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by
Susan Harrow
Media Coach
& Marketing Strategist
 Getting
published in O, the Oprah Magazine, is like winning the Academy
Award. It's a distinction that validates your product like no other
publication.
In fact, getting published in O helped raise one entrepreneur’s sales by
60% in just 30 days. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The mention
brought much needed awareness to a cause close to her heart – breast
cancer. Thanks to Oprah magazine the issue is now visible on a grand
scale.
Knowing how valuable it is to get published in O, you must consider your
competition and understand that, just like The Oprah Winfrey Show, the
standards at the magazine are some of the toughest in the industry. O magazine prides itself as a publication valuing beauty, courage, attention
to the finer points of relationships, and people doing amazing things in
the world.
Here Are 3 Things You Should Know If You Want to Be Published in O, The
Oprah Magazine:
1. Your product packaging must be beautiful.
If your product packaging and product itself isn't an eye-stopper, it's
most likely not going in O, The Oprah Magazine. Jeanine Boiko of J9 Public
Relations, who placed her client Bonjour Fleurette in the magazine three
times for three different products, has this rule of thumb:
"For a product to work in O, ask yourself this: if you walked past
your product on the shelf somewhere, would it catch your eye and make you
stop? It must have unique, attractive packaging that will photograph well.
My advice, especially to new business owners, is to not play it cheap with
packaging. At the end of the day, it's all about the draw of your
packaging."
2. Your pitch must be meaningful.
So, before you make a pitch, heed the advice of The Oprah Magazine
Executive Articles Editor Dawn Raffel who says the magazine teaches people
how to live their best life: "It's about realizing your own greatest
potential and also about making a contribution to others."
Whether you want to write about yourself, be written about, or write about
someone else, ask yourself these two questions:
· Are you making a difference in a
big way?
· Are you making a difference in a
way that is important to Oprah?
Genevieve Piturro, founder of the Pajama Project, gets a "yes"
on both counts. Her charity gives new pajamas to abused and poor kids,
many whose mothers are in prison. Some of these children never owned any
pajamas, and certainly not new ones. When you think about children going
to sleep at night in a fresh pair of pajamas instead of tattered, dirty
clothes, it conjures an image of safety and home.
Pitturo scored big on two points: She tapped into one of Oprah's key areas
of importance: abused children. And she created a remarkable endeavor that
attracted many people's interest, given the story’s emotional pull. It
made me want to hurry and buy pajamas and donate money to this worthy
cause.
3. Your pitch must be well-written.
O's readers expect the content to dig deep into emotional, physical, and
spiritual well-being on many levels. Oprah's magazine delivers on this
expectation by seeking out top authors and freelancers from the best
national magazines and newspapers in the country. They look for writers
from publications like the New York Times to Wired to write on topics as
diverse as women slavery to how men really feel about breast implants to
the death of a beloved dog.
You can either be interviewed by these experienced writers or write a
feature on a topic that touches the heart of the O magazine reader.
It may take you 1 to 2 years to get published in O, The Oprah Magazine.
But I've haven't met one soul who said it wasn't worth it.
Henry David Thoreau said, "If one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." So
if getting in O is one of your dreams, keep advancing toward it with all
the steadiness of a tulip reaching toward the sun.
Media coach
& marketing strategist, Susan Harrow, author of Sell Yourself
Without Selling Your Soul (HarperCollins) can help you understand what
it takes to get into O magazine. To learn secrets from top publicists
about
how they got their clients in the magazine and to discover Oprah’s
10
hot buttons – topics that the editors are looking for, go to http://www.prsecretstore.com/otheoprahmagazine.html
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