Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Place Contributions & Guest Posts

So what we're here to talk about in this second segment of pitch yourself is what are your top PR opportunities? So when you're pitching your ideas in your expertise out there, there are a lot of different opportunities where you can go out and get press. But what I've done is honed in on four different ways that we find the people have the most success when they're getting started with their PR program. So the four things that were going to be covering in this next segment are how to pitch contributions and guess posts. So these air pieces that you are actually writing and submitting with your own expertise. Aziz The Focus also had to do interviews for Web shows and podcasts had so much great opportunities with podcast. It's a really growing area, and it's a great place to get in there and test your messaging out in real time. While you're doing live interviews, I'm also gonna share something that I call an expert pitch. So this is a technique that my business partner and I have incre...

asingly being used using. Teoh help people introduce themselves to reporters who are covering their area, so people are really specializing and the topics in the areas that you want to be talking about and the last one I'm gonna talk to you about is help a reporter out just this amazing free resource you're gonna love hearing about it. So that's actually in our last lesson. How you can use help a reporter out to get the coverage of your dreams. It's unbelievable the kind of coverage you can get using this resource. So let's get started with how to place contributions and guest posts. So contribution and guest posts are something that we find is a great place for people to start. It's where a lot of our clients work. It's also where a lot of people who have been in my mentoring programs go because the changing media landscape has created all these opportunities for you to go out there and share your ideas online. So when we're talking about contributions, most of them go are going on the websites for maybe a math major magazine or a guest post, you know, is going to be going on a blogged. And this is because media outlets have been come thirsty for online content. They cannot keep up with the demand. They have so much content that they need to be feeling so much articles. So many articles I needed putting out there that they don't have enough staff to create all this content. So what? They're looking for our guest experts who can come and share their ideas. So this is perfect when you're pitching yourself right. This is a way where you can really give your ideas an amazing platform for getting out there. So here's an example of what a guest poster contribution might be like. This is on the Huffington Post Small business channel, which is a place where I know a lot of people get excited about. Begin is in The Huffington Post, and this is Kelly Keenan Trump Door, and she talks about how you can start up becoming an investor. And she specifically, it likes to talk about investing for women. So here she has this article on three ways to love. Investing in giving and what's unique about a contribution and guest post is, you know you have a byline, so your name is up there. There's usually a link to your website, and you are writing the article. So this is not an article being written about you. This is something you're offering, and I would like to say when you're writing, So when you're writing for a publication, you can either be paid in money or in links your they're going to pay the money or links. So when I say pain and money is, you know, there was a lot of people who make a living writing, doing freelance articles and freelance writing, and that's not what we're talking about here. Here. What you're being paid in is having, you know, a little snippet with an expert bio, where you can call people to go back to your website so you're being paid usually here in a link and having your ideas profiled when you are paid to do a contribution. Usually, maybe you'll get your name there in a byline, but you don't get a bio. You don't get Teoh. You know, invite people back to your website, and you certainly never get a link because you get paid of money. So when you're building up your personal brand and you have another business that you're supporting your not trying to become a professional writer. You really want to make sure you're getting paid in that bio on that link, so the benefits of contributions of cast post the reason that we recommend it is that you're mostly in control of the message. You're the one who's writing the article, so you're the one who gets to decide what the spin on it. Ihsan, what gets said, you typically get a link back to your website, so this isn't always You're not always necessarily gonna get a link back, but usually you dio. If you have a contribution, for instance, in its printed on their print version, it's you know you won't have a link will just have a bio that references you there and then It's also relatively easy to break into the media this way because they're so hungry for content. So this could be a really great way to get a major media mentioned for your business. And one of the ways that you can use this to build up your personal brand right is you can actually put one of those s seen in our featured in sections on your website. You can put it on your home page. You can put it on your about page. You can put it in your product pages and your services pages to show that you have been included in the media. So this is a great way to get those media mastheads up on your website and to get coverage. You know, you can say, as seen in Huffington Post s seen and fast company a scene an entrepreneur, as seen in real simple, this could be an amazing way to gain those and mass tests. So what's the big drawback here? Well, the biggest drawback I see is that you actually have to write the contribution or guest post. So some people really don't like writing and might not ever do this. So that's just something that you have to decide for yourself. And like I said, we're going talking about four techniques. So this is just one of the techniques that you could be doing the pitch to publication ratio. So I wanted to share