Twitpitch Is Pissing Some People Off

I am somewhat baffled by the response to today's post about twitpitching (see Twitpitch Is The Future).

My argument in a nutshell: I am getting a bazillion pitches a week, especially heading into conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo. I thought that I might exploit the explicit brevity of twitter, and the open discourse involved, to shift the communication with PR people out of my inbox, into something more social, and at the same time, more abbreviated.

Enter the Twitpitch, and I have to say PR folks have adopted amazingly quickly.

But Louis Gray and Steve Hodson have heartburn about it.

Louis Gray wonders, snarkily, if companies or their PR firms can remember how specific bloggers want to be contacted:

[from You Can Only Pitch Me In Reverse Polish Notation or Pig Latin]

But for any company looking to make a name for themselves, how can they possibly remember who wants to be communicated how?

Stowe Boyd of /Message writes Via Twitter, "The Only Approved Way To Pitch Me" is via TwitPitch.

On his blog, he writes, in Twitpitch Is The Future, "Companies will be directed to this page to get the idea, and those that try to stick with the bulging email approach will suffer a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule: After three times of being warned, they go into the spam category."

Upside to him: Less e-mail, more clarity on whether something is being sent his way to write about.

Downside to the company: Their pitch is visible to everyone, making it clear they are shilling, and exclusivity is eliminated.

But, Louis, perhaps the visibility of their pitch is a positive, since my 2700+ followers will see the pitch. Isn't that, in principle, what they are after? Sure, if the pitch sucks, and the product is dumb, that will be obvious, but it's not like they are generally trying to hide their positioning or messaging.

Oh, and PS: PR firms generally keep book on the people that they try to pitch, and they know how they want to be pitched. That's one of the services they offer their clients.

Several of the more percipient PR folks that I steered toward twitpitching me noted in emails that they were informing others in their firms to only twitpitch me in the future.

And when you filter out the implication that I am somehow being arrogant to tell these folks how to communicate with me, it's only sensible that I tell them what I want. It's my life after all: it's my inbox. I am *not* telling them to pitch me in Klingon or something. Just because I have an email address, doesn't mean I want it crammed with pitches.

Or is he suggesting that it's hard to use twitter? Too difficult for the dense PR folks to grok? Bullshit: it's easy, and most of them are using it already.

Steven Hodson read Louis Gray's post, and digs even deeper into the notion that I am arrogant:

[from Talk about getting too big for your britches]

When you start throwing roadblocks into the conversation; whether it just is PR or not, the only losers will be the bloggers and then our readers. You know them .. they’re the people who at some point might come to you with an idea or God forbid a pitch but now they might just think twice about it. As such the only feeling you leave with them is that bloggers are just getting too big for their britches.

Oh, yes. I am getting too uppity.

A haphazard estimate is that I got several hundred emails leading up to the conference. Even a conservative estimate of a minute or two for each would have had me fooling around with these pitches for at least three or more hours. And that's just to figure them out, not the ensuing mess of scheduling meetings.

Hodson may think I am obliged to spend that time on behalf of the /Message community, but I don't buy it. Most of that time is waste, plowing through old school PR mumble -- passive writing, third person voice, phony quotes from CEOs, piles of untruthful superlatives, and a torrent of unintelligible buzzwords -- and with the hard work involved in boiling it down to a single value proposition left to me.

So I am done with it, even if a few self-appointed arbiters of the greater good want to tell me I am doing something harmful, fattening, or sinful.

Comments

[Chris Lynn]

I gotta tell ya, I love the Twitpitch. Many PR peeps, myself included, have been experimenting with the Twitpitch for awhile. Some may complain that 140 characters is too few, but I think it's a worthy challenge. It's also a time-saver for both of us; you get less spam, and we know right away whether there is any interest. My only problem with the public Twitpitch occurs when my client has some sensitive information they aren't quite ready for the world to see.

[Duncan]

Stowe
I thought it was a decent enough idea. I wouldn't worry about the critics, you're just the wannabe's target this week, they'll move onto someone else shortly as they always do.

[Bill Seitz]

Here's a different reason to avoid this. Do you want to *encourage* *more* use of Twitter by flacks? :)

[mitten]

Quoting you quoting Louis above:

"Downside to the company: Their pitch is visible to everyone, making it clear they are shilling, and exclusivity is eliminated."

It seems to me that if your product and/or your pitch relies on exclusivity and privacy to succeed, then neither is very good and you'd probably do well to revisit both.

And embrace the shilling! It's what you're doing, and we know it's what you're doing, so why try to hide that fact? Shill with sincerity!

[BrianGM]

I'm honestly baffled as well. I cannot see a down side to Twitpitch. Perhaps folks just don't understand what an opportunity has been offered, and thus, cannot appreciate it. I on the other hand, think that it is glaringly obvious that the Twitpitch is an amazingly simple yet innovative approach to the 'Elevator Pitch'. I think that the seemingly endless obstacles and gaps that come between the entrepreneur and the Angel Investor, Venture Capitals, and even banks,(yes I said the 'B' word!), can always make use of such a great tool. I vote YES for Twitpitch '08!

[Jeffrey Carr]

One thing to remember in emailing Boyd. Be sure to tell him what's in it for him. I learned that 18 months ago after Boyd was hawking his concept of "advice capital" (i.e., he provides advice, you give him stock). To that end, I sent a short email query asking if he'd like to see an Enterprise Search proposal. His response "And .. What's in this for me?"

So if you decide to send a TwitPitch to Stowe Boyd, be sure to dedicate at least the first 70 of your 140 characters to telling him what's in it for him.

[Stowe Boyd]

Jeffrey -

My name is Stowe. I am involved in consulting, where I work with clients who are interested in my advice, which is presumably why you or other people might pitch me. I am not principally a journalist, and I don't make my living from writing. So, in general, I weed out requests for my time that a/ aren't super compelling, b/ aren't coming from people that I know and/or respect, or c/ don't involve some kind of recompense.

Your product, which I frankly don't even remember, clearly did not fall into any of those categories.

The twitpitch is an outgrowth of the fact that the number of these requests for my time are going up, dramatically.

And yes, I am interested in 'what's in it for me.' This isn't a beanbag tournament: it's my life. You might think that I should be a public service, but I am not.