Perfect Pitch Fridays: Promote Your Pitch!
First day of Spring in NYC and it's snowing! Awesome.
Now that I have that out of the way, this will be a short post because in a few minutes we've got an interview with http://startupslive.tv. Should be fun. Check it out if you can and you can even ask questions so feel free to lob us some softballs.
First, a note about profiles. Please fill profiles out completely as this is the only way to ensure you're "searchable" and soon we'll only include profiles on our homepage that are filled out completely.
Now.. hopefully, you're getting more familiar with this evolving thing called "social media." You're here, so that's a great start at least. Today, I wanted to share a few thoughts on ways to promote your pitch using social/professional media (on and off of our site).
We're sponsorship people at heart, not social media entrepreneurs that just one day stumbled upon sponsorship as an opportunity, so we completely understand where you're coming from if you don't know a tweet from a digg. I was there. It is true that some people in our industry believe that online media has no relevance to a "handshake business" like sponsorship. I once thought along those same lines.
No, online resources are not going take the place of your existing relationships and seal your next deal. What it will do is widen the reach of both your personal network and your pitch, so that you have even more opportunities to get to that handshake.
Twitter's been getting a lot of buzz lately (several nba players have been reprimanded for "tweeting" at halftime in fact!). If you're not familiar with twitter, look up- it's above this post on our blog page. What twitter, linkedin, facebook, sponsorpitch and others help you to do is quickly update your network on new opportunities you've uncovered (ahead of your competitors, we hope!). If you're an agency and you've searched and found a new opportunity, quickly share it with your client by simply entering his email using the "share this pitch" button or clicking the facebook/linkedin graphics on the profile. If you're a property or a fan of a particular property, click on the tweet button and instantly send a pitch to all of your "followers. Right now, we have 563 followers, which are sponsorship sales and brand marketing pros. Every time we tweet, we get about 5 new followers/friends on average. Depending on the size of your network, every time you tweet your sponsorpitch profile, you'll get the word out about your sponsorship opps to a few new people, who then may pass it along to a few more people... you get the point. Next up, digg... digg lets users determine the best things on the web and push them to the front page according to popularity. Got a cool new event, a great pr story, a worthy cause? Provide all the information in your profile (video will be key here too) and then digg your opportunity. You can use this to raise the profile of your pitch and bring it to local, regional or even national attention.
The deal will almost always be offline. We know that and want you to take relationships you make on our site, offline. Use SponsorPitch to help you get to the deal in a smart and time efficient new way. Social media tools can allow you to do that and trust me, they're not going away. We were the first sponsorship platform to integrate these tools into the profile page. If you want a leg up, create a sponsorpitch profile and start distributing your info using these tools today. No one is an expert at the stuff (us included) so let's learn together and find new and creative ways to promote the pitch. You can start by tweeting your profile to us here: http://twitter.com/sponsorpitch
Have a great weekend and if your bracket is already busted, don't worry... ours is too!
