How to Brainstorm Story Ideas for Magazines and Businesses

Struggling to coming up with fresh story ideas for publications and corporate clients? This used to be one of the biggest hang-ups I had as a freelance writer. I didn't understand how other writers could look at a business or magazine and immediately come up with 10 to 20 ideas off the top of their head, or how they could quickly put together a few interviews for a pitch. But now? Idea generation is all in a day's work. This week, we're going step-by-step through the quality idea generation brainstorm process and how to share them with editors and business clients.

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Today, we are talking about how to generate story ideas for businesses and magazines, because they can be different. So when we're thinking about doing these two different types of idea, generation processes, there's a few things we're going to go over in terms of step-by-step instructions of what to do to kind of create your pitches. And then we'll also do some other fun stuff, like how to do some angles up. I have notes over here, so I'm looking over on my notes. So I make sure that I go through all the things. So one of the things I want to start out with is like, how have you kind of gone through the idea generation process before, like write that in the comments or put it in, um, put it below if you're watching this as a replay or put it in the comments, I'd like, how have you kind of done generation for your ideas for your business clients or that your magazine clients for pitches before or for blog posts. So kind of write that below and see what's up. Um, while you guys kind of write that down or think about it, we're going to do a quick pup date because we have some neutrinos today. So we're going to use them on our live stream here.

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Everybody's on point today for our ideas. All right. So what was it and to talk about first is our step-by-step process. So what I have written down here is we're going over how to kind of like come up with ideas. And just like, when I started out as a freelance writer, I really, really struggled to come up with good ideas. Like, I didn't understand how everybody else managed to do it. I didn't figure out like how everyone just magically came up with LDS ideas. They would look at a magazine or they would, um, go into a business's website and be like, oh yeah, there's all these things that they can go fix. And all these things that they can make changes on or here's what's going on in this niche. And I just like, didn't get it. So if you're kind of the person that's like, I don't know how to do this.

It seems really overwhelming. Or I don't understand how everyone else kind of goes through this process. Like that was me a lot, like a years ago. I just didn't get it. Like, I, I didn't understand. Hey, Lindo. Welcome in. So yeah, when we're thinking about our step-by-step process, the first thing is to understand, like, this is the first step of the process, is that when you're generating ideas, your idea generation muscle is your idea. Generation is a muscle. Okay. You have to keep working on it over time. This was something that I did. Didn't get it. I was just like, I don't have any rush. Do I have to do to get this to work? But it's something that builds over time. I couldn't understand how people came up with all these ideas, but it was just because they had worked in that niche. They had come up with things before they had seen, um, different articles, different topics, different things that had run through for over the years.

And then they'd been like, well, how would I write that? How would I make it different? How would I, um, how would I end up, you know, no changing this slant. Like if I was going to write it for travel and leisure versus like garden and gun, or if I was going to write it for, um, bring Fido's blog versus writing for Connie Nass travel, like how would I kind of re slant these? So, um, Linda, I see your comments in here. I'm going to hop to them in a second. So, um, yeah, as you were, we're going through this process, just remember it's part of building your muscle. It's also part of building like your eye for these ideas. It's kind of like wearing a monocle almost. So it's not just building the muscle of like becoming aware. It's also seeing the slants of things.

So I always kind of think of it as like a monocle, like you put it on and now you can kind of see like, oh, I would definitely slant it this way for this magazine. I would definitely slant it this way for this business versus this business. Like, let's say one is a platform. One is some kind of software tool. And the other one is, is, um, you know, kind of, I don't know, some other type of business, like as a physical product that they have, but you kind of end up seeing these different viewpoints of how people want their content to be in the viewpoint is basically like, how is this product or service or, um, magazine? How is it like getting to the reader? Like, what is the reader getting out of this? And then like, how do you kind of reverse engineer that for the idea?

So if someone has a product and they're like, I don't know how to use this, how is this helping me? Why am I going to pick this over something else? Why is this better? Um, how does it actually move, like move in my business? Um, or something like a magazine, like they've, you know, my, my famous example is like Paris. Every year. People write about Paris all the time and there's always new ideas on Paris. And I'm pretty sure Paris is like the most written about destination on the planet. I just, I just, there's always Paris stories, but they always come up with different angles. And the viewpoint is that you're writing for different things. There's very different angle for Paris, for families, Paris for, um, single female travelers, Paris for people who haven't been to Paris in 20 years, Paris for people who want like, uh, off the beaten path thing, Paris for people who just want to go for historical, like not traditional historical monuments, Paris for art lovers, Paris for garden lovers, Paris, for what, like, there's all these different things that we can think about.

And a lot of times what helps is that you kind of go backwards from that. And that's the monocle part. The muscle part is that we're just kind of getting into the idea generation process. We're like building our process of generating ideas. We are becoming more familiar with how to create ideas. The Monigle is like switching the viewpoint there. They kind of work in tandem. So for me building up the muscle was like really hard. I didn't, I, it took me forever to come up with ideas just because I would like look at something and I'm like, I don't know. It seems like they've already written about everything. But then when I finally figured out like the monocle, ad-on when I was like, oh, like, these are, um, these are restaurant owners with quick service restaurants that also have pop-ups right. That's the viewpoint. Um, that's the monocle or the, the differences, like they're Michelin star, uh, full service restaurants that are consistently, you know, top in the world, like, that's the monocle, like how would those restaurant owners, you know, do this thing?

And like, there's a difference between coming up with ideas themselves and then placing them in the actual viewpoint of who's reading them. So I think the idea, like, I always kind of go back to, like, what's been written about a ton, right? What's been written about a ton and then putting that little monocle out of like, okay, where's like the new thing here. Like, what has this audience not heard yet? What does this audience need to know to move forward? What does this audience need to know to use the product or service? What does this audience need to know? Um, like what's a weird issue that keeps popping up. Like maybe they're having trouble with a payment platform because they need an integration and you need to talk about that. Or what's something that you can talk about. Um, that I always think is interesting.

Like, one of the things I saw was like, um, like, um, streetwear in Paris, right? Like, Hey, this is the different types of streetwear you can see in Paris, like fashion, but like for real people, right. And Paris is very fashion forward, but this is another thing like, Hey, when you go to Paris, watch out for these trends, watch out for these cool outfits. Like that's another way to think about it, but that would be coming from the viewpoint of like someone who cares about fashion, right? Like we're, we're kind of not just generating ideas, just generate ideas. We're also putting them through the filter of like, who's reading this and who cares about it and why now? So when you're coming up with these ideas, kind of your step-by-step process, if you're really struggling with coming up with ideas, especially for magazines and public, um, magazines and businesses is you have to just write everything down.

I know this sounds really silly. Um, but when you come up with something, write it down, write it down. Just I have like my notes app on my computer. Right. Um, and it's just sinked with my phone because I have like Mac apple products. And, um, I just write it down all the time. I don't care how dumb it is. I don't care how, how many times I've written it down. Like I might've written it down already. Like four times, write it down. The more you invite yourself to keep coming up with ideas and then getting them out of your brain onto paper, the better your ideas will get. The more familiar you get with a process, the better kind of stuff comes out of it. So every time you're kind of like living in everyday life and you're like, oh, this would be a good idea.

Write it down. So that's number one, you have to write it down. And the writing it down part is part of like building that muscle. You have to build a muscle of like recognizing story ideas and putting them on paper so that when it's time to pitch or when you're to kind of go after a bigger magazine or a different business, you've written it down. You have a list of things to pull from. The second part is that when you're coming up with ideas, you need to kind of look at what they've done in the past and not just what they've done, but like what their competitors have done. You need to learn the format of that magazine. What kind of stuff have they gone through? Like if you were thinking of an idea and it's very broad, oftentimes when you're kind of in the idea space, um, for when you're kind of like new to it, you come up with these things like, all right, Paris, like that's the idea is just Paris.

So you need to go into all these different magazines that are competitors and see like, okay, what are they writing about in terms of Paris and read those articles, understand what they're talking about when it comes to businesses, you need to read through what their competitors are doing. So that means that, like, let's say you find, um, a SAS product and then you find the name and you write, you know, um, like let's just take Zillow, like Zillow competitors, which isn't a SAS product, but well, it kind of is. Um, but let's say you do, um, like you pick a company that you're looking at, you just do company name, competitors, look through the content that they're creating and see like, oh, these are the pockets they're missing. Like I noticed that our company is really focusing on commercial real estate, but they need to focus more on residential because this is actually growing and their competitors are doing this, or we've noticed that they're doing more case studies.

And that seems to be picking up a lot more attraction than doing more blog posts. And then you could kind of think of ideas of like how you would want to structure, like what type of case study or, um, you know, you can try to figure out like what kinds of blog posts ideas would be there. But I think you need to do your research. The best way to come up with ideas is to like, know what's already been done. All right. Now we have a structure, a format and understanding of viewpoint, all of these things that are in the pieces that we're looking at, right. Then we can kind of move forward and say like, all right, it seems like they do a lot of listicles. Okay. What kind of list of all can I come up with? It seems like they're doing a lot of personal narratives.

All right. How, how can I kind of build on that? Like what kind of things are going on then I can use a personal Meredith or, uh, for businesses you're like, all right. It seems like your competitors are doing a lot of pillar content. They're getting a lot more traction because they have these huge basically step-by-step guides of like why their product rocks and how to use it. And you're just doing like pumping out the blog post, but you really need longer content to show people the value in your product. Hey, Marie, welcome in. So we got Linda and Marie so far, if you're here, feel free to say hi in the chat. If you have any questions about just the topic about idea generation for publications and businesses, or if you have any kind of questions about freelance writing, pop them in. One of the things I asked in the beginning was like, how have you kind of gone through idea generation?

Like how have you kind of done it in the past? And what are some things that you're kind of like hoping to do in the future? Maybe like, how do you kind of, um, how are you hoping to work through the process to make it faster or better or more accurate, or, you know, kind of work on the idea muscle and the idea Monaco at the same time. So you need to write things down, you need to know where people have been, right competitors versus other things that are happening in the market. And then you kind of need to bring your own unique perspective. Like, what are the stories that only you can tell or what are the things that you understand from niche expertise or knowledge or experience or working with their competitors or, um, things that you've picked up along the way that you can write down that are stories you can tell or blog posts you can write, um, or eBooks you can create.

And I, I can tell you, like when you practice this over and over and over again, you just continually write down ideas. It is very easy. It becomes very easy over time to go into a website and say like, oh, I already know that these eBooks are kind of working the angle for the ebook that would work for this business would be this, um, it's a lot, but you have to kind of go through this process of writing things down, understanding where they're coming from, where they're going, where the Nisha's headed, where maybe their audience is headed. Like, obviously we have a lot of COVID stories now. Um, and a lot of people want to hear about that. Like, how does that affect me traveling internationally? How does that affect me buying groceries? Um, how does that affect me working from home or in the office?

There's all these things. Yeah. Mind map is great. Marine. I know Linda has a few comments, so let's go through that. So Linda says that she gets ideas from things that happen in life from reading topics of interest, to different slants on articles. Um, and yeah, anything can create an idea. That's the thing that we need to remember write it down. I used to like really struggle with this process. Cause I was like, I don't really need to write it down. I'll I'll remember. I never, I never remembered. So like, if something happens to you, that's interesting. Write it down. Um, it may never become a story. Just remember that this is building the muscle, adjusting the monocle. And it's part of the process of teaching herself to write for different places. One of the things that ends up happening with some writers is they just basically repeat, um, they repeat their copy.

They don't have enough ideas. So they're like, oh, I know this idea works. I'll just like, repeat it for everybody. That's not how it's not good. You need to be someone who has a bunch of ideas because here's why one of the things that really happen that happens often at magazines and at businesses is they get insulated. Even if they work with freelancers, they get insulated in their processes. They get insulated in their product. They forget about all these ancillary things. But as someone who is basically fresh eyes outside of the publication, outside of the business, you can roll in and be like, have you thought about this or this? And I've done that a bunch of times with potential clients and current clients, they're like, Nope, we never thought of that. And it's just because I've worked with different companies, they're just kind of stuck in this one little bubble, right.

And magazines are the same way. There are editors. Like the editors have to come up with ideas all the time and that can be very taxing, right? They have to come up with these ideas over and over and over again. And, um, one of the things that happens is like they get taxed, they need fresh people to kind of come in there and give them some, some new stuff. Um, also the travel editors and the food editors and like a lot of the editors I work with, they don't get to move around as much. Right. We get to go on trips or we get to go walk around our city and say, there's this really interesting thing happening. We get to like, go around and see the stuff. Like a lot of the editors could be in New York or California, and they're not in Austin, Texas, and they're not in, um, you know, uh, Jacksonville, Florida, or like, you know, they're not in all these other places.

So we kind of have to bring that in there. And it's a really valuable skill. Like being able to come up with ideas, being able to, um, always have something on deck for a business or a publication is just, it's just gold. Like it's just like printing your own money. Because if you get in editor, I have a little dog friend over here. She just had to take a nap behind me. Um, if you have an editor or who says like, no, that idea doesn't work. Let's try, you know, can you send me something else? You have a huge list of ideas to send them. You're like, yes. How about this? And then how about this? Like, did the traction that you get from a rejection is just as good as a yes. Sometimes because they're like, no, not not that, but you, you have so many ideas built up that there's a really good chance.

You can get a story because you got their attention with your first idea. Um, when you get a, yes, you're now building a relationship with the editor and the next time they're like, you did so great on this story. Do you have any other ideas? You're like, yes, I have lots of ideas here they are. And it helps you kind of get that recurring work. The same thing happens with businesses. A lot of times they get very stuck in these processes and they need someone to come in and kind of like fluff it up and just say like, all right, I know what you're doing, but have you thought of this? Like, let's get a little creative, let's think a little out of the box. And that really helps a lot of time give their content some freshness because a lot of times like content can get really stale with businesses because they're all trying to like, do the same thing over and over again.

And you really want to make sure that brand stands out. Like, yes, there could be 10 other systems that are like theirs, but there's stands out because of the type of content, the ideas they're coming with, the unique perspectives, um, the, the monocle adjustments, the, all the different types of ideas. They're not just sticking to like one lane, you know, they're really going out and getting a lot of stuff that really can come from people outside the organization who consistently write down ideas. So, um, let's see, I'm looking through comments real quick. So yeah, you definitely want to write down to write down anything that you have. And I don't use pen and paper. Merissa mind maps, which we've talked about. And there's the inspiration app. I don't know about the inspiration app, but I'm very much like if I get an idea, I just put it in my notes app.

I have like a long running list of ideas. Um, and I always kind of use, yeah, I always write it down. Some people take voice notes, some people go in and like idea, blah, blah, blah. So they take voice notes and that helps them. Um, yeah, if you, if you have like a mind map, then you can move it into an outline and have all these notes and put it together. And if that's how that works for you, then do that. But the process here is always that you are building the muscle, you're writing down the ideas, you're taking them from like random thought to like pen and paper. Excuse me.

Yeah. And the thing is, is like, if you, yeah, if you, um, if you, and writing down all these ideas, you always have something to kind of go back to too, like the times when your ideal, well, it gets dry or you're tired and someone's like, do you have ideas? You're like, oh, I don't know, you at least have this giant pile of notes full of ideas. So I have more things that I want to make sure we mentioned. So when you're going through these things for, um, your process of ideas, make sure that you're also just kind of like paying attention to things. I know one of my favorite things to do is people watch. So like when I go coworking or when, like when I did, I haven't been in a long time. Um, but when I go, when I went to a coffee shop or I would just kind of go places, I would pay attention to what's going on or, um, I would kind of like, see what kinds of things are happening.

I would write that down too. Or I think the other thing that helps with idea generation is, should be part of your process is to read widely and read a lot. Like I get things all the time for all these different sources. Like I get Austin business journal, I get, um, you know, Austin monthly or Texas monthly, or all the different realtor communications. I'm on all these different, um, newsletters. I get all this stuff about FinTech or SAS. I get updates about, um, startups. I get updates about restaurants. I get all of these things. And these really feed your idea machine. They really feed like your process of building your muscle because you're like, all right, this is what they're publishing. These are the things people are interested in right now. How do I kind of add these to my, give them my own twist or think about my perspective and the things I've seen around my city or the things I've seen around and kind of combine that.

So I think reading widely is really important, especially since, um, as writers reading widely really helps us write better. It helps us learn new words or new techniques or new sentence structures or how we would kind of lay out a story. Um, and I find that most writers are very natural readers, right? We, we often writers turn like start as readers and turn into writers. So the reading part is often pretty natural. Um, make sure that you find things that are in niche that makes sense that are either publications you want to write for, or publications that give you extra niche, um, like their trade magazines or something that gives you deeper knowledge. So you can come up with better ideas. Um, Marie has a question. Okay. So Marie says, do you look at similar places and look at trends also? How do you deal with trends?

Yeah. I look at all the different places. I look at all competitor magazines, trade magazines, anything that gives me in-depth knowledge into my niches and also gives me in-depth knowledge on basically the readers of that niche. Um, of all those niches. I also made sure I'm looking at all these different businesses that are coming up. So like I've had a couple of clients that I've watched for like a year or two, like I've read their content. I paid attention to them getting funding. Like I've watched them before I ever worked with them and I track these people, um, and they are doing cool stuff. And I think that's kind of important when you're building a business is to have types of places that you follow and you have them in your list and you can pull ideas like, oh, they're doing something really innovative. What's another innovative thing that other people are doing more.

Um, they're doing something really cool. Is this a trend and with trends? Um, especially like with, for me, a lot of times I wrote about restaurant trends. Um, and I wrote about like certain types of trends in, um, real estate. So the trends part is like, you have to be way ahead of the curve. Like you can't just like, be like, there's a hundred articles. Let's write about this trend. The trend part is like, you have to start seeing this pop up. So for example, like, um, you have to, like, for me, what I was seeing was like, I wrote this article a while back about salads at burger places. And it wasn't just like the crappy salads where they're like, oh yeah, salad now. But it's like a premium high class salad at a burger place. And that became a trend. Like all these burger places now have these super ultra fancy salads.

And I was like, all right, there's enough places that are doing this. It has to be a trend. Like I was watching it for a while and no one was really writing about it. And I'm like, this is the thing. So when you're looking at trends and I knew that because I'd been watching fast casuals, um, quick service, all these different restaurants in a bunch of different trade publications, I follow a bunch of them. I get press releases from people. So when you're looking at all these things, when you're dealing with trends, you need to be ahead. I think when you kind of bank on a trend, when it's too late, you just like, you know, get lost in the shuffle and kind of what happens is like that trend piece would have to be in some sort of place, like some sort of magazine that gets a lot of traffic anyways.

Um, but with trends, like I think that this is important. Part of writing it down all the times I've seen trends are like things I've written down, things I've paid attention to. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. There's two. Now there's three. Now there's four. And this was the same thing that I wrote about, um, with shipping container hotels. I just started seeing them. I would get press releases. I would see like, Hey, new hotel opens, it's a shipping container. And I found out that there was like a huge pile of them that had been growing all over the world. And I was like, this is a really good idea. This is going to be a thing because there are so many of them that are growing. Like there keep popping up. And then, um, you can see those architecture firms. You can see that there's places that are like, Hey, we're planning on building a shipping container hotel.

And like three years from now, like there's all these things that you can see from press releases from articles, from, um, different types of things that are popping up in the industry. Like, let's say people are moving more green. Well, part of being green is reusing things and reusing things means shipping containers, right? These are the kinds of things. Hey, Getty, welcome in. No worry that you're late. You can't be late to a live stream. You can just show up and say, hello, can't be late. Um, yeah, Getty, if you ever have any questions about this, just drop them in the comments. So I look at all the stuff and this is really important and you don't have to absorb it all. That's the thing is you just have to kind of read it and get the, just write it down where you didn't get the, just write it down.

And when you're dealing with trends, you have to kind of like start paying attention to things in your niche. Like oftentimes when I was, um, much earlier in my career as a freelance writer, I write things down and I'd be like, oh, it's a trend. And then I would look back and there's already hundreds of articles on it. I was too late to the game. Um, I wasn't, I didn't have enough niche knowledge. I didn't have enough press contacts. I didn't have enough press releases. I didn't have enough, um, newsletters that I subscribed to. I didn't have enough deep industry knowledge to know that that wasn't a thing. But you have to kind of get past that. You have to kind of like start working on that to get to the point where you're like, no, I know this is a trend because of X, Y, and Z, you have to kind of train yourself.

Remember it's like the idea muscle and the monocle. You have to train yourself on that stuff. So like, when I start out early, like one of the first things out, I remember pitching this, one of the first things I pitched was a story about, um, like French people using, um, take-home bags. Like that's not a thing in France now it is, but it wasn't for a long, long time. That was like a big no-no like you would never ask for a take-home box or like a takeout, like a box to take extra food home. That was like a big, big no-no. And I pitched it because I was like, oh my gosh, they're actually starting to do it. But when I pitched it, it was like way too late. Like all these people had already done it. Um, and it was only one thing. It was only one thing, instead of saying like, alright, how can I kind of find a trend where I see multiple different things happening over a period of time.

And that period of time could be six months or that period of time could be several years. And you have to collect these things. Like, for example, this shipping container hotels that I came to after several had opened, but there were like tons of them that had been open for three to five years. It was just more of them started springing up. They started kind of like popping off. And that was, I was like, all right. So this thing is catching on. When you can get something at the point where it's catching on, not just like there's four or five of them around the world, but like, there's actually now there's 20 and six months ago, there was only 10. And now a year later, there's 30. You have to write these things down to kind of track them along the way. And you don't have to track everything all the time.

It's just like, when you kind of learn more about your niches, when you learn more about the CA the content that's being created, when you learn more about things are happening in businesses, it's a lot easier to filter out. Like, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no. Yes. Um, it becomes this thing where it's like, like I could tell you 10 to 20 trends off the top of my head right now, because I figured out the monocle, like I figured out like, mm, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no. Like I've seen enough of these things pop up that I know this is kind of trending. Um, I've seen enough of these things pop up that like it's too late to the game. So with trends, you have to get to this point where like, it's actually expanding pretty quickly. So like you see a few pop up, um, and then you kind of like, watch it for a while and see kind of what happens, but this is why we write it down.

So when we're coming up with ideas, I think I want to make sure, um, that we go through a few, I have a few, couple more things. I know we're kind of like running out of time, but this is like a super in-depth topic. We'll go over this again. I'm going to make another one because idea generation is a really big part of being a very good writer and a very good content strategist, very good content marketer. The idea that you can experiment, come up with ideas, see outside the box, get the business outside of its bubble. That's super valuable. Like I'll not a lot of people really work on that skill. And that's where you bring a lot of value to a project. You're like, all right, I've seen this before. This is happening. This is happening. Let's try these things like that is incredibly valuable.

All right. Um, Linda says, I have an idea about COVID and those who couldn't be vaccinated from all the talk about vaccination. It wasn't much, but it made good pulse posts. Okay. So did you, so it sounds like you already had an idea and post it, so that's good. You made a post post. The problem with COVID is like everything. Um, everything like COVID is everywhere now. So you either are someone who covers COVID regularly, uh, or you really have to have like a super unique story because it's just all the time COVID right now. All right. Okay. Linda says, can't you bring up an idea from the past and put a new twist on it. Now it's often done repeating an issue you could. Um, but I think when you kind of are digging in the past for ideas, um, it's not always the best thing because things change so fast now, like a man was changed so much quicker with all the technology, all the stuff like five years ago is old.

Like for example, um, when I pick a study for an article or I pick a study for a company to use in a blog post or something, um, I don't pick something that's older than like three years. Sometimes if I can't find anything else, I'll go to five. But like studies and data like that stuff changes so quick. Now processes are becoming quicker. Um, everything is kind of moving, I think 10 years is like that's dated. And if you try to put a new twist on it, you have to have a really unique thing on it. So, um, sometimes people do that with anniversary posts. Like this was 20 years ago. Let's talk about what's changed. So there's that. Um, but I think a lot of times it's better to just start with fresh stuff and move on. Yes. You can use ideas from the past.

Yes. You can use ideas from previous stories. That's something you can do is take ideas from previous stories and put new slants on them. Obviously there's a very big difference. Um, let's say I have, uh, an article that I wrote for a restaurant owner, and then I decided to take that article and write it for, um, a FinTech company, right? Those are two totally different audiences. They care about two totally different things. So replanting ideas is one things. But for like, I think a lot of times that people are more sensitive to a tired thing. Like they've because it was covered a long time ago and people have, you know, read it a bunch and now everybody's creating content. So I think the freshness and coming up with stuff, that's kind of like now and why it needs to be told now, I think that matters more than like digging up old stuff and kind of giving it a fresh face.

Um, that's my opinion, personally. I just think that with all the content that's being created, the way to kind of separate that stuff out, isn't to dig back and be like, what's going on here that I can like fluff up, um, or what's going on here that I can do this. I think it's just like, people have heard about that. They're, they're kind of in this thing of like, what's new, what's new, what's new. Like I know about that. What's new, what's new, that kind of thing rather than, you know, I think, I think the better idea would be to re slant. The better idea would be to replant stuff for different audiences. Then worry about older ideas from, I think five to 10 years is like, I think that's too far. Like, like I said, with studies, I only use studies that are three years old at most, if not like worst case scenario five years, but data technology information has changed so much. Like 10 years ago,

Like 10 years ago, I didn't have a

Smartphone, like 10 years ago. I didn't have all the things that we have now where we're like, I mean, like, I think Instagram just started 10 years ago, Facebook, 10 years ago was like, whatever. It was like five years old or six years old. And all the things that, the, the amount of information that gets pumped out now and the amount of stuff that just like is available, I think it's way better to just stick in the present and stick in the future. Cause that's, that's really what people want to read. So I think that, that's my opinion. Um, yeah, it's Getty. I know you've been having a lot of family stuff. I know that it's been really hard on you, so, you know, I'm always happy when you're able to make it and join us. And then maybe you can like, think of this as like a little bit of me time rather than like having to be always the caretaker.

So I know that's very taxing and you've had a lot of stuff, so, um, we're glad you're here today. All right before, um, I want to go over some, some more stuff before we finish up here. So let's talk about pitches and, um, let's talk about angles. So when you're writing a pitch, they're very different for businesses and magazines. So the pitch I write for a magazine, we want to make sure that it's, we cover the ground of like, what is it, why do we need to tell it right now? And why is it right for this magazine? And why is it right for this audience? So when you're pitching a magazine, you need this. I usually use kind of like a format of basically like, Hey, this is the headline. Um, this is basically the general, like a first paragraph, like a spicy first paragraph that grabs our attention.

Then I roll into like, in this article, I'll talk about why this, how that, what that, like, you talk about the questions you're going to answer in it. And usually when you're doing magazines, at least for me, I put in a lot more information than I would in a business pitch. So, um, I'd probably have research. I probably have studies. I have potential interviewees. I might have links to properties if I'm pitching, um, different types of things and saying, here's a list of 10 properties that make sense in this post, or here's a list of restaurants. Here's what I'm thinking. So for those, I would definitely make sure I have more information upfront because magazine editors are really kind of pumping those through. Like they get hundreds, if not like they get hundreds, if not thousands of pitches a week. Okay. So when they're looking at that, they need as much information to get to, okay.

They get it. I know that this is a good fit. Here's all this information. I can look at all that stuff. When I'm pitching to a business, it's much more boiled. Like it's, it's not so boiled down when a pitching to a business, I'm usually like, how about a post on this? Here's what we'll answer in terms of questions. Like, I don't do a bunch of research ahead of time. I'm not finding studies or interviewees. Most of the time, I'm saying like, I've taken a look at, um, your current content, your competitors, what's trending, what's going on in this niche. What's kind of the stuff you should cover. How does your product or service work? I'm combining all this knowledge into, like, I think these are the best ways to capitalize on growing your audience, giving them value, helping them understand things. Um, it's usually like this, the pitches that I write for magazines could be a page.

Um, and the pitches that I write for businesses could be like three sentences. So I kind of don't go whole hog with businesses because a lot of times they end up changing their mind. So usually with businesses, um, my typical policy, I don't always do this. My typical policy is like, I pitched them double the ideas. So if I was going to write four blog posts and they're like, yeah, you need to pitch us ideas. I write eight pitches and I send those over and they pick four. And if they like more of them, then cool, we can save that for the next month with magazines is like, it takes me a while to kind of like get stuff together. Um, and with magazine, sometimes I write a pitch pretty quickly, but most of the time you want to make sure you have enough meat in there and that you explain all the cool stuff so that they're like giving you the green light.

So, um, when you're doing your pitches and angles, so your angles are going to be a little bit different. So your angles for magazines are going to be much more timely. The stuff for your business blog posts are not going to be so like, oh, this new study came out or this trend is happening or like, they're not going to be so, um, harshly angled, they're going to be more open because it's a business that, um, you know, has more opportunity, right? A magazine oftentimes has published for decades and you have to compete basically with all the content they've had for decades. You need to really come in there fresh. Why now, why this story, why you, why does the audience need to know this? How is this going to affect them? How is it going to help them? You really need to angle that in and be very specific with business pitches.

As long as you kind of like hit all of the buttons of their audience, you're giving them value. You're explaining the product, you're explaining a trend, you're giving them something. They need to move forward. They don't have the same compendium of information as a magazine. You're kind of getting much more of a blank slate, where in a magazine, you can't just write like 10 reasons to go to Paris, but on a blog where the business might be a travel company. And they're like, we just added Paris as a destination. Um, we want to highlight it. You're like great 10 reasons to go to Paris and they would totally make sense. The specificity needed for magazines. Like that kind of stuff. Doesn't always work. If you write for, um, more like magazines that kind of pump out more content, it might work if you have more general stuff, but with, um, with businesses, you get a lot more opportunity to kind of like open it up and then you can kind of narrow it down.

You kind of get this nice flow with magazines. It's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You gotta get in there. You gotta get, you gotta get all the points in the row. Um, and also with magazines, you gotta keep trying with magazines. Like this was something I've talked to with a bunch of coaching students and a bunch of, um, my core students is like, you have to keep trying with magazines. Like if you really want to write for Conde Nast, traveler or travel and leisure, or the New York times or Washington post or the new Yorker, or like any of the top publications in your field, or like bone Appetit or, um, you know, any of the top publications in your niche, you have to keep trying, you're going to have to pitch them a whole bunch of times to get it with a business. You're like, here's some ideas.

And then they pick some, and then you go ahead with the ones that they pick. It's a lot different of a process magazines. You got to really like, you gotta be gung ho about it. You gotta keep pitching. You gotta keep getting better at pitching. And, uh, this was something that I talked about with a bunch of my students was just that like, you can't really give up if you pitch a magazine two or five or 10 or 20 times, like I have friends who pitched magazines for two years or a year before they got a piece in there. Like they consistently sent one or two pitches a month or they set a pitch a week for two years before they a story. And that doesn't happen with businesses. You don't pitch a business, a story idea for two years, you like sign the contract, um, get your, get your upfront payment.

And then you pitch them your ideas. And if they don't like them, you try again. But like they don't, you don't have to spend years getting it. So I'm hoping that when you're thinking about ideas and you're thinking about pitching, just remember that this is a, this is a lifelong process. And it's about learning more as you go, your pitches are going to be bad in the beginning. Like if you've never written a pitch, your first pitches are gonna be really bad. That's just how it is. The first time you try anything you're really bad at it, right? You didn't just like get on a bike and you're like, I've done it. It doesn't work like that. But some people pick up pitching faster than others. Maybe you only need to write 10 pitches and boom, you get an assignment. Um, when you're pitching trade magazines, often trade magazines are a little bit easier to get into than newsstand magazine.

So that's another way to kind of get your pitching under you and, um, learn the process and work with editors. Another thing to remember is you can always ask for feedback if you're sending ideas and you're not hearing anything, or like, you're just like, what is going on? You can always roll in there and say like, I've sent you 50 pitches. Do you have any feedback about how I can make this better or, and asking for feedback really helps. Same thing with businesses. If you send businesses eight pitches and they hate them all, and then you send them eight more and they hate them all. You're like, I need some feedback. I need some direction. I need you to kind of like give me some information so I can come up with better ideas so I can have more focus and direction. So I think that's super important.

And just remember that this is something that takes a while to learn that niche, that insider stuff, the T the trends like what's, what's the future of the industry. Who's breaking boundaries. What are kind of the pillars, right? What are the things that aren't going to go away, that you could like go back to it and maybe take a fresh take on it? Um, or maybe there's a pillar that's like, was a new thing. And now it's kind of ingrained. And people use that, um, something that you can try, try to remember, people care about what's happening right now. Um, they don't always care about things that have happened way long in the past. And like I said, I use studies that are like less than three years old, like research less than three years old. Um, because it changes so much so fast. And I think that's really important.

Um, so Marie says, and who is a senior editor at Miami life said he wouldn't accept any writer unless they pitched 10 times. Wow. I've never heard that before. I never heard that they had like a minimum. So yeah, this is something to know. Every editor is different too, right? Like I've known people who have pitched publications for two years. Finally got a piece in, I know other writers who pitched the publication once. And it was their very first pitch that magazine and it got accepted. That's the range. It could be anything. And there's sometimes editors are like, yeah, you have to pitch me a bunch before I accept anything. And they're kind of testing you, right? They're testing you to see whether or not you really care about writing for that, that magazine or publication or newspaper, whether or not you understand their audience, whether or not you really want to, you know, get in there.

Or if it's just kind of like, you know, some random stuff where you're like, oh, I'm sending a pitch to everybody. You get it to Miami life, that kind of thing. So I can see why someone would do it. They would want someone to kind of keep trying. They would want someone to show they're really interested. They would want someone to really learn the magazine and pitch enough ideas that they have a deep understanding, but editors are always different. So some may say like, you have to pitch me X number of times. And some are just like, yeah. As long as you bring me a good idea, you know, and it looks, it looks fancy and I love it. I'm down. Oh, we've got some tech things. I've got a wanderer. Um, so the other thing with businesses, um, we're going to do a quick buck update date while I talk about this. Cause we haven't, we've only done one pup date today. I can't believe it. The other part about

You have to be in your Hobbit hole, go to your Hobbit hole, go to your habit. No, you got to go to your habit hole.

The other thing thing about working with businesses is

That when you go to your hobby hall, your silly beast, go to your Hobbit hole. No, you got to go to your habit hole. Huh? Cool. Watch your head. I know Charlie. There she is. Good job. We did it. Here we go. All right. Good job guys. You look

Great. The other thing about doing stuff with businesses is that it's a lot easier for people to have the opportunity to pitch stuff. It's a lot easier with businesses to, um, come in there with fresh eyes, rather than someone who works at a magazine where they stare at the magazine all the time. You know, a lot of times people work at businesses and they do other things other than content, right? They're planning. They're um, checking metrics, sorry, allergies. Um, they're doing other things at the business besides looking at content, but editors oftentimes are spending lots of time with their content or editing or finding new writers or reading pitches or going to meetings there. They're spending a lot of time deep in the content. So when you do stuff for businesses, again, you have more opportunities here to kind of, um, find content that makes sense for them.

And you can kind of start with more general ideas. They don't have to be so crazy honed down. Um, so I think when you're building your idea stuff, remember the whole point of this is building a muscle and then adjusting the monocle. So the muscle is just creating ideas, getting in the habit of writing ideas down, getting in the habit of understanding what those ideas could be or why they're important or why now. And then the monocle is like, who's reading them. Why, um, like how would this slant be different from like, how would an architecture magazine be different than a lifestyle magazine? Or how would this, um, audience take it differently than this? And that's the adjustment part. So those are kind of really important. And just remember we w we build them over time. We build them over time. And I also want to know last thing here is if you've been working on ideas for years, or you've been, you're just new to the idea process, like, how are you kind of coming up with ideas?

How do you have any tips or tricks that you can share? And you can add them in the comments below. Um, and I would love to know if there's anything that you use to come up with ideas, or you have a practice or a process that you feel like is really helpful. Cause I think that helps a lot more people. Um, if you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about building a profitable, sustainable freelance writing business, make sure to subscribe. Um, okay. We're going to do one last pup date because

Charlotte looks super cute. Charlotte, you look super cute. You look like a bat. You just look like a little bat.

Bear. You look like a little gentlemen.

Good job. Good job. You guys are doing great today. Charlotte's at her Hobbit hole being hominy. You're the best. There you go. Good job guys. You look great.

All right, Charlie, you look so cute today. Why do you look like so proper? You never looked this bad.

Good job. It looks like a little back bone. You look like

A little gentlemen. You're a little geriatric gentlemen. All right. We're going to pop off today. I will see you next Friday. We're here every Friday. All of us, me, even, even the puppers we're here every Friday at noon. I will see you next Friday. If you have questions or comments, pop them below. I'd love to hear them and see them and read them. And I hope you guys have a wonderful Friday. Hope you're enjoying the Olympics. Uh, this is like a w this is like a side note, weird thing about me, but I love the Olympics. I will watch like all the Olympic events. Um, I just love it. I think it's a really cool way to get international competition. It's a pinnacle of just athletics. I think it's so fun. So hope you guys are enjoying the Olympics and I will see you next Friday. Bye.

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