Yahoo! Health - Should You Pitch It For A Product or Expert Feature?

Recently, a member of Tin Shingle requested Media Contacts for Yahoo! Health. We do this research for our members, and add them to our Media Contacts Database that All Access Members of Tin Shingle can search through 24/7. Finding these contacts was not an easy job. The website of Yahoo itself is filled with articles published at other websites. Most of the links from the main pages of Yahoo!'s sections take you out of Yahoo! and into another website.  So is Yahoo! a Zombie Website? It just links people out? Is anyone home?

Who Owns Yahoo!?

Poor Yahoo!, they once had such a shot at being a strong source of good reporting (see Forbes' "Yahoo! Sells to Verizon in the Saddest $5 Billion Deal in Tech History"), but that ginormous company merger (Verizon also owned AOL) may have derailed original content plans.
PS: Media trivia for you: the version of Verizon that owns Yahoo! and AOL is called Oath Inc..

Yahoo! Is Largely A Syndicate Website

At first blush, Yahoo! is simply aggregating articles on most of its web pages. Take a look at the homepage for Yahoo! Lifestyle, and you'll see Marie Claire, Elise Sole, People, and others. Some is sponsored content, meaning a company paid for an article to be written about them.

Yahoo! Pays To Have Content Published Elsewhere

We checked in with writer friends in the industry to get the real scoop on how Yahoo! works. Content production is quite active, but not much is coming from Yahoo!, unless it's Yahoo! Finance, News, or in their new section, Yahoo! Originals. Yahoo! Originals seems to (at moment) feature politics, severe weather, highly trending topics, and sponsored content.

"For everything else," says an editor who works for one of Yahoo!'s partner sites: "Yahoo! develops partnership deals with other sites through which they secure syndication rights for other companies' content. However, this is where it gets a little weird..."

Turns out, Yahoo! editors do ask for something specific around a general theme, like “fall recipes using pumpkins” from these partner websites, and get sent in a lot of pitches (aka story article ideas) from the writers who are on staff or permalance or in contract with those other publications. Yahoo! selects which pitches it wants written, and then those articles get published - get this - at the other websites (depending on the partner…not all of their partnerships work this way). However, an article that does work this way would also be displayed at Yahoo! as syndicated content with a link back to where that content was published.

"For instance," the editor explained, "a story on the 'Top 10 Fitness Moves for Flat Abs' may have originally been published on a partner site, but Yahoo! asked for that particular piece of content to be pitched, assigned, and written in the first place.”

What Does This Mean For Business Owners?

Yahoo! is a mirror website - reflecting content (often times) it commissioned to other publications to write. It's a win-win for everyone, has a handful of original content published at its website. Because it features links to other websites, there is lots more exposure for articles at other publications, however. What is our takeaway as business owners, artists and makers wanting to be featured in an article (or the headline of an article) at Yahoo!?

Study the publications that Yahoo! republishes, and the writers who wrote those articles.

Pitch the writers about your business or expertise, to get on their radar. Tin Shingle's recommendation has always been to stay in good graces - and on the radar - with writers. When a writer gets assigned a story to write, they are quick out of the gate to find the source to quote, or place or product to recommend.

Contributing Writers Are Gold Nuggets

Tin Shingle has a new section in our Media Contacts Database that is specific to Contributing Writers. We are building it out, but it lists writers as themselves - which doesn't really change as they move from job to job.

Writers continue to write for multiple publications - some never listed in their bios because they forget to update their websites, or other databases.

Get fresh ideas for who these writers are, and keep track in your own PR Planning & Media Tracking Sheet that you can download from Tin Shingle. Download it, plus Media Contacts, at Tin Shingle’s website.

To learn more about how to pitch Yahoo!, visit this article in Tin Shingle’s “Ask the Experts” section.

Why I Subscribe To Magazines - And Read In Print - Vogue’s Article On The First Baby In the Senate

While turning through this month’s issue of Vogue, I was so surprised to learn that Illinois Senator Ladda Tammy Duckworth lost her legs while serving in the military while piloting a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. As a subscriber, I also get Vogue’s daily email campaigns. Never saw this one in their emails promoting the print edition. Nor did I see digital promotion of the Karlie Kloss article on her new love of code (oh wait, this is also funny about her promoting her new code camp)and her involvement with helping girls learn to code (Internets and websites and stuff). But maybe I missed them!

Back to the senator - I am pretty sure I heard a feature on her in a NPR interview about her recent childbirth (oh I did! found the link right here), pumping in her senate office, and the ridiculous baby clothing uniform questions she got from male senators.

From that interview, I did not know she was 50 and that this baby was her second! This is why I subscribe to magazines in print! Thank you Vogue for producing this story. Written by Rebecca Johnson, photo by Annie Leibovitz.

