So, either I forgot about sending out a lot of requests to receive press releases or, more likely, an extraordinary number of people have suddenly decided I should be talking about their product on this site. Lucky me.

My mitzvah to you once and future senders of PR comes in the form of these million-dollar tips for promoting your product. Before you send email to (or, God forbid, telephone) Z-list bloggers like myself, please consider these friendly tips for not coming off as a complete tool:

• Don't email anything generically business-y unless the recipient has expressly requested this contact
  • If your first email to me ever is a bulk mail press release, you're officially dead on arrival
• Don't send PR and promotional materials to a personal email account
  • Not providing a "Send Crap About Your Product Here" link was not an oversight; wardialing personal email addresses is a nemesis-making workaround
• Don't assume that someone responding to an email once 2 years ago equates wanting any kind of bulk mail contact today
  • Say Cheese
• Do be insanely gracious about handling the recipient's request for removal from every conceivable mailing list you might have put them on
  • Getting attitude about problems I did not create is a major-league turn-off
• Do research the site, learn what the blogger values, and then provide an attractive and highly individualized case for paying an iota of attention to you (hint: free stuff helps)
  • My three least favorite words this week are already "For Immediate Release" -- send me another unrequested press release with extreme caution
• Do understand that no one has, to date, started a weblog in order to make your business successful
  • If I had, you'd damn sure be paying out the butt for it, believe me
• Don't compound the annoyance by reading this and then penning a weepy, gothic epistle about what a meany-bo-beeny the blogger is
  • And, no, there's no need to apologize either; just...you know...quit it already

Thank you, friends, and good luck with opening the kimono to your paradigm-shifting productization of best-of-breed parallelization in whatever space you're currently in (viz a viz, the network effect &c.). May your vertical markets bear low-hanging fruits, may your bottom line be net net, and may you -- at the end of the day -- capture every eyeball you seek.

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