Andreessen Horowitz is looking to hire an editor to manage guest posts. The VC firm’s 936-word want ad reveals much about good contributed content. PR pros can go to school on this one, using these universal insights when pitching any outlet.
The Wall Street Journal is about to ramp up The Experts, the contributed content operation affiliated with Journal Report. WSJ is open to vetting new “panelists” (contributors) in each of six areas: energy, health, leadership, retirement, small business and wealth management.
— Updated Mar. 2, 2021 — Here is our latest and best list of titles and authors known to produce CEO profiles. The possibilities on one hand have shrunk considerably. On the other, literally dozens of publications will consider CEO pitches — but the context has to be there.
Nothing brings PR anxiety like crickets, especially when you pitch contributed content and include the submission. Was the pitch bad? Was the piece bad, or both? Or neither! Or maybe “they just didn’t see it, so I’ll ‘float it to the top of their in-box’ in a day or two.”
With few exceptions, contributed content gatekeepers are operating the way they always did before Covid-19 — serving the readers who buy products, manage teams and have projects to deliver. Here’s what nine of them said this week.
Placing contributed content ideally comes without strings — “pitch it, place it, forget it” — but that’s not how it works at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. Third Door is in the community business. Community editor Wendy Almeida wants to help but you must help her too.
What makes for a smart approach to contributed content? Answer: something that you know has worked. A Sept. 25 Enterprisers Project piece called “Beware the dark side of agile project management” drew more page views than anything else TEP published that month. Let’s deconstruct why.
G2’s contributed content guidelines are refreshingly explicit and perhaps a bit demanding — you really need to know your SEO. Still, it’s worth it: submitting to G2 may land you a surprisingly effective hit while revealing how trade editors see their jobs these days.
The Enterprisers Project, described by owner Red Hat as “a community of CIOs discussing the future of business and IT,” may represent a contributed content opportunity for you. Content director Laurie McLaughlin (yes, formerly of IDG and UBM) explains why.
Which publications still accept one-off contributions? Of the 114 titles in our contributed content Google Doc, roughly 100 still accept standalone articles. Unfortunately, the most attractive venues — Forbes, TechCrunch and WSJ to name three — want ongoing commitments. Inc. and Entrepreneur already have hundreds of contributors and don’t hunger for more.
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Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
At this time last year, Eric Newcomer and his two podcast co-hosts — Max Child and James Wilsterman — each formed an “AI startup fantasy team” and picked five AI startups to seed their rosters. We’re now in year 2 and it’s time to draft again. The podcasters wonder… which startups do they dump? Which do they add? The player whose startups accumulate the most total value by Nov. 1, 2028 is the winner, so there’s plenty of time to make adjustments. Here’s a link to the AI fantasy team podcast — you may need a password. Not sure.
