Writing Articles for Publications and Appropriate Publisher with Erica Holthausen

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.

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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, you can actually see how his thought process evolves as he digs deeper and deeper into the material, and as he’s creating the book. Articles came first. Those were all things that he could use, because he was already doing so much of the work. Then he came out with a book. By then, his audience was already primed because he was talking about those things. And so, when the book came out, it was like, “Well, obviously, I’m going to get this book.”

 

Yeah, it actually reminds me of one of my favorite individuals as a bicycle enthusiast, also a music fan, is David Byrne. He wrote a book called Bicycle Diaries, after essentially having a lot of stuff in his blog about that. It was this idea of social proof. It seems like there’s a few different ways to get it. A lot of people build websites, where they have testimonials from their clients versus the vetting of a magazine or establishing your own blog. What are the general advantages and disadvantages of these different methods of obtaining your social proof, so that when you do go to meet with someone, they’ll have an answer to that question who are you essentially? 

 

Social proof is always tricky because there’s a lot of malarkeys. This is me not swearing. There’s a lot of malarkey social proof out there. There are people who will say, “As seen in—” and they put all of these logos. It was a press release. Rock on with your bad self. But come on, you can do better than that. Or I was named a top five such and such on Entrepreneur. Then you click through to the article and it’s a sponsored piece, which means it’s an advertisement — which means no, you were not named a top five anything by Entrepreneur. So, there’s a lot of shenanigans that happen in this space with the social proof.

 

So, it always comes back to be legit. If you’re putting a logo on your website, make sure that it is connecting it. If it’s profiling you — this is a place where I run into trouble because I have logos on there. But it’s clients who have been profiled there. Some of whom are happy to have people know that I work with them, and some of whom are not. But if it’s your thing and you’re like “I was profiled here,” and you have the logo to that publication, have a link to that place where I can now read that profile. Not everybody will click. True. But people like me, I click on all the things. If you have testimonials, the best testimonials are the ones that actually have the person’s name. Like ‘a client from such and such,’ you can just make that up.

 

Yeah, for sure. 

 

Why should I believe this?

 

Is that something that people are generally getting better at as we go through time? Because our use of the Internet is still relatively new. It’s still relatively a recent type of phenomenon. Some people realized you can put whatever you want on the internet. You can say whatever you want on the internet, and it’s easy. So, it seems like one of the important aspects of this whole process is getting good at vetting it — both with your own work, as well as with anyone that you decide to work with. If you are looking at someone’s website to make sure, okay, are these links there? Do these things make sense? Is this actual, legitimate social proof? Is this actual legitimate experience? That matters essentially.

 

Yeah, we have to vet the folks that we are going to work with as well. We have to get better at that. As experts, it behooves us to be as transparent as we possibly can in terms of our social proof.

 

Because it takes a long time to build a solid, good, positive reputation. It takes seconds to destroy it. Click To Tweet

 

Yeah, I think we’ve seen plenty examples of that.

 

Exactly. So many of the examples are examples that you don’t even know about, and that nobody will ever see. I’ll see things on LinkedIn from somebody who I’m like, okay, I’m following them. I think they’re really smart. I’m like, “This is somebody I might work with.” One post can get them blocked you to a wrong step and show something that I’m like, “Nope, our values are fundamentally opposed.” You’ve just lost people because of that. So being really intentional with what you’re putting out there, with what your area of expertise is, it’s all about trust. You can lose that trust so easily if you do any of these shenanigans. There are a lot of shenanigans to be done, but I prefer my shenanigans in an Irish pub.

 

I got to say I definitely agree with that, for sure. It’s interesting that you note that. For every high-profile case that we’ve seen in the news, there’s thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people who have ruined their reputation in a different way that just didn’t make national news or anything like that. But it was someone who posted something that either didn’t make sense or something that was potentially divisive — which is something that I tried to avoid having on this podcast specifically — that could potentially put people off for no good reason or give people a negative impression of you.

 

There are different ways to be divisive. You can be opinionated. I am very opinionated.

 

Yeah, for sure. 

 

You can be opinionated without being a jerk. You can say, “Okay. I disagree.” But you can dive into it. Because 9 times out of 10, if you disagree but you have a respectful conversation, you will learn something. It will make your own argument. You may not change your mind, and you may not change the other person’s mind, but both of you have the opportunity to think more deeply about whatever the subject matter is, and add some more nuance to your position.

