Yesterday, at Go Blog Social in Kansas City, I was able to hear from the Better Homes and Gardens Social Media Team. Kaelin Zawilinsi was the closing keynote and shared with attendees Ten Insider Tips for Working with Magazines. These tips go beyond working just with print magazines but also expand into online digital magazines as well. Notes in bold are hers and any extra thoughts from me follow.
1. Understand the Brand You are Pitching. Make sure to study the magazine/brand that you are sending your pitches to – from reading the magazine, exploring their site, and observing trends. She emphasized that magazines shift through time so the brand that you “thought” it might be might actually be a different brand image today. Sites and magazines change focus. Just be aware.
2. Your Best Pitch isn’t Your Typical Pitch. I found this part incredibly important as it was emphasized to pitch to the page of the magazine that you want to appear in. In other words, be as specific as you can be, understand where your content will fit within the magazine, and pitch to that. Don’t try to come up with a new section idea as it takes months for changes to take place. Just like understanding the brand, make sure you understand where your content would work best within the publication.
3. Sell Yourself, but don’t Sell Out.
4. Present a Fresh Idea but Fall In Love with the Idea. Be adaptable. Magazines/Media have very intense focus and need to make content fit within their own story arc for each month. Oftentimes they take the ideas but need to change them slightly to adapt to their vision.
5. A Committee Decides the Process of what is Chosen. BHG has a featured blogger of the month and it’s through a group process that each blogger is chosen. Most decisions in the magazine world do not sit on the shoulders of one, but rather have to go through a committee process. Expect that.
6. Learn to Let Go. This seemed to really related with point four, but the premise was that even if they don’t do all aspects of your pitch that they will make sure to credit you fully. She specifically gave examples of recipes and how they need to adapt them and test them to make them work – from photography to ingredients to cooking times and more.
7. Think Beyond Print Opportunities to Work with Brands. She gave ideas for series, interviews, products, etc…
8. Consider the Benefits that Working with a Large Site Brings. Basically, she boiled it down to them having a small operating budget and that they hope that the klout that you receive by working with a larger brand/print publication is enough in compensation.
9. Let us Know what you are Up To. Bottom line – pitch them ideas, stay in touch with them, but over and over she emphasized not getting creepy with them by sending too many emails and crossing the line professionally.
10. Practice Patience. She tole the story of one blogger that pitched an idea and then it took two years before it was accepted and run. Magazines, especially print ones, have a long term marketing plan. So plan accordingly. Don’t pitch an October idea in August. You need to plan your pitches in advance (just like we discuss in the Marketing Calendar Blueprint) so that when your content hits their inboxes that they are on the same wavelength.
Here are some additional take away tips that I found helpful.
1. When emailing a pitch make sure the subject line is as specific as possible. They get hundreds of pitches every day and simply don’t have time for clever titles. So in your email subject line it should say – PITCH and then the Category of the magazine you are looking to be in and then a specific topic. For instance -> PITCH, REGIONAL FLAVOR, WHATEVER COOL RECIPE YOU HAVE, FALL.
2. Study, study, study the magazine (or whoever you’re pitching) and know exactly where you want to go and why you why you are a perfect fit for that spot.
3. Be easy to work with, be prompt in your communications, ask good questions, and be nice. No snarky, no sassy, no none of that…. your reputation matters. And once you get the reputation of not being someone pleasant to work then that information travels.
4. I though this was cool as well – she mentioned to watch the Better Homes and Gardens instagram stream as often the editors are tagged in it and you can start to get a glimpse of their personalities and what they’re looking for. To me, I saw this as the brand using instagram to create that emotional connection with their fans and instead of just being editors that they were using this platform to make themselves more relatable.
5. Always have a mission statement/purpose behind your work. When they look at sites they want to understand your site immediately – they look for a diverse mix of posts (ie. not all sponsored posts) that feature content writing as well. They look for personality and voice.
6. Make it easy to find contact information. They did awards for BHG and were stunned how difficult it was to find emails when they went to each site.
7. Finally, for all of you who would be interested in this you can easily tour the Better Homes and Gardens facility in Des Moines, Iowa. They have test gardens and test kitchens and love to have visitors (and bloggers) tour their site.
I think that’s it. It’s always interesting learning new perspectives and seeing things from the other side.
Sincerely,
Rachel