Let’s start with a simple question: When it’s time to pitch yourself or your business to Black Enterprise for a possible story, who do you send your information to?

Let me start by telling you who you shouldn’t send it to:

a. Everybody in the masthead of the magazine

b. The highest ranking person you can find on the masthead, or at Black Enterprise as a company, including the chairman and publisher, president and CEO, and both editors in chief

As far as the first option goes, there is virtually no case where sending your press materials or story pitch to every person at Black Enterprise with the word “editor” in their title is appropriate, or even effective. When every editor on staff receives the same pitch, from the same person or company, at the same time, it tells us that 1) your pitch is not well thought out and focused and/or 2) you’re not all that familiar with Black Enterprise. Yet, you’d be surprised at how many people take this scatter-gun approach to suggesting themselves or their company for a possible story.

Now to be fair, there are some exceptions to the rule with the second option—for example, if our publisher specifically and directly asked you to send your information to him so that he could share it with our content team (or if you prefer the old school, pre-multimedia term, editorial staff). It’s rare, but it happens. However, in most cases, sending your information to say, me—or my counterpart with the magazine, Editor-in-Chief Derek T. Dingle—only means that you’re counting on us to read through your materials, and direct it to the appropriate member of our staff, who will ultimately be expected to decide whether or not it should be considered for the magazine. We always do it if we can, but it is highly time-consuming and inefficient, reducing the chance of your idea being considered in a timely fashion, especially given the high volume of correspondence we receive via both e-mail and snail-mail. (Not to mention phone calls and meetings. And Facebook. And Twitter. And producing a monthly magazine. And feeding this insatiable website every day. Deep breaths.) Believe me, it is far better for you to be able to target your communication directly to the appropriate person on the editorial staff, than to count on Derek or me to excel on your behalf as postal distributors.

So, let’s go back to the question at hand: Who at Black Enterprise do you send your information to if you want to be considered for a story? You find the answer to that question by asking another: What kind of Black Enterprise story do you want to be featured in?

Black Enterprise, as with most media products, breaks down its coverage into specific subject areas, and then assigns editors to manage coverage of those areas, including deciding who and what to cover when, and who should write the articles. If you’re familiar with Black Enterprise, then you know that we specialize in coverage of personal finance, small business and careers as primary areas of expertise, supplemented by coverage of technology, lifestyle and personal development. All you need to do is look carefully at the sections of the magazine and/or the landing pages reached via the navigation bar of the BlackEnterprise.com home page, to see which editor is responsible for which area of coverage. All other things being equal, that’s how you identify the right editor to pitch your idea to.

For example, let’s say you’re a successful executive coach specializing in helping black female professionals reenter the workforce after taking time off to focus on children and family, and you want to be featured in Black Enterprise. Go back to the question: What kind of story do I want to be featured in? Chances are, the answer is: a careers story.

So you look at Black Enterprise magazine’s masthead, and guess what? There’s a careers editor named Annya Lott. Flip to the careers section of the magazine, Workplace, and you’ll notice at the bottom right-hand page of the opening spread for the section that it says “Edited by Annya Lott,” along with her e-mail address. Go to BlackEnterprise.com, click on the Careers tab in the navigation bar on the home page, and scroll to the bottom, and again you’ll see Careers Editor Annya Lott.

You know where I’m going: if you’re interested in being featured in a story about careers, pitch your idea and send your information to Ms. Lott. By being familiar with both Black Enterprise magazine (including the masthead found among the first pages of each issue) and BlackEnterprise.com, you’ll have all the information you need to make the best decision about which editors to pitch and how to pitch them, which will increase the chances of you achieving your goal: getting into Black Enterprise.

By the way, a great online resource to find out who’s who in the mastheads of more than 750 magazines (including ours), and how best to pitch ideas to them, is Mastheads.org. You can get a year’s free access by contributing the names of people in the masthead of a magazine not currently in their directory, or you can just pay $4.00 for access.