 

That’s interesting. So, what’s the key to having a more productive conversation about something when you disagree? Say, do you feel like publication should do this, but someone else feels like they should not allow people to post it on LinkedIn or something like that?

 

I think a big part of it is, do your research. Have your arguments in place. Know what you know. Know what is opinion.

 

Separating fact from opinion is critical. Click To Tweet

 

I talk a lot to my clients about hot takes, opinion pieces, and newsjacking. Terrible phrase. But that’s all like how do you respond to some things in the news cycle. These are all tactics to respond to that thing that’s in the news cycle in order to gain attention. It can be very effective. It can also backfire spectacularly. We saw this. A few weeks ago, there was the crying CEO. Everybody, and their brother had to have an opinion about this guy. It was like, after a day and a half, I was like, who cares?

 

You would fatigue on that stuff, for sure.

 

It fatigued really easily. Then a lot of it was — there were things that were just mean and unkind. It’s like, well, do you really know enough? Do you have standing to be that negative about this? It’s one thing to critique and raise some of the questions and concerns that that post did raise. It’s another thing to slam an individual personally, and to make it personal. Remembering that you don’t know all of it, and being able to have the receipts, and being able to say — if it comes out a couple of weeks later — that you were completely wrong. Being able to backtrack without having to lose face, and without having to be losing face and say, “Hey, I was wrong.” But not in terms of, there are now things in here that I fundamentally regret saying. Remember, these people are people. Just because there’s a computer screen between us and them, it does not mean that we can behave like horrible humans.

 

I wish so many people would take that phrase to heart. Because there are some things that people will say in front of the screen that you would never see them say if they were actually next to the person, and feeling their energy, seeing their eye contact, seeing their face. It’s almost gives us the potential to treat people as less than human in some particular cases. Now, this is something that you also talk about with your clients when they’re actually writing their publications. Because oftentimes, when you write an article in a publication, you’re going to have an opinion. One of the things in the—

 

In fact, you have to.

 

You should have to have an opinion. One of the hot topics is, what companies are asking their people to go back into the office a few days a week versus the people that want to stay fully remote. You’re going to come in, and you’re going to have an opinion about it. There are going to be some facts. The facts are a little bit fledging, because we only still have a couple of years of experience with that. So, in this particular example, one of the keys is to understand the limitations. Someone will say the C-level suite tends to want people back in the office more, but the rank-and-file employees tend to want more remote work flexibility, which can be a fact based on surveys taken and stuff like that. But where does that limitation come in to say, okay, we understand that this is a fact based on surveys, but then there are some things about it — about what’s more productive, what’s right and what’s wrong — that tend to go into the realm of where it’s an opinion?

 

Right. So, the biggest thing is not all opinions are created equal. My grandmother had a saying. Opinions are like a particular part of the anatomy down below. Everybody has one, and they all stink. Everybody has an opinion on that particular matter. Even folks like me who work from home, and always have, I have an opinion. But why should anybody care about my opinion? I would never write about that, because I have no standing to write about that. This is one of those ‘stay in your lane.’ If it is within your area of expertise, if you write about workplace culture, if you write about those types of things, then yes, you are, absolutely. You have my blessing — not that anybody cares — to write about exactly that. But you have standing to actually have an opinion. You have a reason to have an opinion that anybody else would care about.

 

If I wrote about stuff like that, why would anybody care? Why should they care? That is not my lane. So, that’s the first piece. It’s evaluating it to yourself with, just because you have a strong emotional reaction and a strong opinion to something, it doesn’t mean that you have to write about it. That’s, again, where the Irish pub comes in. I have a lot of opinions, and I can hold court. Give me a good Irish pub and a glass of whiskey, and I can hold court and espouse all of my opinions and solve the problems of the world. That’s the place to do it. Online, where I’m building a reputation for myself and my business, I stay in my lane.

 

Well, I love this whole Irish pub conversation, because I feel like we own that equivalent of the Irish pub, your circle where you can have your emotional reaction. You can have your opinions. But you’re right. Because I even think about LinkedIn as the most common public form for where people advance their businesses, their careers, talk about what they’re doing. Everyone is lying. You’ve seen opinion about something, and you don’t want to necessarily turn off. Like for example, in your business, you wouldn’t want to turn off someone that wants people to return to the office or wants people to keep working remotely. Because that’s a completely separate opinion and completely separate from what you’re trying to help your clients do, which is find and get published in the right publication.

