How to Get Featured in a Magazine: Strategies, Tools, and More

How to Get Featured in a Magazine in 3 Steps

There are three key preparatory steps to take if you want to get featured in a magazine:

• Decide how you want to be featured
• Decide where you want to be featured
• Decide which strategy to use to get featured

Let’s take a look at each of these steps in more depth:

Step 1: Know How You Want to Be Featured in a Magazine

There are many ways to get yourself or your business featured in magazines. 

For example, you can featured as the author of an article, or you can get featured through a focused piece on your business written by the magazine staff.

So, before you move further, decide exactly what end result you want to achieve. 

Here are the various options to choose from:

1) Bylined Article 

Bylined articles are articles you write yourself as a guest contributor. Some magazines allow self-promotion in bylined articles, but most require you to avoid any conflict of interest.

Bylined articles work best for building personal brands, and less well for promoting a business. 

• Example: “I built a low-cost offering for my freelance clients to diversify my revenue — here's how” (Business Insider)

2) Profile or Spotlight 

Profile or spotlight pieces in magazines are short, typically 500-word-ish articles offering a quick overview of a business or a person. 

They’re also usually a part of a regular series in a magazine and are written by magazine staff or freelancers.

• Example: “30 Under 30” list (Forbes)

3) Interview 

Interview-style articles are just what they sound like. Magazine staff or freelancers interview you and feature your answers in an article.

However, getting interviewed is not likely if you don’t already have a strong personal brand or a prominent business — at least when it comes to features in more prominent magazines.

• Example: The C-Suite Interview: Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor (Forbes)

4) Full-Length Feature Article 

Full-length features are similar to profile pieces in that they focus on a specific business or person. However, they typically run over 1,000 words. Think of them as deep dives rather than quick overviews. 

Full-length feature articles are typically written by magazine staff or freelancers.

• Example: How this startup built and exited to Twitter in 1,219 days (TechCrunch)

5) Press Release

Press releases can land you a mention in the news section of magazines. You typically write them yourself.

The challenge with press releases is that they need to offer something truly newsworthy. So, they’re not the best choice when you’re not launching new products, changing CEOs, or making other significant changes.

• Example: Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. Announces Strategic Changes to Strengthen its Financial Positioning, Drive Growth and Better Serve Customers (PR Newswire)

6) Expert Commentary 

You can also make small contributions to relevant-to-you articles and news stories by offering expert commentary and quotes. 

Getting featured typically requires you to sign up for media inquiry sites, like Connectively, or have existing relationships with journalists.

• Example: 3 Scientifically-Proven Tactics To Focus Your Mind And Spark Creative Ideas (Forbes)

7) Other Ways to Get Your Business Featured

Other, less common ways to get yourself or your business featured in magazines include product or service reviews, case studies, and list inclusions. 

• Product or service reviews can be published as standalone pieces or as part of comparative lists.
• Case studies typically focus on your clients or customers and the transformations or achievements they’ve made by using your products or services.
• List inclusions refer to being included in round-up posts, such as business, product, or website round-ups.

Your feature can fall into multiple categories. 

For example, Entrepreneur India published an article titled “Three Must-Have Apps For Entrepreneurs” which could be considered both a round-up post and a product review.

Step 2: Decide Which Magazine(s) You Want To Be Featured In 

Onto the next step!

To decide where you want to be featured, you could consider:

• The magazine’s target audience and readership — Who? How many?
• Niche — To get the most value for your time and money, choose magazines relevant to your niche. 
• Overall credibility and popularity — The only exceptions to the above rule are magazines that are too popular to ignore, like Forbes, Inc., or Entrepreneur. 
• Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) — Consider this factor if you also care about link building benefits (which you should).

Tools like Ahrefs’ free Website Authority Checker let you check the DA/DR scores of any site. The higher, the better.

Step 3: Use One Of The Strategies Below

Finally, decide which strategy you’ll use to get featured in a magazine. We’ll give you 7+ best strategies below.

7+ Strategies To Get Featured In A Magazine

1) Work With A Link Building Agency

The easiest way to get featured in a magazine is to work with a link building agency (like ours).

