Letting people know you're out there is the first step to establishing your credibiity as a subject-matter expert.
So you’re a new consultant — or you’ve been in business for awhile — and you just can’t seem to get traction against more established competitors. And you don’t have a lot of money to advertise or to hire a PR person to promote your brand. And you worry that part of the problem — to steal from the theme song from Cheers — is that nobody knows your name.
Well, one alternative is subscribing to the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) service. HARO says that every day it ”brings nearly 30,000 reporters and bloggers, over 100,000 news sources and thousands of small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services.” It says it has published “more than 75,000 journalist queries, has facilitated nearly 7,500,000 media pitches, and has marketed and promoted close to 1,500 brands to the media, small businesses and consumers.”
HARO is completely free. The process is simple: You go to their site and sign up. What you’re signing up to receive are three e-mails per day with a list of stories that reporters and bloggers are working on, complete with a description of the story and a contact link. If the story seems to be in your area of expertise, you click on the link and respond to the inquiry. Very easy.
Now keep in mind that a lot of people subscribe so you may have some competition. You can limit the e-mails to only topics that are in your wheelhouse. And you can normally set your watch by the arrival of the HARO e-mails and it’ll take all of a minute to quickly check the topics. And speed of response often matters; a lot of these people are on deadline.
Take a look and give it a try. But keep in mind that the reporters and bloggers are not necessarily your friends. If you’re not prepared — and that includes thinking through how what you’re saying will look in print, searchable and on the Internet for eternity. A few tips:
- Anticipate the questions you might get and prepare talking points.
- Keep those talking points short, but be quotable (i.e., don’t be boring).
- Avoid abusing your competitors.
Please feel free to add additional tips or ways to improve your chances of helping a reporter out.
HARO is entirely free to sources and reporters, and unlike a majority of social media services, is independently owned and funded and has been profitable since day one. In addition, HARO serves as a vital social networking resource for sources, reporters and advertisers who use the service at www.helpareporter.com .