 

And yet, there are some people I am perfectly happy to turn off. Turning off the people that are not your people. I want to fire up and really resonate with the people who I know I’m going to be able to do my best work with. They’re doing something, and I can be all in. There are folks who talk about things that, frankly, if you’re in the gun industry, like good luck. I’m not your person. Because that is something that I feel very strongly about. So, there are places where you can turn people off. I think that that’s a positive. Because the people who do resonate with what you’re saying, those are the folks that you are going to do the best possible work, with and for. The folks that you’re like, “I just don’t drive with you,” you can’t give all of yourself to those relationships.

 

Yeah, I know perfectly well. In my particular instance, I sometimes have trouble driving with people who are really, really wanting to hold on to the strongly hierarchical work structures of the 20th century. That’s just something that never made sense to me when I came to work. People would start talking about things like a war room in a chain of command. I’m like, who are we battling? We’re just trying to get our job done.

 

It’s sort of like how closed off are they. If they are absolutely closed off to having that conversation, they are not your people. If that is their MO but they’re open to considering something else, it still might not the right client-service provider relationship. But it can certainly be a respectful conversation.

 

It sounds like what you’re saying is that, even though we want to know who we’re not going to jive it with, there still are dumb ways to turn people off. There are still dumb rules you can make. So, when you’re looking into getting published into a publication, when your clients are, is that something that they need to really avoid? Is that something that the publications themselves do a good job of vetting for and saying okay? Because very few people want to pick up the Inc. Magazine — I keep just referring to the ones that I read the most — and just say, “Oh, here’s someone who’s going on a rant about why they don’t think Tesla should make cars anymore or something.” You know what I mean? They’re probably not going to publish that, right?

 

Oh, they might. Contrarian viewpoints are catnip to editors. So, how you do it is what really matters. Because at the end of the day, it’s your name on that byline. It’s your reputation at stake, and you are the person that I am going to judge for whatever you’re saying in there. Editors like a contrarian viewpoint because it gets buts. It gets readership.

Whether you love it or hate it — think about all the books you’ve ever read. The ones that stand out in my mind are the books that I either hate and still remember years later or absolutely loved.

Same with this. So, that can get a lot of buzz. As long as it’s not just a rant and there is substance there, they are not going to save you from yourself. That’s your job. That’s not the editor’s job.

 

You’re saying that people are more likely to judge the author than the magazine itself. 

 

100%. It’s a hot topic. They’re going to have other perspectives on that exact, same hot topic at the same time. So, the magazine is safe. Because they always have the little, “The opinions of our contributors are not our opinions.” We do not take responsibility for this mobo.

 

Do they sometimes try to balance it out? To use the Tesla example, I randomly refer to. Someone says Tesla should not make automobiles. Then maybe a few weeks later, they put up a publication. Someone else is saying why Tesla is the future of automobiles. This way, they’re not really the publication having a side. They’re just showing the range of opinions on this particular topic.

 

If it’s of interest enough to their readers, they will jump on it. Because, again, if somebody puts something up that Tesla shouldn’t make cars anymore, and somebody puts that up, and the readers are like, “Yeah, who cares?” There’s no energy behind it. If somebody else submits something, maybe they’ll post that. That might get into a battle of the experts. But the publication is probably not going to assign one of their writers or freelancers to cover that story.

 

If it gets a lot of energy, then the publication might say to one of their staff writers, “Hey, let’s do a more in-depth piece on Tesla, the pros and the cons, and come up with something.” In that case, the publication is more likely to show, ‘here’s the debate,’ and less likely to say, ‘here’s where we stand.’ But more likely to say, ‘Okay, here’s the arguments on this side. Here’s the arguments on that side. Dear reader, knock your socks off and come up with your own conclusion.’

 

One of the things that I commonly think about — this goes with any kind of pursuit of getting noticed, whether it is you’re applying for new jobs, whether it is you’re trying to get new clients for your business, or trying to get investors — is that there are a lot of factors that are outside of your control. This is an example. Maybe a publication doesn’t want to publish your article because they recently had an experience with a similar article, and it didn’t go the way they really wanted to. That’s something that you don’t always have in your mind. You can’t really control it. So, is it advisable for someone who’s looking to get noticed by a certain industry to think of four to five different publications that will get themselves noticed to control some of these factors?

