Eric Yaverbaum, Robert Bly, Ilise Benun. Public Relations for Dummies, 2nd Edition

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When an editor lets us know that he’s willing to accept releases via e-mail, or

that he even prefers it, we change our database so that any future releases

sent to him are transmitted via e-mail. Keep a separate mailing group on your

address book of editors and publishers who prefer receiving press releases

over the Internet, and e-mail your releases to this group separately.

E-mailing press releases works best when you want to follow up a press

release mailing (sent via regular mail) with a phone call. Then when the

editor expresses interest but says that he doesn’t remember getting or didn’t

save the original release, you can e-mail him a copy instantly and then follow

up later that day to confirm receipt of the e-mail.

Don’t send an attachment. If the editor has the least bit of trouble opening

your attachment, she’ll click Delete faster than you can say, “Not interested.”

Further, most television stations won’t open an attachment unless they know

you. Send e-mail press releases as pasted-in text messages. So paste your

release into the body of your e-mail message if you want it read.

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Chapter 9

Writing and Placing

Feature Articles

In This Chapter

! Developing ideas for articles

! Choosing the right publication

! Contacting editors

! Submitting a query letter

! Putting together a pitch letter

! Understanding what to do next if your article is accepted

! Getting your articles online

lacing feature articles with appropriate trade, consumer, or business

publications is one of the most powerful and effective of all marketing

techniques.

Unlike a news article, which gives a straightforward report of recent events, a

feature article is a longer piece that explores its subject in greater depth.

Feature articles often present a detailed case study, explanation of technol-

ogy, or guidance on how to do something, whether it’s how to write a busi-

ness plan or pick a telephone carrier.

Many people naturally assume that all the feature articles they read are written

by freelance writers or reporters employed by the newspaper or magazine.

Sure, some of the articles are written by “feature” writers. But every day, thou-

sands of articles appear that have been written by — PR professionals, self-

employed professionals, business executives, and technical specialists — as a

means to promote themselves, their businesses, or their products or services.

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In this chapter, we explore two time-tested methods of getting feature articles

written about your company or service: proposing and writing the article

yourself, and sending a pitch letter to editors to encourage them to write

their own article about you.

Getting Exposure in Feature Articles

A company seeking publicity and exposure submits an article in hopes that a

publication will spotlight or feature the company, its ideas, or products or

services. A planted, or placed, feature story is an article written and submitted

to a publication by a corporation, entrepreneur, or business professional —

either directly by the business or on its behalf by its PR firm or consultant.

You can get one, two, or more pages devoted to your product or service with-

out paying for the space. (A paid advertisement of that length could run

$3,000 to $20,000 or more.) Your message has far more credibility as “editor-

ial” material than as a sponsored advertisement. The publication of the arti-

cle results in prestige for the author and recognition for the company. And

reprints make excellent, low-cost sales literature.

Just one article in a magazine can generate hundreds of leads and thousands

of dollars in sales for a company. And with more than 6,000 magazines and

trade journals from which to choose, you can safely bet that at least one is

interested in a story from your company.

Getting an article published in a trade journal or local business magazine

isn’t difficult — if you know how. Trade-journal editors are quick to reject

inferior material or “puff” pieces, but they’re hungry for good, solid news and

information to offer their readers. And, unlike newspaper reporters who are

investigative and frequently antagonistic and adversarial toward businesses,

trade-journal reporters are a friendlier audience and are more willing to work

with you to get information to their readers.

Avoiding beginners’ mistakes

Common mistakes that novices make when writing and placing articles

include the following:

! Not querying the publication first to find out whether it has an interest

in running an article on the topic you propose.

! Addressing the query letter “Dear Editor” rather than finding out the

name of the editor and addressing your communications directly to him.

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! Offering the editor a bribe to run the article (“We’ll buy a big ad if you

run our article”) or making a threat (“We won’t buy ad space unless you

run our article”).

! Handing in a sloppy, incomplete article and saying, “I’m not a writer.

Here’s the information — you fix the grammar and make it read right.”

(The editor doesn’t have time to do your work and expects articles that

are well written and edited.)

! Not being able to submit the article as a computer file in Microsoft

Word or another common format.

! Missing the deadline after being given the go-ahead to write an article

for submission. Even worse is missing the deadline and not notifying the

editor that the manuscript will be late.

! Not reading the magazine and being totally unfamiliar with its reader-

ship, style, content, and editorial requirements.

Coming up with ideas for articles

Your chances of getting your article published increase dramatically when

you offer editors an article of the type they regularly publish. For instance,

don’t send an article of recipes to a magazine that doesn’t run recipes.

A handful of standard article types account for 90 percent of the articles pub-

lished today. These include the following:

! Case histories: Product success stories, focusing on companies that had

a problem and how those companies used a particular product, service,

or method to solve the problem

! How-tos: Instructional advice (for example, “How to Size Lighting for

Industrial Facilities”)

! New products: Explanations of how a new technology works (for exam-

ple, “New Mounted Chip Technology Doubles Processing Speed”)

! Developments and trends: Analysis to help business readers plan their

strategy (“Plastics Industry Moves to Global Supply Chain Business

Model”)

The case history or application story is one of the most popular types of arti-

cles that trade and business magazines publish. This type of story tells how a

specific company solved a problem or addressed a need, and usually high-

lights the product or service the company used to solve its problem. The PR

department of the company whose product or service was used to solve the

problem sends a query letter (see the “Writing a Query Letter” section, later

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in this chapter) suggesting case histories to editors. Getting case histories

published is an effective marketing tool, because it shows readers how to

apply your product and demonstrates its proven success.

