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Esther: This is the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and my guest today is Jason Kintzler, the founder and CEO of one of my all-time favorite social tools, Pitch Engine. Jason, welcome to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show.
Jason: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Esther: So last week we featured Pitch Engine on the overtime show as our link of the week and it got a great response. Actually had several people call me, several people e-mail me about it and have started using it and I'm glad that so many people are catching on here. So tell us what Pitch Engine is exactly.
Jason: We are PR for the social web and we're a platform created for public relations professionals and journalists and bloggers and whatever influencers influence your brand to collaborate and share information. We want to do it the social media way with rich content and all those things that you can do out on the social web that you can't do in a boring, rigid press release.
Esther: That's awesome and I know from experience that it works. So why do we need this tool to exist? Aren't there plenty of other news services? PR Web, Newswire, these all seem to work just fine, right?
Jason: Yeah; the horse and the saddle and wagons worked really fine for a long time and ya' know, we got around and we traveled and it was great. No, in all seriousness it's a different model. Traditional and PR distribution was a lot like traditional news distribution and we know what sort of shape that's taking.
Esther: Right.
Jason: I think that the top down process of just distributing our news to as many eyeballs as possible isn't necessarily the most effective way to sell our products or get people to our events or create an audience. We need to do that more organically and not at the risk of sounding too clichι-ish, it's putting the public back in public relations. Let's go reach out to people, humans. It's about relationships so let's talk to the people that count and share our message with them. All these new social networks and tools and all this stuff enables us to do that easier. So we just help them package that content, package your message, your announcement and share it through Facebook and Twitter and You Tube and all these other avenues.
Esther: Well I know that Google absolutely loves social releases. You submit a social release and I would say instantly Google has picked up on it and usually you end up on the first page. It's phenomenal. So how does this work?
Jason: I'm admittedly not an SEO expert. I've fortunately had the people around me that can help us build this tool to optimize our content the best for Google for one, and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo and we have a good page rank. I think we're like a page rank 6 in Google and all those things contribute to the amount of juice we can get on your press release when we put it out there and share it with the search engines. That's a big component. A lot of brands want to be able to when you enter those keywords to see their content up there in Google.
Esther: Absolutely and that's something that PR professionals are really catching hold of is optimizing press releases for SEO. That's something that people never really did before. Now PR professionals have to be very schooled in SEO. So how do you think Pitch Engine has changed the way PR professionals do business?
Jason: Ha ha. That's a great question. The biggest challenge for me isn't getting people to like my tool or getting people to sign up or like the release format. The biggest challenge is educating them that PR is not about sending your stuff to journalists. That's a piece of it. It really is, but that's not fully what public relations is about and we're supposed to basically manage that communications between our brand and our consumers, our end consumer and the people that impact our brand. So that's the biggest challenge. I think where we sort of fit into that is we're providing an avenue for you to put your content out there and share it more organically, for lack of a better term, to your own consumers. So there's great case studies on our site. As you know, the brands that are discovering Pitch Engine are all sizes and shapes, all facets of every industry and they all use it differently to be honest with you. You might have a small kayak company; this is one of our case studies, a small kayak company in Tennessee that has great little Twitter presence, great Facebook fan page. They put these really cool videos out on You Tube of their kayak in action on these great white water locations. Then they cultivate their network. They have people that follow them for certain reasons. Well, when they put their press release, if you take a traditional press release and try to cram it into a social media channel it doesn't work. We don't speak in AP format
Esther: Absolutely.
Jason: when you and I talk. We don't send a text message to our friend in AP style.
Esther: No.
Jason: and five paragraphs and the whole story. We just send them in bits and pieces. So we not only enable you to take your content and share it with rich content in a more conversational way, we enable you to put context around it. So if you've got great You Tube videos that your brand puts out, why not wrap some context around that. Why not say here's the kayak, but here's the back story. This is why it's cool. This is how much it costs. This is where you can get it. I think consumers are savvy enough. They want some of that info as long as you present it right.
Esther: Absolutely. That's one of your phrases. Press releases suck.
Jason: Yeah.
Esther: And they do. Who reads press releases? Nobody.
Jason: Totally. We've just done it because that's the standard way to do it, right.
Esther: Right.
Jason: It's like we use the fax machine because it's there. Well, pretty lame.
Esther: So let's be honest, not that many social tools are actually making any money, yet you have over 13,000 brands that use your service and pay for it. So what do other entrepreneurs with social ideas need to do to make money with their ventures?
Jason: Wow. That's a loaded question isn't it? Ya' know, I went into this, I'm not venture backed. I'm not probably the savviest businessman you'll ever meet either. I wear cowboy boots and a belt buckle so if that tells ya' anything.
Esther: Well you'd fit in right here in Texas that's for sure.
Jason: But no, the reality is I started a business and I saw all these social tools and there's a value to that. We provide a value to brands and I don't care if you're big and small. I think other entrepreneurs, if they look, I'm a big fan of Gary V Gary Vanerchuck and I think that guy nails it on the head when he says, 'If you have something that you're interested in, if you have a passion about anything you can go do this stuff and make money at it.' I really feel that's the thing. Look, is Twitter worth something? Will people pay for it? I believe absofrickinlutely. Of course we would. People aren't going to just turn their back on it. Will they cut down their users by half or something? Well maybe, but who cares if you're going to make a dollar per user even. I wasn't afraid of that. I really loved the premium model where you could use our service, get to know it, see if you like it and if you want to keep your releases and archive them beyond 30 days, here's the fee. It's a subscription fee. We made it cheap. It was 35 bucks a month. For any brand or PR agency that's peanuts, but it adds up. It's all about volume. So it's a business, too.
Esther: So have you always been interested in this social media space?
Jason: Social media in particular, no. That'd be a big lie because I'm probably older than social media, the concept. So I was interested in lots of stuff, but I've loved journalism and media. That's what I started out in. I'm a former reporter, news anchor from back in the day. Kind of cut my teeth in the news business in print journalism and in broadcast. I got into the PR side and it's just a love for communicating. I still love newspaper. I still love all those things. So yeah, social media, it's sort of a learned thing. I built a tool for media relations. When you start talking about ways that we can communicate, well social media obviously factors into that.
Esther: Right. What do you think's been the most difficult aspect of getting Pitch Engine off the ground?
Jason: Ooh, most difficult aspect. That's a good question. I have a hard time holding back. I have a hard time with the reigns. Somebody asked me the other day in an interview what keeps me awake at night. It's not fear of failing or anything like that. It's ideas and the ideas part, my developers, they definitely say, 'Hey, let's work on this project. Let's get this one figured out before we add all these bells and whistles.' The biggest challenge for me personally is I want this stuff to happen in a certain amount of time and I want to get it out there in front of everybody and I don't have the biggest budget in the world. That's been a little challenging. We built Pitch Engine and it's only been marketed through Twitter, Facebook and a little bit of blogging
Esther: Unbelievable.
Jason: And great people like you that are evangelizing
Esther: Groupies?
Jason: Yeah; but
Esther: You mean groupies.
Jason:-- it's awesome. If you build a great tool people will talk about it and that's really what we wanted to do. So it's been a little challenging in that we're small potatoes, but 13,000 brands isn't that small when you start looking at
Esther: Not that small. Are you kidding?
Jason: Yeah.
Esther: That's pretty phenomenal for a tool like I mean
Jason: Yeah; and just imagine what we can do when we start getting the cash flow coming in even more and we can do some marketing and start getting people educated on it.
Esther: Yeah; absolutely. So this is a question that we love to ask our entrepreneurs and you're very clearly an entrepreneur with a big vision. So what was your very first job?
Jason: Very first job.
Esther: Mhmm.
Jason: My very first job was making pizzas in Montana.
Esther: Awesome.
Jason: Yep. I was
Esther: That's a good one.
Jason: I was flipping pizza. I was a young guy making pizzas in a college town for college girls so I thought I was pretty cool.
Esther: Yeah; that actually isn't a bad job. So aside from Pitch Engine obviously, what are some of your favorite social tools or maybe blogs, anything you use or read on a daily basis that inspires you or gives you some good ideas?
Jason: I'm a little bit of a sponge. I love to take in all this information. Probably the most inspiring thing that I did was I subscribed to Fast Company and to Inc. Magazines. Those are traditional print publications. I wasn't finding my content online at the time. I loved reading about stories. There used to be a show called Big Idea too. It was on
Esther: Yep; I remember that show.
Jason: ABC or one of those networks. I loved it. I was like I'm gonna do that. I've always had this sort of entrepreneur gene, but I loved it that I could see people that did it with way worse ideas than I had. So I thought I think I can do this. Now that I'm in there as far as social media tools, obviously I have the same favorites as everybody else in terms of the core. I'm on Facebook all the time 24 hours a day and Twitter 24 hours a day, but I love some of these new things that are coming up that I'm able to experiment with. I love what Filter box is doing for monitoring and kind of this a little bit, not so much noise and not so confusing. I love some of those things for media and journalists. I always look at things through this sort of media scope I guess
Esther: Yeah; well you have a very unique perspective because you've been on both sides of the spectrum. I think that's something that a lot of PR professionals struggle with is finding that balance because they want to do their jobs, but they don't necessarily understand the journalist's perspective. When you're getting pitches and you're getting press releases thrown at you from all angles it's almost like this tool, this Pitch Engine tool is allowing people to have a more conversational approach.
