Here's a post that caught my eye earlier today. For those of you who've never seen writing from Rohit Bhargava, he's one of those folks who really understands the intersection between blogging and traditional media marketing. He leads the interactive marketing team at Ogilvy Public Relations. Rohit is one of those folks that should be heard better across the public relations field.

He ran a session at SxSW that I would love to have been part of. I'm really glad he wrote it up, and here's what came from the meeting. More comments below.

10 Easy Ways to Piss Off A Blogger (from SXSW)
At SXSW yesterday, I ran a "core conversation" called 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger.  This year at SXSW, these aptly titled "conversations" were a type of speaking slot where there was a round table and the challenge of engaging people in a discussion about a particular topic.  Mine was one close to my heart ... the best way to piss off a blogger.  I had created a Facebook event page before the session to try and build the buzz and going into yesterday I had almost 50 people signed up.  So I figured we'd get about 20 to 25.  After the session, I spoke to one of the participants who said he counted about 70 - so we had a really tough challenge of having a conversation with 70 people.

Learning from some of the feedback that came from a panel on Social Media Metrics that I had participated in a day earlier, my main aim was to make sure everyone walked out of the session with what I had promised them ... the 10 easy ways.  The format of the session was a bit different too - as there was no presentation or powerpoint, and I didn't walk in with the 10 ways.  Instead our aim was to collaborate, discuss and walk out with the ten.  I think we managed to make it to more than ten.  A few folks kindly offered to take some live notes and have posted about the ten, but without further ado ... here are the 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger, as defined by a group of super smart and engaged folks who all made it to be part of this conversation:

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 ... ie - sending informaiton 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.

[Read Rohit's Full Post]

As one of those bloggers who has been pissed off at some of the things above more than once, and one who will step out and lash back freely when some company is just boneheaded (I call them cluetards) about dealing with the non-traditional media, I can't stop myself from commenting. I'll number my thoughts to coincide with Rohit's numbering, but what follows are my comments with regard to his Top Ten.

1. Makes us feel like the cobbler's stepkids. Do this and you'll disenfranchise the people who will be talking about your event live and in progress.
   
2. Amen. If you aren't familiar with our blogs, say so, then go find out what we write about. Why did you invite us if you don't know who we are and how we might write about you?
3. Identity theft is just that. Don't steal from us any more than you would anyone else. Most of us are happy to have our ideas and words quoted.
4. See #2. If you don't know what I do or write about, why did you invite me? And why do you want to pitch things I have no interest in?
5. This is really important. Make me feel like you respect me and want me engaged in talking about your solutions and you earn goodwill. We all need goodwill. Bloggers are more likely to be forgiving and develop relationships with companies who treat us as being valuable.
6. Big mistake. Hide your stuff and make it hard, and I'll quickly stop writing anything about you. As a blogger, most of what I do is connect readers with sources of information. If yo umake it hard for me, it's even harder for my readers. Frustrate me and you never get to them. They're the ones you really want to reach.
7. If I don't know you and you approach the first time looking for a favor, odds are I won't even respond. Would you?
8. Do this and you're more likely to get one flaming bad writeup calling you out, then vanish to the abyss of companies bloggers don't write about.
9. This is more important than most companies realize. Sending a press release a few days early gives us a chance to be thoughtful in what we say, and give you better coverage. If you just dump press releases at the time of release, some of us may not even get a chance to read it for a few days. Then we're behind the game and why bother writing? Respect that we're busy too.
10. This is a tricky area. I don't think of myself purely as a journalist. While I can do journalistic reporting, it's not what I do for the most part. I editorialize and give opinion...freely. It's nice when you understand that I'm going to add my opinion. If you come to me telling me you have the coolest thing since sliced bread and I recognize it for smoek and mirrors, don't be surprised when I write it up as a waste and don't give you the glowiong reviews you'd hoped I would parrot to the world.

I wish I'd been at this session

This is one