How We Landed Guest Posts on TechCrunch, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and more
Here at Work-Bench, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with some of the best enterprise startups and journalists across the country.
In my role as our Communications Manager, I’ve had the privilege of working closely with our portfolio companies and friends to help them better tell their stories over the past two and a half years.
One of the things I’m asked most frequently about is our guest blogging strategy. Our team has been lucky to work with some incredible journalists to have our work published in TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal, VentureBeat, and Business Insider among others, so I wanted to share some notes on the best practices we’ve learned along the way.
Here are a couple examples of articles our team has written:
- The State of Enterprise Technology in New York City (TechCrunch)
- Evaluating Startup Financial Risk: A Framework for Fortune 500s (The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal)
- 14 of the most promising seed-stage enterprise startups (VentureBeat)
Together, the posts we’ve written have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, shared by thousands of people, and have resulted in countless founders and investors reaching out to learn more about we’re working on. To date, guest posts account for nearly 30% of all our referral traffic.
In the graph below, you can even see that a typical guest post in the early days of Work-Bench generated a similar amount of website traffic as a standalone piece covering us in a major tech publication.
Not only does contributed content account for almost 1/3 of our referral traffic, but when we first launched Work-Bench, writing guest posts was a great way to help us build our brand and position our team as thought leaders in enterprise technology. Additionally, writing guest posts helped us build relationships with some of the best journalists in our space who we were able to ask advice from down the line. If you decide to go through the process of pitching a guest post, here are a couple things to keep in mind:
1. Take the Publication’s Perspective
We learned early on that publications aren’t interested in selling your company, so make sure to remove yourself from your post (mention your company no more than once, and try to do it in passing if necessary). Shy away from why your company is awesome & the huge problem you’re solving, and email us with that — we’d love to hear from you.
You should write from the perspective of a journalist, and as though you’re writing something for their publication’s audience. The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal has a completely different audience (CIOs, Fortune 500 executives, etc.) than TechCrunch (founders, investors, the tech community, etc.), and we wouldn’t pitch a post we wrote for one to the other.
2. Write Something People Want to Read
Landscapes, market trends, your thoughts on where a particular market is heading, the top tools people are using in your market all bode well. To get traction with an already swamped editor, it helps to focus on a broad market story (and then just mention your startup — if at all — in passing with a few other competitors and solutions as emerging market trends).
Not all of your pieces have to be market trends though. Personal pieces resonate well too, such as Rachel Kaplowitz’s (the CEO of our Work-Bench member company Honey) article on “How I Raised A $1 Million Seed Round When I Was 9 Months Pregnant.” From that piece alone, Rachel had at least 10+ investor inbounds and 70+ signups for Honey.
3. Meet Their Editorial Standard
Editorial standards are particularly high for guest columns, so any given piece needs to be well-written, interesting, and well-researched. You should be sending fully-formed, well-articulated & fully thought out pieces that are ready to be published. Share your opinions, but back them up with data, charts, and evidence. As with everything, learn to Write Less.
It’s a risk to dedicate a significant amount of time writing a post that may not get picked up, so you should have a back up plan. If your piece fails to get picked up (as ours have many times), don’t be discouraged. Post to your company’s blog, Medium, and LinkedIn — blast out through your social media channels — and start working on your next one.
4. Identify the Right Journalists
It’s pretty easy to track down a journalist’s email, but do so at your own peril. If you’re pitching a story on Slack & the top 10 emerging collaboration tools you should be watching, do not send it to their publication’s EdTech reporter. To succeed, not only does a post have to not only be well-written, but it has to land in the right inbox. Make sure to do your homework, and only pitch reporters that cover what you’re article is talking about. Spend some time on LinkedIn or reaching out to friends in the media and PR industry who may have connections, because a warm intro always goes a long way.
5. Nail the Pitch
Keep the pitch quick. Your email should be three to four sentences max. Also, copy the entire post at the bottom of your email to minimize clicks. Here’s an example of what your pitch should look like:
If you’ve done all of the above, you should have a better chance at getting picked up than most. Good luck, and feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any additional questions. And if you liked this post, please add a heart below or give us a shoutout on Twitter!
