Write for the Mag

RevGenius publishes revenue thought leadership by and for revenue professionals. Become a contributor.

January 23, 2023 | 8 min read
RevGenius Team
New York, NY
write-revgenius-mag

Summary​

RevGenius publishes revenue thought leadership by and for revenue professionals. Become a contributor.

8 min read

Our contributor network is made up of revenue pros writing for revenue pros — sharing sales and marketing tips, career advice, research, stories from the trenches, and challenges to industry wisdom — to bring inspiration and creativity to revenue professionals to develop their skills and get the support needed to thrive at their jobs and grow their companies.

Who is eligible to write for RevGenius?

Any RevGenius community member who is a real, practicing sales, marketing, and revenue/sales operations professional. We’re looking for individuals willing to get real and share their unique POV’s and personal experiences. We want you to have opinions, make stands, and even be a little controversial.

To write for RevGenius, you must be a community member. Before pitching your idea, create a member profile and begin to engage with the community.

Articles should be of interest to other members of RevGenius, be written to help other revenue professionals succeed, and be written by that member, not a content manager or PR department. While we encourage drawing from your own experiences to support your ideas, promotion of yourself or your product/company will prevent us from publishing your article.

You must be willing to help us promote your article once it goes live. You can do this by:

  • Starting a discussion about your article in our community.
  • Posting on LinkedIn or other social media

What topic should I pitch?

We are looking for thought leadership content—not just regular content.

  • Regular content tends to be obvious and focuses on the how. It loves generic listicles: “5 Ways to Improve your Productivity and Get More Sh*t Done.”
  • Thought leadership is usually non-obvious and focuses on the why. It loves disruptive ideas that make you question your beliefs: “Productivity is Overrated: Why Doing Less Yields Better Results.”

Thought leadership is the intersection between expertise, innovation, and education. It begins with a subject matter expert (expertise) who develops a new and radically different way to solve a problem (innovation) and educates others about the problem and the new solution.

  • What is an “old way” of thinking that your readers have that they must change for a better “new way”?
  • What mistakes are your readers making that are perpetuating their problems?
  • What principles for success do your readers need to adopt in order to get the outcomes they’re looking for?
  • What common wisdom or widely shared best practices are you debunking?

Here are some examples of great headlines:

  • Disruptive headline: “Social Selling is Dying — Here’s why you need to develop thought leadership instead”
  • Mistakes headline: “3 Mistakes Sales Reps Make When Writing Outbound Sequences”
  • Principles headline: “Marketing Disruptive Products — Five principles of Category Evangelism”

If you’re not familiar with our site, browse our articles to get a sense of what we publish. Here are some examples:

Think about your audience: Our readers are primarily B2B revenue professionals. While we have people in other roles, our readers are looking for ideas and tips from salespeople, marketers, and operators for salespeople, marketers, and operators.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

  • Analysis of trends and technologies that might impact the future of the industry.
  • New frameworks for sales, marketing, and revenue operations.
  • Data-driven content (original research from surveys or customer data).

Evergreen topics:

  • Non-obvious sales tips, step-by-step guides, and best practices for every stage of selling.
  • In-depth coverage of core sales skills or methods we haven’t already covered.
  • Templates, scripts, and downloads.

Topics we see too often (feel free to pitch, but unless you have a fresh take or a downloadable template, these are a harder sell):

  • The importance of personalization / human connection in sales
  • “Your Most Important Resource Is Your People”
  • “How Coaching Builds Great Teams”
  • Sales and marketing alignment tips
  • High-level strategic content (not tactical) on the role of RevOps in an org
  • Prospecting and lead gen tips

Nonstarters

  • Marketing materials — i.e., “Why Your Company Needs Our Tech Solution”
  • SEO-building content
  • Link-building/link swaps
  • “My journey from BDR/SDR/etc. to AE/Leader/etc.”

Pitching and publication: the process

1. Join RevGenius and create a profile

First, join the RevGenius community and create your profile. Don’t skip out on uploading a photo! We’ll use it for your bio.

Note: The byline needs to go to someone in a revenue role. If you are a content writer for your organization, please find an appropriate person to give the byline to (such as a VP, director, or manager), and include their name and bio in your pitch.

 

2. Submit your pitch

We do not publish content from freelance writers or PR professionals.

Submit your pitch here. We’ll let you know if the idea will work, or help you find another idea if it isn’t a fit.

Here are the criteria we use to evaluate your pitch:

  • The content is newly written for RevGenius and has not been published elsewhere, including your own blog or website.
  • You’re writing to inform the audience, not promote your company, products, or services. The topic has not already been written about on RevGenius. (Not sure? Browse our site to see what topics we have not yet covered or what new angle you can provide on a topic.)

3. After your pitch is approved, write the article.

We’ll work with you to provide editorial guidelines and set you up for success. When you’re ready, submit your draft as a Google doc using these settings:

  • Title your Google Doc with your first and last name – article title
  • e.g. Jared Robin – How to Refine Your Sales Funnel for More Leads
  • Turn on settings so that anyone with the link can edit

4. Wait for our team to edit your draft

Your story is your story — but RevGenius retains full editorial control over your content after it is published on our site. This means we’ll edit as we see fit, including removing promotional content, optimizing for SEO, and rewriting sections for clarity or readability. Please don’t submit if you aren’t comfortable with this.

