Good luck with your projects. I enjoy your blog.

Newsvetter sounds like an interesting idea. The problem you’ve run across is the same one I see on the knowledge management (KM) system front…how do you entice people to use a system that is useful but would change their workflow.

My research on the KM front follows something similar to what Brian says above. Find ways to make these systems seamless and make the ’switching costs’ (as Chris Brogran puts it) as close to zero as possible.

Brian, you’re exactly right. The issue is that to understand how an individual blogger would like to be pitched, you have to hear it from them. Other information about the blogger can be provided however.

Corey: The short cuts are okay as long as it’s in the research process. Tools can be created to help PR pros find the most relevant influencers, in less time. In actually building a relationship, and connecting with a blogger, you cannot take shortcuts.

David, Scribnia

But the traditional journalists don’t want to bother. They think they have the power and so you should come to them. Then, the concept of who is a journalist has evolved, so now you have thousands of people — bloggers and all the rest — to try to organize. On the PR side, they are billing by the hour and trying to keep three clients happy so they want to move fast — too fast to really connect with media.

I think what will happen is there will be a technological solution, a marriage of coverage and media tracking services like Cision with the social media listening/monitoring tools of Radian6 and Visible Technologies. Some algorithm will soon be able to assess the recent coverage of journalists and postings of company news and PR pitches and automatically connect the two based on certain settings and preferences. It sounds like futuristic artificial intellegence, but it’s almost already here with the tools we have for monitoring coverage and sentiment scoring.

If you also apply some human oversight with a crowdsourced Wiki model or the About.com/eHow approach, then you can make it that much more relevant.

I expect some deep pocketed corporation will make this happen by acquiring these services, or some large agency is probably already attempting to build something similar.

Of course, nothing will replace a long-term trusted relationship with a reporter or the chance to share a hands-on demo. In a race for shortcuts, the PR industry sometimes forgets the value of face to face or creating real experiences. Don’t be lazy, people.