We’ve been featured in Reuters, bNet, Mashable,  Entrepreneur,  cNet, and more….all because of  HARO. Just in case you haven’t heard about HARO, it’s a handy tool that connects reporters to the stories they’re looking to cover (“Help a Reporter Out”). Each day, HARO sends out about 3 emails of curated requests from journalists who are looking for sources.

1) Timing is Everything

HARO goes out to over 30,000 people, so if you’re not one of the first to respond, chances are your submission will not get a glance. I’ve experienced this myself, since several months ago I put out a request on HARO looking for business owners to share their experiences with payment processing for a blog post I was writing. Guess how many responses I received? Over 100! Imagine my inbox about an hour after my query went out. First hand, I can tell you that fatigue set in after the first dozen responses, and many of them started to sound the same. It’s a pretty common phenomenon in psychology called the “primacy effect”–you tend to recall things in a list that are at the very beginning, especially when the list is quite long.

There is also something called the “recency effect”–the last items on a list are also remembered more prominently. Using these two heuristics, you can quickly see that either being the first to email a response, or one of the last means you may get noticed more frequently. Of course, since most queries are time sensitive, being last may not be the best strategy. I know people who get up at 5 am in order to be the first to respond to HARO. Not practical, but still something to keep in mind.

2) The Three P’s of a Good HARO Response

In crafting your response to the reporter, it’s important to be polite, practical, and pithy. Responses should be short, address the reporter’s question directly and relevant, useful information. Content can be presented as bullet points, links, or short sentences demonstrating knowledge. When I sent out a query, I was amazed at how much fluff I received back…people clinging to baseless responses with little merit, just for the sake of a possible link. If you don’t have a good answer, save yourself and the reporter time by not responding. It’s better to qualify yourself for good queries rather than responding to any possible one. Being pithy is also very important: limit the email to the most relevant information, and the reporter will contact you if they have more questions. A response that is short but sweet is much more likely to be picked up than a novel (no matter how novel!) length response.

3) Be Creative (but Practical!)

There are a set number of topics in which you have expertise, but don’t limit yourself when responding on HARO. When you see queries that you can add value to, go ahead and respond. For example, there are often requests for women in the workplace posts. I almost always respond, and have gotten a number of links from those responses. If I can point out practical resources for the query without promoting my own business, I will always do so just to be helpful (and position myself favorably for future correspondence). We once made a video about working out in the workplace that got us on the homepage of Bnet.

The overall point for is to always provide value when responding on HARO, if you’re not adding value, you’re only wasting your time, and the time of the reporter. Promoting your business blatantly is not adding value…using examples, links, bullet points, and providing resources are all tactics for a successful pitch. HARO can be a potent PR tool for scrappy startups…just make sure to keep these ideas in mind when crafting responses.

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