Every day I immediately delete about 20 percent of the messages in my inbox. Historically, the em-ails I trashed were mostly relegated to Nigerian scams and requests for cash from someone "unable to access" his pending inheritance. Fortunately, Gmail spam filters have helped to abolish most of these. Unfortunately, these same filters can do nothing for the endless stream of PR pitches that assault my inbox that are often irrelevant, impersonal, and, dare I say it, lazy. The laziness is especially damning in the age of social media. Never before have PR professionals had such an enormous opportunity to custom tailor pitches to journalists, bloggers, and content creators, who are most likely flocking to sharing sites online. With a few minutes of simple due diligence on a pitch recipient, which means dipping into Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, an e-mail message is easily customizable to become more relevant and personal.

By Amber Mac as seen in Fast Company