Is That Op-Ed a Good Idea? Questions to Ask Before Writing an Opinion Piece

“Op-ed.” “Opinion article.” “Commentary.” These are all words for a strong, informed, and focused piece written from one or two peoples’ perspectives, giving an opinion on a relevant issue for a target audience. They are not academic papers, which follow their own format and are targeted toward a very specific, mostly scientific audience, and they’re not sales pieces either, which have the express goal of getting people to buy something. Op-eds are, however, an excellent way to build credibility for your client by positioning their leadership, stakeholders, staff, and others as thought leaders in a particular area or issue. 

There are a few questions you should ask yourself if your organization’s leadership wants to write an op-ed, or if you’re unsure how to respond to a news development, to help you determine if an op-ed is the right tactic. 

• Do you have a meaningful position on an issue that’s happening in your local area, state, country, or the world right now? Alternatively, can you tie an issue that you are passionate about to something that is currently in the news cycle? Opinion section editors are going to want to publish pieces that have something to say about whatever issues their readers are talking about, whether they are small local publications or national media outlets. 

• Does the issue impact the organization’s mission or audience? For example, it’s one thing to have a strong opinion on a social issue. But is anything happening around that social issue right now that impacts your mission or audience, such as legislation that restricts’ peoples’ rights or affects how people can run their businesses? You need to be able to make that connection for an op-ed to resonate with readers. 

• Do you have a call to action besides “donate to our organization/buy our product”? In addition to not being academic papers or sales pieces, op-eds are not marketing emails, which are allowed to have simple, self-serving calls to action like that. Better calls to action for an op-ed, especially one written by the leadership of a business or organization, include: “Volunteer for services that provide X, including our organization” or “support candidates that support X this election,” or “call your representatives and ask them to support  X.”  

• Can you back your assertions with research and facts? Whether it’s impactful stories of clients you have helped, in-house research or third-party data, you need to be able to point to the reasons why your opinion is valid in a clear, unified way. Otherwise you’re just–to use an old boss’ favorite word–bloviating, and nobody will take you seriously. 

• Can you keep your thoughts to 500-700 words? Most editors want op-eds to be 700 words or fewer, but every publication has their own guidelines. We absolutely want you to be able to cite research, but make sure this isn’t a subject that might be better suited to a whitepaper, or even an academic paper, especially if it requires a lot of data to explain. 

• Would the people who can take this action, i.e. your target audience, care if your name was connected to this publication? Fewer and fewer people get their news directly from reading the newspaper, but many of them do click on links in an email news round-up that might feature this op-ed or follow this publication on Facebook or Instagram. They might even see a video on TikTok where someone summarizes or discusses your article, if the publication is big enough! The question is, though–does your target audience care about this publication? For example, if most of your audience pays attention to the influencers in the Teen Vogue universe, it might not be worth the resource to pursue a New York Times op-ed placement (which are notoriously hard to secure) right out the gate. 

• Can you distribute an op-ed piece widely via your own channels? Just because you place an op-ed with a relevant publication doesn’t mean your audience will automatically find it on their own–you have to do some legwork as well! Promote it on your social media and make sure it goes out in your newsletter, to start. 

• Are you comfortable with the fact that you cannot control the outcome? The truth is, op-eds are subject to the news cycle, who else has written about that topic, and even the schedules of individual editors. Your PR partner ultimately cannot control if the op-ed is accepted, even if they have a good relationship with the opinion editor at a particular publication. If accepted, it may take some time for the article to run, and it could be bumped up–or axed entirely–at any time for any reason. 

If your answers to all of these questions are “yes,” you should definitely write an op-ed! If your head is spinning because you just read a lot of text, no worries. Here’s a simpler flowchart we’ve put together to illustrate. 

Op-eds as a tactic are our bread and butter at SLH Communications–we’re huge fans. They can humanize a very theoretical or abstract concept, showing concrete examples of the human impact of legislation or scientific practices. They can present a point of view that an increasingly siloed, polarized media audience might not have encountered before. Finally, they are a way to demonstrate that you are taking a stand on an issue that is relevant to your audience, making you part of the conversation, instead of sitting on the sidelines. 

To summarize: just because you, your CEO, or your organization’s leadership have thoughts on an issue, it doesn’t mean you should immediately write an op-ed about it–and if you do, you probably shouldn’t expect it to translate into donations, purchases, signatures, or any action right away. However, op-eds can be an excellent tool in your PR arsenal, and a steady drip of well-placed, well-written op-eds can elevate your profile with the audiences you need to reach. 

If you’re working with a good public relations partner, they’ll be able to advise you on a wide range of tactics to use. We love op-eds, but we don’t just do those good–we do other stuff good too, like comprehensive public relations strategy and policy communications. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you with op-eds and all other parts of a solid PR strategy, contact us today.

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AI Disclosure: The header image was created using text-to-image generation in Canva Magic Studio.