Jason: And I'm gonna give you the lowdown Esther is that what you see now on PitchEngine.com is the beginning and what you're gonna see us launch at PRSA, which is the Public Relations Society show in San Diego November 7th, we're going to launch a bunch of new stuff
Esther: I heard about this.
Jason: Yes; we want to
Esther: Through the grapevine.
Jason: We want to stay in the games. Yeah; I was out there talking about this stuff and I was blogging about Pitch Engine before we launched and I got a lot of criticism for the hyperbole and all this stuff, but you know what? I'm passionate about this stuff and I want to change the way we do this. I know what journalists want. I understand that bloggers there's a lot of talented bloggers and they're not treated like journalists and we don't treat them like journalists. As PR pros, we don't send them embargoed content and exclusive information and all this stuff. NO wonder they're not writing the same content the journalists are.
Esther: Exactly.
Jason: So there's a lot of things to this and same with the news side of it. I love reading about these new programs and applications and the newspapers are using social media to make their content just better and evolve.
Esther: Absolutely. This company isn't just for Whole Foods. It's not just for Yamaha, although those are some of the brands that are using it, among many others; it's helping a lot of small businesses immensely. Was that one of your goals?
Jason: My experience in PR has been with smaller brands, has been with kind of small business type brands, 80 employee type things. It doesn't matter. We all have journalists we want to reach or media we want to reach, but we all have influencers, which is even more important.
Esther: Right.
Jason: And social media, these different tools enable us to do things that you would have never imagined. Ya' know, I look at it like this. When we get a one line article in the Wall Street Journal let's say, we're getting one line and the way to measure that was oh, well this is the ad value so here's how much value we're providing you
Esther: Right; by inches.
Jason: Yeah; right. It was all based on impressions. Now you can basically share your content with let's say you're selling turkey fryers. Let's bring that up since it's close to Thanksgiving, right?
Esther: Okay.
Jason: So you're selling turkey fryers. You get one line in the New York Times. How many people care about that turkey fryer? Maybe five, but how many in the cooking group that follows you on LinkedIn, how many of those folks care about it --?
Esther: Everyone.
Jason: Well probably a lot more.
Esther: Right.
Jason: So it's about using your head a little bit and sharing some of the stuff and
Esther: And being more targeted.
Jason: Yeah; it's just like the whole analogy of the blog. People start blogs and if three people follow you those three people care about what you're saying. If you're a brand you have a lot more than three followers. So if you can cultivate that, if you're getting into this whole social media thing and you're got a Twitter profile and a bunch of people follow you that's a little bit of a captive audience. You understand that you're not going to pitch to them and spam to them, but you know what? People are savvy. We don't give consumers enough credit. They know when they're being pitched.
Esther: Right.
Jason: They know when they're being spammed. We know the difference. Be smart about how you put that content out.
Esther: So many of our listeners are sitting out there, they've got these great ideas and they love to get them off the ground. So for our last question, if you could share one piece of advice with them what would that be?
Jason: You're going to have doubts about what you do, but just work hard. It's about hard work. That's the key thing. You've got to put in the sweat equity or you won't have anything. When I started Pitch Engine I started it as a network on Ming, started
Esther: I was a member. I remember.
Jason: Yes, I remember that. I know. I know. That's awesome and I started it and I started blogging about the topic and I cranked out a lot of content in a short amount of time. I shared as much as I could. I talked to everyone and I still do and I think you have to work your tail off. You're not always going to get paid for that either. You can't assume you're going to make money doing that.
Esther: That's right. Absolutely.
Jason: But I'm a Wyoming guy and Wyoming's a very independent state if you will and what I mean by that is it's a lot of hard workers that do their own thing. My family was hard workers, but on the end of a shovel kind of work. I think that kind of work ethic translates to entrepreneurship in business as well. You've got to work hard if you want to get anywhere. If you're passionate about it, how easier is that.
Esther: Well thank you so much. This has been an awesome interview and thank you so much for Pitch Engine. It's phenomenal.
Jason: Thank you, Esther.
Esther: If our audience isn't using it, well they should be after this interview. That's for sure. So that wraps up our talk with Jason Kintzler, founder and CEO of Pitch Engine. Now it's time for another business survival tip with Carl Klyman from Odyssey One Source. You've been listening to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard hear and online at thebusinessmakers.com.