by Nita Sweeney, award-winning author of Depression Hates a Moving Target and coauthor of You Should Be Writing
A media outlet interviewed you. Congratulations!!
Contributing to articles is a fabulous way to become a well-respected expert in your field!
But once the article goes live, your work isn’t over.
First, share it all around.
I’m so grateful to have landed with Mango Publishing Group. My editor and their social media coordinator share pretty much anything I send their way. So my first step is to send a link to any new piece to them.
Tweet the link and tag anyone else in the piece, including the publication and especially the journalist who wrote it.
Post on Facebook. If you have a business page, start there, but there’s rarely harm in sharing to your personal page at a different time for more visibility. If your friends won’t celebrate your success, why are they your friends? Don’t overdo the promo, of course. But people want to know what’s going on and might be interested enough to share the article.
Also post in any Facebook groups that allow promotional links. Find ones that are the right fit for you and your topic. I belong to many groups but also started my own wellness group where I share relevant information.
Are you on LinkedIn? That’s where the biz folks are. If there’s any business angle post it there.
Pin to a board on Pinterest. Create a board for a specific topic or a “Where I’m Quoted” or “Featured Ins” or some other catchy title related to your topic. Things pinned on Pinterest have a very long shelf-life.
Instagram allows you to use Link Tree to create a link in your bio where you can add articles, social media platforms, and your website since Instagram only allows one link. Post a photo from the article, preferably the one closest to your quote, then say the link to the article is in your bio.
Don’t forget other relevant organizations. Would the piece interest your high school, college, or professional association? Send it all around.
Hashtags
Be sure to find relevant hashtags because that’s how strangers find articles on social media. Check out Frances Caballo’s excellent post on hashtags for authors. Sometimes that’s what you’ll want, but if your feature covers more than writing, use a hashtag appropriate for your topic. Tons of articles cover hashtags. Here’s one I like. Choose hashtags for the correct social media channel. Popular Twitter hashtags may not trend on Instagram.
Blog It
If you’re new to this process, you could blog about the experience of pitching to a journalist and doing the interview. Write about moving forward with a more involved marketing strategy. Or blog about your topic and link to the piece. Be sure to use the WordPress plugin Yoast or another search engine optimization (SE)) tool. I love Yoast because it removes the guesswork.
Email It
Do you have an email newsletter? It’s lovely to include a link to this new “featured in” with your next newsletter. If you were quoted at length, send the whole quote as the newsletter content with a quick “Not sure you saw this” note. People subscribed to your newsletter because they want to stay in touch.
In the News Page
If it’s your first interview, now’s the time to start an “In the News” page on your website where you collect these things. Leave it as a draft at first, until you collect a few, but have them all in one place on your site.
Save It
And do save a pdf of it. In Chrome you can “print” to “save as pdf.” I do that with every article. Sometimes articles disappear and you want to save it for posterity.
Go you!
An earlier version of this post appeared on Nita’s blog.
Nita Sweeney is co-author with Brenda Knight of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration and Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. Nita’s running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink, won the Dog Writers Association of America Award in the Human/Animal Bond and was short-listed for the William Faulkner—William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award. Nita’s articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in many magazines, journals, books, and blogs. She writes her own blog, Bum Glue, publishes the monthly e-newsletter, Write Now Columbus, and coaches creatives on writing and meditation in Natalie Goldberg style “writing practice.” Nita has been featured widely across media outlets about writing, running, meditation, mental health, and pet care. When she’s not writing or coaching, Nita runs and races. She has completed three full marathons, twenty-seven half marathons (in eighteen states), and more than one hundred shorter races. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and biggest fan, Ed, and their yellow Labrador running partner, Scarlet, the #ninetyninepercentgooddog. You can contact Nita via her website or follow her on your favorite social media channel.
You polish your writing, imagining your audience. You read it over. Out loud. Does it say exactly what you want it to say? You have a friend read it to you. Impressed, she says, “You should submit this to contests. Put yourself out there. Get some recognition for your work.”
Wooden spoon puppets can create holiday magic. 
Kate Farrell, 
Kate Farrell is our host and facilitator. Kate is a storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. Farrell’s new book, a timely how-to guide on the art of storytelling for adults, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories, was released in June 2020. 