Link building agencies can help you:

• ✅ get a guaranteed feature
• ✅ choose the most suitable magazine(s)
• ✅ get highly beneficial backlinks to your site

So, by working with link building agencies, you get both promotional and SEO benefits from your feature. 

Also, you don’t have to pour hours of your time into trying to score a feature that may never happen. Getting featured is guaranteed — well, at least if you work with reputable providers. This also means purchasing backlinks is the easiest way to build them at scale. 

On top of that, the best link builders will get you into magazines that would otherwise be out of your reach, like Forbes, Business Insider, and so on. 

The only con of this strategy is that you’ll have to pay to play. 

However, paying for backlinks can, in the long run, be much cheaper than trying to build them yourself or hiring a VA to do your outreach.

If you’re interested in purchasing backlinks on magazine sites, check out our link packages.

If you’d rather get your features yourself, see other strategies below.

2) Pitch An Article Or A Story Idea

Pitching an article or a story idea can work for getting: 

• a bylined article,
• a full-length feature article, and
• in some cases, an interview.

There are a few tricks you can use to choose topics that are likely to get accepted: 

• You can research popular and trending topics using tools like Google Trends and BuzzSumo. 
• Alternatively, you can do keyword research using SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
• You should also look at your chosen magazine’s editorial guidelines and calendar to see if it has any specific requirements. For example, some magazines prefer topics with a personal or otherwise unique angle.
• Finally, you can check existing calls from editors on X. Editors often use X to ask for pitches, and typically mention the specific topics they want you to pitch.

After settling on a topic, all that’s left to do is reach out to the magazine and make your pitch. 

We’ll give you some helpful recommendations for this below.

3) Provide Expert Commentary & Opinions

If you’re looking to provide brief contributions to articles and news pieces, you can offer expert commentary and opinions to journalists.

One way to find commentary opportunities is to sign up for media inquiry sites, like:

• Connectively 
• SourceBottle
• ProfNet
• Qwoted

You can also look for suitable opportunities on X. Magazines often use X to find expert sources, and typically use specific hashtags to do so.

Some popular hashtags include:

• #JournoRequest
• #ExpertRequest
• #PRRequest

The challenge here is finding opportunities that are truly relevant to you and your niche. 

If you want such opportunities to find you, focus on building your brand and relationships with magazines:

• Build your social media following
• Clearly state what you do and what you specialize in
• Make it easy for journalists and editors to contact you 
• Engage with journalists and editors on social media — share their articles, comment on their posts, etc.

When you get an opportunity to share your commentary, make sure to provide concise, authoritative, and straight-to-the-point quotes. 

4) Buy Sponsored Magazine Content

Let’s face it: it’s not likely you’ll get featured in magazines for free, especially if you want features that explicitly mention or talk about your business, products, or services.

So, unless you want to outsource these efforts to link building agencies, you can buy sponsored content directly from your chosen magazines.

Sponsored magazine content is essentially an ad that looks organic, i.e., fits the rest of the magazine. For example, it can be written as a regular product or service review article.

The only difference is that such content is labeled with tags like “Paid post,” “Sponsored by,” etc. 

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To learn how to buy sponsored posts and what guidelines they should follow, read magazines’ advertising policies. As an example, here are The Atlantic’s Advertising Guidelines.

• Example: Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn’t Work (The New York Times)

5) Submit Press Releases

You can submit press releases either directly to magazines or to PR distribution platforms. 

• For example, Business Insider publishes weekly roundups of newsworthy press releases from PR Newswire.

Again, getting your press releases published — especially on high-authority sites — is highly unlikely to be free. PR distribution platforms always charge for their services and often have additional fees that quickly add up to a large sum.

• For example, according to Prezly, PR Newswire charges extra for multimedia files, branding, additional words…

Still, press releases are a great way to get more exposure and make important announcements.

With that said, if you don’t have anything newsworthy to share, choose another strategy.

6) Get Mentions In Existing Round-Ups

Listicle-type round-ups are super popular, so it’s no surprise that magazines often publish them. 