 

Yeah, part of that is, start with one, and then work your way up. It really depends on what those publications are. Because every publication has a different way that they like to be pitched or approached. Some you’re applying for the privilege. Some are pay to play, and you have to join. Forbes is like you join the Forbes Council, and that gives you the right to publish on their platform. Others are a more traditional pitch.

 

To your point, what was so great about that point that I don’t want to allow to escape us is — I also work as a freelance editor. I am on, it’s called, the slush pile. That’s where all the pitches come in. I’ll have to go through 100 to 150 pitches and identify 10, not that we say yes to. 10 that I bring to the rest of the editorial team. So, when you’re narrowing it down from 150 to 10, it is not personal. It might be if your pitch is terrible. It’s personal.

 

You probably some terrible pitches in your time.

 

Tons. You will see terrible pitches to your podcast, people who have no idea what it’s about. Same idea. So, do your basic research that at least puts you in a good standing. But I always tell my clients if you get a rejection, it is not personal. It is a rejection of that specific idea at that specific time. So, pitch again. If this publication rejects that specific idea right now, well, you might be able to pitch it to this publication over here. You don’t want to pitch both at once. But you can pitch that second one. One of them says no. You can say, “Okay. Now I’m going to pitch it over here and see if they’re into it.”

 

I think that’s an amazing way for people to look at rejection. Because rejection is one of the main obstacles. I have this model in my head for obstacles to success that everyone must overcome. That final obstacle is rejection once you’ve actually started moving and building on things. When you get rejected, it’s not a rejection of you as a person or your business. It’s a rejection of your specific pitch, whatever that specific pitch is — whether it’s to be published, or whether it’s to get business, or an investor, or a job or something. It’s a rejection of that pitch for that particular person or organization, at that particular time given their circumstance. That even particular organization, person, publication might have a different time when the timing is more right for that particular idea.

 

It’s good to remember that sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Nothing at all to do with you. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

 

That’s like even thinking about some of these controversial ideas, right? Maybe a publication is just thinking, “Okay. We’ve leaned a little bit too much into this realm of ideas. We need to broaden our perspectives a little bit more, or we need to cover a different topic, because maybe people are getting tired of these topics. I mean, we’ve covered before about topics people just get tired of.

The news cycle moves fast. So, if you’re writing, if you’re pitching an idea about something that happened last week, you’re too late. The news cycle has moved on.

Especially these days, the news cycle has always moved pretty fast. But these days, nobody’s talking about it anymore. So, you miss that opportunity. That’s part of why I tend to much prefer what’s called evergreen content — the stuff that is always relevant. You can still take risks in terms of having a very strong point of view, in terms of what you should do. You want to have bold statements. You want to stand out. Because if you’re saying the same thing as everybody else in that publication, why should an editor say yes? You don’t want to add noise. You want to add insights. You want to add value.

 

Yeah, I even take that into my personal life. If I’m having a conversation with someone, and they’re saying the same thing as everyone else at a given point in time, I’m like, okay, this doesn’t add any value in my life. I get it. Watching other people who’ve made that same exact statement to me in the last two years or sometimes 1400 other people or whichever. What are some examples of this evergreen content, that type of content? I always think of the first example we all learn in high school William Shakespeare. The reason why people still love his plays 400 years later is because those things are always going to be part of the human experience.

 

That’s such a good point. Because there’s evergreen and there’s evergreen. There’s Shakespeare evergreen, and then there’s the business world evergreen. The business world evergreen is more like a couple of months. Basically, if it’s not related directly to something in the news cycle, if it’s something that is your area of expertise, yes, your area of expertise, to talk about my own area, it’s getting published.

 

The industry is constantly evolving and changing. Click To Tweet

 

But there are certain things that are standard like guidelines, contributor guidelines. Every publication has them. Not every publication bothers to publish them, which they should. But anyway, that’s always there. So, they’re either written, or they’re implied guidelines. Those are always there.

 

Publications always have a particular audience. There are those standard things. If you’re in the leadership space, certain kinds of leadership, especially if that’s your area of expertise, that is stuff that you can talk about. That is evergreen content. So, as much as the business world does evolve and change, rarely are those evolutions and changes sudden and dramatic. Every once in a while, they are. But then, those level out again. Like the internet, sudden and dramatic change. Now we’re all used to it. My nephews would not understand the world before internet. That’s just because this is what they were born into, which I will say it makes me feel pretty fancy. Because we had to learn how to live in this world. If you can pitch it this week and if somebody says no, and you can pitch the same thing a month later, that’s evergreen.

