Pitching Social Media

Over on his blog, Long Tail author Chris Anderson provides some commentary on the debate around pitching bloggers with a social media press release. He says:

But what about the Long Tail of media–all those new influentials, from the micromedia of Techcrunch and Gizmodo to individual bloggers? And the social news aggregators like Digg and our own Reddit? They’re where the most powerful sort of marketing–word of mouth–starts, but most of them don’t want to hear from a PR person at all. Blogging is all about authenticity and the individual voice, not paid spin. Many bloggers seem just impedance mismatched with the preternaturally positive PR professionals, and woe to the flack who’s busted trying to game Digg without revealing that they’re paid to do so. So now imagine that you’re one of those PR professionals. What do you do?

The Long Tail: Long Tail PR: how to do publicity without a press release (or the press)