And one more takeaway: this is why having 1 news source - local or otherwise - is not enough. One source cannot possibly tell all of the information.  

This Week’s Cover of Variety: The Survivors

Sometimes Variety, the trade magazine for the film and television industry, will be bought, and an ad will be there, positioning a film to win an award. Nothing wrong with that - it’s what pays the bills and the writers and the designers and the editors and the entire departments that produce a magazine.

So when Variety doesn’t have an ad on the cover, you know they’ve devoted a deep dive into some great reporting and information presenting.

This editorial, this subject matter won’t stop. It won’t let up. It won’t become less trendy and cycle out of news cycles. A culture of acceptance and rudeness and entitlement and blindness is being fired right now. That’s why this is so hard. Pages in print and in digital are the weapons. Both sides use them, and readers need all of them to find the right answers.

Local Magazine Reaches Far and Wide for Small City - The Valley Table for Beacon in Mahopac

Enjoying the article on cream in the September-November 2018 issue of The Valley Table which devoted this issue to farmers (and the Pots de Creme in the recipe section).

I’m currently writing this blog post from a car dealership in Mahopac, which is about 35 minutiae from where I live in Beacon, NY (and I produce a blog from there). Several of the staff way out at this dealership love Beacon, NY simply because they read about it and the restaurants so often in The Valley Table.

As a side note, the ads are so well designed! I always enjoy reading the features and the ads. My philosophy is to support ads, to pursue purchasing them, as well as pitching magazines for organic, solid PR. While a true editorial feature can raise your brand’s profile as well as tap into a flood of sales, well placed advertising also educates your customer base and keeps your brand top of mind.

That and, without it, the magazine wouldn’t exist. So there’s that. Plain and simple. 

So support your local and national media sources! 

Julie Chen Moonves Exists CBS' 'The Talk'

Photo Credit: Screenshot from Variety’s website and article.

As reported by Variety and others, Julie Chen Moonves has exited CBS’ ‘The Talk.’ She will remain the host of ‘Big Brother,’ also at CBS. Chen Moonves is married to Leslie Moonves, the longtime CEO of CBS Corp. who is no longer CEO due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

According to the article, Chen Moonves signed off of the latest ‘Big Brother’ episode by using her maiden and married names. Normally she uses her maiden name, Julie Chen. She cited needing to spend time with her family. The couple has one son.

Deconstructing the Pitch: Designer of Animal Furniture Featured in Architectural Digest

As you're flipping through your favorite magazines, you are reading inspiring features about other people. In the back of your mind, you may be thinking: "Ah, one day, that will be me."

Reality Check: Today, that is you.

You Can Be Featured In The Magazine Too!

As you are trying to market your business, you're going to want PR. You're going to want to be mentioned in magazines, TV segments, blog posts, and interviewed on podcasts. It's a big job - all of this marketing - but somebody's got to do it, and that someone is you. Here's how you're going to hit the grand slam:

Step 1: Realize that you can be featured in a magazine like Architectural Digest. This is the "Give Yourself Permission" approach we preach in Tin Shingle Training TuneUps (all of which are free with an All Access Pass Level 4 of membership) and is the undercurrent in all of our articles.

Step 2: Find the "Why." Why would this magazine feature your business right now? What about your business is significant to that magazine's readers?

Step 3: Go for the pitch. This means you will write an email to an editor (or contributing writer) at a magazine, with some clever suggestion of why their readers would love to know about your company right now.

The Pitch Deconstructed

The pitch is the trickiest part. It's a simple email, but needs to be written to just the right person in just the right way. We have deconstructed this full page feature in Architectural Digest of the designer Porky Hefer. Tin Shingle Members at the Community Level 1 and above can log into their accounts and find the analysis right here in our Pitch Whisperer Workshop forum of the Community Boards.

Find out what may have appealed to editors at Architectural Digest that convinced them to give this designer a full page in the "back of the book" aka the back of the magazine where lots of people flip the back cover and see it, and how you can do it too.

The Pitch Whisperer Workshop forum is available to Community Members Level 1 and above to submit their pitches to the group and get feedback (and sometimes edits!) from our supportive community. No pitch is to far out for our eyes. Tin Shingle is all about helping you Think Big and Go Big for your business marketing.

PR HOMEWORK:
Read a Feature & Think Backwards

To help train your mind in pitching the media:
1. Read the magazine you want your business featured in.
2. You'll notice a feature of a business that could have been yours.
3. Think about what they featured about that business - all of the highlights and special points that was in the article.
4. These observations will help form your pitch.
5. Use Tin Shingle's Media Contact Database to help you find the right editor or writer to pitch to.
6. Use Tin Shingle's PR Planning & Tracking Template to log when you pitched to them, and when you'll follow up.

