Twitpitch Is The Future

I am shifting permanently to twitpitching as the sole medium for companies to pitch me. I debuted the idea in the past few weeks, leading up to Web 2.0 Expo (see Web 2.0 Expo Meeting Scheduling: Twitpitch Me! and As Bad As It Gets: The Case For Twitpitches, Part II ). Basically, I want companies to get their story down to a one-liner 'escalator' pitch -- like 10 seconds long -- which is going to force them to drop the superlatives and buzzwords and get to the heart of the matter.

A twitpitch takes the following form:

1. A twitter message of the form "@stoweboyd [pitch goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch". (Note the #hashtag means that these will be accessible at www.hashtags.org/tag/twitpitch.)
2. A second, optional twitter of the form "@stoweboyd [single URL goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch". Just one URL, please.
3. A third, optional twitter of the form "@stoweboyd [proposed time(s) to meet or call go here without the brackets] #twitpitch".

That's it.

Twitpitches that work -- that interest me enough to warrant spending some time to find out more -- will be retwittered on my @stoweboyd account, and here on my blog.

And 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. Obviously I am open to receiving emails for general communication, just not for pitches.

I have both @twitpitch and @twitcatch accounts at Twitter, but I am reserving them for a future, more complex and automated solution, downstream.

Comments

[Yzard]

What about ideas that require some significant paradigm shift or an understanding that differs from what is current?

I don't have one, nor do I wish to pitch you; however it seems a bit limiting. If someone had more explanation that needed to occur, wouldn't they prime a good twitpitch merely to get your attention?

[Paula Thornton]

This piece caused me to have to add a new tag for del.icio.us "SocialMessaging"

Had to mark it to come back and digest it a couple more times.

[Graeme Thickins]

great stuff, Stowe...sounds like a
very sensible, efficient approach,
and I'll be interested to hear how
it goes for you

might see you at WidgetWeb Expo

cheers,
Graeme
www.twitter.com/graemethickins

[Michael Krigsman]

And how does forcing others to jump through unnecessary hoops benefit anyone?

[Armand]

Awesome stuff Stowe!

This cuts the process down to bare essentials. It reminds me of a book I read a while back, written by Donald Trump titled "You have 3 minutes", where this guy had 3 minutes to describe his pitch to Donald Trump.

Except your "pitchers" will have to describe theirs in 140 characters or less.

Different process - similar concept. :)

[stowe boyd]

Ahmand - Exactly.

Michael - The 'necessity' of PR flacking me has to be judged by the people doing it: they are getting paid to do it by others. Just because it is easy for them to send me bloated emails doesn't mean I have to play along. It certainly benefits me to get them to twitpitch, and it might benefit them.

Yzard - Yes, that's why I suggest a second optional tweet with a link.

[alan p]

I was talking to some people the other day about the idea of a "Twitter Elevator Pitch", you've beaten me to blogging it ;-)

But, why stop there - why not every company that wants to pitch needs to write a haiku ;-)

We were also talking about the "6 word pitch" to really crystallise things, and the Pecha Kucha business plan.

[Nic Darling]

the neophyte writes
lessons coalesce as words
marketing revealed

Not very good, but I couldn't resist making the attempt to haiku pitch my blog.

Anyway, this is a great post and an excellent idea. I think a request like this is likely to benefit those sending pitches as well. I know I could benefit from getting my business down to Twitter length.

[Annie Heckenberger]

Love the Twitpitch, but minus the hashtags. I'm part of the anti-hastag movement. Dave Coustan explains that here: http://blog.extraface.com/2008/02/26/why-i-unfollow-people-who-use-hashtags-on-twitter/

[Elliott Ng]

Stowe, I've been following the #twitpitch stuff on Twitter. I call this the PITCHMEME era! I think my PR people tried this but they don't really have a real Twitter account and I think they DM not @ cause it was embargoed. Anyway, we did a roll up of all the recent coverage on how to pitch and how *not* to pitch bloggers and included you.

http://tinyurl.com/5exv6o

I will #twitpitch you again once i figure out how to get "edgelings" into the #twitpitch.