Online marketing is very important. Without it, achieving exposure is impossible. People no longer turn to their high streets in search of products and services. Instead, they use the internet. If you do not market yourself online because of this then you won’t get as much custom.
One fantastic place to turn if building your business’s online presence interests you is HARO, formally known as Help a Reporter Out. HARO is an email service that connects journalists with industry leaders and experts, allowing them to share insights and boost brand and website visibility.
This post will tell you how you can use HARO to build exposure for your business.
Respond Quickly
Once you have signed up for HARO’s service you need to check your emails every few hours. When journalists get in touch they want responses immediately. If you don’t get back to them quickly they will move on. As soon as you receive an email reply and make a pitch. In case you are unsure of how HARO’s service works, journalists use it to get in touch with subject matter experts so they can write articles and blog posts about specific topics more effectively. In these posts, you get to briefly talk about your business (or you get a backlink). Â
Filtering Emails
Upon subscribing to the service you will immediately begin to receive hundreds of emails a day. The number of emails received can be overwhelming at times. Many of them will not even apply to you. A good way of dealing with incoming emails from HARO is to set up an email filter, sending specific emails to inboxes you have set up exclusively for them. You can do this by filtering emails with keywords. Then, when you do go to read your emails you will be able to avoid the ones that aren’t ideal for you or your business. The best email server to do this in is Gmail. Gmail has the most effective email filtration system of all of the leading email providers online today.
Creating Pitches
Journalists will send you emails to reach out to you, and when they do, you will have to pitch to them. Creating pitches is not particularly easy. In fact, it’s arguably one of the most difficult HARO-related tasks. Journalists become very good at pitching because it is an important part of their daily life but ordinary business owners like yourself tend to have no experience in it. As a general rule, your entire pitch should be summed up in a single sentence (your email’s title) and the most important information in it should be readable in the first paragraph. Keeping the most important information at the top of your pitches will keep journalists interested and engaged.
Showcasing Expertise
In your pitches, showcase your expertise. While in your email’s title and in the first paragraph you should summarise your pitch you also need to share information about yourself. Journalists are far more likely to work with accomplished business owners than newbies, mainly because it looks more authoritative. Be sure to showcase all of your achievements and share information about your individual business accomplishments, even if they are not related to the specific venture you are at the helm of now. Showcasing expertise will give the journalists you are pitching to more confidence that you are worth working with.
Unique Angles
When you are sending pitches, try and pitch them from unique angles. Journalists are always looking for stories that have not been done before. Unfortunately finding such stores is almost impossible today. Business owners interested in using HARO’s service, therefore, need to make sure that they have novel posts and article ideas. Ideas that have not been done 1,000,000 times before will be prioritized by journalists and given a lot more attention. Be sure to make clear in your pitch’s title that your idea is unique so that journalists pay attention right away.
Remain Consistent
Running a business is by no means easy. To achieve success as a business owner you will need to ensure that you are both consistent and persistent. Nothing comes easy in marketing. While you will begin getting responses almost right away you need to remain consistent and also need to know that you are not guaranteed to find perfect matches immediately. Over time, your pitches will get better and journalists will become more responsive and interested in what you have to offer. If you take anything away from this post, let it be that consistency is key if you want HARO to work for you.
Building a name for one’s business is not easy. In spite of how difficult exposure can be to achieve it’s still something you need to work towards. HARO is the ideal service for business owners like yourself who’re looking for attention.
