Get Featured in BUST

Lifestyle publications such as BUST hear from restaurants, product makers, coaches, authors and travel companies all the time. A small business or a solo practitioner with a good story but no publicist is easily lost among them. A guaranteed placement removes that uncertainty: the piece is arranged with the publication in advance, you approve the draft, and it publishes on bust.com inside a written window, usually one day. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What BUST covers

BUST publishes for an audience in the United States that is interested in living well. Its category is deliberately wide. Food, drink and hospitality, travel and leisure, home and garden, parenting, relationships, wellbeing and personal growth all belong, as do the consumer brands that serve those interests. Much of what a lifestyle publication runs amounts to a recommendation: a place, a product, a book or a person worth a reader’s time.

Stories in this category start from the reader’s point of view: what would I do with this. That question leaves room for restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels, for food, drink, home and family products, for wellness practitioners, coaches and authors, and for travel and experience businesses. The piece needs to show what is on offer, who is behind it and why someone would be glad to have found it.

Who reads BUST

The audience for BUST is made up of lifestyle readers in the United States: people who like to eat well, travel when they can, look after their homes and families, and try new things. Readers like these are in a deciding frame of mind. They are looking for a place to book, a product to order or an idea to try this month.

For a restaurant, a consumer brand, a practitioner or an author, a BUST feature places you in front of readers who are already looking for somewhere to go, something to try or someone to learn from. It is also a credential you can use: something a customer, a retail buyer, an event organizer or a publisher can read before deciding to get in touch.

Being seen by readers across the United States

A publication with a national audience in the United States is read well beyond any single city, which makes coverage in BUST useful for companies that sell across state lines. Customers, investors and partners in different parts of the country can all see the same feature. When any of them looks up your name, a nationally read publication is a reference they are likely to recognize.

Typical clients are growth-stage businesses preparing for a funding round, a product launch or a move into new states. Consultants, physicians, attorneys and speakers who want to be known beyond their home market are also common. Companies headquartered abroad use coverage in the United States to establish a presence before they open an American office.

Lifestyle publications write for people making everyday decisions, so a feature earns attention when it is clear about what you offer and who it is for. The strongest pieces describe the experience or the product in concrete terms and tell the story of the person behind it. A season, an opening, a launch or an anniversary gives the piece its timing.

Before drafting, we settle on the strongest of the angles below. Owners and practitioners often describe what they sell and leave out why they started, which is usually the part readers warm to.

What weakens a pitch

• Health promises. We do not write that a product, food or practice treats, cures or prevents anything. Features describe the experience and the approach instead.
• Nothing a reader can try. A feature about a business that is not yet open or a product not yet available gives people nowhere to go.
• Superlatives without detail. “The best”, “unique” and “made with love” appear everywhere. What the food tastes like or how the service works is what readers remember.
• Every offering in one piece. A feature that lists the full menu, range or program reads like a brochure. One story, clearly told, serves you better.