Based on our current queue, time from pitch acceptance to publication is about 4-5 weeks.

5. Promote your article on social media!

Tag RevGenius, and start a discussion about your article in our community and on your own social media account(s). Try to get your company accounts to promote the article as well! The better the promotion, the more views your article will receive.

Share it on social media (LinkedIn and Twitter especially)  Include a link to it in your newsletter Link to it in other articles you write for your site or other websites.

We will provide special links and assets for promotion.

 

KNOW BEFORE YOU PITCH: Best Practices

Want a seamless acceptance? Check out our quick list of golden rules and pet peeves:

Lean into your unique experience

Make it clear in your pitch why you are the best person to talk about this topic — then tell us your life story like it’s a page-turner we can’t put down.

The weakest pitches we see are general, high-level, academic, and vague. Be specific. We want details. Anecdotes. The blooper reel. The nitty-gritty.

Anyone can write an article about the importance of coaching in an org — but only you can write about the lessons you learned from your 20 years coaching teams. Or the time management strategy that helped you co-found a business while still crushing your quota. Or the 5 things you learned about objection-handling working as a cashier at McDonald’s. Don’t hide your light. Shine it! It makes you stand out from the pack.

No promotional content! Solve, don’t sell

Great content is about solving problems, not selling your product/service. Your article must NOT come off as a sales piece. Your goal as a writer should be to share your experience or knowledge to help the other revenue professionals. Tell readers what to do and how to do it without mentioning your own brand or product.

Do NOT try to sell in your article. Do NOT link to a landing page. Do NOT be self-promotional. You may link to an ungated, relevant, informational resource (blog post, white paper, infographics, etc.) on your site, but we will remove links to landing pages.

Do not include:

  • Backlinks to lead gen, sales pages, or product landing pages
  • Product demos, screenshots from only YOUR product
  • Talking exclusively about your product, your solution, your buyers

Use external source materials to back up your claims

Make sure that whatever source materials you include, you include the direct source link in your content. All sources must have a link for reference purposes.  

  • Third-party statistics: “According to Forrester, 50% of marketers struggle with X”
  • Original research and data: “We analyzed 250,000 content contributors using machine learning AI, and learned that RevGenius content contributors are 97% more likely to be amazing than the average content contributor.”
  • News and current events articles: “We all saw the news story about the avocado shortage due to Millennials making unprecedented amounts of avocado toast.”

Provide clear, actionable takeaways

Readers should be able to read the post and go apply something to their daily work right away. A good rule of thumb is to answer the question “how” rather than “why.”

Give specifics in your content

Write in your own voice, but write to our audience. Write in second person where applicable. This means writing you-focused content for our readers, not “I-focused” content that comes off as a huge opinion-based blog post. If you do use “I” in your article, make sure it’s absolutely necessary. Our editor will refine the language in your article as necessary.

  • “War” stories: If you tell us that grit is important in sales, tell us the story of the grittiest rep you ever managed. If you tell us about the biggest mistakes in cold calling, tell us about the time you called a prospect by the wrong name and blew it. Here’s an example.
  • Examples/templates/checklists: If you’re telling us the “best presentations,” include visuals, include some screenshots or links to attractive presentations. If you’re telling us that the “best email subject headings are short,” include templates that worked for you.
  • Research/statistics: Articles are nearly always stronger when you include references and numbers to support your points.

Have a point of view – think “thesis”

  • Good: ”Dreamforce 2022 was the Best Ever. Here’s Why”
  • Bad: ”Top 5 Takeaways from Dreamforce 2022”

Challenge conventional wisdom

  • Good: ”Why the Top Sales Contests Don’t Reward Top Performers”
  • Bad: ”At the End of the Day, Sales Is About People”

Submission Checklist

  1. Document access is set for anyone with the link to edit.
  2. The document name is: [author’s name] – [title]
  3. You / the author have joined the RevGenius Community and completed your member profile.
  4. Your article is 1000+ words (or you’ve checked with Jared/Sara that it’s okay to be shorter).
  5. Your article is NOT a reprint.
  6. Include a 1-2 sentence author byline.

Format & Structure Guidelines

Length
Posts should be no shorter than 1000 words. Ideally, they should be 1,250+ words. There’s no cap on length. It often takes 2,000 words for an article to rank well in search, and that’s the goal.

Making Your Article Actionable
Always end your post with 3–5 KEY TAKEAWAYS or WHAT TO DO NEXT. The idea is to help readers apply the information you just shared with them.

Making Your Article Readable.
Short sentences, short paragraphs.

  • 3–4 sentences per paragraph.
  • No run-on sentences that lack punctuation.
  • Make good use of bold and italics.
  • Bullets or numbered lists work well.
  • Try to limit paragraphs to 150 words.

Phew! You made it to the bottom. That means you really want to do this. Awesome. We look forward to seeing your submission.