GetPress

August 25, 2026

How to get picked on Featured (the old Terkel playbook, updated)

Key takeaways

Featured.com used to be Terkel.io. Same founder, Brett Farmiloe. Same job: publishers post questions, experts submit short answers, the good ones land in roundups.

Then Featured acquired HARO in April 2025 and revived Connectively in 2026. Same company, three wrappers. If you showed up looking for “HARO alternatives,” you might be in the wrong product. HARO is still the three weekday emails. This post is the roundup job: how to get picked.

The playbook below is what used to work on Terkel, plus what Featured still publishes about submissions. Character limits, skip buttons, and profile fields move. Open Featured’s current FAQ (or the help linked from featured.com / connectively.us) before you treat any number here as a hard rule.

The roundup product. You log in. You see questions. You submit a quote on the site. A publisher builds a listicle. Your profile carries the bio and the link. The answer body is only the insight.

The company. Featured owns HARO (the email digest, back since April 2025) and Connectively (the 2026 logged-in platform). Some HARO queries surface on the platform earlier than the next newsletter. That is Featured’s marketing, not “HARO is dead.”

In 2026 Featured has also described itself as an AI co-pilot for PR, and has moved some of the old in-app opportunities under the Connectively name. If your roundup questions now live at connectively.us, the playbook is the same. The login changed. The journalist did not.

If you want the digest, go to helpareporter.com. If you want to get picked for a Q&A page, stay here.

Your profile matters more than you think, and optimizing it is a one-time action that will pay dividends over your entire career as an expert source.

On Terkel, an incomplete profile, especially a bad headshot, was the biggest reason answers did not get picked. Terkel wrote that in their FAQ. Featured’s later submission guides still put the profile (name, title, company, LinkedIn, homepage URL) in the attribution so the publisher does not need a bio dump in your answer. Same idea.

Fill every field they show you.

Terkel’s form had nine components. Featured’s form may have more or fewer now. Open it. Complete it.

Some of those are self-explanatory. A few need extra attention.

Headshot

This is the most important thing to get right.

Terkel wrote: “Lacking a professional headshot is the #1 reason why panelists do not get chosen for publication.”

In short: looks matter when it comes to getting published.

Check Featured’s current image requirements. The old Terkel list is still a decent bar, and it is the one I would use if their FAQ is thin this month:

  1. Semi-professional attire
  2. Centered
  3. Simple/plain background (can be colorful, as long as it is not messy)
  4. Forward facing and looking at the camera
  5. No objects that obstruct the face (sunglasses, baseball caps, dogs, products)
  6. Includes shoulders and face. No long body shots.
  7. High-quality
  8. Not animated
  9. No brand logos
  10. Only a picture of yourself, without another person

A LinkedIn crop of you at a wedding is not a headshot. A logo is not a headshot. An AI face that does not match the person on the Zoom is how you lose the follow-up.

Company name

On Terkel, the company name was the anchor text in the article. That is why we used to tell people to make the company name as relevant as possible.

Featured still attributes company plus URL. Whether the live article uses your company name as the clickable text is something you should check on a recent placement, and in the current FAQ. Do not assume the 2019 SEO trick still fires the same way.

If you do control the field, make it the name you want printed. “Agency 101” next to a marketplace URL is a wasted click. A name that matches the domain is cleaner.

Company website URL

Add the exact URL. Copy it from the browser. Include https.

Wrong:

Correct:

Only one of those is your canonical. Redirects look sloppy in a publisher’s CMS. Featured’s attribution line is doing work you used to put in the email signature. Give it a URL that loads.

Job title

Optimize your job title to reflect your expertise.

If you are a “Recruitment Manager,” you are more likely to be picked for HR / recruiting queries than if your title is “Software Developer.”

So, depending on your expertise and which queries you want to be picked for, you can adapt your job title slightly. Slightly. “Visionary growth alchemist” is not a title. “Head of Customer Success” is.

