It’s Funny That A Guy I Pissed Off Is Now My Friend

I received the following note from someone who recently befriended me on Facebook. I’m foremost a student in this world, and I bet I learned equally or more out of this interaction. It made my day, so I asked my new friend if it would be OK to share his letter, presuming anonymity. He agreed, and here it is:

Hi Max,

My wife was looking over my shoulder as I surfed facebook tonight and asked, “Who’s this Max guy you’re friends with?”

Not sure if you remember, but a little more than a year ago, I pitched you on your blog with what I thought was a refreshingly honest pitch letter. You didn’t care for it, in fact you hated it, and posted it up there for the world to see. I was shocked and embarrassed, though grateful that you kept me anonymous.

What I wanted to thank you for was your advice. You told me to actually go READ the bloggers I wanted to pitch, get to know what they’re interested in, and see if there’s something interesting in it for them.

That advice has been one of the best things I’ve learned this year. My colleagues in the PR firm where I work have tried, with very little success, to astroturf blogs with comments linked back to the product they’re working with. I’ve tried to tell them to actually *read* who they’re posting to, to see if there’s a way to approach that blogger. They tell me “it’s too much work.” But the proof, of course, is in who gets the big names to actually talk about what we’re trying to do. Astroturfing, I tell them, is immediately apparent to anyone who can think…but they do it anyway.

So Thank You, from a PR flack, for clueing me in on how to do my job better. It’s been invaluable.

My wife thinks its funny that a guy I pissed off is now my friend on FB, Twitter, Linkedin….. 🙂

Cheers,

ANONYMOUS

I’m now honored to be friends with this guy.