Here's the Pitch: How to Pitch Your Business to Anyone, Get Funded, and Win Clients

CHAPTER7

The e-Pitch

The availability of low-cost, efficient web communications technology, coupled with the rise of social media, is leading to an increased use of virtual and Web 2.0 pitches. Although these newer forms of pitches will never be as effective as a face-to-face meeting, they clearly offer advantages in terms of time and cost savings. In this chapter we will look at the twitpitch, virtual pitch, video pitch and e-mail pitch.

The Twitpitch

With the number of people using social media increasing exponentially every year, it was inevitable that pitching would begin to cross over from the real to the virtual world. Although a social media pitch has limitations, it can play a valuable part in the overall pitching process, particularly at the outset.

Social media expert Stowe Boyd is credited with first coining the term twitpitch in 2008. Boyd was attending a Web 2.0 Expo and was attempting to schedule meetings with start-ups. He posted on his blog that he would not accept e-mail proposals, only twitpitches.

Boyd set out the following rules regarding twitpitches on his blog:

• All companies who would like to have a meeting with me, need to send me a Twittered description of the product. Yes, please Twitter it to me at www.twitter.com/stoweboyd. Yes, one tweet, 140 characters ...