Sunday's Are Perfect For...Magazine Reading...Here's How To Find The Perfect Media Contact

You can get into any one of these magazines. Be your business a local shop, or if you’re an expert in your field, or if you’ve developed the perfect toy. Inside the pages of these magazines - and their digital versions - are a myriad of reasons why your business would fit into a story. The key is to unlocking that 1 reason that makes your business a must-write about.

The Perfect Pitch

Sunday's are for being unplugged and dreaming your dreams. That means answering to no one, and listening to the ideas that enter your mind. Being that you're running a business, the ideas #dontstopwontstop. They make you happy! That is why you can use today to discover one special pitch.

Discover The Pitch

You want a feature in a magazine. Or a TV show. Sunday is the day you will pick up 1 magazine, or watch 1 TV show you want your business featured in. You will turn the pages. You will read the articles. You will discover "The Why" of why that writer might cover your business next time. You see how they covered one business, and an idea will click on why they might cover yours.

"Don't I Need To Wait For The Editorial Calendar To Tell Me When To Pitch?"

No. While Tin Shingle does give you instant access to over 100 editorial calendars (Yes, over 100 different publications and growing! Our researcher Yvonne has been busy!), it all comes down to the ideas. Planting the seed.

You can do this. You can plant that seed. You can send a writer an email about your business, just as an FYI, and walk away. You will want to be thinking of so many different story angles. Perfect ones for a particular writer at a particular brand (magazine, digital magazine, TV show). If you’re nervous or unsure about it, you can join Tin Shingle and talk to us in Tin Shingle’s Community using the Pitch Whisperer forum to get feedback.

How To Discover The Best Contact

In your Sunday Reading, here's how you're going to discover who is making the magic. In this video, Tin Shingle's owner and publisher Katie takes you through a little media monitoring of Sift Magazine, a publication that features bakers, bakeries, products, authors, recipes, and more. Another way to discover writers or publications you had no idea about is to tap into Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library, also a perk of membership with Tin Shingle.

Butter! Celebrated In Sift Magazine

I love butter.

My Instagram friends know this. So imagine my delight when I found this book just about butter and “why butter is the reigning champion in our kitchens.” By Dorie Greenspan!

Found while researching King Arthur Flour’s Sift Magazine for our small businesses, artists and maker members at Tin Shingle.

There are features of bakers, authors and products in this magazine. In addition to the oodles of recipe from chef and writer Susan Reid. What a combo - to be a chef and a writer. King Arthur has an entire catalogue of products - which I did not realize - and those are featured in the magazine, as well as treasures from others.

Maybe this could be you. Researching writers now to include them in Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library.

Chevy “Grilling” On The Cover Of bon appetit February 2019 “Healthyish” Issue - Whatever Works!

These magazines arrived in the mailbox today. Condé Nast Traveler and bon appetit. Can’t wait to read! Re the bon appetit cover of the enormous grill on the Chevy Silverado: whatever works, y’all! 😂 I’ll take that all American grill.

Haven’t seen the magazine out in the wild on the newsstands to see if this advertisement cover is also used on retail shelves. Variety magazine also sells their cover to advertisers, especially around Oscar time when Oscar campaigns from film studios are fierce for attention.

2019 Editorial Calendar for Architectural Digest On Its Way Too You!

Magazines release their editorial calendars at different times. Or we’re buried under research with other Editorial Calendar and general Media Contact research to remember to follow up.

Today, one of our favorite magazines came in - Architectural Digest! Can’t wait to learn the monthly themes this magazine has coming up. So many angles as to why you could pitch a writer or editor about your business, if you had a vague idea of what resource or inspiration that would appeal to them at that time.

Members of Tin Shingle at the All Access Level have instant access to these editorial calendars. Or idea centers, as we call them. We have the editorial calendars from 100 publications for 2019 right now! All searchable by Title of publication, AND Area of Interest. Because we are list nerds like that 🤓

Wanna see ‘em and overfloweth with ideas of why to pitch your business? Join us! www.tinshingle.com/editorial-calendars

Starting Research on Sift Magazine, From King Aurthur Flour

Reading for the night...in preparation for our hopeful new series...Sunday Reading. Does it count that I’m starting on Monday?