#Magazining - The Most Enjoyable Homework When Doing Your Own PR

Favorite homework one can do when doing their own PR: #magazining or as we also call it,  “media monitoring.” It’s the time when you can absorb how these magazines are spinning ideas 💡, and inspiring readers. It’s the time a DIY PR (translate: artist, maker, busniness owner, innovator doing their own PR) thinks 🤔 up ways to get their businesses mentioned.

Media monitoring is how you make your own luck, and make your own PR happen. Tin Shingle has the tools to help you do that. Join us. Already a subscriber to our free newsletter? Upgrade to a pro level and dig into our classes, databases, and community.

DailyWorth Online Magazine Change of Ownership - Acquired By Jean Chatzky

Happy Money Monday!

In honor of today's Money Monday, we're updating you about the exciting news over at the online magazine, DailyWorth. Founded 10 years ago by Amanda Steinberg, it has long been the go-to source of information for women's financial needs and questions, delivered in an honest way that Normal People can understand.

We've watched the online magazine itself go through many changes, including major newsletter design changes (we watch them closely for what is working or not working, as newsletter-based websites are very effective), and changes in editors and contributing writers. They even had a paid membership of experts at one point.

The New Owner of DailyWorth, Jean Chatzky

Jean Chatzky is the new owner, and she was an early investor in DailyWorth. Jean is the Financial Editor of NBC's TODAY Show, as well as the host of her own podcast, HerMoney, and the creator of the community HerMoney private Facebook Group.

How You Can Pitch DailyWorth

Our Super Sleuther Ashley Cox 🕵 is on the case to update Tin Shingle's Super Easy Media Contacts Database (available to All Access Pass Members at Level 4), verifying new or current Media Contacts at DailyWorth who would make a great fit for your feature idea.

You'll want DailyWorth if you want to gain exposure from a wide audience of women who are looking to improve their financial lives and make smart life and business decisions.

Ideas for Why You'd Pitch DailyWorth

This is a great source for service-industry experts who are looking to gain exposure for their brands, and want to be quoted as an expert - even if you're not a financial expert. If you know how to guide someone in the right direction of making a financially smart decision, this is an outlet to pitch.

Service Industry Ideas:

• How you have mastered writing and/or designing proposals that get accepted.
• How to get paid - and not ignored on an invoice.
• How you've mastered being awarded grant money.
• How to feed your family as a self-employed person.
• How to work from home with kids (either big kids, or little kids...pick a focus).
• How to employ your kids and pay them through your business (usually an accountant's trick).

Ideas for People Who Sell Products

Pitch perhaps less for the actual product, and more for the financially smart side of you and decisions you've made and learned from.

• Did you finance your business using a creative solution?
• What was your experience working with a bank?
• Products that have to do with managing or saving money are of course great candidates to pitch!
• Do you advise people on how to work with non-profits, or best ones to donate to?

So many ideas. These suggestions will get you started.

How to Hook In with DailyWorth and HerMoney

You want Jean on your side! She wants to know about the great money things you are doing. And you want her advice, and that of her community of experts. Start listening and reading. This will make your pitching easier, so that we can watch or read what you have to say!

• DailyWorth Newsletter Signup
• HerMoney podcast
• HerMoney Newsletter
• Community: HerMoney private Facebook Group.

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How To Be A Known Entrepreneur and Expert In Your Industry

So you want to be a go-to expert in your industry? Are you hoping to reach more people and get your message out there, building buzz for your business and your brand, but perhaps you're not sure where to begin? This Training TuneUps webinar will give you a jumpstart in the right direction.

Allure Magazine Makes A Point To Feature Asian Women On Their Covers

We're going to start sharing with you our #MediaMonitoring research. It's really fun homework - you just read magazines. But it makes pitching the big magazines so much easier because you already know how they think. Continue the conversation with us in our Private Community Groups to bounce ideas off each other, but here's what we got from Allure:

Allure Magazine is stepping it up with Asian women appearing on their covers. Only 2 Asian women have held the spot: Lucy Liu in 2000, and Olivia Munn in 2014. Editor in Chief Michelle Lee  is changing that with this year’s "The Hair Guide" which dropped this May/June 2018 by featuring 3 “game-changing Asian models,” which has special meaning to her. “My preteen self couldn’t even fathom seeing an Asian face on the cover of a mainstream magazine or landing a TV show or headlining a movie,” she said in her letter from the editor. As for future coverage for Asian women, Michelle says: “Let’s not wait for Lucy Lui’s next movie.” Bravo! 👏

What else was featured?

A Local Hair Parlor - In Chicago! 

