How to Get Your Posts Published on Major Websites: An Interview with Dorie Clark. The first part of my interview is about the ladder strategy and the steps you should take if you’d like to write for the most popular sites. Essentially what you want to be pursuing is a so-called ladder strategy, where you’re reaching out in writing for incrementally more prominent publications, because it’s very hard to go from just having a small blog to Forbes. But if you are writing for local or regional publications or business publications that they have heard of, then that gives you an additional level of credibility when you try to get in the door there. Even people who ask me to introduce them to editors often don’t take the time to do this. For example, they write a piece about five mistakes that you might make in doing something, and ask me to send it to the editor at Harvard Business Review. Can you name a few publications that you’d recommend sending articles to, after publishing a few posts on your own blog? Another example would be to write for niche sites. It might not be a household name, but people that are in the know about technology would respect that. What do you think is the best way to find professional sites that are more likely to publish your first guest posts?
Writing guest posts for major publications can give you credibility, get your name in front of prospective clients, and eventually bring you paying customers. But not many bloggers are able to achieve this. Actually, most of them fail somewhere along the road and abandon content creation altogether.
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Time, and Entrepreneur. She consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, The World Bank, Microsoft, and Morgan Stanley.
Clark started to write posts because she realized that success in blogging could help her in everything else that she wanted to do. It took two or three more years than she expected, but her efforts ultimately paid off.
She talked to me about her journey on Skype and also gave several tips that I believe any blogger will find useful. The first part of my interview is about the ladder strategy and the steps you should take if you’d like to write for the most popular sites. The second part is about the importance of persistence, and the things that will keep you going even when you feel like nobody’s listening to what you want to say.
What do you think is the best approach if you’d like to write guest posts for publications like Forbes or The New York Times?
First, you should create content on your own site. This way you are able to get clips, meaning you have done some writing so that you have samples that you can show to other people. Writing on your own site or on LinkedIn is a very low-risk way to find your voice and improve your skills.
The next step, once you have those initial clips, is to reach out to slightly higher profile publications. Ones that are not necessarily household names, but are run by people or institutions that are not you and have an increased level of credibility.
Essentially what you want to be pursuing is a so-called ladder strategy, where you’re reaching out in writing for incrementally more prominent publications, because it’s very hard to go from just having a small blog to Forbes. But if you are writing for local or regional publications or business publications that they have heard of, then that gives you an additional level of credibility when you try…
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