Securing magazine coverage requires more than a great product, it needs to bridge between your business and the editor’s urgent need for fresh simple, relatable insight for their discerning readers. Outlets such as Harvard Business Review and Forbes are less interested in promotional announcements than they are in stories that provide executives with tools to help them navigate uncertainty.
How to Get a Magazine to Write About Your Business (Proven Tips)
Have an angle larger than your brand
Business stories have a long shelf life because they cut through self-promotion and instead tell stories that show what executives know to be true but have not had the time to name things. Rather than, “our company is great” build your pitch around a hypothesis tested inside your business.
In order to do this, you must structure your angle around three parts:
A penetrable argument (e.g. Free onboarding for B2B SaaS customers pays for itself within 18 months when measured through churn adjusted lifetime value)
A mechanism to explain why the claim is true (for example, using complicated software means that it takes coaching to get people to use the software, and customers completing the structured onboarding process provide more expansion dollars).
What is some evidence that makes it more than opinion (cohort analysis, matching before and after comparisons, or some kind of benchmark between clients).
Different publications have different forms of proof. HBR promotes the use of research, case studies, or data that can be located in an existing body of management thinking. Forbes easily relates the anecdote, founder perspective, and concrete takeaways in an apparently both personal and financial nature.
A contrarian angle can be a good way of spiking interest without buyout to gimmicks. For example: “We found that our remote-first policy reduced office expenses, while increasing coordination overhead by 15% – and that here’s the hybrid model that regained productivity.” This type of framing will accept trade-offs and encourage that readers make comparisons to their own operations.
The sense of exclusivity helps to further strengthen your angle. If you are able to present anonymized information across dozens of clients, or you are able to expose a special internal experiment, you cease to be simply one more firm and fulfill the not temporary position regarding a broad shift.
Learn the structure of a good pitch
A pitch is not a biography – not a brochure – and not a press release. It is a keenly argued memo that is written for a sceptical reader with limited time. Several guides directed towards HBR and Forbes contributors stress clarity, brevity, and defining an idea and providing specific proof to back it up instead of sweeping claims.
Start with the subject line. It should do what one may consider as a potential headline, specific, time-bound, understandable at a glance. Research and practitioner advice on media pitch subject lines tends clearly to prioritise clarity above alland it tends to emphasize the need to signal concrete value to the recipient.
“Pitch: The 28% Margin Killer Hidden in E-Commerce Returns”
“For your leadership section: Why compliance teams are quietly becoming product strategists.”
Within the e-mail aim for a lean but full:
- Hook (one or two sentences): To state the insight along with the reason for why they too matter at this time.
- Fit (one sentence): Demonstrate your knowledge of the audience and division of an outlet.
- Evidence (three to five bullets): Provide numbers and specific observations or has access that show that the story is real.
- Offer and close Make clear what you can offer – interviews, data, access to customers – and make the next step easy.
For instance:
Premium D2C brands are quietly re-engineering their margins – not by increasing the price, but by redesigning the economics of returns. Short-form video has boosted impulse buys and raised expectations when it comes to reverse logistics, and internal data from us shows returns for one category increasing from 12% to 47% in 18 months. We can pass on some anonymized data from the whole cohort, operational changes we made that cut down waste by 62%, we can introduce you to two brands that are Partners but willing to talk on record.
This form is respectful of editorial judgment, but a way of showing there is a fully formed story and not a need for visibility.
Provide journalists with frictionless assets
Even the most effective pitch falls apart when a journalist is unable to do some quick homework on key facts or make material available. A nicely designed media kit certainly makes it that much easier to go from interested to published piece. Modern best practices for press kits include a brief company overview, bios of leaders and key facts, as well as a library of good-quality images and logos.
In order to support serious editorial work, do a step more:
- Maintain two boilerplates – a short one (e.g. about 50 words), and a longer one (up to 150 words), featuring landmarks that will be important for your probable story angles.
- Curate a bit of material with the high resolution chosen photos (founder portrait, product/operation) and descriptive captions: Don’t forget about context.
- Prepare a one-page “numbers sheet” which includes well-defined metrics, timeframes and sources (e.g., how do you define “active customer,” or what period do you include growth rates in?
- List what should be a small group of spokespeople – founders, functional heads or clients who know the boundaries between on-the-record information, background and confidential detail.
Hosting these materials on a dedicated and easy to access press page makes sure editors have the ability to work independently once they are provided the link. Analysts who are used to studying media workflows point out when media organizations offer complete, trustworthy kits, turnaround times are improved and journalists will see media organizations as less of a friction point for getting future stories.
Transparency is essential. Flag any limitations of your data so that fact-checkers are not taken by surprise and be specific about what you can share and under what condition.
Act like a long-term rather than one off promoter
Many executives take magazine coverage as a one-shot trophy; magazine editors see it as a continuing conversation. The businesses that are included repeatedly in the esteemed outlets tend to act like partners-in-inquiry rather than supplicants looking for exposure.
That begins with the way you deal with the first “yes.” Return rapid responses, availability and brief the spokespeople on the angle of the story as well as the publication’s readership. Review drafts. Reputable outlets are very protective of editorial independence, and seasoned contributors will stress that attempting to control the story is the quickest way of ending a relationship prematurely.
When you have published an article, amplify it using care. Share it with context – what leaders can do with the ideas, how they fit within a larger trend – not just repost the cover line Many writers for Forbes and magazines that are similar recommend that would-be regular contributors approach each appearance as evidence of reliability, then follow up on the periodic with fresh data or developments that are naturally linked with previously written work.
Conclusion
In the long term, try to become a “go-to” voice on a relatively small set of issues. HBR’s advice for authors advises deep expertise and idiosyncratic points of view over journalism. When an editor knows that you can provide thoughtful opinion on, say, cross-border compliance or warehouse automation, you cease to be a cold pitch and begin to function as part of his or her mental Rolodex.
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