Other posts in this series:

How To Get Into Black Enterprise

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Entrepreneurs, Take Note

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: What Not To Do

Alfred Edmond Jr. is the editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com

Spelling the editor’s name wrong. Or not getting their title right. Or even sending the pitch to an editor that left the magazine five years ago. This kind of stuff happens all the time, and can make the difference between an editor placing your company’s materials on file for consideration in a future issue of Black Enterprise, or it ending up in that other file–the circular one–before we ever get a good look at how great or interesting your company’s story is. I get particularly miffed at having my name misspelled; it’s Alfred Edmond–not Albert Edmund or Edmunds or Edmonds or Edwards or Evans. (If you want to really impress me, add the “Jr.” and get my middle initial right.) Derek T. Dingle‘s title is editor-in-chief; not publisher or executive editor or CEO. We currently have a Sonja, a Sonia and a Sonya on staff; yes, it matters that you know which one is which. By the way, Paula McCoy-Pinderhughes is no longer our small business editor; she left the staff nearly a decade ago. Why is this such a big deal? Our names and titles (and in many cases our photos) only appear in more than a half million copies of the magazine each and every month, as well as at BlackEnterprise.com. All you have to do is take the time to look it up–in a current issue. Or call our New York headquarters (212-242-8000) and ask. Failing to take the time to get it right tells us that you are either unprofessional, careless, plain disrespectful, or just not ready for prime-time national media exposure. None of these attributes will motivate us to present you and your business as examples to our audience, who trust Black Enterprise to introduce them to businesses they can emulate, do business with, work for or invest in.

Being obviously unfamiliar with Black Enterprise. This is something else you communicate when you don’t seem to know our names and titles. Or when you send your information to every editor on staff (using form letters, an absolute no-no) whether your business is relevant to the topics they cover or not. (Ask yourself: Why would our senior personal finance editor need to know about your glass repair business?) Or when you send the exact same letter to different magazines, and we get the one meant for Essence or Inc. by mistake. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you have to be a lifelong subscriber of Black Enterprise to get into the magazine (though that doesn’t hurt). But if you want us to consider you for a story, it helps tremendously if you know what generally appears in the magazine and on the web site, and what you’ll not likely to ever see. For example, Entrepreneurs should be familiar with the columns, such as Making It, that appear in the Enterprise section. You, or the person or company you’ve hired to handle media relations, should keep at least two years of back issues of Black Enterprise on hand, and be familiar with the content of those issues, and the monthly sections in particular. By doing so, you’ll know basic things, such as the fact that we focus on black-owned franchises in September, rank the nation’s largest black-owned companies in every June issue, and begin looking for nominees for the Black Enterprise Small Business Awards in the fall, with finalists profiled in the May issue of Black Enterprise in the Enterprise section. The more familiar you are with Black Enterprise, the better you will understand what editors are looking for, which types of stories are sought for which sections, and how to best position your company for consideration.

Telling us everything about your company, your business plans, your clients and what a great CEO you are–verbally. Sometimes we see you coming. Worse, sometimes we don’t. It happens via phone. I can tell what’s happening when I walk past an editor’s desk and they’re holding the phone to their ear with that pained look on their face, like a trapped animal. We can’t be rude and hang up, but they just wont stop. It’s also an occupational hazard for us editors at networking events such as the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference. There’s nothing worse than an entrepreneur chewing your ear off for 20 minutes, monopolizing your time and blocking access to others who are also trying to network with you, about stuff you won’t remember 5 minutes after the spiel ends. (Actually there is something worse–when they do it while we’re eating, or literally standing at a urinal in the rest room. Yes, really.) What we’ll remember is how rude, annoying and unprofessional you were. Just kidding (kinda). We’re not that harsh. We understand how passionate and enthusiastic you are about your business, and how excited you may be to get an opportunity to tell one of our editors, face to face, how important it is for you to be in Black Enterprise. However, here’s a tip: There’s no way that we can memorize anything you say after the first three minutes of what you share, no matter how fascinating it is. There’s a reason why developing an elevator pitch is so critical to your ability to promote your business. Do us and yourself a favor: Keep it short, assume we’re interested if you’ve captured our attention for more than three minutes, and follow up with a detailed, professionally prepared package about your company via mail or e-mail to the editor. After that, it’s a okay to call to make sure we got your materials and to answer any questions we might have, and to e-mail follow up updates on your business to keep it fresh in the editor’s mind.

