How many ways can you spell “FAIL”?
You’d think the turkey could have at least filled in my name after “Dear” 🙂
Needless to say, I won’t be reviewing or trying his service.
(It was someone who is very obviously tracking posts related to a conference I mentioned over on my Disruptive Telephony blog and who seemed to have copied/pasted the contents of an email message into the blog comment, complete with email-type signature. The content was pure marketing-speak and had no personalization whatsoever to my blog. Too bad, because his service does sound halfway interesting… I might have looked it if he had taken a minute or two to personalize his pitch and try to relate it to what I write about. Pitching bloggers isn’t rocket science, people!)
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I wrestle with this all the time.
Some vendors are outright rude so I don’t want to talk about them, but then I think news and technology should not be so personal.
The line between personal feelings/behaviors and what is news/blog worthy is indeed a gray one. You say above.. “Too bad, because his service does sound halfway interesting…” In other words, because a low level marketing guy goofed, you are not going to evaluate what you admit might be compelling.
This is really tough, but I totally agree and understand. The beauty of blogging is we don’t have a boss and don’t need to cover things we don’t want. But I do feel obligated and torn, particularly with some industry giants that won’t give me the time of day.
I find it interesting that they attempted to pitch you with a blog comment. I guess if they’re actually a legit service and are trying to market themselves honestly, I’d give them a little credit for just that, trying, but they’re obviously missing the mark on the conversational nature of blogs and how to utilize them (or the influence of reputable bloggers) for marketing purposes. I find it’s a lot more effective to build a relationship with bloggers and editors rather than try to gain their attention through comments like that one.
I have the same gut reaction to similar comments on our blog at http://videoarmy.tv. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish a legit comment from the average spam when the messaging is so poor. Since my time spent moderating comments is limited, I’m not that willing to investigate very far. It’s easier to just hit the “Reject” button.
Enjoyable post, Dan!
Rachel
VideoArmy.tv
I often get comments telling me how nice my blog is. That’s a one-way route to spam hell (WordPress does have a Spam button for Comments). I’m looking for informative conversation about the post, not the Next Big Thing….