In a nutshell, Twit-pitching involves two things: relationships and concision. In other words, you have to have some sort of relationship with the journalist to twit-pitch them, and you don't have a lot of space or time, so you've GOT TO BE CONCISE.
On Twitter, for example, you are limited to a mere 140 characters in each tweet. That’s about the length of this paragraph. (including spaces!)
On other social networks, such as Facebook, there's no specific space limitation, but you know you aren't sending a pitch letter or email, or even making a phone call. You know you've got at best, a moment or two of the person's time.
These thoughts are reflections from yesterday's excellent Bulldog Reporter audio conference with four top journalists using Twitter, Facebook and Linked In to do their jobs. My thanks to:
- Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Consumer Technology Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press and Author, “Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company”
- Ina Fried, Senior Writer, CNET News
- Chris O’Brien, Business Columnist, San Jose Mercury News
- Dan Patterson, Digital Audio Manager, ABC News
We were also supposed to have Brian Stelter of the NY Times on the call, but he got pulled away on assignment. But he did drop one nugget on me when I talked to him before the conference: that he keeps his Twitter page open on his desktop, posts queries on it when he needs help and teases people with previews of what he's working on.
Wanna find out which journos are on Twitter? You can Google 'journalists on Twitter' and get a few results of pages with compilations. Or you can head to m1cr0pr.com where they have posted a wiki -- thanks to the great Brian Solis, who also joined us as a guest speaker on the Bulldog call yesterday.
Last point: if you want to see the tweets from yesterday's call by speakers and attendees, search for #bulldog at search.twitter.com.
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