with you what your likelihood is getting accepted on this and so low, medium and high, you know, on a pitch to publication. So if you're going to send in your email pitch to getting accepted and actually showing up on the website. I would say contribution and guess foetuses medium. It's actually a really great place to do it. We've had a lot of success and I've coached people who sent out their own pitches who've had a success and getting really major media mentions. We've talked about fast company we've talked about having imposed. We've talked about blog's like mind Body Green. So this is a wonderful way Teoh break into major media outlets and build that momentum. And, um, you know, it's relatively like a higher likelihood that you're gonna be accepted. So now I want to share with you. You know how you find these contribution and guest post opportunities. So the first thing that you're going to do here is and I actually use this, you know, Kelly Keenan. Trump Door had this investing article that we looked at, so I wanted to show you how if I were to do an article on investing, how would I find this? So the first thing I would do is I'd say, OK, what is it that people are coming to me for? What is the question that they're asking me? We talked about this a lot in lesson one and listen to. So I would take those ideas that we shot it down and just put him into Google and see what comes up. You know, become an angel investor. That's really what her article is about. How do you become an individual angel investor? And you put this into Google and you see, it's kind of hard to see here, but there's an article in Forbes. There's an article and TechCrunch um, venture hacks. I think that says another TechCrunch article. So you can see a lot of different articles are actually coming up right away in the Google results, and so you can go ahead and look at those and see, Are they accepting contribution opportunities? Another great place to find contribution because post opportunities is on all top. Do you guys use all top it'll? Yeah, awesome. So all top is a website that actually creates ah home page for different kinds of articles on topics. So when you go to the all top dot com their website, you can browse by subject and here were in investing. But you can see you know, there's ah whole a BCD down the alphabet and you can also search. So whatever your general industry topic is broad, you know, maybe it's creativity. Maybe it's art. Maybe it's food. Maybe it's dining. Maybe it's photography. You can either find it in here. It could be interior design, you know, whatever your topic ISS, you can browse it or you can search it and then we'll pull it this page of articles from top influencers in this area, and then you can kind of click around and see if any of them look like a good fit for you. And if they're accepting contributions or guest posts and usually can tell right away, you know, by looking at some articles, and if you see an article that's written by somebody and it's not someone on staff, so they'll have their name, it will have a bio. It will talk about their business. Then you know they accept those kinds of opportunities. If you see him from other people, you know they'll accept them from you, too. And then the last one is look at where your competitors are posting. So this is one of my sneaky tips, but it could be really great to look at. What are other people who are in your area who are in the conversation you want to be having? Were they having those conversations? And if they're posting somewhere, chances are that they'll accept a post from you, too. So those are three ways to build up your list of places that you can send your contributions and guess supposed to on your submission. So the best practices. So we looked at at the end of the last segment. What is your template? Email submission. But each of these will have little tweaks. So here's where I'm gonna share with you for each of the different kinds. You know how you can tweak this four year old submission. So for contribution and guest posts, I prefer when you send, like, three bulleted different kinds of ideas for the headlines that you can dio. So when we looked at that pitch template, I believe it was in less than four, and we talked about you know, what's your main headline and what are three different ideas you consent? This is one of the places where you want to do that for sure, and here's actually a modification that you can see how you do that. So you have your subject line is the same. You reach out to somebody in much the same way. But then here, in the first paragraph, you introduce your general topic and then you pull it out. Three different headline ideas. Then you share your bio and then you send them. You'd be happy, Say, I'd be happy to send over a draft. So it's just a slight modification on that main template. The main pitch. You've already tracked it up. And then another thing to think about two is that you know, who is it that you're me pitching? So how do you build up your media list? Once you've found somebody who accepts a contribution or guest post, how do you know who you're pitching? Teoh. So for a blawg, you know that has one author or maybe a couple of authors. It's pra fairly easy to figure this out. But if it's a bigger publication where they have a ton of people, what you really want to be looking for is either the editor or the assistant editor of the section that you want to be reaching out to So if I were doing a story on interior design and it was to a general lifestyle publication, I would look for the person who talks about the sign or interiors in the lifestyle publication. So looking of that editor, another alternative is some publications specifically have online editors. So if they have an online editor, that's another person that you can send your contribution over to for blog's. I do recommend that you actually check that they have submission guidelines and actually a lot of mainstream publication. I know Forbes have some articles and how you might seem it to Forbes. So you can Google like if you know, like, I want to pitch my butt body green, search online and say, like my body Green Submission got Alliance and this will come up or mind body green contribution guidelines and something like this will come