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is a Pushcart Prize nominated author. Her second book, All That and More’s Wedding, is a collection of fictional mystery/crime short stories. Running for the 2:10, a follow-on to A Dollar Five delved deeper into her coming of age in Oakland and the embedded issues of race and skin color. Betrayal on the Bayou, published June 2020, is her first novel. Website: 
Humaira Ghilzai is a writer, speaker and Afghanistan Cultural Consultant. Humaira opens the world to Afghan culture and cuisine through her wildly popular blog, 
Mary Mackey is an award-winning novelist and poet with fourteen novels and eight collections of poetry. Mary became a writer by running high fevers, tramping through tropical jungles, dodging machine gun fire, being swarmed by army ants, making catastrophic decisions about men, and reading. Website: 
As a consultant and professor of strategic management, 
Sharifah Hardie is a business consultant, talk show host and influencer. Sharifah was a Long Beach City Council Candidate in the 2020 March 3rd Primary Election and is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Expert. With over twenty five years of business experience, Sharifah Hardie has positioned herself to become one of the top executives in entertainment, business, politics and a person on the rise. Sharifah is the author of Signs You Might Be An Entrepreneur – How to Discover the Entrepreneur in You
Lyzette Wanzer’s work appears in over twenty-five literary journals. She is a contributor to The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (Wyatt-MacKenzie), The Naked Truth, Essay Daily, and San Francisco University High School Journal. A three-time San Francisco Arts Commission and Center for Cultural Innovation grant recipient, Lyzette serves as Judge for the Soul-making Keats Literary Competition Intercultural Essay category. She is currently helming an anthology entitled Trauma, Tresses, & Truth: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narrative.
Sumbul Ali-Karamali, a former corporate attorney with an additional degree in Islamic law, is an award-winning writer and speaker. She grew up in California, answering questions about her religion, which is why her books engagingly introduce readers to Muslim beliefs and practices and include The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing and her just-released Demystifying Shariah: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Not Taking Over Our Country.
Pushcart Prize nominee Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is an Oakland multidisciplinary writer. Her autobiographical and fictional short story collections, along with her lyrical and stunning poetry have been described as “rich in vivid imagery,” “incredible,” and “great contributions to literature.” Her first novel, Betrayal on the Bayou, was published in June 2020. She is also a popular literary reader, presenter, storyteller, curator and emcee for local events.
Fourth-generation native San Franciscan, Kathleen Archambeau, is an award-winning writer and LGBTQ activist. She is author of four nonfiction works, Climbing the Corporate Ladder in High Heels (2006), “Seized,” an essay in The Other Woman (2007), edited by Victoria Zackheim, Pride & Joy (2017), and We Make It Better (2019), with gay dad, Eric Rosswood. Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black wrote the Foreword to Pride & Joy and endorsed We Make It Better. Archambeau’s work has been favorably reviewed in global and national literary publications and she has been a featured speaker at national and global Pride literary events. Her book was included as part of the Oakland Museum of California store’s Queer California Exhibit and she is a founding member of the James Hormel LGBT wing of the SF Public Library.
Michael Larsen co-founded Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents in 1972. Over four decades, the agency sold hundreds of books to more than 100 publishers and imprints. The agency has stopped accepting new writers, but Mike loves helping all writers. He gives talks about writing and publishing, and does author coaching. He wrote How to Write a Book Proposal and How to Get a Literary Agent, and co-authored Guerrilla Marketing for Writers. Mike is co-director of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference.
Rose Castillo Guilbault is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir Farmworker’s Daughter: Growing Up Mexican In America. Her essays have been published in dozens of textbooks and anthologies. She also wrote the book The Latina’s Guide to Success In the Workplace. Rose was the first Hispanic columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle; her column “Hispanic USA” was honored by a number of journalistic and community organizations. A longtime television journalist, she was awarded an EMMY for her work. Ms. Castillo Guilbault was featured in the award-winning book Latinas and Their Muses. Her community activities include Chair of the Commonwealth Club of California’s board of directors and serving as a judge on the Book Awards Committee for several years.
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GS: Thanks. My interest in writing started with an awareness of news and politics. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor in that she realized early on things were going downhill for the Jews in Poland. She left before it got really bad and tried to convince her siblings to come with her to the states. They thought she was over reacting and hence were killed by the Nazis. She taught me early on to pay attention to the government because things can get very bad and you need to be alert. My mother was a political junkie and she taught me the same lessons. 
By Debra Eckerling, author of 
I learned about “To Write” lists from best-selling author Natalie Goldberg, of Writing Down the Bones fame. As I sat in the classroom at Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, I watched her pick up her writing journal, flip to the back, and show us a list of scrawled topics she’d penned on the final page. She carried a notebook everywhere and jotted ideas on the back page as they occurred to her. “If I’m stuck, I look at these,” she said.
WNBA-the National Organization 
Nita Sweeney is co-author with Brenda Knight of the writing journal,