Spam 3.0 – the way forward, apparently

A strong contender for the email that has most wasted my time this week has just landed in my inbox. And, yes, I do appreciate the irony of spending an extra 10 minutes writing about it.

The email, PR 3.0: The New Public Relations Toolkit, has probably been received by 10,000 people that even remotely work in the PR industry – a group that should probably be spammed to highlight how it feels – and highlights that only those adopting PR3.0 will see it through the recession.

Nicely, Thunderbird assumes this is a scam and will not let me download the whitepaper without clicking half a dozen boxes but eventually I find out that PR3.0 is an automated service to reach a sh*t load of people.

I agree that more people are reading blogs and getting news from Twitter but I also believe that people only trust a handful of sources. So instead I’d rather send out to 10 people that I know are influential and interested.

And besides, there are enough “paste a turgid release” websites with good SEO out there that you won’t need to do many of them to ensure it’s seen by the casual researcher looking for a company press release rather than an editorially credible and debullshitified piece of copy.

As a blogger I also know that most of the content I generate is led by one of two things. Lots of research or an interesting item or two from one or two sources. The best effect I’ve ever seen on Technorati listings has come not from direct outreach but from one well placed piece with the New Scientist.

PR3.0 – Nope, just spam 3 times as many people. I prefer PR1.0 – know people, target appropriately, use the medium that they like (twitter, email, phone) and come up with something that can be used; not just I have a crappy release but this is happening and ties in nicely with X, Y and Z to mean A, B and C.

Now please, bugger off, stop labeling it as anything other than mass spam and go back to basics if you want to make it through the recession.

PS – I should probably attribute the “paste a turgid release” – Chris Lee, ex Rainier PR