Dern’s PR Tips

For journalists, especially (us) freelancers who get assignments spanning a range of topics and beats, one of the biggest (solvable) challenges is finding sources (appropriate people to talk to for quotes, facts, background information, etc.)
(Harder-to-solve challenges include finding more work, and finding assignments that pay reasonable rates.)

In particular, finding “users” — people doing/using the topic — and sometimes, finding third-party experts — consultants, analysts.  Finding vendors — companies who make/sell/provide the products or services involved is comparatively easy (although to be honest, some vendors often don’t respond or make themselves available to the press).

I write mostly technology-oriented articles, where, sometimes, vendors can provide names of users/customers.  But not always, especially if they’re selling consumer products, or sales go through resellers.

When I remember to do it, Google and Wikipedia have become part of my initial topical research, to get up to speed, learn key terms, identify likely players.  (Google isn’t, of course, a source per se, and unless nothing better presents itself, ditto Wikipedia.)  But finding user and expert sources, or vendors in an area I’m unfamiliar with, has remained a challenge.  I often query one or two mailing lists I’m on, do my best to remember who I’ve run into at trade shows, will ping some of my colleague friends.  I’ve tried via LinkedIn. But finding sources remains a bear, as a rule.

What’s helping out is the HARO (Help A Reporter Out) web site, which helps match up requests and sources, from Peter Shankman.

It’s simple: If you want to be a source, sign up at <http://www.helpareporter.com/>.  And “If you’re a JOURNALIST who’s LOOKING for sources, submit a query at <http://www.helpareporter.com/press/>.

According to Shankman’s (from the HARO site), “I built this list because a lot of my friends are reporters, and they call me all the time for sources. Rather than go through my contact lists each time, I figured I could push the requests out to people who actually have something to say.”

Shankman started HARO up in March 2008, on Facebook.  The sources list quickly exceeded Facebook’s 1,200-name limit; within a year, Shankman had nearly 70,000 members (including me).

Shankman sends out up to three email messages a day, labeled with [shankman.com] in the subject line, with anywhere from 15 to 30 queries per message, topically sorted (based on the checklist on the web query entry page).

There’s no charge to HARO queriers or sourcers.  Shankman is covering costs and generating revenue, currently through in-message text ads.  “HARO is profitable,” according to email I’ve just swapped with him. “We’re generating a fair amount of revenue.”

I’ve now used HARO three or four times.  It works.  In fact, so/too well … one recent query got at least 150 potentially useful replies!  (I’ve learned to include an “include HARO <topic keywords> <your name/etc>” in the subject line, to make it possible to organize and search within my mail files.)

I know there are a growing number of other ways to find sources.  I’m sure that there’s some way to leverage Twitter, etc…. assuming the folks I want to reach are on Twitter, etc.

But for now, HARO is so useful that I need to try and only use it when I’ve exhausted my other avenues; I don’t want to make it my default first port of query.

Thanks, Peter Shankman!