But understand this: You can’t talk your way into Black Enterprise. In fact, it’s more likely that you’ll talk your way out of a potential story, especially if you don’t provide us with the key information we’ll need to know about your business. Please, try to avoid emulating the person ridiculed by the late James Brown: “Like a dull knife, just ain’t cutting. Talkin’ aloud and saying nothin’.” And can a brother at least wash his hands?

Alfred A. Edmond Jr. is the editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com

Click to read other posts in this series:

How To Get Into Black Enterprise

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Entrepreneurs Take Note

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Pitch The Right Editor

 

Small Business Editor Tennille Robinson

The best person to send information about your company to is our small business editor, Tennille Robinson, who edits the Enterprise and Motivation sections of the magazine. Information sent to me or any other Black Enterprise staff will likely be routed to her. Robinson is responsible for developing content and providing information to help small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs build and manage successful, profitable enterprises. She is also responsible for coordinating Black Enterprise’s small business initiatives for our other platforms, including our national networking events. For example, Robinson is part of the team that plans our annual Entrepreneurs Conference, and the Elevator Pitch Competition and Black Enterprise Small Business Awards in particular.

Each day, Robinson and other staff editors receive an abundance of information from small businesses hoping to be featured in the magazine, in the form of elaborate brochures, expensive press kits, URLs to amazing Web sites and even samples of products. (We love the packages from you entrepreneurs in the baked goods industry.) However, too often, these efforts lack key information that we need to know to even consider an entrepreneur and her business for an article. Here’s a brief summary of what we have to know:

What are your revenues? You’ve heard the saying, What get’s measured, get’s done. As a longtime editor at Black Enterprise, I say what gets measured, gets in. If you want us to seriously consider your business as a subject for a story in Black Enterprise, there’s no way around it—you’re going to have to show us your numbers. We’ll expect to see the following information at minimum: annual revenues for the most recent full calendar year and for two to four (depending on how long you’ve been in business) preceding calendar years, along with projected annual revenues for the current calendar year. Yes, we do intend to publish your annual revenue figures.

Who owns the company? No, really. We’re going to want to know who holds an equity stake in the company, and what percentage of the equity each owner holds. What percentage of the company is owned by blacks? To be considered black-owned by Black Enterprise, at least 51% of the equity of the company must be owned by black people. Not every company featured in Black Enterprise meets that standard, but for certain sections of the magazine, our goal is to showcase black-owned businesses.

For example, Making It, one of the most popular columns in the Enterprise section of Black Enterprise, profiles business between two and six years old, that are at least 51% black-owned, with annual sales of between $250,000 and $10 million, and at least three employees (including the owners).

Who are your top clients? This is one of the ways we reality-check the sales figures and other information provided by entrepreneurs. Yes, we will want to talk to your clients, as well as other parties who can vouch for the viability of the business and the credibility of the owners.

How many employees do you have? Are they full time, part-time, seasonal, temporary or independent contractors?

You’d think I’d be used to it after more than two decades at Black Enterprise, but I continue to be amazed by entrepreneurs who expect us to write about their business with no financial information about their company. We are a business and financial media company, so we use numbers to tell the story. So with all due respect to your passion for your business idea and your deep desire to give back to the community, if you’re not willing to divulge financial figures and other data to help us to measure the size and performance of your business, you’ll have a hard time convincing us to do an in-depth profile of you and your company.

Most of the businesses covered in Black Enterprise are privately held companies, which means we have to ask you to provide the information we need, and then verify it through our own network of industry experts and analysts. If you want to be featured in Black Enterprise, you have to be willing to share details—including the numbers—of your story with our audience. Doing so will increase your appeal to our editors, and increase the odds that your story will be told in the magazine.

