Update (July 24, 2009)
Brenda wrote back and I’m impressed. No, I still do not think OLX is relevant to Milliblog, but their tone is bang-on – it is sane and rightfully apologetic. Even if I’m not going to start using OLX today noon, I’ll definitely take a serious look at it.
Response from Brenda,
Hi Karthik,
I read your reply and your post http://beastoftraal.com/2009/07/23/social-media-outreach-gone-haywire-the-olx-way/ and I understand how you may feel. I reached out to you because Amarjit Batra from OLX India asked me to reach out to all of the respected English language Indian bloggers and you were high on my list. Awesome Douglas Adams references, by the way — he’s one of my favorite authors. Anyway, I am sorry if I reached in mistake; however, I do think that your readers might be able to use OLX to buy and sell music, tickets, instruments, and I also think OLX is a great way to advertise for band members, etc.
Let me know if you have any questions. Again, I am sorry you felt like our campaign was off the mark.
Best,
Brenda
***
Original post:
A mail I got today – this is sent to my other mail ID that is related to the fairly popular music review blog (Milliblog) I manage.
Hi again
I’ve emailed you a couple of times over the past few weeks and I hadn’t heard back so I wanted to try once more. I thought you and your readers of Milliblog! would be interested in OLX, and I was hoping you could check it out and post about it. OLX is a global online classifieds community with many more features than the traditional online classified sites while remaining completely free. Please check out this social media news release which explains everything:
<OLX’s social media news release link>
If you’re interested in interviewing Amarjit Batra, Country Manager of OLX, I would be happy to set up a personal interview for you – just let me know. If you are able to post or tweet about OLX please send me the link so I can share it with the team.
Thank you so much,
Brenda
My response,
Hi Brenda,
I’m curious…have you even seen my website? It is a blog that does music reviews of Indian film soundtracks. I think it has absolutely nothing to do with OLX or online classifieds. I don’t think even one of Milliblog’s readers would be interested in an interview with Amarjit. I’m happy that corporates are seriously looking at social media engagement, but it needs to be appropriate and relevant. Not mindless, like this one!
Cheers!
Karthik
This is the perfect example of how not to do social media outreach – why would an Indian film music review blog even think of posting about an online classifieds website? And to think this is what I plan and design for a large part of my day and go out my way to make sure that every bit of social media outreach has relevant context. And for the record, this is the first time I’m seeing Brenda’s mail – if her earlier mails have gone to my spam folder, I think it is for a reason!
Picture courtesy: Ralph Krawczyk Jr via Flickr.