How to get your article published by Fast Company and not have the editors want to die?

Hello and welcome to The Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show. My name is Jim James. Thank you for tuning in, and I'm going to share with you over the next set of 10 to 12 minutes or so some interesting ways that you can get yourself into a magazine or a newspaper, and it's called a contributed article. Now, most people think that getting into the magazines or newspapers is really difficult and they only run news, but actually what you'll see, of course, is that most publications have got long-form articles. And their articles quite often written by contributors. Certainly Forbes and Inc. and Fast Company take articles written by industry leaders, thought leaders, and it could be you. You can write about your industry, your domain, and contribute an article. But there are some guidelines that I'm going to share with you that you need to follow in order to get your article even looked at, let alone published. So let's first of all start with the key point, and that is that the article that you write needs to be about an industry issue or a topic that will engage the readers and be written in a style that is as if you were a journalist. In other words, you're not writing a piece about you and your company. You need to think about it as an industry participant almost, right? So that's the first thing. So Fast Company says on their website they don't want pitches, abstracts, outlines, press releases or interview offers. What they want are stories. They want articles. They want original thought pieces. So really, really important to get that. Now, in terms of length, only 750 to 900 words. It's not that long. And if you heard me talk with Langer the other day of AI Writer, you could even use AI-Writer to start your article if you were not sure what you wanted to write to say. So the article, 900 words, is not even a full sheet of A4 paper at 10 or 11 point. But what we do want to do is to have an article that has a new point of view, a new piece of information, something that other people haven't written or thought about before. So that's important. Now, what they will say to you, and as I say on Fast Company's website, is that What you submit may be edited, so you can't take it personally. Headlines and subheads are going to be taken and maybe changed to fit in with what the editorial team would like to have. They may change the style, the tone, the substance, and they may add links or take out links. And the artwork that you supply may be put into the piece, or they may replace it. So you might write something, it'll have your name, but it may not look exactly as you originally intended. So you have to bear that in mind. So just think about if you want to write something, you can do that. Now there are some other guidelines, and I'm going to share with you something that The Fast Company here says, how to write thought leadership pieces that get published and don't make editors want to die, right? So the idea here is to try and get something that the editor and the journalist think is going to be as good as if they were going to write it. Okay, so what we want to do is to get your credibility in there, but you need to send them something that shows that you're not just writing about yourself or about your company. So you've got to establish your credibility Because they've got so many pitches and that they don't need to waste their time with anything that's vaguely suspect. I was talking to a journalist just the other day in Oregon. He has about 40 pitches per day. That's right, 40 emails a day from companies asking if they will take their stories. Obviously, he's got the pick of the crop, and if yours is too self-serving, they're not going to be interested. So you've got to show you've got a track record of writing legitimate pieces for good places. Now, one of the tricks then is to start with maybe a small local newspaper or a local trade press. So if you're going for a publication like Fast Company, which is kind of tier 1, to get there first off is really going to be very difficult. Start as you might if you were playing in a sports tournament. Start smaller ones. If you were running, you'd start smaller marathons. So first of all, that's one thing to think about, is to start writing in smaller publications to get training. A bit like with the podcast, you start first and you're going to get better. Now, so next thing that we need to do according to Fast Company here is to have something to contribute to a larger conversation. Okay, so as one person, a guy called Michael Lazaro of Buddy Media, says You have to be truly a valuable source of information, right? In other words, you've got to be giving information that you've got that maybe other people don't have. So how thoroughly have you researched what you're writing? If you are going to be taking other sources, you need to attribute them to the original sources so there's no plagiarism, of course, right? So what we need to make sure of is that the posts are well-researched, and that they are really aimed at answering the questions that the reader of this publication has in their mind. I'll repeat that. So we're writing for what the reader of the publication might have in their mind. So you can use a tool like Ask the People, for example, which is one website on social listening. There are some other tools. But also you can just read the publication and see what sort of topics and trends and conversations they're already having. Or if you go into one, for example, the Facebook groups, you can find out what people are asking about. So what we're trying to do is to write something that would already be in the common thread