Interests / expertise

Keep it relevant. Pick interests you have actual expertise in.

“Only answer questions where you have real expertise,” Brett Farmiloe said when this product was still Terkel. “Use your real identity, and don’t use a pen name. Publishers of Terkel content want to feature real experts.”

That sentence aged well. Featured’s current terms still tell experts to answer only where they have a good-faith basis of relevant expertise, and not to fake it. Their 2025 submission guide still says your answer should match the qualifications on your Featured and LinkedIn profiles.

Remember that they vet profiles. You are unlikely to be picked for something you are not an expert at. You are likely to waste a credit answering it.

LinkedIn profile

This is the most important thing to optimize off-platform. It is the first place anyone checking your expertise is going to look. Featured’s own submission advice still points publishers at LinkedIn via the attribution line.

Make the profile look complete. Headshot that matches the Featured photo. Experience, education, and competencies visible. An about section that sounds like you.

Actions to take:

If you are submitting on behalf of a client, they need their own expert profile. Featured has said this in public: do not submit from your name and hope the attribution lands on them. Create their profile. Complete it. Send as them.

Google top results

When you google your own name, you want to make sure that nothing sketchy is popping up.

We never confirmed that Terkel’s vetting team googled their experts. Imagine that you yourself were trying to determine someone’s expertise.

What’s the first thing you would do? Exactly.

Optimize your answers

Now that your profile is optimized, we can move onto the part where you are actually answering queries.

This part is just as important, since mediocre answers will give you mediocre results.

Answer queries that match your expertise

Terkel had a team that assessed the expertise of each active source. Featured still ranks answers from people who look like they have authority on the topic.

So if you are the HR Manager at your company, do not bother answering queries from the “Technology” category. Your expertise is not relevant. You are unlikely to be chosen.

Other than optimizing your profile, this is probably the biggest hack when it comes to getting picked.

You will also waste much less time answering queries you would not be picked for anyway.

On HARO, skip means you did not email. On Featured, skip used to mean something to their expert score. I will come back to that. The human rule is the same: skip what you cannot defend.

Give insightful answers

Use your actual expertise to give a unique answer that provides real value.

On Terkel, your answer was typically 4-6 sentences long. Single sentence answers were very unlikely to be picked, because they were not complete. The character window was 200 to 1000.

Featured’s later publisher-side copy has used different windows. Farmiloe has also described journalist-request replies as four to eight sentences. I am not going to pretend I know this month’s character counter.

In short: write a complete insight. Not a slogan. Not an essay. Check the box they put under the answer field.

Featured’s own “common submission issues” post (still on their Connectively blog) is the current instruction set:

Get to the point

Do not fluff around with introducing yourself or the topic. Give the insight straight away and write in a confident tone.

Do not add any greetings, bio, links, websites, or anything else. This is all taken care of through your Featured profile.

If you have run a remote team since 2016 and the question is how you celebrate wins, you say: we have a #wins channel on Slack, team leads post on behalf of their people, here are two examples. You do not start with “As a thought leader in people operations.”

That’s the whole craft.

Always follow the instructions

A Terkel query had three basic parts. The question, the headline, and the answer. Featured still uses a question plus an answer. Some forms still want a headline.

Follow the implicit instructions in the question itself. If they asked for one way, give one way. Most roundup queries are looking for a single insight, so do not overcomplicate this.

If the headline field exists, it should summarize your answer, because it may be included if you get picked. Think of it as the table-of-contents line, not a blog title.

If they numbered questions, number the answers. If they asked for 150 words, stop at 150. If they asked for a personal anecdote, do not send a framework.

What else affects whether you get picked

The main things are your expertise, your profile, and the quality of the answers you give.

On Terkel there were a few more technical factors. They may have changed. Check the FAQ before you build a superstition around them.

Skip-rate

Ever noticed the skip button?

When you skip a question on Terkel, you were telling them you could not answer it. If you skipped a lot of questions in a certain category, they might lower your expert score in that category.

I do not know if Featured still scores skips that way. I would not spam skip just to clear a queue, and I would not answer garbage to protect a number I cannot see.

Skip what you cannot defend. Answer what you can. That is the whole policy.

Conversion rate

On Terkel, your overall conversion rate would actually affect your… conversion rate?

That’s right.

A low conversion rate often meant the answers were not insightful, the expertise was thin, or you otherwise did not follow the instructions. The takeaway was to focus on quality rather than quantity.

Featured later capped free accounts (lite plans have moved from 3 answers a month to other numbers; check current pricing) for the same reason: spraying mediocre answers trains the system to ignore you.

Farmiloe’s 2026 line on journalist-request platforms is the same idea: less is more. Fewer, better replies. I will not invent a Featured close rate for you. If they show you a success percentage in the dashboard, use it as a quality alarm, not as a sales metric.

Q&A pages

One thing that did change after Terkel: Featured launched Q&A pages so eligible answers can live on Featured even if a publisher did not pick them. They exclude flagged profiles, exclusive-source questions, and 100% AI-generated answers that were not selected.

So a sloppy answer is not only a missed pick. It can sit on the internet under your name. Another reason not to “just hit submit.”

AI

Featured runs AI detection on pitches across HARO, Connectively, and Featured. Journalists can filter 100% model copy in one click. Their submission guide still says: if you use AI, use it as editorial assistance, not as the author of your life.

A response that is 100% generative AI will miss the details only a human can share. You already knew that. Believe it when the platform says it.

A HARO pitch is an email: subject line, greeting, credential, quote, attribution, send from Gmail through a relay. That craft is here.

A Featured answer is a form. The profile is the letterhead. The box is the quote. If you paste a HARO email into the Featured box, you have just added a greeting, a bio, and a sign-off that their own guide says will hurt you.

Do not drop the HARO newsletter because you paid for Featured. Do not skip Featured because you already “do HARO.” They are two pipes. The alternatives list is the map.

Connectively 2024 was Cision’s shutdown. Connectively 2026 is Featured’s platform. If your roundup questions moved there, you still need the headshot. You still need the 4-6 sentences. You still need to skip what you cannot stand behind.

Mistakes that used to work on HARO and fail here

Greeting the publisher. They are not in your inbox.

Pasting your media kit into the answer. Attribution already has the URL.

Answering 12 questions because you “had thoughts.” They asked for one way.

Submitting from the agency profile. The quote will be misattributed. Build the expert’s profile.

Chasing Domain Authority on every question. Featured will show DA on paid plans. A recognizable outlet your buyers read still beats a vanity score on a topic you cannot defend.

Treating skip as a to-do list. It is not. It is a filter.

Waiting for the perfect week. Featured caps free answers. Use the ones you have on questions you actually know.

Checklist

  1. Open Featured’s current FAQ and image requirements. Terkel’s nine fields were a starting point, not a contract.
  2. Complete the expert profile. Every field they show you.
  3. Upload a real headshot. Shoulders and face, plain background, you, nobody else.
  4. Company name you want printed. Canonical https URL. Title that matches the queries you will answer.
  5. LinkedIn that matches the profile. Google your name. Fix the first page if it is a mess.
  6. Answer only in your expertise. Skip the rest.
  7. 4-6 complete sentences (or whatever the live counter says). Insight first. No greeting, no bio, no links in the body.
  8. Follow the question. One way means one way. Headline summarizes the answer if the field exists.
  9. If you represent someone else, submit from their complete profile.
  10. Quality over volume. A low pick rate is a writing problem, not a volume problem.
  11. Keep HARO’s three weekday emails. Featured did not replace them.
  12. Re-read the FAQ when they rename a tab. They will.

GetPress drafts from the author’s own words, then you send. It will not complete a Featured headshot for you. That part is still on you. Start a desk.