I'm Back To Blogging, And Here's Why...

This past weekend I happened upon a rant from @NCAAPartnership on Twitter, about my favorite topic, sponsorship ROI. Reading it inspired me to dig up and share an old blog post I had written. I found the blog post and discovered two interesting things.

One, there was a comment I had never seen on the post that was really quite eye opening, that I think the whole sponsorship world should see because it is so insightful. Two, this post was actually the last one I had written, but to my astonishment, it was published on November 9, 2009. Wow, more than a year ago.

The primary reason I stopped writing my posts was because it was profoundly disappointing to see such little discussion generated from what I put so much time and passion into writing. But here I was, 14 months after writing my last blog post, seeing a comment I had not known about, that made me feel as though all the posts I had written were worth getting that one response, that one truly awesome perspective. It’s great to know you had enough of an impact to inspire someone to share their own thoughts, especially when you can tell they share the same passion you do.

When I stopped writing my editorials for SponsorPitch, it was clear our operation couldn’t be sustained the way it was configured, and that in order to have any impact on truly improving the sponsorship industry, the infrastructure to drive it into the information age would have to be built.

So here we are. SponsorPitch has launched the first iteration of what I have to be honest, is going to be one spectacularly awesome web application to serve the sponsorship market like nobody has ever imagined. Sure, you may look at SponsorPitch as just a blog or a website you don’t understand right now. You may log in today and not know what it is or why you should use it. It may be buggy or not as intuitive as possible on March 22, 2011. But I promise, you will be using SponsorPitch as an integral and essential part of your day-to-day sponsorship job, whether you sell or buy sponsorship, this year. We may not be Facebook, but we will be that big in the sponsorship world.

Honestly, even if you don’t really get what SponsorPitch is doing, or if you don’t really see why you need it today, if you sell sponsorship, now is the time for you to sign up, create a profile, and upgrade to Professional membership (brand marketers, you may want to come on and fill out a profile, because there will be a premium offering for you soon, and we will be looking for testers to try it out FREE). You can put as little or as much information on your profile as you like. Sure, you are probably thinking “this Munson character is just trying to sell me something.” Yes, I am, but the fact is I am trying to help you. The price is going up as more people join and the amount of data available increases. In fact, the price goes up (by a few pennies) every time someone upgrades. As I type, it is $32.17/month. Ten days ago, we started offering professional membership at $31.60. I’m trying to save you money!

Your peers are upgrading and getting access to hundreds of brands, deals, brand experts, and brand marketer contacts while you read this. Everyone on SponsorPitch you see with a red star on their profile is taking full advantage of all that SponsorPitch can offer, and we're happy to see them invest not only in our future, but in theirs as well. But honestly, I care more about providing a great service for an industry I have great passionate for than anything else. The more upgrades we get, the faster we will be able to make improvements and increase the value SponsorPitch provides to its members.

As I told Brent Schoeb of the San Francisco 49ers this week, his colleagues and peers will thank him later for turning them on to SponsorPitch while the membership price is about $32 today. Why wait for the price to go up when you can lock in the lowest lifetime monthly rate for a Professional level membership now? In a few months from now, you’re gonna ask your peers and colleagues how much they got SponsorPitch for when they joined. Wouldn't it be nice to tell them what a low rate you got when you joined?

Alright, that’s enough selling. Some of you may be popping blood vessels over the fact I am using an editorial to sell something. But keep in mind my role is to help people in the sponsorship market do their jobs better. I’m sure there are some people that will thank me. In any event, I have to advocate for what I believe in and am willing to put my name on the line to stand behind my convictions. That said, I will never again ask readers to upgrade to SponsorPitch Professional membership in a blog post. If I do, I’ll comp whoever calls me on it a free month.

From here on out, I’m going to use this editorial perch to continue evangelizing what SponsorPitch is doing, give you some insights into how things are going, give you some usage tips, and share what I am personally learning from activity in the network. And I might get back to some more industry wide topics if y’all want to read about that kind of stuff. Whatever I write, hopefully there will be more discussion and positive activity generated as a result of it from here on out!

Contact Michael Munson:

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: twitter.com/MJMunson

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mjmunson

The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the publisher, SponsorPitch, LLC.

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