Answering a Writer's Substack, SOS, Qwoted, etc. Call for Sources? Do This!

A few simple strategies that can help your client rise to the top of call for sources submissions

Happy Tuesday Top Tier Consulting community!

We hope everyone is off to a great week. Hopping in here with a deeper dive into topic that we’ve heard publicists chattering about lately. How the heck can you stand out in a writer’s inbox when you’re replying to a call for sources on a platform like Substack or SOS and writers are receiving TONS of submissions?

Recommended Reading: A 2025 Update on What Platforms Journalist Are Posting Calls for Sources on These Days

Read on for our thoughts below!

Answer as soon as your can — aka the early bird truly does get the worm

Ahhhhh that annoying cliche. It’s true though guys. So true. After a writer posts a cal for sources, the clients come pouring in. When we sit down to sift through them, we’ll probably pay a lot of attention to the ones that come in the day of or day after we posted the call for sources. But if we post on a Friday and our deadline is Wednesday and you’re responding Tuesday at night or Wednesday, hours before the deadline, we’ve likely already picked the people we’re going to work with by then. Occasionally someone who sends in a submission later will be considered if they have a really good source that makes a lot of sense for the story. But in general, the earlier, the better.

Pitching an expert? Provide a few talking points or sample quotes

We often get asked should we have our sources answer the questions a writer posts in their call for sources? Our general response to that is:

We know that having your clients answer questions without knowing if they’ll be included in the story is a big time commitment … so you want to be sure you are only doing that when necessary.

We usually advise publicists to let the query’s due date dictate this. Writers are notorious for getting last-minute assignments. So if you see someone writing a query on a Monday saying, “I desperately need someone to answer these questions and provide quotes by tomorrow AM,” they are probably going to hop on a source who comes back with answers to their questions versus the ones who don’t. This is simply because they are on a crazy time crunch.

But for the most part, deadlines are usually about a week long. In those cases, a writer is often including their questions to give a publicist an idea of the types of questions they may be asking for you to be able to validate that a source is the right fit. In this case, you can usually stand out by writing back to the writer and following the guidelines above.

If you’d like to go a bit further on the above and really stand out, have your client answer one question, provide a few talking points or maybe include one or two quick quotes to give a writer a taste of what they can talk about. If you do this, however, please only give us original quotes. If they aren’t and you just want to give us an idea, let us know these are not original. This is CRUCIAL!

Tell us more than just your client’s title — What street cred do they have?

A writer is sourcing for a therapist to talk about postpartum anxiety. Their inbox will be filled with lots of publicists saying “I rep a therapist in Phoenix.” “I have a psychiatrist who would be great for this.” “I want to submit my therapist to talk about this.”

That’s great, but it doesn’t help us determine if they’re the best expert for the story. Tell us something different about your source to make them stand out. For instance:

“I connected with my client and probably 60% of her case load is women who have dealt with postpartum.”

“She did a TED Talk on post party.”

“She wrote a book on this topic.”

“She hosts a podcast and just had an entire 6-week series on postpartum”

“She had postpartum herself and also helps women through it in her practice that centers around female clients”

You get the gist. Writers are always looking for the best sources they can possibly use that make the most sense and are the most qualified. Any of those above blurbs will help make your therapist stand out over the other submissions.

Read on for more of our tips below.

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