HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. It’s a feed of requests from journalists, bloggers, and other writers who need information for pieces they’re working on.
You can be that source of information. Simply sign up for the email feed, monitor the requests in your category, and respond with valuable information as fast as possible whenever you see a good opportunity.
This is a great link building and PR technique, especially for projects in their beginning stages. That’s because what matters are your credentials and the value of the information you provide, not your actual website or content on it.
Here are a few tips from my experience with HARO:
Check the publication. Avoid those that aren’t authoritative or are overly reliant on HARO.
Be picky. Only respond to requests where you can truly provide great information.
Respond as fast as possible. Many people are monitoring the same niche as you.
Get help. Don’t hesitate to bring colleagues on board if they’re more qualified to answer.
Stick to the script. Don’t deviate from the format the author is requesting.
Here’s an excerpt from a successful HARO submission in a roundup post published for an authoritative website relevant to what CDN77 is doing (a company I worked for in the past). I got the help of my former colleague because I wasn’t qualified to provide answers for the “best tools for system administrators”:
The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results.
Recommended reading: How to Build Backlinks and Get Press Using HARO
10. Build authority and links with newsjacking
Newsjacking is a reactive PR technique that relies on providing valuable information about current events to the media as soon as possible.
Unlike the previous HARO tactic, this requires monitoring what is happening in the world related to your niche and pitching your expert contribution to the news before they publish anything.
It’s one of the more advanced tactics, but the results can be amazing: