LIVEdigitally

In an effort to make pitching LIVEdigitally as easy as possible, I’ve put together a handy little guide.  Please take a moment to read it prior to bringing news to our attention.  Note that we really do like getting pitched stories, reviews, news, etc, but we are just trying to make everyone’s jobs a little easier to accomplish.

General Rules

• We’re very forgiving.  We won’t blacklist, we won’t ignore, we won’t bias, even if you continue to ignore our requests below.  But please at least do us the courtesy of reading this list, and giving it your best shot.
• Say hi. If you send us a press release, there must be some form of introduction as to why it’s being sent.  Generic PR blasts will be ignored, but individualized outreach will always be considered.
• No calls please. You are welcome to use as much email or twitter as you want to reach us, but please don’t call.  In fact, if you have one of our phone numbers it generally means you bought it from some list, which makes us unhappy.
• Read the blog occasionally. We would appreciate if you’d take some time to get a little more familiar with the blog style and content.  We aren’t BusinessWeek, nor are we Engadget (we wish!), we have our own little rhythm of opinions and reviews.  In fact, here’s a little list of the topics we tend to cover:

Coverage Topics

• Gadgets – new ones, old ones, good ones, bad ones, blue ones, red ones, iPhones, and more.  We like gadgets.
• NEW consumer electronics – we aren’t interested in a camera with one more megapixel, a printer with higher DPI, or other incremental changes.  One caveat here, we might be interested in it from a review perspective, IF we didn’t review the last generation.
• Lifestyle Web services – this isn’t LIVEenterprisely, it’s about regular consumers.  If you have some new B2B enterprise market analysis exchange database server, I’m sure it’s fantastic, but we aren’t going to write about it.
• Accessorize us - this is a tricky one, we tend to like some accessories, but not all. What I’m saying is, we’re open…
• Big honking “plasma screen TVs” – nuff said.
• Anything else – well, take a shot, but hopefully this will help make it clear.

Reviews

• Budget your review units. If you announce a new product/service, you should expect us to possibly want to review it.  If you are never ever going to let us review it, then you really shouldn’t pitch it.  We understand backlogs, and we aren’t a Tier AAA blog, so we don’t need to be first to get it, but somehow we need one at some point (just tell us when, we’ll be patient).  Further, if you pitch us something then refuse to give us one ever, that might just be blogworthy.
• Pinging is ok! When you send us something for review, it never hurts to nudge us.  Sometimes we get swamped, sometimes we forget, hey – things happen.  So if you’ve sent us something, please don’t worry about overcommunicating afterwards.
• Take feedback well.  If we offer up some thoughts on your product/service, please take it as us trying to help.  We aren’t going to like everything, and we’re generally not going to completely trash your janky gadget in public.  So if we take the time to write back constructive thoughts, please give a listen to what we say, and even if you end up ignoring us, just be nice about it.  Nice, for lack of a better word, is good.

Hopefully this is seen as useful and constructive.  We aren’t trying to dictate anything, just clarify our goals as bloggers, and make it easier to work with those who’d like us to blog.  Please feel free to get in touch and let us know if we are missing anything on the list, or anything here doesn’t make sense.