Scott Brown on the Art of the Elevator Pitch | Magazine. Photograph: Leo Espinosa Got a sec? Then I’ve got one blockbuster of a column for you: It’s about how the “ elevator pitch ” evolved from sweaty-palmed business ritual—a form of white-collar panhandling perpetrated by pushy salespeople and desperate screenwriters—into the quintessence of the Big Idea. At the marketplace, the multiplex, the dinner table: Everybody talks in elevator pitches, tweets in elevator pitches, thinks in elevator pitches. And that’s fortunate, because wielded properly, the mighty Elevator Pitch could actually save us from the forces of fear, obfuscation, and delusion that savage our culture.
You’re still reading, so I’ll consider you hooked. The phrase didn’t truly conquer the vernacular, though, until Web 1.0 . Today, the elevator pitch has outgrown its original industrial-age metaphor and expanded into mass culture. Maybe it’s time we learn what movie producers and angel investors have known for years: Glib is good. Email scottiswired@gmail.com . New Venture Communications Strategies. XMediaLab. What It Means to Be an Avatar: A Study of Second Life - Faculty Research @ SMU Cox. Getting Clients to Embrace Fresh Ideas | Build Internet!
The internet is full of brand new proof of concepts and ideas just waiting to be implemented on exciting new projects. Actually getting the approval to use these features is another story entirely. Some of the most interesting ideas turn out to be hard sells when putting them into to practice. So what’s a web designer to do when clients insist on stale ideas?
Know Your (Actual) Audience Your client can mean the world to you, but the world is not your client. The world audience does not always share all of your client’s needs and direction. Success (in most cases) is built on the ability for other people to interact with the finished product, and not just the client’s approval of color scheme. It’s not easy to tell a client that their idea isn’t going to work out, but unfortunately it’s sometimes a necessary part of the job. Three Facts of Client Work As a web designer, it’s important to make note of a three main points. So what now? Don’t Get Discouraged Ask Good Questions Food for Thought. Thirty Second Sell – What’s Your Website’s Elevator Pitch? | Build Internet! You have thirty seconds to tell me why your website matters, and what it can offer me.
Go! Did you panic? It’s a simple enough request, but did you manage to simplify everything down to half a minute? That’s the idea behind the elevator pitch. What’s an elevator pitch? It’s a simple 30 second explanation of who you are and why you matter. This is just as important for your website/blog. Visitors are Customers It doesn’t matter if you run a web application or blog, visitors are the currency of any successful website. Build Internet is a web niche blog focused on web design, development, and business. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s a good start. You’d be surprised how many web directories or other sites require a short description. Sell Results, Not Possibilities This is the major difference between pitches for investors, and pitches for web traffic. Visitors don’t care if you have the potential to write compelling content. Lessons from 140 Characters Consider the following two examples:
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