of conversation, but where you've got an expertise that you can add to. So the media are going to be looking for something where your expertise is something that they don't have, and where your ability to tell a compelling story and to give some case studies and some instances and some facts make it more compelling. Now, what they also talk about on the Fast Company website here is having journalistic rigor. And what we mean by that is that the journalists check the facts. They don't just write what they want to write. They put together a narrative based on what already exists. With their own ethical approach and with their own sense of transparency. What this is also saying on the Fast Company guidelines, but I say this to my clients as well, is that you, you should take a stance. It's okay to have an opinion. So it's not that you're writing something that's vanilla flavored and full of facts. They're looking for opinions and viewpoints that they may or may not be able to articulate themselves as the editorial board. But that adds value to the conversation in and around their publication. Focusing on what you can add to the conversation rather than what you're going to get out of the conversation is a really important piece of the narrative here for submitting a piece of content. So what we want to do is to look at a publication like Fast Company, for example, and see the editorial content that they've got, and we're going to pitch stories to Fast Company that are resonating with what their audience are currently reading and asking about. So obviously each piece is going to be unique. So that's another key point. It's not in the Fast Company, but I will tell you that when I write an article for a publication, it's only relevant for that publication. It's impossible to write an article that's relevant to every audience for every journalist, because by definition they're all different publications. And so actually they all need a slightly different bent. What you can do is if you have a synopsis, 100, 150 words of an idea, you could send that to a couple of different publications in the same industry and say, if I was to write about this, would you be interested in that story? But if you want the story, you can have it. As an exclusive. And to avoid finding yourself having several people all coming back saying, yes, I want an exclusive, do a first-come, first-served— first across the post gets the story— else you can find yourself in quite a pickle. I can, I can tell you, you can find yourself in a pickle. So Fast Company, and in fact all media, are happy to have contributed articles because of course it helps them both get gain more content and to get their readers or their viewers participating in the publication. But it cannot be a puff piece for you and your business. Do look at opportunities. Look at media that you want to be in. Look and see, do they have an editorial opportunity? And often you'll find on the website it'll say contact us or submit a story. This is different to a press release. It's not an interview about you and your company. It's how you contribute to the overall scheme of the industry that you are interested or working in. It appeals in the consumer market. It appeals also in the B2B or in some of the verticals, for example, like science. So do look at the different sections that each publication has, because some might have, for example, a leadership section. Some might have a technology insight section. Some may have a new education section. Each publication tries to serve its readers. Publication, website, TV, they're all trying to serve their audience. They're looking for content from people that are experts and have an expert domain knowledge. And you can share yours by creating a 750 to 1,000 word article. And you can use a platform like AI-Writer or Scriptwriter, which is another one that I've had on the show to get you the first 800 words, and then you can edit that back if you don't feel like writing it from scratch. So it's a small tip, but it's a key part of building your own personal brand, because once you've been featured and had your story or your article in a publication, you can add that to your bio, to your LinkedIn, to your Twitter. And of course, all of these add to your credibility. Get enough of them together and you've got the beginnings of a book. But that's a whole nother podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. I'm really here to help you, and if you've got any specific questions, problems that you're facing, do please write to me, jim@eastwestpr.com, or reach me on Twitter. I'm here to serve you, not myself, and I really am trying to share information that I know is valuable and that I'm using for my clients on a day-to-day basis. So I will put the Fast Company link in the show notes for you in case you find that useful. But I've covered that, and I think the essence of this is you've got value to add. How do you share it and take part in the conversation that the media are having with you and your fellow audience in the same community. And with that, I say thank you so much for listening. If you do like the show, can I request that you rate it? And I've got a little rate link in the show notes. If you just click on there, it'll take you to the place to do the ratings because it's not always so obvious how to do that. We're working on the volume 2 of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur book, which is a compendium of over 50 articles again. So I'm really working here to help entrepreneurs and business owners to get noticed with all the tools and the tips that I know out there to help you and me. Thank you so much for listening, and until we meet again, I do wish that you stay safe and healthy.