Aside from case histories, most planted feature articles are of the how-to

variety, aimed at executives, managers, professionals, or technicians in a

given field. Editors are also interested in stories on new products, develop-

ments, or trends in their industry.

One way to come up with article ideas is to make a list of the ads you would

run (and the magazines in which you would run them) if you had an unlim-

ited ad budget, write articles based on topics related to those ads, and place

them in those magazines.

For example, if you wanted to advertise your new wood-chip stacking system

in Pulp & Paper magazine but didn’t have the budget for it, you might con-

sider writing an article titled, “A New Way to Stack and Inventory Wood Chips

More Efficiently” for that magazine. Writing and placing articles in magazines

and for secondary markets in which print advertising is unprofitable or

beyond your budget is cost-effective.

Many trade journals will send a sample issue and set of editorial guidelines to

prospective authors upon request. These guidelines can provide valuable clues

as to style, format, and appropriate topics. The guidelines often tell you how to

contact the magazine, give hints on writing an article, describe the manuscript

review process, and discuss any payment or reprint arrangements.

The quickest way to turn off an editor is to offer an idea that has nothing to

do with her magazine. Every magazine is a little different in some way from

other magazines. To increase your chances of getting a placement, you must

study tone, style, content, and the quality of a journal’s writing and graphics.

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Mum’s the word

Although as a businessperson you’re writing an

article for self-serving promotional objectives,

and editors know it, keep it to yourself. Editors

are interested in serving their readers, not

you. Keep the self-promotion in your article to a

minimum — for instance, don’t mention your

company name 50 times — and give the editor

an article that will be of real value to her readers.

That serves your purpose, too, because the more

useful the article, the more readers will contact

the author for additional information — which

can often lead to purchase of your products.

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Offer an editor the type of article that his magazine seems to prefer, and your

odds of placing the story increase. If a magazine contains all short articles of

one or two pages, don’t send a 6,000-word thesis. If it doesn’t run case histo-

ries, don’t propose one.

Study issues of magazines to see which topics they cover. The key to success is

not to send an idea for an article on something never covered, but to offer an

article that presents a new slant or angle on one of a magazine’s frequent topics.

Selecting the Right Magazine

The best magazines to target are the ones you are now getting. This is

because you read them, are familiar with their editorial slant and style, and

are aware of what articles related to your topic they have run recently. If you

don’t subscribe to many magazines in your industry or you aren’t familiar

with those publications, some good resources you can turn to are Bacon’s

Media Directories or Writer’s Market. Or simply spend some time in the maga-

zine section of your local bookstore and pick the top ten for your material.

Contact each publication you choose and ask for a sample issue and editorial

guidelines. When the sample issue comes, study it and become familiar with

the publication.

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Tying in with special issues

You can increase your chances for coverage by

requesting a magazine’s editorial calendar and

scanning the list of “special” issues to see

whether there is a possible tie-in between your

products and services and any articles to be

featured in these issues. Call the magazine’s

advertising department, say that you’re a poten-

tial advertiser, request a free media kit, and ask

for an editorial calendar of special issues along

with a sample issue. These items will be sent

without charge to potential advertisers.

Go over the editorial calendar to see which

topics would be most appropriate for your

subject matter and articles. Fitting into what

they already have planned gives you a leg up on

getting into the magazine. But don’t be pushy

about it. Simply suggest that your material might

fit in nicely with a particular theme. Then let

them decide how and where.

However, if you spot a new trend in, say, pack-

aging food in recyclable cardboard containers

instead of plastic, and you can provide statistics

and information to back up your claim that this

trend is important, contact the editors at the

appropriate packaging magazine. They’ll prob-

ably appreciate your interest and effort.

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Here’s another way to target magazines for article placement. You proba-

bly have a wish list of five to ten publications in which you would love to

advertise — if you had the budget. Advertising is an expensive way to get

exposure in these magazines, but you can hit all of them affordably through

feature article placement. The result: You can get pages of coverage without

paying for them!

Writer’s Market, although not traditionally used for PR purposes, is in fact

especially good for getting a sense of a magazine — its slant, topics, appropri-

ate editors to pitch stories to, and editorial requirements. Writer’s Market lists

more than 4,000 consumer, general, business, and trade publications that

accept articles from outside sources. Listings give detailed descriptions of

what editors are looking for, along with names, addresses, phone numbers,

and other contact information.

Timing is important. For a monthly magazine, an article that you want to

appear in a special issue should probably be proposed to the editor three to

six months in advance of that issue’s publication date.