It is helpful to remember that publicizing your company is not our primary objective at Black Enterprise, although that is a major incentive for you to want to have your company featured in the magazine. Our mission is to showcase companies that can serves as examples and inspiration to other entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners who are trying to confront and negotiate the realities of doing business. The more we know about your business, the more are able to determine what lessons from your experiences can be imparted to our clients—the Black Enterprise audience.

There’s a type of pitch well known around the offices of Black Enterprise; we jokingly call it the “black-man-with-a-suit-and-a-job” pitch. The entrepreneur in question will invariably be a reasonably successful person—a nice person who wants to ‘give back’ to the community—and will approach us as if this is a rare and amazing thing. We have to explain to him that reasonably successful black people who want to help their community are, fortunately, a very common thing.

The difference between this and a potentially successful pitch can be subtle. If you can convince us that you have been inventive or particularly strategic about plotting your path to success or responding to a major setback, you could be a great subject for a story. What appeals to our editors is what about a particular individual’s story will help our readers. The story is never the person; it’s the examples and the lessons.

Click here for a complete check list of information entrepreneurs should provide to be considered for a small business profile in Black Enterprise.

Other posts in this series:

How to Get Into Black Enterprise

How to Get Into Black Enterprise: What Not To Do

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Pitch The Right Editor

Loyal B.E. readers know that this is far from an impossible dream. While we occasionally feature famous business people and industries (such as sports and entertainment) driven by celebrities, we’ve never been a celebrity-driven media company. You have a far better chance of being featured in the magazine if you are a viable small business owner, a successful executive or a typical black family, than you do if you’re a recording artist, actor or pro athlete.

 

They made it. Why not you?

All you have to do is look at the issues of B.E. published in 2009 to see this. Yeah, we had President Barack Obama on our March cover. (What can we say? He flies off the newsstand.) And our February cover featured several of the “100 Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America”; admittedly, not an easy club to get into.  However, the covers of the January, April and May issues feature young business owners, a family and a young investor—people just like you. And the vast majority of the people inside the magazine are also like you or like people you know. Why not you?

Starting this week, I will begin giving you some answers to that question, in a regular blog called “How to Get Into B.E.” I’ll start out focusing on entrepreneurs, but in the weeks and months to come, I’ll cover what we are looking for when it comes to stories ranging from career profiles to the families featured in our monthly Wealth for Life features. I’ll be bringing you insights straight from the editors of our magazine and website, as well as the producers of our television shows and national networking events. I’ll cover what we look for in a “Slice of Life” segment for Our World with Black Enterprise, or what we have in mind for our “Entrepreneur of the Week” segment of the Black Enterprise Business Report. I’ll also provide insight into how we select speakers and panelists for events such as next month’s 2009 Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference.

However, the fact that we are not celebrity-obsessed doesn’t mean it’s exactly easy to get into the magazine. Along the way, I’ll also cover some of the things that you shouldn’t do and that will not work, if your goal is to be covered by B.E. (Publicists and public relations professionals, please take note.) While some of this insight will be specific to B.E., much of it will consist of basic rules of engagement in dealing with any media outlet. For example, if you want your small business to be featured in B.E., it would help if you actually knew who the small business editor is.  It would help even more if you took the time to spell her name right—after all, all you have to do is look at one of the more than half million copies of the magazine printed each month with her name in it. (Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine.  More on this topic in a future blog post.)

Finally, we’ll draw many of the topics we address from you; so feel free to ask questions, offer input, raise issues and even challenge our editorial approach. Our goal is to create a win-win-win: You increase your odds of being featured in B.E., we gain access to better story subjects and ideas, and our audience continues to have access to the best advice, strategies and examples of business success their money can buy.

Check later this week for my next post on “How To Get Into B.E.”, where I’ll share some of the things entrepreneurs need to bring to the table to get our attention.

Other posts in this series:

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Entrepreneurs, Take Note

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: What Not To Do

How To Get Into Black Enterprise: Pitch The Right Editor