This magazine, Sift, is from King Arthur Flour. Yeah. That’s right. Because companies see magazines as good for business. And this Holiday 2018 issue employed a fair amount of people, most of whom are full time freelance or work for King Arthur Flour. Right now, the magazine comes out 3 times a year: Spring (March), Fall (August) and Holiday (October). Each new issue becomes available on the last Tuesday of the month it publishes in.

There are great product recommendations in the pages as well. And a holiday gift guide! Future updating into Tin Shingle’s Media Contact Library we go. To make sure you know about these foodies. All Access Members of Tin Shingle get instant access to that idea 💡center of goodness.

Updating Media Contacts Library: CRWN Magazine

We first learned about CRWN Magazine through a feature that appeared in Alley’s newsletter, that featured one of its members of the co-work workspace. That member is Lindsey Day, co-founder of CRWN Magazine.

The magazine launched as a zine, and grew to a publication with 20 contributors and advertiser support, according to this 2016 article in Yahoo Beauty. At the time of that article, the magazine’s Instagram had 15K followers. Today it has 44.6K and growing.

Co-founder of CRWN, Nkrumah Farrar, pointed out in that article that there were not many publications catering to women who have chosen to live a natural-hair lifestyle. Farrar pointed out, that publications available like Sophisticates, Hype Hair and Black Hair tend to not be owned by or operated by black women, and lack a focus on beautiful imagery.

CRWN Magazine covers more than just hair, said Lindsey in that article. “We probably have more thought pieces and essays in the issue than we do things that are specifically pertaining to hair. We use natural hair as a pivot point to connect with an audience of African- American women who share similar psychographics that led them to eventually becoming natural.”

Read this amazing interview with Lindsey in Byrdie to learn how and why she and Nkrumah created the brand, how important it is to them to have African- American women in printed pages, how they thought of the name, and much more.

We’'ll sum up with the mission statement as stated on CRWN’s website:

CRWN Magazine exists to create a progressive dialogue around natural hair and the women who wear it. We're reaching beyond trendy clickbait and #BlackGirlMagic to address the whole Black woman; a woman who is more educated, well-traveled and sophisticated than ever before — largely because generations before her have fought to ensure her seat at the table.

Through beautiful content, thoughtful commentary, hair inspiration and resources; we’re telling the world the truth about Black women by showcasing a new standard of beauty — and documenting our story in tangible, print form.

Ready To Stream: What To Pitch The Media In February (2019) + A Podcast For Holidays

February’s edition of “What To Pitch This Month” is ready for you to stream. In it, we cover ideas of how you can pitch the media about your business. To warm up your brain a bit, we went through a few magazine themes from Tin Shingle’s 2019 Editorial Calendar Collection.

But we also went through some of the national holidays that are coming up, like National Caramel Day, National Donut Day, and those other random holidays that get celebrated for seemingly no reason but are a great reason to stage a social media picture and surf in some hashtags.

After the live broadcast of the TuneUp, one of our listeners (my sister), forwarded a Planet Money podcast episode #765 that investigated the origins of these designated days. The exploration started off skeptical and anti-commercialism and suspicious of all things PR, but ended up in a really sweet place when they discovered who invented most of these holidays. Yes - who. They found the person who has the most passion for creating these holidays, why they did it, and what we’re left with. It’s worth the 19 minute listen.

Meanwhile, our TuneUp is worth the 45 minute listen for the courage you’re going to get to pitch the media with your brand new idea! Get it here.

Snow Day Stikes Again! TuneUp For Facebook Ads Rescheduled

We are deep in Snow Day Season, which means that TuneUp Wednesday came and went with no peep from us! Yup, this week it snowed in New York, which means that schools close (it seems that NYers have confused themselves with North Carolina, where a school closure would make more sense).
This TuneUp: "Beyond The Boost: How And Why To Create Facebook Ads" is going to be a good one. It stars guest experts Patti Devine and Devin Holmes of Digital Impact, who know Facebook Ad Manager like the back of their hands, and are going to walk us through the basics of how to set up an ad (literally, like, where is it in Facebook), and the best strategies behind making your ad artwork and content.

Right now, the TuneUp is on for Wednesday, February 27th at 1pm EST. You can register early here, and be notified if anything changes.

You know our position on Facebook - use with caution and with exact reasons. So we'll be guiding this TuneUp with that approach.

If you see your competition in those ad slots and want to start bumping them out, this TuneUp will teach you how to do that.

Facebook Buys Shop-By-Picture Tech Company

Photo Credit: Tin Shingle

Facebook just bought a shopping tech company, GrokStyle, that was a shopping tool created for the visual search space, and was used in Ikea’s mobile app. The way it worked was, a person could take a picture of a piece of furniture, and the technology would match it to similar pieces of furniture that the person could buy.

Deep dives by the media (social or print/digital brands) into shopping integration with online content continues. As StarOnline pointed out in their article, GrokStyle stated that they were shutting down as a company, but would continue on in team and technology. The statement did not include that the team would be at Facebook.

Screenshot of GrokStyle’s announcement of winding down the company as it’s known now.

According to every article that published a story about this, they credited Facebook’s statement announcing this purchase including Bloomberg News, quoting Facebook’s spokesperson Vanessa Chan: "We are excited to welcome GrokStyle to Facebook. Their team and technology will contribute to our AI capabilities."

How Facebook Benefits By The Shopping-By-Picture Feature

Print media began adopting shopping into its print and digital pages, by way of picture scanning, like at Seventeen, and via good old fashioned affiliate links like with GQ, or that time in 2012 with Nordstrom sales. Facebook replaced Craig’s List with its group selling groups, where you could post a picture into a Buy/Sell group, and get immediate response as to if you had a buyer.

Then Facebook released Marketplace, where this buy/sell activity could begin happening instead. Simultaneously, visibility of anything posted at the then old Buy/Sell groups got slow. Instead, Facebook suggested ways to share the post (ie more work for me, and to keep me on the website), which is an attempt to increase activity on their website. I used to use the feature quite a lot. People in Buy/Sell groups moved to Marketplace, and is now is the place where people can have instant garage sales. Brands can also have a shop on Facebook and sell that way. Anyone can start Donation pages. Collections for birthdays, etc.

Facebook is trying to hook the next generation. The children. But the kids these days see Facebook as a Grandma and Parent Hangout, and don't want to hang with their parents. If Facebook can’t lock in teens and kids by way of whichever strategies they are attempting at the moment, Facebook is trying to lock it in with shopping. It must be hard to appeal to all of the people in all of the world all of the time. That’s a big customer base!

In Other News, Facebook Snuggles With Cryptocurrency…$$ To Buy The Stuff? Or Kill It…

Bloomberg also pointed out that Facebook acquired a blockchain technology company earlier this year. “The GrokStyle purchase marks the second reported acquisition by Facebook this year. Earlier this month, the company bought the team behind blockchain technology company Chainspace for an undisclosed sum. The company purchased at least four firms last year, including startups focused on messaging and AI.”

Interestingly, Facebook had blocked ads related to cryptocurrency, stating that the crypto marketplace is too high risk. This done in Facebook’s attempts to step away from being the vehicle people use to guide people down a bad - or wrong - path. In June of 2018, Facebook reportedly lifted that ban on cryptocurrency ads a little bit.

However, since that time (November 2018, actually), Tin Shingle wrote an article about cryptocurrency when we highlighted a blogger, Digiconomist, who covers cryptocurrency in depth. Facebook blocked our ability to Boost that article on their platform in November 2018.

Insert: Thinking Emoji…

GQ's 2019 Editorial Calendar Available At Tin Shingle

The 2019 Editorial Calendar for GQ has been added to Tin Shingle's PR Center. Get ideas on where the print version of the magazine is headed over the year. Enjoy it, it’s one of the few remaining titles at its publisher, Condé Nast, that is producing a monthly print book.

Themes to look forward to include a Mothers Day Gift Guide. Followed by a Fathers Day Gift Guide. And sports! Lots of NBA. They are even doing a Wedding Season feature. Lots of fashion over there at GQ.

Oh! And they have made a point to celebrate Amazon Prime Day. Why you ask? Well, readers might love their Amazon Prime memberships, but magazines are getting in on the affiliate link trend that very, very small businesses and bloggers started doing years ago - a decade ago at this point. Amazon affiliate links. Yes, that old trick. The old dogs are trying it! GQ started a few years back (see here with their “Best Stuff” newsletter discovery). Seventeen Magazine was a big user of it in their print magazine with Q-code like picture snapping to go shopping from the print pages. BTW, Seventeen Magazine stopped publishing their monthly cycle, but are staying digital.

All Access Tin Shingle Members can gain instant access to this and our entire Editorial Calendar Catalogue when logged in.