How Do I Track Down a Magazine's Editorial Calendar?

in: Public Relations
by: Katie Hellmuth Martin

All Articles and Classes by Katie Hellmuth Martin

Editorial calendars are powerful tools to have in your small business PR tool belt. An editorial calendar is the basic outline for all of the planned features, themes and stories a magazine will be covering for the year. Publications primarily do this for advertisers to help advertisers plan what issues they want to buy ad space in.

But business owners, artists and makers can use editorial calendars to look ahead to find out what the magazine cycle is, and pitch accordingly to feature your brand. Checking in with an editorial calendar can really help you manage your PR campaign more effectively, and give you relevant ideas to market your business.

How Do You Find The Magazine's Editorial Calendars?

The traditional ways of finding editorial calendars are easy, but a little time consuming. We've cut down the legwork for you! Tin Shingle has lists of editorial calendars already in our Member Center, but I'll tell you how to get them for free just in case you really want pound the keyboard.

Get an Editorial Calendar from the website of the magazine.
Sometimes you will see a tab for "editorial calendars," but look for words like "Media Kit" or "Advertise with Us." These links will usually lead you to an editorial calendar.
Instead of searching magazine by magazine, go to the actual publishing company's website.
Publishers often have all of their titles listed and you can to through them one by one and snag their media kits right there. Here's an example, check out the Hearst website. When you click on any of the magazine titles a new window will pop up for you and you'll get tons of information about that magazine along with a media kit and within that you'll find the editorial calendar - BAM! Done!

Wow That's A Lot of Research - Save Me Time!

Yes! Tin Shingle already did this research for you! In our easy to use Editorial Calendar Database!

Our Editorial Calendar Database has over 80 magazine titles for your to research. We collect them throughout the year. Sometimes magazines publish the calendar for the entire year, and sometimes they publish only months at a time. Knowing where the magazine is in their publishing cycle will help guide your marketing ideas to be well timed.

How Do You Pitch A Magazine According To Its Editorial Calendar?

Tin Shingle provides training via educational webinars in how to use an editorial calendar in our Online Training TuneUps, as well as Media Contact Lists to help you pitch the right people with your idea.

Listen to and watch this Tin Shingle Training TuneUp, that guides you in how to get great ideas for how to pitch a magazine using their editorial calendar.

Learn More about Membership with Tin Shingle to access our collection of Editorial Calendars in seconds.

Tools You'll Need To Pitch Magazines About Your Business

Tin Shingle designed a membership program for business owners, artists and makers that teaches the best ways of pitching the media, and provides contacts to people at different media outlets through our unique DIY PR Membership Program. Once you unlock membership, you can have instant access to Media Contacts at major magazines, Editorial Calendars, an All-Access pass to all of our Online Classes a connection to a trusted community of other businesses who are going through what you are experiencing as you grow your brand.

Membership Level 3: Online Classes

The best thing you can do for your business is to hook into our Membership Level 3: Online Classes. You'll get free streaming of over 250 webinars we have recorded - and continue to produce.

Membership Level 4: Media Lists

Get instant access to Tin Shingle's list of over 3,000 Media Contacts at different media outlets. Built into this level is free access to the Training TuneUp Webinars so that you can know how to best pitch the media. Having a media contact email is only a fraction of the effort you'll need to earn organic media placement. See how Tin Shingle curates our Media Contact Database.

Tap into a membership with Tin Shingle and instantly get these awesome resources:

Media Contact Lists: Over 3,000 names of people in the media who want to know about your brand and what you offer.
Training in How to Pitch the Media: Yeah, that's right. You can email magazine editors and TV producers to let them know about your business. There are effective ways of doing this. Tin Shingle trains you in the best approaches. Pitch the media like a pro.
Hashtag Cheat Sheets: Tin Shingle's super-sleuthers have cultivated a gold mine of popular hashtags you could be using to get more exposure to your posts in Instagram and Twitter.
More PR and Marketing Tools: Tap into ways to amplify your brand. Learn more about a monthly membership with Tin Shingle here.