4 key secrets of pitching social media

Back in the 1960s, San Francisco was the hub of a libertarian counterculture whose ideologies included free love, experimentation with drugs and the rejection of materialism. The hippie subculture spawned some truly historic things, including the Summer of Love and Woodstock.

And the Internet.

The original concept of the Web, and of social media, was a leveler—a tool to empower ordinary people to gain access to knowledge and to share it with others. The Well, the first-ever social network and the forerunner of the likes of Facebook, was formed in the 1980s by the ex-lead singer of the Woodstock-performing Grateful Dead and was infused with an “anything goes” attitude to “set information free.”

Fast-forward 30 years, however, and we find that digital agencies are scrapping with PR agencies for the right to “own” marketing on the social Web, each jealously guarding the secrets of what they pitch to clients and how they pitch it, and each firmly believing that their process-driven or content-driven approach is the best. Well, I’m about to reveal those secrets.