of a misdirected pitch is higher than it used to be.