 

The difference between, say, the content of an Eminem song from about 20 years ago, where there was so much current event topics that you’d have to look back at historical news articles to really understand all the references. One of my favorite shows, South Park, they always seem to be on those current event topics because they are new story breaks, and they just work intensely to put together a show in 48 hours so that it’s relevant.

 

That is newsjacking. Actually, that’s a great example of newsjacking. They would basically take something that happened in the news and be like, “Yep, we are going to use this so that we can stay relevant and gain people’s attention.”

 

I see. So, newsjacking is what it’s called. Right? 

 

Yeah, newsjacking is a marketing term. David Meerman Scott — I might be getting his name wrong — he coined this term. Some of it is absolutely brilliant. It’s often in social media. A while ago, I think it was Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. They tied the price of their dozen donuts to gas.

 

Yeah, I remember that. 

 

That got a whole lot of publicity. That’s brilliant newsjacking. So, there’s the newsjacking. There’s hot takes, which is basically something happened in the news today. I’m going to write about it in order to get that publicity. It’s writing on the coattails of the news cycle, basically.

 

I see. Essentially, what people need to think about is, do I want to write on the coattails of the news cycle? In which case, you have to move on something pretty much right away for you to still be relevant. 

 

Yeah, you have to move very quickly. You can do that well, and you can do it poorly. So, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. My big thing is always having your little circle of friends that you can go to and be like, “Is this legit?” How does this hit you? Because if it hits wrong, we all have that dark side of ourselves. I can really like to feel superior. So, that’s usually my check. I feel like I am smarter than all of you people. This is why I’m writing this thing. Then I’m like, “Let me share this with a few friends.” Am I valid and valuable and helpful and insightful, or superior jerk?

 

Are these the same friends that are at the shenanigan’s Irish pub, or is this a different location?

 

As funny as that question is, it’s also a really good one. Typically, different. Those are my business world friends who understand how this online business world works and can say, “Hey, girl, you got to rein that in,” or, “This part was insightful. But here, you get a little off on a rant and rave.” So, knowing your own biases, knowing your own dark side and being able to say okay, here’s my biggest challenge. I can come across like a superior jerk, because I can start feeling like a superior jerk when something triggers me. Knowing that and being able to have somebody who can help you check yourself before you publish something that is just a rant and rave and not a helpful thing.

 

I see. So, you’re at a shenanigan’s Irish pub to rant and rave and get it off your chest. But then you go to your neighborhood coffee shop to ask, okay, is this something I know? Personally, my biggest weakness is to become a vengeful contrarian when I get triggered by something. I’m not going to do what you tell me to do. I’m going to reassert myself that I have my own opinion so much, that I’m going to sound nastier than I want to sound and nastier than what I want to be as a person. Because that’s oftentimes, whether it’s that vengeful contrarian on my side or whether it’s that superior jerk on your side, that’s not even who you really want to be, actually.

 

Yeah, that’s not how I want to move around in the world. You can have those conversations because everybody’s doing a little rant and rave at the Irish pub. It’s a good time. You have a whiskey and your best buds by the end, even if you disagree. But in the online world, that’s where you really have to be careful. I talked about the crying CEO a little bit earlier. I turned that into because I was so frustrated that everybody was jumping onto this bandwagon, in ways that were not terribly thoughtful, that I actually wrote a post that was all about here are seven questions you should ask yourself. In one post, that was all about newsjacking, opinion pieces, and hot takes, what the difference is. One post that was, here are seven questions to ask yourself before you jump into the fray, because sometimes that’s not a helpful place to be. Sometimes, yes. But make sure you’re doing it deliberately, intentionally, and respectfully.

 

Interesting. Deliberately, intentionally, and respectfully. If people want to come across the right way and not put people off stupidly, or not ruin their reputation, they can think along those ways. That’s a good segue. Because where would someone find this opinion piece, as well as your website, if someone listening to this podcast want to get a hold of you, want to talk to you about getting published in the right publication for the right reasons at the right time?

