Once upon a time, in a land known as “The Internet” I came across an article on Facebook entitled “How to Get Published On The Huffington Post.”
There are many urban legends concerning this process, so I was rather skeptical that my article would make the cut and be “Huffington Post worthy,” however, I decided to give it a shot, because it was the beginning of 2014 and I needed something to focus on.
In January 2014, I wrote a blog post about my son loving My Little Pony. I posted it on my personal blog: www.oldschoolnewschoolmom.com I then went on Twitter and used a plethora of hashtags to publicize my article.
While I did this, I decided to multi-task, and look at the instructions to submit to The Huffington Post. I followed them to the tea, emailing the Blog Team with my post and bio picture. I was not expecting anything to happen. I had submitted to them before, but it was worth a gamble.
I clicked on over to Twitter and kept using a variety of hash tags for my article about my son who loved My Little Pony: #Brony #Parenting #MyLittlePony were among them.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a Brony website with an insanely large following tweeted my article. They are called Equestria Daily. My tiny little post had over 16,000 views in one day and over 80 comments.
I reached out to The Huffington Post, and told them what had happened and asked if they would consider publishing my piece. Turns out they were way ahead of me, they had thrown it up on their site.
Thus began my foray into the land of publishing my work on The Huffington Post. I wrote a piece that then went viral called 3 Year Olds Are Assholes.
And also began to candidly speak about mental illness.
It was grand, truly.
The lesson here is this: don’t give up. Follow your intuition. If you have a gut feeling about a post: write it! You never know where it will go!
Sarah Fader is the flavor vanilla with something unusual in it – like gummy bears, because she’s sometimes extroverted and wants everybody to like her, but some folks are like “wait a minute, this vanilla ice cream has gummy bears in it?! That’s weird. I don’t know about that…” Other people love that this particular ice cream has gummy bears in it, because it makes it more interesting and special. Oh, and she writes for HuffPost was on Good Day NY, has her own column on Psychology Today called Panic life, and runs a non-profit for mental health called Stigma Fighters www.stigmafighters.
That’s awesome! I know with Huffington Post articles a lot of times those catchy titles are what bring people in and then add in an awesome story and viola…viral! Def going to search out the little pony story for myself. Thanks for sharing and I’m working hard on not giving up on my dreams either.
This is great! Thanks for the inspiration… I might just have to give it a try!
I’m curious if you saw an uptick in actual followers from getting published on The Huff.
Jennifer @ the Jenny Evolution