March 25, 2024

Forbes: Hidden Treasure for Op-eds

In months of exploring opinion pieces by college presidents, I discovered some hidden gold, both in messages and media outlets.  However, my candidate for the most underappreciated and potentially valuable placement venue is Forbes magazine online.  Only a very few college PR people and their presidents have discovered this prime outlet.

For a look at the demographics of the Forbes site, download the 2014 media kit for advertisers, a 22-page PDF loaded with stats.  In a nutshell, Forbes digital claims to now reach 26 million unique visitors a month with an average household income of more than $600,000 a year.  Visitors to the site have an average age of @45, and are skewed heavily (@65 to 35 percent) toward males.  Forbes also claims the site attracts more decisionmakers and influencers than the Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, Businessweek, Bloomberg, and Economist sites.

Now deep into serving as a leadership forum, the site features only a handful of college presidents as regular contributors to its Leadership section – and Forbes is eager for more.

“Presidents (or provosts and other top officials) are welcome to send pieces directly to me at FAllen@forbes.com , says Frederick Allen, the Leadership section editor, in an e-mail.  “If the articles are especially political, I may pass them along to our op-ed editor.  Also I’m always happy to hear from top educators who might want to be considered for regular contributorships.”

The reigning — and lonely — regular contributor from the college-president ranks is Daniel Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College.  He’s posted an amazing 10 op-eds on the Forbes site so far in 2014, one of which (posted in August and offering advice to high school seniors) has already been viewed over 26,000 times.

In the first six months of 2014, I found only three other presidents with op-eds appearing on the Forbes site.  Kind of reminds me of California in 1848.  Think about contacting Fred and staking your claim.

(Check out the PhairAdvantage Op-ed Resources page for other tips and insights.)

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