You. Are. Not. Special.
Why following the rules matters when it comes to submitting content.
Several years ago, a major U.S. defense contractor lost out on a multi-billion dollar contract because it was submitted a few minutes past the deadline. This may seem like a petty bureaucratic response—and it probably was—but it underscores a very real issue: rules and processes matter. This may sound strange in a world where we’re all told to think outside the box, but no matter how amazing your thoughts and ideas might be, at some point they need to be integrated into (to use some late-sixties hippie parlance) The System.
In the world of marketing communications these rules can take many forms, but companies constantly try to get around them. And it almost never works. That’s because the parameters usually exist for a reason, even if they’re not immediately apparent.
A textbook case of this is bylined articles. Many publications accept third-party contributed content from industry experts so that their readers can get real-world insight from people in the field. Editors usually have stringent requirements that authors are expected to follow so that articles comply with their house standards. Invariably, the writers (or their marketing teams) try to bend the rules to their advantage—and then get upset when their first drafts are rejected.
The most common rule violation is the length of the stories. Print and online publications work in a world of templates where word count matters. If editors want 600 words, they want 600 words, not 1300 words. It’s not because the editor is a terrible person—it’s simply a matter of making sure that stories will physically fit. And yet marketing people are constantly writing overly long pieces because they feel that the shorter word count is restrictive. Guess what? It’s not up to you!
The second rule that gets ignored has to do with tone. While editors like to run expert commentary, they don’t want to print advertisements masquerading as articles. That is usually spelled out pretty clearly in their contributor guidelines so that authors know what they can and can’t write about even before they put pen to paper. And yet the majority of articles that get rejected are eliminated because they include information that editors requested that stories avoid. This includes mentioning specific products, referencing customers by name and being overtly promotional. However, writers are forever trying to shoehorn this kind of information into their articles, and then they get upset when the editor sends a rejection email.
You may think your new product announcement or business combination is so great that it’s a story-and-a-half in and of itself, but unless you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that’s just discovered a new subatomic particle, that’s hardly ever the case. The thing to understand is that businesses don’t get to set the agenda—editors and publishers do. To get a byline printed, it has to connect to some problem, some event, or some trend of the day. In a word, it needs to be newsworthy.
All that is just another reason why training as a journalist is so coveted in the public relations industry. The real expertise you get (or should get) from a communications professional is knowing what’s news today. To do that, the writer must have a finger on the pulse of the media. A business partner of mine who’s a real ace at getting pitches accepted spends as much as three hours a day reading publications, consuming everything from The Wall Street Journal to news magazines like The Atlantic to highly technical industry journals. That’s not him goofing off—that’s him doing his job!
The lesson here is that to get your byline published, you have to start thinking like a journalist. Receiving articles that come in way above (or under) word count, are transparently promotional or don’t correspond to the pitch you approved are obvious indications that the contributor doesn’t know how the business works. But more than that, they place into doubt the quality of the information within. Because if authors can’t be bothered to follow the rules, how can they be trusted to have fact-checked their data?
Getting a bylined article published certainly takes work, but the process is ultimately pretty simple if you pay attention to editorial policies. Don’t ignore word count rules. Don’t call to follow up with editors if they state they don’t want phone calls. Send a good, relevant pitch over the preferred medium—and if it’s accepted, then stick to it. It sounds basic, but if you just commit to playing by the rules, you’ll see your rates of accepted byline articles increase dramatically.