up and this is actually a full page. It's much longer than I have screen shotted for you, so you can see that they have specific requirements. You know, they tell you we love posted help. Our readers grown. Felix inspired that she talk about some different topics. They talk about if if you have photos, You know, my body Green does a lot about yoga fitness, so they actually give you guidelines for all the different kinds of post that they accept and what they're looking for. Another thing that you might find is that some outlets might actually ask you for the full article. So I told you to send over ideas, and that should be your default. But if they request a full article, then something in the full article give them what they're asking for. But it's a good rule of thumb that most editors might want to look at your idea and actually help you modify it or massage little bit. So that's why I suggest that if they asked to send over the full article, do you use it as an attachment, or do you included in the body of your email? That's a great question. Never send attachments, so that is a great role when you're reaching out to the media. So what you can do is you can actually paste it underneath. So where you have your call to action that says, like I can send over a draft. What you would say is, you know, check below my I'm signature for a draft. Another thing you could do is like linked to a document in Google Driver something, or in Dropbox that they can go to. The problem there is They might not be able to open the kind of format so they might not have Microsoft Word or they might not have Google drive, you know, So if you put in an email, you know they're able to open it in my email signature. I have some, like little graphics, the logo and stuff, and it shows that as an attachment, does that affect my me being able to get through to these people? Uh, it's not actually an attachment. Well, I mean, that has a paperclip thing on it. So I assumed it's considered attachment. That's a really good question. So the issue of the attachments is that the, um, a lot of media outlets will have filters that if a file sizes too big can't get through. So it's not the attachment itself. It's that your file gets to be too big. So if it's just something in, you know, a small thing there, I think you should be OK If you're sending out a ton of pitches and nobody ever responds. You might want to try to change it up, but I think it should be such a small file size. If it's something in your signature, you should be OK, Thanks. So in your email submission, um, you're giving them your pitch ideas and saying, If you'd like a draft, let me know. Do you have a draft ready already or when someone asks, Do you write a draft? And how drafty is it? Is it you know, a straw man idea? Or is it a full blawg or you know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's a great question. So it kind of depends on what you know about yourself. So if you know it takes you a really long time to put something together, then you might want to write it or at least outline. It's something that will recommend to people if they're sending in a bunch of these is that they do outlines. So that fever down that where you've send somebody a pitch on something or have sent something, no blogger and they're like, Oh, I love to talk about that and you're like, what the heck was gonna talk here? I don't. That is the fear. I totally done it. You know what, though? You make it work. Yeah, sure. You figure it out because generally you want to turn an article in 1 to 2 weeks. So one week is best. Two weeks is fine. So you want to turn an article in 1 to 2 weeks and you really want it to be publication ready? So you see a draft because they're probably gonna edit you. OK, the bigger the media publication is, the more likely you are to be evident. Eso You know, you want to let them know I'm open to that, That you're expecting that. But you do want to make it is is ready as possible. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Welcome. Did we have another passion, or do they not see a hand? Awesome. So the other thing you want to do once you send in your submission is actually to follow up. So 1 to 2 weeks later, after you send your pitch over, you want to do a follow up so that if it goes spam filter or if they don't catch it, that you're able to cue them and let them know like I have this coming through to You are readable to get it. So how do you follow up? How do you follow up? Right, So it could be a simple as responding to your initial email and just saying like, Hey, have you had a chance to take a look at this? I think it would be great for your reader is let me know. Or if something has happened in the news, it's relevant to your topic and it's trending. You could say like Hey, like this new study came out. You know, this new study came out or this has become really hot in the media. I thought you might want to see it. I have this article that I want to send to you with the news twist on this. So those are two different ways. The first is perfectly fine. The second one's a little bit more advance. I think we have a duplicate here. Sorry, guys. Okay, so I want to know who is excited about guest post and contribution, who feels like they want to try that out. Show of hands. Wow. We've got almost everyone. And we got a little nervousness over there. What's the look for? I'm just still thinking about how I can actually contribute, Like where I would contribute. And I actually saw the reason I'm picking on you because I feel like you're the perfect person to be doing exposing contributions. So for you, let's do a little work shopping here because really it to get started. You know, it's finding those outlets you'd like to pitch matching with your headlines and setting it out. So let's create an action plan for you. Okay, So what I would do is can you remind the audience of what your name is in your business? Because yes. So my name is just Lane and I do interior architecture and design specifically, like teaming up with contractors and engineers and doing like a design build remodel. Awesome. And who is your customer? Is that the contractor or is it like the homeowner is the homeowner? Okay, great. So you want to be positioning yourself out? There is somebody that the homeowner can can hire you, right? And you were saying to us in another lesson that your value or what you want to be known for is that you have this one stop shop where you can pull the whole process together. Yes, and that they don't have to piecemeal it out. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So what I would do for you is I would actually start looking for What are those things that people are looking for when they're starting a project when they're considering a project? So what are the terms? They might search when they're, you know, I'm a homeowner. I'm Sally Homeowner, and I want to do a project. I want to do this major remodel. So if I'm starting that research process because I'm imagining that's where you want them to find you what kinds of things would I be looking for? I know that people Google, like design build San Francisco remodel San Francisco. That's how a lot of people find, Okay? And, you know, like, if there's any media that might cover some angles on that, I don't I mean, there's a lot of interior design coverage, like design stuff, but like in term on projects, more industry, like our picture and construction. I don't know. Yeah, you're in that space, right where people are often talking to the piers and not to their customers. So I think of taking into, like, what are the problems that they're having? Or what are they worried about? When when they're searching and what kind of things might catch their eye, so are they. Um, for instance, like, if I were starting a project, I might be thinking, you know, what are the things you need to know before you launch an interior? Um um ok. Or, um, I don't want a litter. The roadblocks that people have, like, what are some? Their challenge is something that you told us when we were talking was that you take care of all the permits and right now is a very huge unfunded, especially in San Francisco people. It's It's a nightmare. People won't do rebuilds because of the permits. All right? Yes. Everybody does ask that. Thank you. Um, do you dio permitting? Because most no one. Nobody. That really does what we do anyways, but most people don't want to touch it. Ah! Oh, my gosh. So for you, you have this expertise around how you clear through this and it Is there something that you could say about how to do how to make sure that the permit process doesn't hold up your interior model because you're doing it right. Like spinning a little bit. You know, you don't want to say that Someone who has the expertise. Yeah, but that's not a thought piece. That's a promotional ad. So it has to be your expertise. So it's like I've gotten some really tricky permits that are hard to get. Okay, If that's worth like, Yeah, I would say your process. The process is what people are gonna care about how I work. Yeah. I mean, because if you're doing a thought piece, it has to be about what you know, know, selling yourself. So that's one of the hard things with earned media, right? It can't be an ad for you. It has to be about. So for instance, this might not be right, but let me give you a little bit where I'm going. So I'm Sally Homeowner. I'm looking something up, and I find an article about three things you need to know before you start into your processing or five common hurdles with permits and how to get past them. Yeah. What do you What? Like, uh, what do you need to get, like your ducks in a row before you start right, we'll go back to the other lessons and massage that language a little bit. But that kind of works for now. So that's your expertise that you're gonna come up with. So then what you want to do is Google some of those things and find, you know, what are the people who is covering those issues? Who's giving people advice before they launch their projects? Yeah, this is great. And I don't know, I've actually looked for stuff my on my own. Like, I feel like you haven't found anything. Yeah, there's not a lot of talk about it. What I would imagine is like the home section in the local paper might have something right for people who are talking to homeowners. Yeah, we're maybe a vlog like apartment therapy. You know, if you're starting a large scale remodel, what do you need to know before you start a large scale model? Yeah, that would be or, um, that sense that Yeah, like something that is talking to people that is very designed. Focus. It's the consumers. And what are their common problems that they have. So then what you would do is you would go to them. Um I mean, like I said, apartment therapy would be a great one for this cause, you know, they accept contributions. I not sure if Sunset does or not. So that would be something to look into. I love. It's since that I love that magazine. But, you know, for apartment therapy might go and look and see like, Okay, what kinds of articles do they have about this? You know, right up a couple of different headlines in their style that you can send over and say, Like, you know, these are the roadblocks that we're finding. And I'd love to create a piece for you around this, even a checklist. You know what's your before you renovate your checklist something like that to get people through that initial hump, and then you demonstrate your expertise and then you have your name and your bio on your link. And then the people of that segment who want to hire you can hire you produce a bronze to check out its sf doc curb dot com. Oh, yeah, that's great. Curve is a really good and house logic dot com said seven essential questions to ask before hiring an architect. There you like? That would be saying, Yeah, I I'm telling you this like Googling works, you know, some things you might come up with some hurdles where you're coming up with things that are more advertisement for services. So another place I'd recommend it for you to go to his Pinterest. Look up some of these income Pinterest. And now that you have a couple of ideas, you can actually go and type in those headlines and find out who else is writing similar stories. So once you find one lead, you can use that to find other leaves to do that. Or you can look at who are the people who are serving, you know, who else are your customers looking at and who don't offer those comprehensive services? And do they have any press? And where is that? And