Getting featured in O, the Oprah Magazine, is like winning an Oscar. No other publication validates your product or service like this one.  

One chocolatier doubled her sales in one month. Another entrepreneur increased her sales by 60% in 30 days. While the sales were meaningful to her the mention meant much more than dollars in her pocket. It brought attention and awareness to breast cancer, a cause that was dear to her heart. Oprah magazine made Oprah's 2.65 million subscribers aware of this important issue. 

Know that the standards at O represent some of the most stringent in the magane industry. Since getting featured in Oprah's magazine is highly competitive it's important to understand what kind of qualities the editors look for in people, products and services. O, The Oprah magazine values such things as courage, beauty, the complexity and subtleties of relationships, and people who help their communities or are impacting the world at large. Sometimes these people are ordinary folk doing extraordinary things in unexpected or unusual ways. Other times they are people whose passion and life work is about making a difference in the lives of others.  

3 Things To Know If You Want to Be Featured in O, The Oprah Magazine: 

1. Beautiful product packaging is a must. 

If the product packaging isn't gorgeous, it's unlikely to get in O, The Oprah Magazine. Jeanine Boiko of J9 Public Relations, who secured a placement for her client Bonjour Fleurette in the magazine three separate times for three different products, gives this advice:  

"If you walked past your product on the shelf somewhere, would it catch your eye and make you stop?" She further explains that the product packaging must translate well in a photograph. Cheap packaging on the outside is often interpreted as cheap product quality on the inside. Chintzy isn't Oprah's style. 

2. Your pitch should be meaningful. 

Former Executive Articles Editor of The Oprah Magazine Dawn Raffel states that the magazine teaches people how to live their best life: "It's about realizing your own greatest potential and also about making a contribution to others."  

Two the essential questions to ask if you want to get yourself, your product or your cause in the magazine:  

Are you making a difference in the world on a grand scale?

Are you making a difference in a way that Oprah cares about? 

Founder of the Pajama Project Genevieve Piturro, gets a big thumbs up on both points. Her non-profit collects new pajamas for abused and poor kids, many whose mothers are in prison. A number of these children never owned even one pair of pajamas, and certainly not brand new ones. Piturro began collecting new books for the children as well. She remembered how warm and safe she felt at home with her parent's reading to her in her snuggled up in her cozy PJs in her warm bed, and wanted to give these kids this same good experience before they went to sleep.  

Pitturo connected on three points: She tapped into one of Oprah's hot buttons: abused children. She tapped into a second one of Oprah's hot buttons: reading and education. Thirdly, she developed a memorable cause that attracted many people's interest, given the story’s emotional pull. Doesn't hearing about the Pajama Project make you want to run out and buy pajamas and donate money to this worthy charity? 

3. Your pitch needs to be well-written. 

O's readers count on the content to delve into emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being on many levels. Oprah's magazine lives up to this expectation by inviting top authors and freelancers from the best national magazines and newspapers in the country to write about what matters to them. The bylines in the magazine are ones from the writers of publications like the New York Times and Wired who expound on topics as diverse as how women feel about their private parts to mothers awaiting organ transplants for their ill baby boys. 

You can get into the magazine in a couple of ways. Either by being interviewed by these experienced writers or by writing a feature on a topic that touches the heart of the O magazine reader. Or by getting your product reviewed by the editorial staff. 

Realistically, it may take you one to two years to get published in O, The Oprah Magazine. But I have never met a single person who said it wasn't worth the wait. 

Management consultant and university professor Peter Drucker says, "Most people are more concerned with doing things right than with doing the right things. The secret is to focus on doing the right things right."  

If you continue to do the right things right you will be on the right life path toward getting into O, The Oprah Magazine.  

Media coach & marketing strategist, Susan Harrow, author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul (HarperCollins) http://www.prsecrets.com