Want to know how to find editors that are seeking pitches? If you’re a journalist or a freelance writer, of course you do! Sending pitches to the right editor is one of the fundamental parts of being a freelancer.

Today, I’m going to show you how to find hundreds of editors seeking pitches, including how to easily find their contact information and get to know their interests, so you can send a pitch they might actually be interested in.

Get ready, because you’re about to learn how to be a Twitter power user.

Seriously: Just a few months ago I was completely baffled by Twitter. I found it to be confusing and boring. A bad combo.

Fortunately, I’ve since learned how to make very good use of Twitter. It’s a valuable tool that you can use to connect with real editors who are commissioning articles every single day. I’m now, dare I say, a Twitter Power User.

By the end of this article, you can be a Twitter Power User too, using just a few simple techniques.

Let’s get started.

The first thing I recommend doing is creating a brand new Twitter account, just for your freelancing. Twitter makes it easy to have multiple accounts, so this shouldn’t be a big deal.

The main purpose of this account will be to “follow” only the editors that you may be interested in pitching. This is important later on, because it works directly in conjunction with Twitter’s search feature.

Don’t worry about creating that account just yet — if you’re like me, you’ll want to see the “goods” first.

So — Here’s the first strategy for finding editors on Twitter that you can pitch right away.

You’ll want to head over to Twitter, and start a new search. The search phrase to use should be

editor “pitch me”

Once you enter the search, you’ll then click on the “People” tab. This will then make sure it’s searching just the profiles of editors. Immediately, you’ll see a list of editors and their email addresses. It’s actually kind of magical, right!? Who knew it could be so easy to find editors and their contact information?

This is important: Please don’t pitch these editors! At least, not yet. As a friendly reminder, you have a lot of legwork to do before sending a pitch. That means carefully studying a publication, thinking about where your article will fit in the publication, and then thinking of a good idea for an article that you think the editor will like. Please watch this lecture  to learn how to pitch properly.

So, back to the search results above. In your new Twitter account, you should start following the editors that work for publications you’d like to be published in. This is an easy way to keep track of these editors in one central place.

Also — there are a few other search terms that you may want to try including:

• editor commissioning
• editor pitches
• editor DMs open

Of course, in addition to the above search, you’ll want to add additional keywords to your search. For example, you might be a food writer. In that case, try the search food editor pitches. You’ll see a list of food editors open to pitches. Keep in mind that this doesn’t tend to work out well if you get too specific, because you’re just searching the short “profiles” that editors add to their Twitter accounts. Those tend to not have very many keywords. However, this is a great technique for broader topics.

You can also use Twitter search to find editors for a publication you’re interested in writing for. Even if they don’t have contact information, this can be a useful way to learn about an editor’s interests. First, you’ll want to find the username of the publication, for example @businessinsider.  Once you’ve done that, simply use that “@” name in your search, along with the word “editor.” For example, here’s a huge list of editors for Business Insider.

Hopefully you’ve found this article to be helpful! I encourage you to spend some time exploring the search options onTwitter. See what appears for you. Don’t limit yourself to just the searches that I’ve listed above. Be persistent, try variations. (Many variations.) Some of them will work, others won’t. It just takes a few minutes, and is well worth the time.