No Marketing or PR Help to be Had? Get Yourself Published

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Make sure your employer is OK with the idea.

2. Scout out which site or sites you want to write for. Be realistic.

3. Study your intended site and its audience. See if they accept guest posts from people in your role by reading their “About” page or perusing the bylines.

4. Find the email of the community editor, managing editor or editor-in-chief. If the site does not publish contact emails, it’s better to go through LinkedIn or Twitter DMs than to send an inquiry into the black hole of a general email box.

5. Send a great pitch email and abstract with an introduction. Think TOAST:

• Targeted (relevant to the audience).
• Original (in relation to the site, unique, don’t send a pitch about MRR because they’ve published 12 such blogs this month, unless you have something new to add).
• Appropriate and actionable (be controversial but not a jerk. Give usable advice.).
• Scoped (don’t try to boil the ocean. If you can’t get a thought across in 1,000 words, split it into two blogs.).
• Timely (tie-ins to news, trends or world events are good for SEO).

6. Be open to feedback and willing to adjust the abstract, and don’t take rejection personally. Sometimes editors are just too busy to take on a new contributor. Ask if you can circle back in a month or two.

7. Be dependable. If you promise copy Friday, send it Friday, and not at 11:59 p.m. Pacific.

8. Make the content as clean as you can possibly get it. There’s no shame in using Grammerly or asking an English major friend to do an edit.

9. Include your byline as you want it to appear, a professional headshot, a bio and all your social tags — without having to be asked.

10. Watch your email for requests for clarification, and respond promptly.

11. Socialize the crap out of the content.

12. Rinse, repeat. The content monster is always hungry.