4 Ways to Get your Op-Ed Published
“Never let good messaging go to waste!” should be every speechwriter’s motto. If you and your principal have made the investment in developing the content for a speech you should do everything within your power to get that message out there in other formats.
An op-ed is a really nice way of recycling existing messaging, but the problem with op-eds is that they’re really, really, really hard to place. I should know. Over the years I’ve written numerous op-eds, but success for getting them placed has been very mixed.
Here’s what I’ve learned through my trials and tribulations:
Don’t make stupid mistakes
Look, it’s really hard to get published by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, or the NYT: That’s just a fact. But it’s easy to make stupid mistakes that mean your piece is discounted before the editor even gets to the first paragraph. Not long ago, I had an op-ed I just knew was going to get picked up: It was a joint-byline from two high-profile people with a distinct and timely point of view. I felt really confident about this one. The problem? The outlet I was pitching to didn’t allow joint by-lines. Even if you’ve been in this game for a while it pays to check the fine print of the guidelines for each publication.
Play the game
Sometimes getting published is about who you know and not what you know. It’s not fair, but it’s the reality of the world we live in. It pays to have connections to journalists and editors who work on the opinion pages. If you’re part of a corporate communications team it’s more than likely that someone in PR can help. Your PR agencies should be another useful resource for making sure that someone is at least looking out for your pitch in an inbox that’s exploding with ideas.
If at first you don’t succeed, get creative
Don’t get downhearted if you don’t get any nibbles from the big names. Start thinking more creatively about where to post. Let’s say the op-ed is spun out of a speech your principal is delivering at a major institution. Does the institution have a blog? They will usually be more than willing to publish a guest post authored by a speaker. Make sure you ask them to feature it in their newsletter too.
LinkedIn should not be a last resort
LinkedIn is a perfectly respectable place to publish your op-ed and if your principal has a significant number of followers you can achieve pretty impressive reach. Publishing on LinkedIn comes with some major benefits: You don’t need to conform to anyone else’s timeline or editorial guidelines to publish and it’s a great way to reach your employee population. It’s also quite likely that your piece will still get picked up by a journalist, especially if you work with your PR team around publication.
