How to Gain Public Exposure Through Feature Writing

Many businesses focus on promoting themselves on platforms like billboards, social media, websites, and email. And while these current channels provide higher visibility, there’s one other platform that you might miss out on. News outlets. Of course, you want good press for your business. And the best way to go about that is through feature writing.

So, how can feature writing benefit you, and how can you write an article for this? Read more below to find out.

What is Feature Writing?

Feature writing blends elements from news writing, but it aims to capture the reader’s attention and tell a story about a specific topic. Unlike news stories, feature writing gets more in-depth and conveys more emotion. Most times, it tends to pique your interest. While in some cases, feature articles will entertain you.

Some would say feature writing can be considered as fluff. However, that isn’t the case for all feature articles. Here are the different types of feature writing to tackle.

Feature Writing Ideas

Luckily, in feature writing, you can write about any topic. The thing is, a writer or journalist may have written a similar topic before. So, how do you put your spin on it? It’s all about the angle you’re presenting.

Here are the most popular ideas:

• Profile – Focuses on a prominent individual
• Trending stories – Discusses or gives opinions on the latest stories
• Featured News – Aims to expound more on a specific news story as opposed to the breaking news or hard news story
• Live-In – Provides insight on everyday situations in a particular place

How Can Businesses Benefit From a Feature Article?

Due to the nature of feature writing, businesses can become the focus of a feature article. Writers can focus on the profile of prominent people in the business. Perhaps, a review or background of the business. It can even be a simple mention. 

Businesses may tap a PR agency to produce a write-up for the company. Or a journalist could create a piece for them.

Regardless, businesses may further boost your visibility. Here are three reasons why.

• Introduces Your Business To A New Audience – If your marketing efforts can only reach your current target audience, readers that might not have considered your value proposition can learn more about you.
• Establishes Your Authority – In your feature article, you can demonstrate how different you are from other businesses. Plus, you can show off your expertise, which can increase your authority over your competitors.
• Promotes Your Business and Activities – If the publication you’re posting to has an online presence, you can consider it as another platform for people to get to know you better.

How To Write a Feature Article?

So, you’ve decided to proceed with feature writing for your business. But don’t know how to start? Here are some tips and tricks to write your feature article.

Let’s start with the prewriting phase first.

Identify Where You’ll Publish and Submit Your Pitch

The first thing to remember when you decide to push through with feature writing is to identify the publications or outlets you want to publish and submit your pitch. It can be challenging to find publications that may accept your pitch. 

So, what you can do is find relevant ones that fit your business. Plus, don’t forget the most important thing when finding a publication: demographics. Know who will be reading your piece. 

Let’s say you’re a technology company. Then, identify your customer base. Think about who’ll benefit the most from reading your article. From there, you can narrow down the publications that might serve your target audience too. Once you have a list, you can create a pitch that can get the editor’s attention.

Create a Pitch

Not to scare you, but this will be the part that will decide if you get to write your feature article or not. It’s good that we tackled identifying publications because you need to know how to entice the editor to say yes.

Some things to remember when writing a pitch:

• Make it short and sweet.  Mark Nowlan writes, you don’t have to create an elaborate pitch. An outline would do just fine.
• Provide different perspectives. Karlee Weinmann says it’s good if you can give different angles. This way, you have some other topics to write if some of your choices don’t make the cut.
• Know Your Audience and the Section. As you write your pitch, keep the audience in mind. Not only that, you should know which part of the publication you want it posted, as James Randerson points out. You don’t want to end up in the lifestyle section when your article is about technology, for example.

Choose A Theme

Once you decide that you’re writing a feature article, know what theme you’ll cover. The Guardian further elaborates on this, saying that you should prepare questions beforehand and try answering one of them as you write.

So, what about your business do you want to discuss?

Make sure not to make it too generic. Try to flesh out something about your business that would make the readers get to know you better and notice you.

Now that I’ve covered the pre-writing section, let’s head over to the actual writing.

Follow The Structure

If you’ve written web articles or blog posts for your business, a feature article is no different. However, it’s best that we revisit the structure.

The structure has these components:

• Heading
• Deck (According to Your Dictionary, this is another way to hook readers to finish the article.)
• Introduction
• Body
• Conclusion

Remember to Include the 5Ws (and the 1H)

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? 

As mentioned before, feature writing blends elements of news writing. However, a feature article has more breadth. You want to provide context as to what you’re writing about. These elements will help you remember the subject of your piece and how the reader can get to know them better.

Add Quotes

If you notice other feature articles, writers would add quotes from their subject. This works well for the profile pieces. Include quotes from top management, for example. You could probably tap the CEO for a few words. Maybe, you could even have fellow employees talk to you. 

Quotes help us connect with the piece. In some way, it makes it more interesting to read. Plus, it’s another form of promoting the business as well. Since you hear someone from the business speak, you get to know them a little better, and in extension, what they say about working with people and the business itself.

Show Don’t Tell

Feature writing allows you to be more flexible in terms of writing more information. Unlike hard news, you have to stick to the fact. Meanwhile, feature articles can have more color and personality. ThoughtCo points out that if you want to “show,” you need to use verbs. Since verbs describe actions, this will help the reader imagine what has conspired during the writing.