If you want to write about anything you’d like, as often as you’d like, there’s a place for that: Your own website. But sooner or later it will come time to learn how to pitch an article.
Publishing posts on your own blog is a modern privilege that gives writers the freedom to digitally share their work publicly. And they can potentially reach any reader with an internet connection.
Can you imagine going back in history and telling that to professional writers who only wrote on paper? Scribes whose only readers were those in physical possession of their writing?
They’d surely be amazed.
But today we may miss out on ways to spread our writing, because we’re not as accustomed to the practices our writer predecessors had to use.
Pitch an article like a pro
I want to show you how to seize more contemporary opportunities with classic grit.
And the practice I’m going to talk about is pitching article ideas.
While you might be familiar with guest posting, I don’t think it’s often discussed as a practice.
A lot has to happen before more readers discover your writing, and one big obstacle blocks many internet-era writers …
Our entitlement cup runneth over
Since we’re so used to business blogging on our own sites, it’s natural to think our own style is acceptable on other sites.
The misconception is that once you find a site that has an audience you want to connect with, you can offer that site a typical article you’d write. You naturally expect to lock down a publishing spot on their editorial calendar.
While that experience is certainly possible, many publications aren’t interested in publishing a post that would appear on your blog.
Instead, they may be interested in your expertise and point of view, but they need you to craft an article that honors their editorial standards. You need to craft content that would appear on their blog.
In order to work, pre-internet writers had to follow a publication’s editorial standards.
They didn’t have the luxury of publishing whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. They had to learn to trust an editor’s vision. That was the only way to get their articles in front of new people and find loyal readers.
Top comments (1)
… where is the rest of the article?