Usually when brick and mortars are featured in print magazines, they are in New York, since that’s where most of the magazines are based. Here, Chicago’s North Side is featured when the salon Logan Parlor took the spotlight. Founded by LGBTQ activists Jamie DiGrazia and Tricia Serpe, this parlor is unusual in that it was designed to look like your grandma’s house to promote familiarity, be snug, offer coffee and free beer while you’re getting cut, and “act as a safe community space first,” according to the article. Published during LGBTQ month, this gave the parlor even more relevancy against competing salons may have also been pitching into the magazine.

Products of Course

The Tangle Teaser, an invention of a brush by a London based hairdresser, Shaun Pulfrey. It got only two paragraphs of content, but it's a spot in a regular page of the magazine that features entrepreneurs. An entire page was dedicated to it. Shaun recounted how he mortgaged his flat, spent $130,000 to develop the brush, got on to Dragon’s Den (London’s equivalent of Shark Tank), and was sent home, rejected. They called it a hair-brained idea. That night, however, 1,300 orders came in and Shaun considered it a score. A global commercial for his brand. This type of story could have easily been pitched in to the magazine just by knowing the magazine’s theme alone. Which is what’s Tin Shingle’s Editorial Calendars are for.

PS: Want to pitch Shark Tank? Listen to this Tin Shingle's Training TuneUp where we interviewed two contestants on the show who went home with a win.

The Experts Weigh In

There are the roundups of course. Maybe you would have seen this come across a HARO lead, maybe you would have missed it or maybe it never ended up in that slush pile at all. An expert or product owner could have certainly cold-pitched this in with an idea of when best to use this product. The editor may have forwarded it to the writer for consideration. If you’re an expert or service provider, you could off-the-cuff recommend your preferred products. If you’re a business who created the products, well...you know what to do.

A Singer-Songwriter

Kelissa McDonald is a 29 year old singer-songwriter who was included in Allure’s feature story on how hair is represented in culture and religion. Kelissa was featured for her hair worn in Rastafarian tradition. Three women in total were featured in the article: a Sikh woman named Jessie Kaur Lehail who co-founded the Kaur Project, a storytelling site about the varied experiences of modern Sikh women like her, and Melissa Oaks, a Native American Mohawk who grew up on the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory and is an activist and organizer, as well as a teacher of Native American art and design.

Are Your Wheels Turning?

This is what happens when you subscribe to magazines and study them for their style, vibe and content choices. The more you read them, the more you'll know how your brand might fit into a story. Thumbing through the magazine is a great way to think outside of the box, and think of clever angles or reasons to feature you or your business, that you normally wouldn't have thought of.

This is what we love about looking through Tin Shingle's Editorial Calendars. It forces us to think outside of the box, and form an idea around a theme. It means you are "cold-pitching" an idea, and not waiting around to hear something more specific that already has a line of pitches in for it. Tin Shingle helps you do this each month during our "PR Planning for This Month" Training TuneUp webinar. Subscribe to our newsletter to get alerts of when these are, and turn on a Level 3 Online Classes Membership to stream any of the webinars you missed or want to hear again.

What's Next At Allure?

Here's a sneak peek of Allure's Editorial Calendar in Tin Shingle's Members-Only Database. When you're a Level 4 Member of Tin Shingle, you can see our entire collection. Knowing the general theme of a magazine will help your wheels turn about the type of pitch you could send in to the right editor.

Speaking of such contacts, Tin Shingle keeps an exclusive list of editors, writers and producers in our members-only Media Contact database. We also knew they were working on this Hair Guide because we have their Editorial Calendar in our members-only database as well. We focused on it during our webinar TuneUp, “PR Planning: January” where we highlight ideas 💡 that the print media is working on, since their editorial cycle is 3-6 months in advance.

Media Contacts & Editorial Calendars Through Membership With Tin Shingle

Become an All Access Level 4 Member today for access! And improve your chances for getting featured in magazines! Tin Shingle is your DIY PR BFF.

Weekend Reading: Curled Up With Architectural Digest

Weekend 📖 reading known as Media Monitoring or PR Homework in these parts at Tin Shingle.

Flipping through the gorgeous pages of Architectual Digest and settling in on a feature of a Hudson Valley home in Croton on the Hudson, the Neumann House by Marcel Breuer.

The best way to pitch a magazine is to know its writing and editorial style as well as you would know your closest friend and how they like things. The easiest way to do that is by subscribing to the magazine in print. If you want a magazine to even exist in print to feature your business and inspire you, then support it with a paid subscription. Read it on paper and experience it in the way it was designed.

For all you advertisers out there - if you have paid for branded content or a roundup or a group full page ad - bravo to you. Advertisers keep the magazines in business to keep the editorial cycle spinning. Somethings got to pay those photographers, writers and editors!