Generate free PR for your startup, your self, or your clients

7 Step Process for Getting Your Content Published

I have used this process to get myself published in TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNBC, and a number of other publications over the last two years. I have also helped a number of our portfolio companies deploy this same process, resulting in high impact, FREE, PR for their startup.

As with any marketing strategy it takes effort. No one is going to come knocking down your door. But if you put in the effort you can generate significant buzz for your startup, your self, or your clients.

STEP 1: Understand Your (Potential) Audience

What Problem are you Solving? When your potential customers are trying to solve this problem, what are they typing here?

TASK: Write down 5–10 searches a client might perform when looking to solve the particular problem that you solve!

Example: Blue Apron

The obvious search term is “Meal Delivery Service”

The less obvious search term is “Dinner Ideas for Two”

The obvious search a customer might make is better tackled within traditional marketing channels (Press Release, Ad Campaign, etc.). It’s the less obvious search that makes for a great content piece and the ones we will be looking to go after.

STEP 2: Identify Your Target Platform

Blogging isn’t reserved solely for your “Blog”. There are 4 main platforms for your blog content to reside.

1. Editorials: Think of these as going after a big and broad audience. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and even TechCrunch to a lesser extent, all have fairly big and broad audiences. The goal here is to build name recognition and showcase some thought leadership.
2. Guest Posts: These are websites with ideally, a bigger audience than your own. This strategy is for a startup who has little to no web traffic. Let others do the hard part of building an audience (Ideally the same audience you are going after) and provide them with free content in return.
3. Your Own Website: Until you have consistent web traffic, only use this to promote company milestones or events. You may want to republish articles here or to use it for SEO purposes but my opinion is that content marketing has moved beyond SEO and should be focused on high quality thought leadership and eyeballs, rather than keyword stuffed posts that no one will read (Coming from a guy who ran a company that did exactly that).
4. *Publishing Platforms (Medium/LinkedIn): When I first put this process together 2 years ago, this option didn’t exist, or at least hadn’t emerged as a possible choice. The unique aspect of these platforms is the way users are duplicating the content from the other platforms on this one, or even using these, Medium especially, as a replacement for their blog. I recommend doing the same. Typical strategy is wait 1–2 weeks post publication if your content is picked up as an editorial or guest post.

TASK 1: Google “(Publication) op-ed guidelines”, then start a spreadsheet and track the email address and format for each publication. Try to get to 20.

TASK 2: Start a spreadsheet of industry related blogs that potential clients might read.

Case Study: The founder of Buffer, Leo Widrich, acquired 100,000 customers via an aggressive guest blogging strategy before writing anything for their own blog.

http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2194396/how-guest-posting-propelled-one-site-from-0-to-100-000-customers

What Leo did was something few of us could do (1–2 posts per day) but shows that piggybacking off of other companies audiences is an effective strategy to build your own.

Here is a simple email template that Leo used when pitching his guest post:

Hi guys,

As a guy just starting out with a few basic webdesign lessons, I found you website extremely helpful, so just a quick thank you on that note.

I wanted to ask if you are interested in a guestpost that I have drafted, which I titled “10 Tools To Make The Most of Twitter”. It covers a few of the latest Twitter Tools, which help me a lot to stay productive.

I hope you can let me know if you think the post could be interesting for you.

For reference of my writing style, I published recently on: Six, RevisionsSocialMediaExaminer, & Inspiredm.

Best,
Leo

STEP 3: Display Thought Leadership

Don’t be Afraid to Have an Opinion!! You know more about your industry than most people and need to remove the fear of being criticized.

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

-John Steinbeck

Focus on "an Audience of One" to Avoid Creative Fear

STEP 4: Identify & Duplicate Proven Strategies

When I first put this together, 2 years ago, lists were all the rage and still have huge appeal (I’m currently using a list for this post) but there are also a number of other strategies that have been identified.

Buzzsumo put together an amazing study on the most shared articles of 2015, breaking down the elements of shareability into four distinct buckets:

How To Go Viral: Lessons From The Most Shared Content of 2015

They also developed 14 category topics that resulted in the largest number of shares in 2015:

1. Surprise People (Facts & Images)
2. Leverage A Trend, Particularly Zombies
3. Inspire People
4. Create Stunning Picture List Posts
5. Exploit Cute Animals & Babies
6. Be Amusing
7. Be Controversial
8. Quiz People
9. Provide Warnings
10. Tell Them The Secrets Of Success
11. Health, Diet & Fitness Tips
12. Tell Them Secrets Of Love & Dating
13. Share The Secret To A Long Life
14. Share A Heart Warming Story

TASK: Come up with 10 ideas related to your industry that could be the basis tied to one of the previous categories. Be creative!

Example:The Periodic Table of Venture Capital Blogs

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital-blogs-periodic-table/

STEP 5: Optimize Your Headline!

Usability research shows that people tend to take in only the first and last 3 words.

Kissmetrics does a nice job or breaking down the headline into 5 categories:

• Simplicity: If you are vague about the value of reading your copy, your reader will be too.
• Helpfulness: For your reader to see value in your copy, you must show how it will help him.
• Immediacy: Your headline should be so interesting that your reader cannot help but read on immediately.
• Newsworthiness: Your headline must say something he hasn’t heard before.
• Entertainment: Headlines which promise some entertainment in the copy succeed more often than those which don’t.

Can You Write a Better Headline Than This? Not Using Old Headline Formulas You Can't

STEP 6: Optimize Your Body

How long should your post be? According Medium the ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes or 1,600 words… Though I have seen many 4–5 minute reads be more than sufficient.

https://medium.com/data-lab/the-optimal-post-is-7-minutes-74b9f41509b

https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-link-worthy-post-part-1

Adding video, images, audio, or any other type of media also adds to your posts sharability.

https://moz.com/blog/what-makes-a-link-worthy-post-part-1

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-power-of-twitters-new-expanded-images-and-how-to-make-the-most-of-it

STEP 7: Implement Your Plan

Steps 1 and 2 only need to be done once. The list of journalists and publications will continue to serve you well. As new opportunities and connections arise, continue to add to the list.

Plan Overview:

• Target to customer
• Write a post from your list of topics
• Write a killer headline
• Add some media
• Start sending to Publishers, industry specific blogs, or publish to your Website… Then republish on Medium.

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