HARO or Help A Reporter Out is a platform used by many journalists to acquire information through the help of crowdsourced answers, quotes, stories, or interviews from different types of individuals with specific expertise. These will be used for their contents and articles intended to be published online. 

On the other hand, in exchange for their contributions to those specific articles, journalists will feature them and give them credit through backlinks. If you are someone who wants to give a contribution, you need to subscribe to HARO first in order for you to receive a round-up of queries every day. Now, what are the effective ways for you to get press coverage? Here are some tips: 

1. Target queries that fit your expertise. 

This is the first thing you should put in mind when utilizing HARO. Don’t just randomly answer questions that are out of your scope because there’s a tendency that journalists will only find your answer irrelevant. There are multiple questions from different categories, choose the ones that fit your role. 

2. Make them notice your subject line. 

Journalists receive hundreds of emails in their inboxes on a daily basis. Subject lines are the first thing that they notice, so, don’t lose them on the subject line. It should be noticeable so they won’t mistake it for another unnecessary email. Here’s a tip, including the title of their query on the subject line so they will directly know it’s from HARO. 

3. Use an easy-to-read format. 

Construct your email in an organized manner. Use a clear formatting, clean font, and readable font size. Now, begin by addressing the journalist by his or her name if it’s provided. Then, provide a brief summary or a teaser of your expertise. Then, directly provide what you can contribute to the query. If necessary, you can use bullet points or bold texts to emphasize highlights or important information. Lastly, provide personal information about what company you represent.

4. Keep it short yet informative and straightforward. 

Since journalists receive hundreds of emails every day, they won’t really have the time to read long and hanging contributions. What would be much better is to make it simple yet direct to the point. Avoid using flowering words. Answer the query without any fluff and don’t add information that doesn’t add value to the whole content. Every sentence that you include should be purposive and is worth it to be featured. 

5. Use a link-building service.

Of course, not all of us have the time to answer queries and keep HARO’s best practices in mind. It’s easy to see that using HARO can be time-consuming, but it’s definitely rewarding as well. But if you just don’t have hours to spare going through emails every day, another great option is to use a HARO link building service. This way, you will still get press coverage for your business without diving into the nitty-gritty.

Final Words 

Those are just some important tips that you should really apply when you’re new to using HARO. Along the way, you’ll learn a lot more and discover different techniques on how you can capture a journalist’s interest. Just keep in mind that purposive content is what they aim for so make it your top priority.

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