Create Content That Gets You Quoted

Remember when everyone told you to publish more content?

Blog three times a week. Post daily on LinkedIn. Create endless streams of videos, infographics, and thought leadership pieces.

While you exhaust yourself feeding the content beast, a smarter play is happening right under your nose.

It’s not more content.

It’s Borrowed Trust.

My experience is that your best ideas don’t win when you publish them. They win when someone else quotes them. Feed reporters and bloggers – not the algorithm.

Why third-party coverage hits harder

When you publish on your own site, you’re fighting three enemies at once:

• Distribution: You have to bring the audience.

• Credibility: You’re obviously biased (no matter how honest you are).

• Shelf life: Your post gets 48 hours of love, then disappears into the void.

When a journalist, editor, or reputable publication quotes you, you get the opposite:

• Their audience.

• Their authority.

• A link and a mention that can keep sending traffic for years.

It’s the difference between yelling into a canyon and being handed the mic at a packed venue.

Lesson: reporters don’t want your product

When I was at Pingdom, we learned this fast.

Ain’t no reporter waking up thinking, “Today I’m going to research website performance for the 500 biggest newspapers.”

They’re waking up thinking: “I have a deadline at 3 pm, and I am screwed.”

So we did the work for them.

We pulled the data. We ranked things. We found patterns. We packaged it with screenshots and references, ready to publish.

I even built a public “live map” style page that turns internet and outage data into something inherently newsy. Also, the backlinks you will get from this truly is the cherry on top.

That’s the play: don’t pitch your tool. Pitch the interesting thing your tool can reveal.

The system: build a “Quote Engine”

If you want to get quoted regularly, you need a repeatable system. Not vibes. Not hope. A small machine that runs every week.

Here’s the one I use.

1. Pick your lanes (and stay in them)

Choose 3–5 topics where you’re genuinely helpful.

Not “marketing.” That’s too broad. More like:

• B2B onboarding mistakes

• Website performance and conversion.

• Pricing psychology for tech.

• Remote team comms during incidents.

• How AI ruins recruiting talent.

I dunno, you are the expert at what you do. Write these down. This becomes your filter for what you say yes to and what you ignore.

2. Build a tiny “data drawer”

You don’t need a 40-page report. You need ready-to-quote assets:

• 5–10 punchy data points (with sources)

• 2–3 simple charts

• 3 screenshots that illustrate a trend

• 5 short “lines that land” (quotes you’d be happy to see published)

Update it quarterly. Reporters love fresh numbers, but they love packaged numbers more.

3. Plug into journalist request streams

Yes, HARO-style services still matter, but don’t bet your life on one platform.

HARO rebranded as Connectively, which was discontinued on December 9, 2024. Cision later sold HARO to Featured.com, and HARO was relaunched (with emails returning).

Also worth testing:

• Source of Sources (SOS), founded by HARO’s founder.

• Help a B2B Writer – MentionMatch (strong for B2B quotes).

• Featured is a great way for experts to get exposure.

Pick one or two. Start there. You can always add more later.

4. Respond like a human who respects deadlines

Most pitches fail because they’re too long, too generic, or too late. You need to be quick on the draw here.

A good response looks like this:

• One-line answer up top (the quote they can paste)

• 2–3 bullets with supporting detail

• A tiny credibility line (who you are, why you know)

• One link: your bio or homepage

No essays. No attachments unless asked. No “Happy to jump on a call!” (They are not happy.)

5. Track, follow up, and compound

Keep a simple log:

• Query topic

• Outlet/writer

• Deadline

• What you sent

• Result (quoted/not quoted)

When you get quoted, don’t just retweet it and call it a day.

Turn it into:

• A short “what I learned” post

• A credibility block on your site (“As seen in…”)

• An updated data drawer with that angle strengthened.

That’s how this compounds. That’s how you stop regurgitating content into the void.

If you’re exhausted, this is your way out

To take stock: you don’t need to publish more. You need to be more quotable.

Build the data drawer. Join the request streams. Spend 20 minutes a day responding to the right asks.

You’ll create less content, get more credibility, and, unsurprisingly, you’ll start seeing your name show up in places your own blog could never reach.

And yes, it feels like cheating.