Mistakes Everyone Makes with HARO

Are you signed up to receive queries throughout the day on HARO (Help A Reporter Out)? If not, then you should be! HARO can be a great source for marketing and branding. Whether you use it to benefit you or your client’s brand, HARO has high potential to help you to share your story, skills, and expertise, and to help you to further promote yourself and/or your brand. Additionally, HARO can also help you to secure a link on a high-quality website for free which in turn can help you to boost your SEO marketing efforts.

However, many people that are signed up for HARO don’t use it half as often as they ought to. Using HARO for marketing isn’t easy. In fact, it could quite possibly be one of the most difficult marketing tools/strategies available. For this reason, many marketers are choosing to abandon and ignore HARO, believing it is a “lost cause” and that they will “never get a response”. But truth be told, HARO is far from being a “lost cause”. It can actually be pretty easy to get your pitch accepted and to market yourself or your brand on HARO!

I pitch to HARO whenever I see anything that captures my attention. Lately, this has meant responding to at least one HARO query a day and I’ve been receiving quite a few responses! I have gotten links published on high quality websites for clients, been quoted on industry-relevant websites for sharing my marketing predictions, and even had my story featured in a recently published novel all thanks to successful HARO pitches.

However, learning how to use HARO didn’t happen overnight. I too, made quite a few mistakes over the years and experienced lack of responses or disgruntled reporters telling me they were “not interested” in what I had to say. But no mistake is a failure if it teaches you something. Here are 5 of my most common mistakes that I have seen many of my peers make as well.

1.     Not responding quickly enough. Most of the queries on HARO aren’t coming from entrepreneurs that are their own boss with their own flexible schedules; they are reporters working for major corporations with tight deadlines. They don’t have time to wait around for your response; they need responses immediately. Look at the bottom of the query and you’re likely to find a deadline. Most of the time the deadlines are for later that evening, but the sooner you respond, the better. In this case it pays to be one of the first responders because that helps to guarantee that your response will be seen. HARO reporters typically receive hundreds if not thousands of responses to their pitch so they don’t have time to read all of them. The sooner you respond, the better your chances are. Memorize the times when the HARO queries will be emailed to you. For me it is typically 5am, 12:30pm, and 6pm.

2.     Writing too long of a response.  To reiterate what I mentioned in the first point I made, HARO reporters are busy people working on tight deadlines. They don’t have time to sit down and read your 3-page response to their pitch. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. If they are interested and need more information, they’ll follow up. Most of the time the HARO reporters are only looking for a response between 3-7 sentences (or 1 paragraph) long.

3.     Not giving the reporter what they want. This may seem like an obvious one, but you’d be surprised by the number of times people respond to HARO reporters with irrelevant pitches. The reporters are usually pretty upfront about what they are looking for. For example, a reporter might be looking to cover a health related story in the future, but they could be looking for direct quotes from a doctor or a nurse. If you’re a health reporter but not a doctor or a nurse, then they don’t want to hear from you. Don’t waste your time responding to an irrelevant query thinking you’ll “get lucky”. Trust me, you won’t.

4.      Not being original enough. Why should a HARO reporter publish your story or quote you and not someone else? They receive hundreds if not thousands of responses, so be sure to respond in an original and unique way that makes your response stand out from the crowd.

Bustle.com was recently seeking stories from women who lost something or had an item not returned to them after a breakup. There are many common items people lose during a breakup including clothes and if the relationship is more serious, perhaps an engagement ring or even a house or pet. But I knew Bustle was looking for something a bit more original than that. I recently ended my long-term relationship and was looking to poke fun of it so I decided to reply. I could’ve taken the basic “safe” route and replied by saying “I lost a book I leant to my ex” or “I lost my backup cellphone charger”, but instead I decided to capitalize on the Christmas season and tell my true but strange story of how I lost my Elf on the Shelf. This original approach paid off, as my story was published, earning me permit bragging rights (who doesn’t want to be quoted on Bustle.com?!?)

5.      Not taking risks. Many times you’ll see a HARO query from an anonymous source. Many marketers tend to shy away from these queries because they don’t know where their story or quote will be used if they respond to it. However, it’s worth replying and taking that risk. By not replying you could be missing out on a huge opportunity!

I once saw a HARO query for an anonymous source looking for some household management tips. I was doing marketing work for a maid company at that time that was looking for guest blogging opportunities, so I decided to take the risk and pitch to it about the benefits of using a maid company. I thought it could be a stretch and I honestly didn’t think anything would come from it. However, a few days later I received an email from SheKnows.com that they were going to use my pitch for their story! I was able to secure a very high quality, relevant link free of charge for my client from this pitch.

I have learned that often times these anonymous sources are actually pretty big companies like SheKnows. They choose to be anonymous with their queries, because this prevents them from receiving too many responses. If people see that a big company name is looking to speak with people they will often pitch irrelevant ideas or stories simply in an effort to get their name mentioned. Being anonymous helps them to receive fewer but more relevant responses and it can also mean for you less competition since fewer people will be responding.

Have you been using HARO for yourself or your business? What have you learned from your experiences with HARO? When you avoid making these 5 common mistakes you’ll be much more likely to receive a positive response from the reporter(s). Happy pitching!