that could be another way to look at it. Do you feel like you may be much? Yeah, which I need to do more research than a Yeah. Yeah, you just lied. And I want to see you just need one. So we looked at, um you know, some examples earlier I was going to name a name, but I'm not gonna name a name. I don't think Souness I've worked with somebody different people who have said, Well, I don't have a media list of 10 people. I don't have a media list of three people. You just need one. You just you're setting one pitch at a time. So you just kind of take one of these ideas that we just gave out in Send one. And then maybe in a couple weeks, you do some research and you find some other ideas. But there's no reason if you can't find 3 to 5. I mean, I say that cause you're doing the work and and I recommend kind of matching its You're in the zone, but you really just need one. He really just need one. And a cool thing is, once you get media, sometimes other media, then we'll start coming to you so it can create this amazing of momentum. Yeah, I could speak to that, cause I've done a lot of guest posting, and it's brought tons of new subscribers and customers and um I got invited to be a blogger for the Huffington Post because I was found. You know, the guy was looking. He was hungry for somebody, somebody to talk in relation to some Ted video that they were sharing on their Sunday Ted talks on Saturday, Ted talks or whatever, and he just did a search on creativity. And I think I don't know if you found my my blogger, another one that I've written for. But once you've once you've gotten an article published in a blogged than it's so much easier to get another article published in that same blogged. So then you can start to be kind of a regular contributor. Yeah, that's a great example. Like Meghan, who we looked at earlier with my Buddy Green. She had to post within a month. She just started blogging in a month, and she had to post on one of the top sites. You know, it's crazy, like the kind of results, and I have done guest posting for design Sponge, for instance. There Biz Ladies column. So I guess, posted there three times. And each time it's brought in, like 300 new subscribers to my email list. So that kind of result that you can get it's just had huge payoff versus creating a ton of content for your own site or trying to find. I mean, I know you're in a referral business just like I am, and I don't want to ever downplay the value of referrals, but getting that momentum and then telling the people refer to you like, Hey, look at this article will spark more referrals. So that's where, like Chest One will make such a difference for, you know, you had a you mentioned, um, batch ing. So just to clarify, you could say, Take the same exact email, change out the person's name if the media outlets were similar in tone and send out the same email. Oh, that's a great question. So I when you stay back, I want to be really clear what I mean about batch ing is actually taking the task. So doing all your immediate lis research like, you know, in one day and then maybe writing your pitches, you're in the zone. But you ask a really great question. So there's a lot of people you know who they want. Exclusive articles So what you could do, though, is you can take one article and maybe it's 10 tips and then you can pitch. It is in our another article with one tipped so you can remix your articles into different topics. But you can't send two different editors the exact same headline. Which is why, in another lesson, we created, like, 3 to 5 different headlines. So what you would do is maybe send out one or two pitches at a time. You know, maybe just send one. Maybe, like, I'm gonna send this pitch out, I'm gonna follow up in two weeks and then in two weeks later, if you don't hear back for them, you can send it to somebody else. We have a client recently that we sent one article toe like three different media outlets, and the 3rd 1 picked it up. So your work isn't going to waste. And if an editor doesn't get back to our blogger says noting article that doesn't say anything about the quality of your work, it just means it doesn't fit at that moment, right? That is not a reflection on the quality of your work. I cannot emphasize that enough. And this, You know, the client that we had three different media outlets we sent it to, and then it got picked up. So you definitely want to use those things and recycle them as much as possible. The other thing is you can take one idea and write like three different headlines for it and then just write articles and have different kinds of examples. So you don't want to do what they call self plagiarism and the experts space That could be a little dangerous where you have, you know, this same ideas repeating and you're quoting yourself. But what you can do is say, like, I'm gonna take one headline and have three different angles on the same article, the same idea. You create this article. I know you wouldn't want it exactly the same, but could you reuse that on your own personal log and then still pitch that article out toe other that is called syndication. So there's like a special name for that. And the reason I say that is that if you're looking for opportunities, they will often say, like you can republish or syndicate um, websites that allow, like Huffington, Post actually allows for syndication. So you can write something for your blogging. Sending the Huffington Post Lifehacker, which is another huge block, allows for that. I think like techcrunch even allows for syndication. So websites will have very clear guidelines around that. What's interesting is some sites, like entrepreneur, they syndicate the articles you write for them. So, like, we had a client on entrepreneur and I got picked up by Yahoo small business, But you're not allowed to republish it. And so they have guidelines. So if you're not sure, just ask. See, you'd want to hold off unless they got picked up somewhere else. And then you could go about that or not stated very clearly on their submission guidelines. Yeah, right. And if it doesn't state, I would assume that you can't and then find it up. Okay, great. Alright, guys. Well, I'm so excited about these posting and contribution opportunities, and I love seeing all the hands