How to Get Featured In Business Insider
The first time I got featured in a Business Insider article was a fluke. I had recently been invited to write articles for Forbes, and Forbes and Business Insider had a syndication agreement at the time. One of my Forbes articles caught the eye of someone at Business Insider so it got printed there as well. One article, two outlets.
However, this isn’t how you’re going to get into Business Insider. There’s an easier way than becoming a Forbes contributor, and that’s to pitch Business Insider directly. That is, you’re either going to pitch a writer at Business Insider (to write about you) or you’re going to pitch an editor (and then you’ll write the article).
PITCHING A WRITER AT BUSINESS INSIDER
Pitching a writer at Business Insider so they’ll include you in an article, or write an entire article about you or your business, is the same as pitching any other publication—do your research and customize your pitch for a single writer. However, that said, there are some particular differences in the process at Business Insider and other outlets that are good to know about.
For example, at Forbes, writers have a swimlane they stick to, or a certain topic or focus, but as long as they’re writing for their swimlane they can write whatever they want to write, and they can publish immediately. At Forbes, they bring on writers they trust and editors look at the articles after they’re published.
At Business Insider, the process is different. Writers pitch their ideas to editors, get approval, and only then do they start working on an article. That means two things; that you’re pitching the editors at Business Insider as much as the writers, and it’s a slower process.
If you explore the articles on Business Insider, you’ll notice they have their own flavor. For example, at Forbes, some of the recent headlines in the Entrepreneurs section include:
5 Ways To Improve The Performance Of Your Marketing Content
Brazil’s Nubank Is Leaving U.S. Digital Banks In The Dust
What Bud Light’s Controversy Says About Conviction Over Caution
5 Tips For Building A Digital Health Company In A Turbulent Digital Health World
Inside The Startup Whose Technology Promises An American Energy Transformation
How To Create A Psychologically Safe Workplace – And Why You Need To
Contrast those with these headlines from Business Insider:
I bought a laundromat and only spend 1 hour a week managing it. It's an easy, hands-off secondary income stream — here's how I got started.
I'm a digital nomad who built my business to $1.5 million in revenue last year working from countries like Colombia and Argentina. Here's what to know about running a company while traveling abroad.
I'm a CEO who wakes up at 3:45 a.m. without an alarm clock. These 11 sleep hacks helped me become a better leader.
Meet the designer who made Taylor Swift's Eras tour ballgown that has 200,000 hand-sewn sequins and crystals
I sold more than $110,000 in clothing with my Poshmark side hustle, and now I get paid to help other sellers create their listings
You’ll notice the Business Insider headlines are much, much longer. You’ll also notice they tend to be feature articles that focus on an individual vs. topical articles that focus on a trend or topic.
Here’s the money paragraph of this blog post: If you want to get into Business Insider, create an angle for your story that reads like one of the headlines on Business Insider, because that’s what writers pitch to editors at Business Insider, and that’s what gets printed.
Once you have your story in hand, find a writer at Business Insider who focuses on the type of story you want to get in, and pitch it to them. As always, be polite and deferential—you may think you’re doing them a favor by helping them get a great article, but act as though they’re doing you a huge favor by getting you into Business Insider, because they are.
PITCHING AN EDITOR AT BUSINESS INSIDER
If you want to do this the easy way, just join Kimanzi Constable’s masterclass on how to get paid to be a writer for big publications. He’ll teach you everything you need to know.
But here are some quick tips that will help:
Don’t pitch yourself or your own story, pitch an article about someone else (not a client, nobody who has ever paid you anything).
Find Business Insider editors on Twitter, but don’t contact them there. Pitch them by email.
Put “Pitch” and your article idea in the subject line of your email.
Make pitch brief and concise. Get to the point quickly. The shorter your email, the more likely an editor will be to read it and response.
Pitch one editor at a time. Otherwise, you may end up getting approved by two editors for the same article and then that’s awkward, isn’t it?
“Why would I want to write articles about someone else?”
The best PR I’ve ever received came not from articles others wrote about me or my businesses, but from the articles I wrote. I couldn’t exactly promote myself in my articles, but there were ways to get PR from it. For example, when I wrote an article about marketing, I might never have mentioned my marketing agency but people would naturally find their way to my bio on Forbes and there they could see I ran a marketing agency and they would often contact me.
Granted, writing for a publication is a lot of work, and maybe you don’t fancy yourself as a writer.
Pitching another writer is easier than being a writer, but that may also be more work than you want to do.
If you find yourself reading this and asking, “Can’t someone else just do this all for me?” then the answer is yes, someone can. Contact us or check out our pricing:
