Why send a plain old written PR pitch when you can send a “vitch” — a video pitch?

That’s right, the new thing is to make your pitch via video. It’s certainly simple enough to do — plan your video, shoot it with an inexpensive video camera, upload it to Youtube and spread the link.

Makes a lot of sense, too. Video is such an incredibly powerful medium, and now, through the evolution of technology, we can all be fast and cheap video producers.

The key thing here is that a “vitch” can’t just be you reading your boring, stilted press release into the camera. You need to show something — the newsmakers, the location, something, anything tangible. This, by itself, takes PR people out of their jargon-filed comfort zone.

I just picked up on this word so I don’t have any good examples of video pitches and their results, but the whole thing makes a lot of sense to me. I plan to try it this month just to see what happens.

My new Twitter buddy, PRjobs (aka Lindsay Olson), has written a nice primer over at PRNewser about why people don’t get hired for jobs they want. It really applies to any industry, but Lindsay is a PR headhunter, so it’s focused on our industry.

The tips in a nutshell:

• Don’t let your ego hang out there
• Focusing on the job title rather than the job
• Being too concerned with pay too early in the process
• Bad-mouthing a previous employer

One thing to understand about Twitter: you can follow someone without their permission, unless they have set their profile so that they have to approve you [which is rarely the case].

This means that you can get someone’s Twitter handle, find them on Twitter and click “follow” and if it doesn’t give you the privacy notice, you’re following them and what they have to say in 140 characters or less.

For instance, check out Anderson Cooper’s Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/andersoncooper — he’s got 6173 followers, but he’s only following 7 people. Because in order to have a relationship on Twitter, the other person has to follow you back.

This is in response to Peter Himler’s otherwise very good post on Twitter, where you can find more links to journos on Twitter that you can follow and maybe have a Twitter relationship with.

I’m happy to report that I’m movin’ uptown — that is, over to CNET’s business-oriented web site, BNET.com. BNET.com is a news-you-can-use site for business people, and they’ve already got a million register users.

I’m the new blogger for their PR-oriented blog, Catching Flack. I’ll be doing the vast majority of my blogging over there.

I will keep this blog alive for now, but won’t post here very often. So if you want to keep up with my thoughts and strategies on 21st century PR and media relations, please check me out over at Catching Flack.