50 words to pitch your blog: a writing challenge for business bloggers

January 18, 2008 · by Joanna Paterson · in

Can you describe your blog in 50 words or less?

That was the challenge I set myself as part of the redesign of the Confident Writing blog. I was looking for a piece of text that would a) welcome new readers and introduce the blog and b) generate some eye movement down the page, anchored by my photo, and still have room to show the RSS subscribe buttons above the fold.

While I was playing around with the words I wanted to keep and discard (and discard and keep), I came across Mike Sansone’s idea of the “porch pitch” and used this as the frame for my writing challenge.

The porch pitch challenge

Shorter than an elevator pitch, this is an at-a-glance description of and introduction to your blog. I ended up pitching mine at 41 words and still achieved my writing and design objectives. Mike has his off pat at 28 words. If you’re good at brevity you could take it to another level again and write it twitter style, in 140 characters or less.

The idea is to come up with a form of words that tells new readers what they need to know without asking them to:

  • scroll
  • search or
  • click a link

The last point is important. It’s what makes the porch pitch different from your ‘About Page’ which a reader needs to click to find – and needs to know to look for.

Mike’s challenge is to put yourself in the shoes of a reader who arrives in the middle of your site (rather than through the front door) and who might have no experience or knowledge about the way a blog site is ‘supposed’ to work.

The Confident Writing Porch Pitch

I have to confess I edited the pitch at least a dozen times. It probably absorbed more of my (writing) time than any other part of the redesigning and restructuring process. But I’m glad I took the time to get it right, because it didn’t just deliver on my design and writing objectives, it also helped me focus – really focus – on what this blog is about, and what I hope it can offer.

This is the pitch I went for in the end:

Welcome to Confident Writing, a blog site full of writing tips and virtual coaching from me, Joanna Young. It’s a site not just for writers but for anyone who wants or needs to write with confidence – because our words count.

That’s the <50 words version.

I also challenged myself to see if I could ‘tweet’ it (140 characters or less):

Writing tips & virtual coaching not just for writers but anyone who wants or needs to write with confidence

Take the porch pitch challenge

I know some of you already have strong (and commendably brief) porch pitches, some of you have longer versions, and some have about pages that I’d find with a click. But can you pitch your blog in under 50 words? And if you can, are you happy with what it says?

If you want to review what you have, write a new pitch or take the scissors to the one you’ve already got, here are 3 questions that helped me finish mine:

  • Imagine you’re a new visitor to your blog: what do you need to know? what would make you stay?
  • Imagine you’re a new reader, and have never read a blog before: what would make you feel welcome?
  • Set yourself a word limit: 50 word maximum or 140 characters if you can. What can you throw out? What do you have to keep? Do you know why? What can you learn from that?

Sharing the learning

If you decide to take the challenge you’re welcome to share how you get on either in the comment box here, or write a post about it and link back. If you’ve already mastered the porch pitch, let us know how you did it…

Here are the links to the articles I used for inspiration when writing my own porch pitch:

Hey writer, what’s the blog idea? and Porch your elevator pitch from Mike Sansone at Converstations

If business embraced the essence of Twitter Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand