You’ve identified a place to send your freelance writing pitch, but how do you know where to send it? I’m sharing 7 things I did consistently, for years, when I was pitching for new clients. These aren’t the only things you can do to know who to pitch at any organization, but this list of tactics never failed me.
1. Job title
Find relevant job titles on the website of the organization you want to pitch. Depending on the size, this might be a chief marketing officer (CMO), a marketing director, a marketing manager, an editor, a content director, or something like that.
You can also look on LinkedIn–if you have the name of a business, you can search for it on LinkedIn and see if they have any of their job titles listed.
2. Email list
If you’re pitching a personal brand of some sort, get on their email list and see who the “from” email address is. If it’s a reply-able email address, try that one. Also look for a support email or a general inbox (like hi@xxx or hello@xxx or even info@xxx).
Then, send a letter of inquiry to that email address. Not a pitch, but a “Do you work with freelancers?” kind of thing, introducing yourself.
3. Chat support
See if there’s chat support available on the website of the organization that you want to pitch. I’ve had decent success rates with asking the chat support “Can you tell me the name of the person I should contact?”
4. Business email
Send an email to the organization’s jobs email address, if they have one. I see this most often with startups and SAAS companies, but not exclusively. It’s usually jobs@xxx, and you can send a letter of inquiry.
But if you’re looking at some mega corporation, this probably won’t get you very far. If a company is huge, it’s better to find their marketing department than use a jobs email address, as that will generally route you to their human resources department.
5. Call
Although writers usually cringe at this option, it does work. If you find a phone number for the organization you want to pitch, don’t be afraid to call it! Admins are good people (I used to be one) and typically know a lot about who to contact in the organization.
If they don’t know the answer, they can ask their office manager. They also can give you more information than chat support. Just make sure to call during regular business hours.
6. Print publication
If the organization you want to pitch has a print publication of any sort, see if you can get a recently published copy and look at their masthead. The masthead will tell you who the editor is and will frequently give you information on where to send your pitch. Anyone listed on the masthead is ordinarily a person involved in the publishing of that publication.
7. Guidelines
If you want to pitch a blog, search the blog website for anything like “contributor guidelines” or “write for us” or “contact the editor” for clues. Also look for the name(s) of people whose bylines appear (sometimes the bylines are clickable links to bios). If there are bios, those might also have clues.
If nothing else, reach out to one of the writers who has already been published on the blog and ask them if you’re on the right path for pitching to that site. For more on reaching out to established writers for help with getting work, see my post “How To Borrow My Clients (The Golden Rules).”
Questions?
If you have questions about this or just freelance writing in general, come join us in my free Facebook group, The Ink Well Guild with Ashley Gainer. See you there!