Finding the best target for articles

The editor most likely to be receptive to your queries is one that you’ve writ-

ten for successfully in the past. When you sell one article to an editor, it makes

sense to fire off a second letter immediately if you have another good idea

that might be right for him. Figure 9-1 shows a sample of such a follow-up

query letter.

In a P.S. to the follow-up query (refer to Figure 9-1), Bob could add a thumb-

nail sketch of his professional background. What is the point of that post-

script when the editor has already done business with him? Remember: She

has accepted only one previous article and doesn’t know Bob all that well, so

it could be beneficial to remind her of why he is exceptionally well qualified

to write this article for her.

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Ms. Kimberly A. Welsh, Editor

Circulation Management

859 Willamette Street

Eugene, Oregon 97401-2910

Dear Kimberly:

Thanks for publishing the article on mailing lists so quickly. I

hope you get good reader response to it. I’m writing because I

have another idea that might be right for Circulation

Management.

How about an article -- “Do Premiums Work?”

Background: As you know, response rates are down all over. In

attempt to combat this, publishers are offering more and more

expensive premiums to attack first-time subscribers. Sports

Illustrated, for example, is offering a videocassette on great

sports flubs. Time recently offered a camera. And then there’s

Newsweek’s successful free telephone offer.

Questions: Is there some point at which a premium ceases to be

an added inducement and actually becomes a “bribe,”

overshadowing the primary offer and becoming the key reason

why people respond to a mailing? If so, how does that affect the

quality the subscriber-base circulation is delivering to the

publication’s advertisers?

This would be the basis of my article, which would attempt to

answer these specific questions:

Do premiums still work? Are they still profitable? Or is their

effectiveness declining as more and more publications jump into

premium offer?….

To get the answers to these questions, I will interview circulation

directors, advertising managers, direct-response agencies, DM

consultant, and freelancers responsible for creating and testing

premium-based packages. I see this as a feature article running

3,000 + words.

Kimberly, may I proceed with this article as outlined?

Thanks for your consideration. An SASE is enclosed.

Regards,

Bob Bly

Figure 9-1:

A follow-up

query.

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Avoiding puffery

Impartiality is a must with many editors. They’re not there to praise your

company’s products.

To make sure your articles are run, they have to be as objective as possible.

Be sure your articles aren’t one sided and only highlight the positive. The

media need to spell out advantages as well as disadvantages. So, for example,

an article about storage methods needs to include as many as possible, not

just the methods used by the company sending the material.

Approaching editors one at a time

Many potential home buyers avoid a “cookie-cutter” home, and editors are no

different when it comes to printing articles. After all, what value does a story

add to a publication if its competitor has the same one? Emphasize exclusivity

by never submitting the same idea or story to more than one competing maga-

zine at a time. Approach another editor only if the first publication rejects

your idea. Most editors want exclusive material, especially for feature articles.

If a story is particularly timely or newsworthy and has run in a magazine not

directly competing with the one you’re approaching, however, you may be able

to get around this problem by working with the editor to rewrite the piece. But

be upfront about it or you’ll risk losing the editor’s confidence and goodwill.

Making the Initial Contact

Should you call or write the editor? Most editors don’t object to either

method of pitching an idea, but they usually prefer one or the other. It’s

simply a matter of personal choice and time constraints.

If you don’t know how a particular editor feels on the subject, call and ask.

An appropriate opening might be: “This is Joe Jones from XYZ Corporation,

and I have a story idea you might be interested in. Do you have time to spend

a few minutes over the phone discussing it, or would you prefer that I send

you an outline?”

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Editors who prefer to get the story in writing will tell you so. Editors who prefer

a quick description over the phone appreciate your respect for their time,

whether they listen to your pitch on the spot or ask you to phone back later.

But even those editors who listen to your idea over the phone also want

something in writing. If your idea is on the right track, the editor may request

a detailed outline describing the proposed article. Also, some editors may

not be able to make an editorial decision until they see the query letter.

All letters should be addressed to a specific editor by name. A letter that

begins “Dear Editor” may not reach the right person; plus, it indicates you

were too lazy to find out that person’s name.

Writing a Query Letter

The best way to communicate an article idea in writing is to send a query letter.

A query letter is a miniproposal in which you propose to the editor that you

write an article on a particular topic for his magazine (and that it be published).

A query letter is, in essence, a sales letter. The “prospect” is the editor. The

“product” you want to sell is the article you want to write for the magazine.

Querying the editor

Many businesspeople ask me, “Why bother with a query? It seems to slow

things down and creates an extra step and more work. Why not just write and

send the full article?”

In my opinion, you should always query. Ninety-five percent of editors prefer

a query and will not look at a full manuscript that they didn’t request.

Why do editors prefer queries to completed manuscripts? Two reasons:

! It takes less time to read a one-page query and make a decision than

to read the entire article.

! The query is a proposal — if the editor wants a different article than

is proposed, he can go to the writer and request it. Editors perceive

that authors are more willing to change direction in the query stage than

they would be if they have already submitted a completed article. So

queries give the editor a greater degree of editorial control, enabling

them to tailor articles to their readership.

Querying also saves you, the publicist, the time and trouble of researching

and writing an article that may never get accepted anywhere.

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