How to Get Featured in the Financial Post

The Financial Post is one of the best-known business mastheads in Canada, and one of the harder places for a founder to appear.

Here is an honest account of how it works.

What the Financial Post is

The Financial Post is a Canadian business and financial news brand covering markets, the economy, corporate news, energy, real estate, tax and personal finance. Its journalism is written by staff reporters and columnists.

There is no contributor programme to join and no membership that turns a fee into a byline. Whether a journalist writes about you is a newsroom decision, and nobody outside that newsroom controls it.

Who realistically gets covered

Companies and people with a stake in the Canadian economy. Businesses raising or deploying capital, firms whose numbers say something about a sector, executives who can explain a market move, and analysts with a view they can defend.

National relevance matters here. The Financial Post writes for readers across the country, so a story that only concerns one city usually belongs with a regional title unless it illustrates something happening nationally.

If your business has no financial or economic dimension that a reader would act on, this is very likely the wrong target — and chasing it can cost you a year you could have spent building coverage that reaches your actual buyers.

What makes a story they will run

Material consequence, and evidence somebody can check. Data that reframes how a sector is performing. A regulatory or tax change you are positioned to explain. A first that matters commercially. A credible view on a question their readers are already asking about rates, housing, energy or employment.

Being a successful company is not a story. Being financially significant, or being able to explain something financially significant, is.

Timing counts as much as substance. Business newsrooms work to the market's clock, so the same insight is worth a great deal on the morning a sector moves and almost nothing three weeks later.

The paid routes, and what they are not

Advertising and sponsored content exist here as they do at every major newspaper, and they are labelled. Newswire distribution is a different product again: a release pushed through a syndication service that can surface in non-editorial corners of financial sites.

None of that is a Financial Post journalist writing about you, and anyone who blurs the two is hoping you will not check. Ask one question of any offer: is this a reporter's piece, a wire release, or an advertisement? The answer settles it.

Be especially wary of guarantees. Editorial coverage at an established newsroom cannot be guaranteed by anyone outside it, and a guarantee is the clearest sign you are being sold something else.

The realistic path

• Be a source, not a subject. Business reporters need informed comment on stories already in motion, often within the hour. Being useful and fast is how these relationships begin.
• Bring evidence. A figure, a filing, a dataset. Something checkable beats an adjective every time.
• Know the beat. Read a week of coverage before you pitch anyone. One journalist who writes about your exact corner of the economy is worth more than a list of fifty addresses.
• Build the record first. Journalists at this tier check whether you have said anything credible in public before. A visible track record is what makes a serious pitch worth reading at all.

What we do

Digital Networking Agency builds the story and the press record that make coverage at this level plausible, and places clients consistently in business and financial publications where we have genuine reach. From there we pitch upward.

We do not sell Financial Post placements, and we would treat with caution anyone who does. We will also tell you honestly whether it is a realistic near-term target for your business or a goal to build toward.

Frequently asked questions

Can you pay to be featured in the Financial Post?

Not for editorial coverage. Advertising and sponsored content are separate commercial products and are labelled, which is exactly why they read differently to anyone paying attention.

Can an agency guarantee a placement there?

No. A guarantee of editorial coverage at a staff-written business newspaper should make you question everything else in the offer.

Does Canadian business coverage matter if I sell internationally?

It can matter a great deal if you operate here, because Canadian buyers, partners and regulators read Canadian business press. If your market is elsewhere, spend the effort where your customers actually read.