I've mentioned this kind of thing in the past but if you are in the public relations business there are two things I'm going to tell you that if you listen to me will be invaluable to your business when it comes to relating to bloggers. If you ignore them, as I'm expecting you to do, you will continue to suck and we will continue to hate you.

1. DO NOT EVER tell me what my readers want to know about, or what my audience would love to hear about. I know who my readers are, you don't. Don't try to act like you do. That tells me you don't know shit about me or about blogs and are just trying to get a piece of my action. Don't fucking do it. I'm the only one who gets to shove things my readers don't care about down their throats.

2. ALWAYS look at my blog before you e-mail me. Does it look like I've ever written about some crappy product/service/website/event like the one you are shilling for in the past? If not chances are I'm not starting now. If I have, and it genuinely looks like something I've shown previous interest in, let me know that you've taken the few moments to actually invest yourself in my site by referencing what I've written in the past. Better yet read my blog before you are trying to pitch me something and be active in the comments so I know who you are before you are trying to sell me on something. Even more important, do a simple search to see if I've ever written about the exact thing you are pitching in the past.

There are few things worse than getting e-mails from people you've never heard of acting like they know you better than you, asking you if you've ever heard about something you wrote about just last week, or telling you how much you will love something you just wrote about how much you hated. There are about 20 companies right now that have gotten my name from one press list or another and constantly bombard me with releases and news about what they are up to, even though I've never ever mentioned them, and have no plans to ever. Does this stop them from filling up my inbox? No it doesn't. You know what does? The auto-delete filter I just wrote that instantly kills any e-mail that mentions one of their brands, or the names of any of the PR gunslingers they have on staff. Buh-bye.