You want to get published but how do you begin to determine which magazines and podcasts to pursue?
The better research you do prior to pitching, the more likely your pitches will stand out to the media outlets you are approaching.
Starting with magazines, there are a few keys to look out for that will help you in pitching.
The first is to study the magazine itself. What are they publishing, how often are they publishing, what are their features, major sections and topics they tend to focus on. Knowing this will give you a competitive advantage when it comes to pitching ideas.
For example, if you see that every issue they feature a workout circuit you know that is a piece of content you could pitch.
From an artistic standpoint, you can get a sense of the style of imagery they want to focus on when it comes to publishing so you know which are the right types of images to send with your pitches.
In each issue of the magazine there is something known as a masthead. This is a fancy way of saying staff list. You are going to look for the name and contact information for the individual you want to pitch to. More often than not you will be pitching to the Editor on Editor in Chief of the magazine. If the magazine is big enough, you could pitch to a section editor (IE Fitness Editor, Nutrition Editor, etc).
Their contact information could be located in the masthead, in the letter from the editor or through a Google search. One tip is that if you find one person’s email address at a magazine, the rest of the staff tend to follow the same format.
For example, lastname.firstname at magazine dot com or firstname at magazine dot com, etc.
Another tip, go to the magazine’s website and go to the advertising section and download the magazine’s media kit. This will give you an editorial calendar for the publication for the next calendar year! You will know what each and everything issue of the publication is to be about which will drastically help you in your pitches!
For podcasts, the approach can be similar. I would suggest using either the Apple Podcast App or a free service Chartable.com and check out various podcasts using the categories and subcategories. You are going to be looking for three types of shows.
1) Top shows in a category/subcategory (I would place these shows anywhere between #1 and #100). They have a powerful and loyal audience that can drive a lot of traffic back to you.
2) New & noteworthy shows (Apple Podcast list for each category/subcategory). These are shows that are new but growing very quickly.
3) Established shows. These are shows that have a medium to large loyal audience and are the easiest to land features with. Although Apple does not release downloads statistics, there are a few ways to gauge an established show. First is is if they appear between #101 and #250 on a chart/list. Another is to see if they have between 100 and 500 reviews. These tend to indicate a show with a strong audience.
You want to spend a quarter of your time pitching to top shows, a quarter of your time pitching to new and noteworthy shows and half of your time pitching to established shows.
In your research look for two things.
1) Is the podcast still publishing?
2) Do they feature guests? Not all do!
Listen to some episodes to get a sense of how you could fit on their show.
Then use the site Chartable.com to find the show’s website and thus their contact information.
Hope these tips help you in your media research!
For more information and to gain media features, attend FITposium.com Sept 16-18 virtual or in person!
James Patrick
JamesPatrick.com
