Communication Skills (Sort of)

This has nothing to do with marketing. But it was a lot of fun.

The Elevator Pitch is Going Down

This is what it's come to. While I've helped clients develop and refine elevator pitches for internal and external audiences, apparently nobody's got that much time anymore.

Introducing the TwitPitch or escalator pitch--so called because it can be said while one person is going up and on is coming down.

According to an article in Friday's Business Week, The Escalator Pitch, a Twitpitch forces you to tell your company's story in 140 characters (about 20 words), the maximum length of a message on Twitter, a microblogging platform.

According to the article, the phrase TwitPitch came about when: "social media pioneer Stowe Boyd experimented with the idea and coined the term on his blog last month when, overwhelmed by e-mails, he decided to take appointments at the Web 2.0 Expo only via Twitter.

I have a Twitter account, but haven't had time to make it take off yet. The authors of the article propose that Twitter may play an increasingly important role in Public Relations. I can certainly see it playing more of a role.

But at one point your average media person or investor--or any person--may feel deluged with social media accounts. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter--you can spend all day updating and playing with this stuff. Where do you draw the line? Third-party vendors to manage all of your social media accounts?

Still, it's an interesting development and I think erring on the side of making future elevator pitches escalator/Twitter friendly is a great idea. What's the worse that can happen? You'll be too concise? If you can't do it, maybe that says something about your idea.