Part Four of the Social Media/PR Roundtable on the “Technosailor” blog, hosted by Aaron Brazell of b5media. This round deals with the fallout from Wired EIC Chris Anderson ’s outing of PR spammers on his blog, not to mention Aaron himself getting a bit tetchy last week. As with Parts One , Two and Three, my answer is copied below:

Is “outing” a wayward PR agency or individual an effective way of dealing with the problem of misfired pitches?

Doug Haslam: “Is it effective? Yes. No PR person wants to see their name on a “bad pitch” list and would do anything not to be publicly ridiculed. I have no problem with outing in that sense, though I wouldn’t necessarily take part in that sort of behavior unless severely provoked. What Chris Anderson did in his Long Tail blog– publishing the email addresses of 300 bad pitchers — is a real price PR people must pay, whether fair or not. The best answer to a “bad pitch” complaint is to send a good one– it’s worked for me.”

To see the rest of the answers, from Read/Write Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, blognation’s Marc Orchant, social media consultant Cathryn Hrudicka, and Brian Solis of FutureWorks and the PR 2.0 blog, please visit Technosailor.

The final roundtable installment is tomorrow.

Aaron Brazell, director of technology at b5media, has posted Part Three of the Social Media/PR Roundtable on the “Technosailor” blog. I am flattered to be among the participants. As with Parts One and Two, my answer is copied below:

How can bloggers engage public relations better?

Doug Haslam: Use them to help you. Tell PR people what you want, and let them in on the conversations, so long as they participate as, well, a participant, and not just a bald shill. The best way to increase the percentage of quality communications from PR is to post a policy somewhere on your blog or site that sets down your rules of engagement– do you want press releases? Would you prefer to hear from PR in comments? What topics do you want to hear about? There is nothing PR people like more than being told how to communicate with you.

To see the rest of the answers, from Read/Write Web’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, blognation’s Marc Orchant, social media consultant Cathryn Hrudicka, and Brian Solis of FutureWorks and the PR 2.0 blog, please visit Technosailor.