HOW TO GET FEATURED IN LARGE PUBLICATIONS

The six major publications (Entrepreneur, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider, Fast Company, SUCCESS) get over 500 million unique monthly visitors. They have mind-blowing traffic. When you get featured in these publications, it can help every part of your business. 

Over the past three years, I've helped over 1,000 writers, teachers, speakers, consultants, agency owners, and online entrepreneurs get into 41 publications. 

Everywhere from mainstream newspapers such as the Washington Post—all the way to smaller publications such as Thrive Global. I've also had articles published in 30 large publications—including the print edition of Entrepreneur Magazine. 

The Why 

After getting into large publications, entrepreneurs have grown large email lists, sold TONS of books, gotten new coaching clients, tripled their course sales, booked paid speaking gigs, booked corporate consulting gigs, and made an impact on millions. 

Whom To Pitch

On large publications, you find staff (editors, staff writers) and "contributors." 

Staff gets a paycheck from the publication and has a vested interest in putting out great content that helps a publication grow. Contributors don't work for the publication. They contribute content to a publication as a way to build their business. 

Most large publication content comes from contributors—not staff. For a publication, it's a great way to get amazing content without having to pay an employee. 

You can pitch staff (editors, staff writers) at a publication. Since they have a vested interest, they’re always receptive to good angles on a possible story/feature that has clear takeaways for their readers. 

However, staff (editors, staff writers) gets pitched 100X more than contributors. It's very hard to break through all of that. To get featured, and do it quicker, your best opportunity is to pitch a "contributor." 

Contributors produce most of the content. You can reach a contributor quick. However, a contributor's main purpose for creating content on large publications is to help build their business. 

They don't have the same vested interest as someone on staff. For this reason, most people approach contributors in a way that's not relevant or appealing to them. 

A Stronger Approach

I get approached every single day by people or organizations that want me to feature them. Their approach is: "I see you wrote this article about a certain topic. I want to let you know I can be a resource or I can help you with a follow-up article." 

That approach doesn't work to a contributor because our main goal is to build our thing. If we wrote an article about a certain topic, it was for a purpose. A "follow-up piece or another resource" is not the best approach for most contributors. 

If you want to get featured, you have to approach a contributor in a way in which they can see benefits. BUT, you can't offer to pay for links, mentions, or features. That is ILLEGAL and a publication will blacklist the contributor (and person that paid) if they find out. NOT worth it. 

Most contributors won’t risk the multiple six-figure opportunity that large publications provide for the chance to get a quick couple of bucks. 

So, you can't pay and a great story or angle is not going to get most contributor's attention. A stronger approach would be to offer value they understand. You can offer to:

**Promote the featured article to X number of people on your networks. If you have a following and an email list, you can offer more exposure for the article, and by extension, that contributor. 

When a publication article does well, the contributor gets better placement on a publication and more opportunities to contribute. That helps them get more opportunity to grow their business. They will be responsive to that offer. 

For example. Entrepreneur .com has three types of contributors. "Guest Writer", "Contributor", "VIP Contributor.” I'm a VIP Contributor for Entrepreneur. I've been writing there since 2014.

To get from guest writer to VIP contributor, your articles need to crush it every time they’re published. The articles need exposure. 

When you offer the chance to give a contributor more reach for their articles, that helps them go up levels at a publication. This approach is appealing to contributors—especially if you have a large network. 

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**Offer to run ads to the featured article. The same principle applies here. When you run ads, it gives more exposure to the article and contributor. A small investment in ads goes a long way. 

And, this is ethical because you're not paying for the feature. You're offering a way for the article, contributor AND the publication to get more exposure. Even publications love that. 

For example. “Guest writer” Corey Tollefson has had four articles published on Entreprenuer. His articles have done okay but not great (you can see from the social shares). 

You can approach him with an angle for a new article that features you. Make it an angle that falls in line with what he writes and that ties into your core message. You also offer to run adds to increase the exposure. The ads help him become more than a guest writer as the article (and his profile) gets more reach.  

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**Offer an in-depth look at something a contributor about. If a contributor wrote about building funnels, offer a look into one of your successful funnels. 

If they wrote about mindset challenges, offer them the opportunity to see content, studies, case studies from an expert (or from you) on mindset stuff. Give them what they might not have access to. Content and information you don't share publicly. 

For example. Contributor Jeff Pruitt just wrote an article about “how to know your content is paying off.” If your expertise is digital marketing, you can offer to show him an in-depth look at some of your successful content pieces. 

Or, you can offer to give him an in-depth look at one of your digital marketing campaigns in which content was the primary driver. Based on his other content, it’s an approach that would get his attention. 

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**Pitch newbie contributors. Seasoned contributors (like myself) create content based off of a content plan. We know what we're going to write about. 

A newbie contributor probably doesn't have all that figured out yet. When you can offer ideas and angles that lead to several pieces of content for them, they're going to be willing to listen. 

Find the contributors on large publications that only have one to three articles published. They're about to enter their contributorship journey and will be hungry for new good ideas. Offer them content through featuring you. 

Show them a specific angle that falls in line with what they write about. Don’t make this about you, your book, your course, or whatever. Neither staff or contributors will care about any of that. 

Make this about how featuring you around some specific angle leads to value for the publication’s audience. Focus on the value, takeaways, and how your expertise fits. 

For example. Contributor Jonathan Moed is a new contributor to Forbes. He writes content about startups and trending news. 

You can approach him with an angle about how something in the news ties to your business or you can approach him with a feature about your business that will lead to several content pieces for him. 

Since he’s NOT a Forbes Coaches Council member, he won’t have restrictions on featuring people. 

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Here's the bottom line. You can approach staff at a large publication with a solid story or angle for an article. But, a better approach is to pitch contributors to get featured. 

Look for the "contributors" on any large publication that you want to be featured in. That's what the "Get Featured" companies/services do. They have relationships with contributors and they approach new contributors. 

You can do that on your own. 

When you approach contributors, lead with value that would appeal to them. You can approach contributors and be featured this week on a large publication with the right approach. 

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