Big Publishers Want Big Content — How We Got Coverage on 15+ Top Sites

or why you should bet big on big content.

We’re doubling down on big content, and our clients couldn't be happier.

Big content is a phrase you may have seen pop up recently, and although it’s not perfectly descriptive, it seems to fit what our focus has become as an agency.

Loosely, big content is a descriptor that works for majority of campaigns we take on — but to be more specific, what we’re really talking about is the creation of cool stuff that has three distinct features.

1. Novelty — whether we’re conducting original research, exploring the limits of a new technology, or uncovering insights from a new academic study — successful big content must bring something to the net people haven’t seen before, or illuminate ideas that have yet to be fully explored.
2. High Production Value — big content needs to look great. With the content deluge upon us, it’s imperative we not only say something new, but also to tell our story in a compelling, elegant, or even beautiful way.
3. Social Appeal — appealing to the sharing economy with emotionally resonant concepts and ideas is essential for sparking virality. If you can’t emotionally hook readers with your content, you won’t make it.

Although not every big project hits it out of the park, a single home run can change the course of our client’s businesses indefinitely, and has.

What most people don’t realize is how possible it still is to achieve massive exposure for what is, relatively speaking, still a small amount of work and effort.

Betting on big content means you’ll spend more money focusing on bigger initiatives, and you’ll spread your risk among a smaller number of projects — but you’ll also be taking advantage of a simple fact that will only become less true as time goes on:

With the right idea and presentation, even the little guy can compete with the giants. Any single business’ potential for visibility is not constrained by the size of their pocketbooks, but the creativity of their ideas and the focus of their execution.

Generally, big content projects become much less risky, and much more likely to hit it big if a few rules are followed. These general rules have allowed our team to achieve placements from top newspapers and media destinations on more than 75% of our initiatives.

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel — creating something novel doesn't mean you have to start from scratch. Mine ideas from previously viral or recently newsworthy content. Rely on the past discussion of similar ideas as proof your topic has legs.
2. Have an angle & headline — if you want big coverage, you have to make a big statement. The goal is to dig up dirt, uncover a hidden truth, make a headline. Think: would the NYT’s listen to my pitch, would their readers care?
3. Tell a compelling story — lead your reader on a journey to uncover your thesis. Readers don’t just want to know your conclusions, they want to see how you arrived at them. Big content illuminates results and how they were derived.
4. Choose the best medium — don’t just use a content medium because it’s popular (like infographics). Think instead about how you can best convey the thesis of your story. It’s just as important to tell your story in a compelling way as it is to have a compelling story to tell. Often, the best content utilizes a variety of media to tell the story in a variety of ways.

Doubling down on big content can really pay off. In the past month alone, two big content initiatives (1,2) landed one of our client’s with features and links from dozens of high value publishers, including:

Women’s Health Magazine, MTV, The Daily Mirror, Discovery.com, CNET, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Time, Glamor, MSN Now, PhillyMag, BreitBart, Fox News, Yahoo News, SF Gate, Business Insider, and over 60 additional mid to high authority sources.

The impact of such placements can be astronomical — not only can they drive tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of inbound visitors, but also spur thousands of social interactions and sharing — as well as powerful, authoritative, earned links that can make a big difference in how you rank.

It is worth it to shoot for the moon with the content you create. It will only get harder to create content that has the chance for virality.

Take a chance now to get your brand seen.

The opportunities really are still pretty limitless. It’s still the wild west for creative marketers, and the barriers to success will never be as low as they are now.