 

So, my website is catchlinecommunications.com. I have a blog on there where all of my pieces, including those two pieces that I was talking about, are published. I’m also very active on LinkedIn. It is my one and only social media platform, which I find delightful. Because I used to be on all of them.

 

I know that can be exhausting.

It’s like, okay, here’s one place that I am. That’s where I really engage with folks. Then the one other piece is, I do a free Q&A every month, the second Wednesday of each month. It’s Pitched to Published. I start with 10 minutes of training, and then I just open the floor to whatever questions are in the room, and do my best to provide some answers and guidelines and guidance and all that good stuff.

 

That’s wonderful. Then one final question. Given that your mission is to get your clients published in a lot of publications, are you published in a lot of publications?

 

Yeah, so I’ve been a freelance writer and a freelance editor for over a decade. So, I have been on both sides of the pitch. I’m still on both sides of the pitch, though I do less of the freelance writing work now. So, I know what it’s like. My very first editor — I was approached. I was a little surprised that I was approached. She took me under her wing and taught me everything about this business. The first piece that I wrote came back with red pen everywhere. I thought, I’m going to go crawl under the nearest rack and not come out. She was like, “But it’s really good.” I was like, “What?” That’s not what really good means in school. I was a good little straight A to B student. So, that’s been part of it.

 

That’s part of what inspired Catchline Communications. This is the stuff that I love. This is where you can share your ideas. You can share your insights, where you can provide value by writing. This is my writing bias. I very strongly believe that the more you write, the deeper you think.

The deeper you think about things, that just makes you so much better at your work as a speaker, as all of those things. It helps you understand your area of expertise.

There’s always another deeper level to go. There’s always more new ones to explore.

 

So, even if someone’s not going to, say, want to get published in a publication, people should write something. I know it’s common nowadays for people to at least have a blog of some sort about their topic. My blog is about travel. It had nothing to do with this. It’s just the way my life turned out. But even just blogging about something and trying to get better at blogging is going to cause them to become deeper in their thoughts about their area.

 

About whatever area they’re writing about. This is my bias. There are people who hate writing. Okay. Then talk about it. One thing I often say is, it’s not about the ink. It’s about the think. So, if writing a first draft is hell for you, take your phone for a little walk and talk into it. Then get a transcript of what you said. That gives you a first draft. Then you can polish it. But really, it’s about thinking and making sure that your thoughts are coming across clearly. Writing and talking help each other, and work together really, really beautifully.

 

So, in the end, it’s really that you have to figure out how you’re going to communicate whatever it is you’re offering, whatever it is you’re doing — whether it’s a certain perspective that’s going to inform how you’re going to work with your clients, or how you’re going to work with your organizations, or whether it be a communication of a method, a manner of doing your work, essentially.

 

Yeah, all of this. That’s right. It’s all communication.

 

For sure. That’s something that we all need to learn a little bit more of. 

 

Yeah.

 

So, Erica, thank you so much for joining us today on Actions Antidotes, providing some context for people as to how to effectively communicate. I really love the whole thing about having a strong opinion, but communicating it tactfully and in the right intentional setting so that you’re not stupidly putting people off for no reason, as well as how to really think about the idea of rejection and the idea of the shenanigan’s Irish pub in our lives, whatever form it takes, and also the coffee shop, the group of people that are going to vet some of your more raw instincts, I will say.

 

Yeah, this was great, Steven. Thank you so much for having me.

 

I’d also like to thank everybody out there listening, for tuning in to Actions Antidotes, for being on this journey, this path alongside all of us and getting us to the place where what we do with most of our lives is really indeed what we want to be doing, what we feel like we should be doing deep within ourselves, within our psyche. Stay tuned or tune back in for more episodes of Actions Antidotes, or go back. Because there’s probably about 65 others before this. I hope you all have a fantastic day.

 

 

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About ​​Erica Holthausen

Erica Holthausen is the founder of Catchline Communications and a strategic thought partner to consultants who wish to build their authority and increase their visibility by publishing articles in industry trade journals and business magazines like Inc., Nonprofit Quarterly, and EHS Today. A long-time freelance writer and editor, Erica started her career as a litigation attorney in Boston. She credits her legal training with teaching her to use persuasive writing techniques, ask the right questions, and communicate complex ideas with power and clarity. If you’d like to learn more about how you can raise your profile by writing for high-visibility publications, register for Pitched to Published, a free monthly training and Q+A.