Round-ups can tackle any topic. We typically distinguish between: 

• Product or service round-ups
• Business round-ups
• Website round-ups
• Data round-ups
• Trend round-ups, etc.

Unless you have a well-known brand, product, or website, it is improbable that journalists will include you in their lists on their own. 

Usually, your best bet is asking to be included in already-published round-ups:

1) Find round-ups to be included in. 

Search for relevant key phrases. For example, if you’re a SaaS business, you can search for “top apps for entrepreneurs.” 

The key here is to include words that are often used in round-up headlines, such as “top,” “best,” “must-have,” “trends,” “round-up,” etc. 

2) Contact the author. 

Usually, the easiest way to get featured in existing articles is to contact the author directly. Send them a relevant link and explain how your inclusion will enrich their piece and help their audience.

(Link insertions in existing articles are called niche edits, and will rarely be free.) 

7) Other Strategies To Get Featured in Magazines

Wondering how to get featured in magazines using other strategies? Here are the top three alternatives we’d recommend: 

• Do something newsworthy. For example, you can host charity events or free workshops (great for getting featured in local magazines).
• Partner with influencers who have magazine connections.
• Conduct research, such as surveys, and share your findings with relevant magazines.

How to Write to a Magazine to Get Featured

With all of that out of the way, let’s see how you can write to a magazine to get featured.

1) How to reach out to a magazine

You can usually find relevant contact information on the magazine's website. You can also choose between reaching out via email (more professional) or social media (more personal).

If you can’t find contact information, use tools like Hunter.io — see below for more details.

2) How to pitch to a magazine

Your pitch must be really good to stand out. 

Here are a few guidelines:

• Keep it as short as possible. (And get to the point as quickly as possible.)
• Create an attention-grabbing subject line. For example, consider including the recipient’s name.
• Mention any relevant experience and expertise. 
• Clearly present your topic. 
• Emphasize how your feature can benefit the magazine and its readership.

For more details and a plug-and-play template, see our pitching guide.

5 Tools to Help You Get Featured in Magazines

Trying to get featured in magazines is hard work. Here are 5 tools that can make the process easier:

Prowly

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Prowly is PR and media relations software that can cover most of your PR needs, from finding media contacts and monitoring relevant mentions to creating press releases with custom design. 

Meltwater

Meltwater has a suite of tools that can cover a wide range of your media but also sales and consumer intelligence needs. You can use it to monitor your mentions or other important key phrases, reach key journalists, and conduct social listening. 

Ahrefs

As a robust SEO tool, Ahrefs can give you insights into your newly earned (as well as lost) backlinks, brand mentions, and keywords that can inspire your magazine features. You can also use it to identify magazines that feature your competitors.

BuzzSumo

We primarily use BuzzSumo to find popular, interesting, and fresh content ideas. However, this robust tool can do much more than just help you analyze and research content. You can also use it to track mentions, find journalists via Media database, and connect with influencers. 

Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a simple tool with a simple purpose: to help you find and/or verify the email addresses of potential magazine contacts. Its straightforwardness is what makes it super useful. 

Recently, they’ve also added additional email features that now allow you to automate and accelerate huge chunks of your outreach workflows. 

Get Featured in a Magazine, Guaranteed

Tired of spending hours working on your features, only to get ghosted or asked to pay hefty sums in the final stages? We can help.

Our expert link builders will get you featured in your chosen magazines — or you don’t pay us. We can also recommend the best magazines and write articles for you.

Order your links and features today, or contact us to iron out the details.

FAQs

Can you pay to be featured in a magazine?

Yes, you can pay to be featured in a magazine. To learn how it works and get the pricing, search for your chosen magazine’s advertising policies. Alternatively, you can pay link building agencies to help you get your features.

What are the benefits of being featured in a magazine?

The benefits of being featured in a magazine include:

• Increased brand visibility
• Increased credibility and authority
• SEO and backlink benefits
• Reaching your target audiences
• Ongoing value due to long-term accessibility of magazine content