Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for several years you’ll no doubt be aware that bloggers are a prime target of those looking for online publicity. Which, most of the time is great, it means people send me interesting stories and lots of excellent business books to review. However the flip side is a number of requests that are, inappropriate, irrelevant or rude. Here’s a breakdown of an example I received recently (minor edits to hide the identity of the misguided soul responsible):

Hello. Interesting site/blog you have.

Mistake No. 1

I don’t believe you are being sincere. You claim I have an interesting site, yet the email is not addressed to me personally – and my first name is on every page of my site so I’m sure you could have found it. He then goes on to say:

I have a new business website (with articles, news/markets, forum, marketplace, business directory etc). I aim to expand and develop this website to make it stand out from other business portals by adding more interactive functionality and a customisable interface to my site (in a similar way of igoogle’s intelligent approach to customize homepages).

Mistake No. 2

It’s all about YOU. I’m sorry but I don’t know you, you’re just one of several hundred people that have emailed me today and you’ve been insincere already, so I’m not all that interested in learning about you. Next he says:

The beta version is online now and I am working on marketing my website and optimising SEO.

Mistake No. 3 and No. 4

3: You want to tell me about a site in Beta, it’s not even finished? In fact when I took a quick look there was no real content on the site. There’s two problems with that a) it has no value, so what could I possibly promote and b) a lot of sites get started, few are ever finished, how do I know you’ll ever finish the site?

4: You’re working on marketing and SEO ah I think I see where this is going, you’re going to ask for a link from me.

Lets see what you say next:

I was wondering if you would be interested in mentioning my site in a blog with a link, or even writing a very short blog about my site.

Mistake No. 5

There we go, the real reason you’re contacting me is to ask that I market your (unfinished) site to my readers and give you a link so you’ll rank better in Google. So what are you offering me in return? Let’s see:

You could write whatever you want (except slander, false statements, but even constructive criticism I would welcome).

Mistake No. 6

How kind of you to give me permission to write what I want on MY blog. I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to remind me that I shouldn’t slander you on my blog, although give you asked me to write about your site I’d be more concerned about libel.

Mistake No. 7

Offering me nothing. I’m sorry but like most people I want to know What’s In It For Me (WIIFM). You need to tell me why I would want to blog about you, link to you or even bother to review your site/product/offer. Here’s some of the things you could have done so that there was something in it for me:

• Written or offered to write a relevant guest post, I’d then have included a short bio and a link to your site at the end.
• Sent me an interesting link, fact, story, story idea or press release. If appropriate I’d have credited you/your site as the source.
• Given me a good reason why my readers will benefit from your site, if it’s something I don’t/can’t offer them then I’ll probably link to and refer to you a lot.

You get the idea. Put simply, I’m trying to build a great website about identifying business opportunities and ideas and turning them into successful businesses, if you help me with my goal then I’m likely to help you with yours.

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