Digital Common Sense

It seems that every time there’s a conference some set of bloggers, and I’m in that set, start getting more press releases and press queries. This trend is rising as more of us are involved as not just bloggers, but as industry analysts and even accorded press courtesies. Conferences that let us register as press put us on alist to receive email and PR pitches. I’m good with that.

I appreciate the benefits, and I don’t even mind getting poorly targeted queries for the most part. In general, I’ve gained access to more information through this process.

There are however, some approaches that don’t get too far with me. First, if your email begins “Dear Eric” I must assume you have me confused with someone else. If you know your clients business and their story, even if it doesn’t fit, I respect a good try.

If you don’t, please stay out of the game. You’re harming your clients. I’m keeping this very generic as I know of and am a fan of the product in question here. But sending me an email about a new handset and asking if it might be of interest in my discussions of software oriented architecture indicates that either you don’t know that a handset is hardware, or you don’t have a clue what SOA is, but because hardware runs software, there must be a link.

It’s a good way to get a pitch ignored. That’s what’s happening in this case. In sales, we call it an elevator pitch, but if you want to get a strike, the pitch has to be near the plate.

Filed by Ken at 4:27 pm under Technology, Unified Communications