Writing Articles for Publications and Appropriate Publisher with Erica Holthausen

For anyone who wants to kick-start their business or reach new audiences with your message, how do you craft articles that top publications would actually want to publish? In this episode of Action Antidote, Erica Holthausen will walk us through the process of writing, why it's important, and how it compares to other types of writing. Erica Holthausen is the founder of Catchline Communications, a consultancy agency that helps clients get published in esteemed publications. Her clients have by-lines in some of the most prestigious industry trade journals and business magazines, including Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Thrive Global, and EHS Today. Listen to the podcast to find out more! --- Listen to the podcast here: Writing Articles for Publications and Appropriate Publisher with Erica Holthausen Welcome to Actions Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that stops a lot of us in our pursuits is when we see what someone else is doing to manage their pursuits, and we can't picture doing it ourselves. This can be especially true with the mission of marketing or getting ourselves noticed. Now, this is true whether your pursuit is to start your own business and get it to succeed, or whether your objective is to find the right job, the right position, the right role with a company. My guest today, Erica Holthausen, is the Founder and Leader of Catchline Communications. What she does is, she helps people get their articles published in many different publications, as one of the possible many mechanisms that we have out there to get ourselves noticed. It doesn't have to be a social media blitz campaign. It doesn't have to be the standard methods that you always think about when you think about marketing. Because the mission is just to get yourself noticed, regardless of what your pursuit is. --- Erica, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Steven. It's great to be here. Oh, thank you so much for hopping on Actions Antidotes. Let's begin. Tell me a little bit about Catchline Communications. Because you help people not only get their publications out there, but also determine what's the right publication to reach their audience. Yeah, that's a big part of what I do. It's easy to say I know this publication, like Harvard Business Review, or Inc, or Forbes. I want to be published there. But before you jump in front of all of the other steps, knowing what your business goals are, like why do you want to be published anywhere? Why do you want to write articles for publication? What are you hoping it will do for your business? How do you want to use these? What is the business purpose that underlies all of this? The more you understand why you want to do this and what your goals are for writing for publications, the easier it becomes to — I call it creating filters. You use those goals as filters to say, "Okay, this is what I want to do. These publications will help me get there. These won't." What types of pursuits? What types of businesses and objectives are the types that people should be thinking about writing an article for publication, as opposed to some of the more, I would say, "traditional marketing techniques" that we have now with the social media blitz campaign or everything else? So, the obvious easy ones are professional services businesses. So, if you're a consultant, if you're a business coach, if you are anything that does professional services, those are easy, easy fits into these publications. Less obvious, but equally true are, if your industry has an association or has a trade journal, that's an opportunity to write for them. Because other people in your same industry are always looking for smart, actionable advice that is going to allow them to do what they do better. So, if you're in the supply chain world, there are a ton of publications regarding supply chain. There are a ton of associations. That's a great place to connect with your audience and start building your reputation as somebody who really is an authoritative expert. When you're going through whatever social media feed or standard marketing method, anyone can just take out an ad, or anyone can pay Google to get to the top of the search engine. Is there a different way that people think about it when they see something in an industry publication, even if it's general entrepreneurial stuff like Entrepreneur, Inc Magazine, some of those magazines that I'm a bit more familiar with myself? Yeah, absolutely. Part because, as you said, anybody can put a post up there and say, "Oh, I'm fabulous." Also, anybody can call themselves a thought leader. Please don't do that. Somebody else should call you a thought leader. But anyway, side note. Anybody can put stuff out there. But if you are putting something, if you're publishing something in a third-party outlet, they are vetting you. Trade journals, business magazines like Entrepreneur and Inc — they are vetting you and deciding, "Okay. Here is somebody who has something that our readers would benefit from. Here is somebody who is worth listening to." So, it gives you that social proof and almost that stamp of approval. So, I've had clients who have used writing for publications as ways to get meetings. It can be hard to get in the door. An environmental health and safety management consultant was one of my first clients. He was brilliant at using these publications to get meetings with people that he was having a hard time getting a face to face with. But as soon as he sent them something that was written for EHS Today — a trade journal that is very well respected in that industry — the doors were open. He was able to get meetings and have the conversations he needed to have. Wow. So, getting published in a trade journal, a magazine, a key publication generally takes a little bit more effort and energy than just issuing an advertisement. Is that right? Yeah, as well it should. This is your reputation at stake. So, yes, it definitely takes a little bit more energy and effort. It becomes easier over time. Ads are fine if you have the money and the budget to do advertising, and if you have all of the things set up, that you can actually respond to the leads that come in through your advertising. I used to work for a small ad agency, and you would be shocked at the number of companies that we worked with. We did this whole ad campaign. The ad campaigns were successful, and then the leads sat there. They had no idea what to do with the leads. So, you have to have a lot of infrastructure in place. You don't need as much infrastructure in place. You need knowledge. You need experience. You need something insightful to say to write for publications. That's all they care about. Are you going to say something that our readers will benefit from? If you will, then you can do that. Then it's all about, how do you leverage that? For most publications, they are perfectly happy. They want original content to start with. But after 10 to 14 days, you can syndicate that stuff. So, you can take that exact same article and now publish it on your blog, publish it into a LinkedIn newsletter, repurpose it. Use it however you want, so that you can get as much mileage out of that as possible. Now, it's interesting that you have the perspective of both your current endeavor, as well as having worked for an ad agency. You mentioned these companies that just didn't have the infrastructure. By the infrastructure, I assume you're meaning the people ready to follow-up on the leads, whatever you call that division — marketing, sales, anything else. When you issue and get published in a key industry publication, do the leads come in differently? Are there different type of leads that requires a different level of infrastructure, or is it similar? Vastly different. You get your first article published on Inc.com., the hordes are not going to come knocking down your door. They're just not. So, it is less about, I do this and I immediately see this influx. It's much more about, I do this now. How do I use that credibility that I have just built? I now have credibility as an Inc columnist. How can I use that to further those goals? Sometimes, if one of those goals is, for example, interviewing other experts in your field. Once you’re an Inc columnist, Inc allows you to do that. Entrepreneur, by the way, does not. So, that's one of those filters I was talking about earlier. It's about figuring out what you want to do and which publications will let you. So, if that's one of your goals, that opens the door. Because now you get to say to somebody, "Hey, Steven, I am an Inc columnist. I would love to interview you for my column." Very few people are going to say no to that. It means free publicity for them. So, you get to be very intentional about who you want to go after and ask for that kind of a conversation. That allows you to start building relationships. It's also a great door opener if you want to do more public speaking. You can say, "Okay. Here's this conference. I'm an Inc columnist." The event planners say, "Oh, this is somebody who actually has something valuable to say. They've already been vetted by Inc." Also, this is my last one of these, because I could go on forever. Sure. It's also a great way to start if you are thinking of writing a book. Some of the best business writers write articles first, because they're testing their ideas. As they do the research, you may as well use that research to put something out there. So, if you watch Cal Newport — he wrote Deep Work, one of my all-time favorites — you always know when he has a new book coming out because the articles shift. You can actually see. If you totally nerd out, which is amazing,...