Got this in a group Skype chat and thought it was actually rather true.

Rohit Bargava ran a conversation with about 70 participants at the SXSW with the purpose of establishing a list of “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger”. I think the group did an excellent job. Here’s the list:

  • 1. Invite bloggers to participate in something and don’t give them a chance to talk about themselves. This was what I opened the session with, followed by letting people around the group introduce their name and their blogs. A list of people who chose to share their names and blogs is at the end of this post.
  • 2. Pretend to be a “long time reader” when you actually just visited the blog once and read a few posts.
  • 3. Use a blogger’s content or identity without giving proper attribution
  • 4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it
  • 5. Add them to a PR list and don’t let them get off of it
  • 6. Make it hard for them to link to something by hiding your content behind usernames/passwords, giving them uncertain directions or requiring them to take multiple steps
  • 7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you
  • 8. Fail to identify yourself or falsely represent yourself as something or someone you are not. This includes failing to mention something about your or your employer that is relevant.
  • 9. Set an unreasonable expectation for a blogger and expect things in an unreasonable amount of time … i.e. sending information and expecting them to post within a few hours. Quick poll of our session showed that for the vast majority of bloggers, it’s not their day job.
  • 10. Get the journalism relationship right. Some bloggers consider themselves journalists and others don’t. It was clear from the participants that this is a tricky subject, as some people also noted after the session.
  • hahah!!


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    Comments ( 1 Comment )

    This also works – don’t link to the URLs they provide after dropping a comment on your site. Really pisses them off :)

    Craig added these pithy words on Oct 09 08 at 2:37 pm

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