#PitMad: Tradition Publishing Meets Twitter

Have you ever seen #PitMad on your Twitter feed?

We all find ourselves scrolling through social media at times. And then we are bombarded by various messages from companies, celebrities, and our friends at every turn. And on Twitter those messages only have so many characters to grasp your attention. They cannot ramble on and on like they can on a blog, which can lead to us tuning out the messages we don't want to hear. I am extremely guilty of this. However, every once in awhile I stumble across something that piques my interest. In this case it was #PitMad.

Our twitter feeds are full of the content we decide to follow. We pick topics and Twitter gives us recommendations. My personal twitter account follows publishing companies, editors, literary agents, and fellow writers. You could say that Twitter is the LinkedIn of my writing career. When I stumbled across #PitMad I was immediately intrigued. I saw multiple posts with variations of the phrase "are you doing PitMad this year, let me know!" So, like all of us, I wanted to be involved.

I clicked here to find out more about it, to find out what it is. According to the organization's website "Pitch Wars is a volunteer-run mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns choose one writer each to mentor. Mentors read the entire manuscript and offer suggestions on how to make the manuscript shine for the agent showcase." This organization prepares new authors who want to break into the book world by preparing and leading them through the process. And the best part, this all happens on Twitter. In a short tweet you describe your book and you see what happens.

Why are we talking about Pitch Wars? We are talking about Pitch Wars because someone out there was listening, talking, helping, energizing, and embracing the individuals on Twitter and created this organization. This is the main topic of Chapter Ten "Tapping the groundswell with twitter", of the Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. The chapter goes on to discuss the importance of five key strategies to engage with the groundswell on Twitter and all other social media platforms. #PitMad seems to be how the publishing world is tapping into the groundswell using Twitter.

Listening: "Unless you listen to Twitter, you won't know what you're getting into" (Groundswell, 202). Pitch Wars listened to Twitter through the creation of their organization to give users the ability to connect with fellow writers and receive a mentor from a social media platform! Talk about breaking down barriers!

Talking: Pitch Wars has it's own Twitter page were all questions can be directed to: @pitchwars and individuals receive responses on comments from the organization.

Energizing: Pitch Wars has a blog! Pitch Wars has a Twitter! Pitch Wars has events! Pitch Wars has people talking about it and promoting it and submitting to it because they believe in the process and the organization. Pitch Wars created sub hashtags for easier organization of work! Pitch Wars does whatever it needs to to support its consumers and make them happier to be part of the organization.

This directly leads into helping because Pitch Wars engaged with its users directly where they were because why recreate the wheel if you can just join your community! Pitch Wars engages with its community by taking in new ideas and criticism and updating. One of the most recent updates was a way to uplift Black voices, which they described on their website.

Li and Bernoff understood the importance of Twitter, meeting consumers where they were at, and engaging with them on social media platforms. #PitWar may have been created a year after Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies was published, but I still believe Li and Bernoff would be impressed with the work they have done. As Li and Bernoff said "Twitter may well be among the simplest, most powerful social tools you can use". What an interesting application to find of our learning after fifteen minutes of scrolling online.

Have any organizations listened to you on Twitter? Energized you?

Please tell me in the comments! I want to hear your stories too!