Want to be featured by a magazine? Here’s how

At Essentials magazine, we love working with bloggers. Whether that means featuring them in the print magazine or collaborating online, we’re always looking for inspirational women to help us create content for our readers.
In fact, we love bloggers so much we put food blogger (and general awesome human) Katelyn Williams on our March cover.
Getting featured by a magazine is a great way to get exposure for your blogging brand – and most publications are happy to work with bloggers. To help you on your way, we’ve got 6 tips to help you get featured by a magazine.

1. Do your research

The best way to know exactly what kind of content a magazine is most likely to want is to actually go out and buy the mag and spend a bit of time checking out their website and social media accounts. That way you’ll know what kind of stories and people they feature, so you can adjust your pitch accordingly.

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2. Come with ideas

Once you’ve decided which magazines fit your brand best, do some brainstorming to come up with a few specific ideas for how you can work together. Just sending an email introducing yourself and saying you’d like to collaborate is probably not going to help you, because then someone at the magazine is going to have to come up with those ideas.
Instead say something like, ‘Hi Essentials, I think your readers would love an article about “5 ways your laundry pile could kill you”. Would you be interested in publishing it on your website? If not, please let me know if there are any other ways you think we can work together.”
At Essentials, our online editor is Claire Sebastiao. Click here to send her an email.

3. Sell yourself

Remember that magazine workers get loads of emails every day from brands trying to get their products featured. Stand out by telling the person on the other end what makes you amazing, and what you can do from your side to promote the content (printed or online) if the magazine decides to publish it.

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4. Get on the features list

Most magazine writers are always looking for women to feature in their stories, but the people they pick for articles depends on the angle or theme of the story (which could be anything from single moms to ladies who’ve dyed their hair pink). You might not be right for this month’s features, but you’re probably perfect for something coming up.
Find out who is in charge of the features at the magazine you’d like to work with and ask them to include you when they send out briefs. That way you can respond if your story fits an upcoming feature.
At Essentials, our features writer is Leigh Hermon. Click here to send her an email.

5. Interact online

If you really think a magazine brand and your brand are a great fit, it should be easy for you to engage with them online. Tag them in posts you think are relevant, reply to their questions on social media, maybe even share a post or two.

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6. Don’t underestimate exposure

You’re probably not going to get paid to write a guest post for a magazine, but these kinds of publications usually have large audiences that you can tap into to help grow your own. But make sure the relationship is reciprocal; if you feel like you’re giving more than you’re getting, it might be a good idea to propose something new or approach other publications.

What do you think magazines could do better when working with bloggers? Do you have any good or bad stories to share? We’d love to read them in the comments.

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