Help A Reporter Out HARO – How to Get Free Media Coverage

Learn how to get free media coverage using HARO. In this episode, we discuss how you can get free media coverage using Help a Reporter Out (HARO). We talk through what reporters look for, how to sign up and respond to inquiries, and the secrets to guaranteeing that journalists use you as a source in their articles and stories. This is one that you do not want to miss – also, help us pick out a name for this show!

Jack Shell 0:01
Welcome. This is the otter PR show. My name is jack shell. I’m a publicist with otter public relations. We’re a Florida based company, we serve all kinds of people that need basically pimped out. And I’m here with Jay Feldman. He is one of our founders along with Scott Bartnick. I like to call him the PR, Dr. Dr. Jay, welcome to our podcast jack.

Jay Feldman 0:24
Super excited to do this and episode one, we’re gonna have a lot of fun, it’s going to be super educational, right be dropping all of the insider secrets that we use at our PR so that our listeners can can get some of this insider media knowledge, knowledge, it’s going to be a lot of fun,

Jack Shell 0:39
fantastic, you know, we have somebody videos and all kinds of information already available on some of our social media channels, our tic Tock our Instagram, and of course, our YouTube channel. This is kind of a way for you to take these thoughts and ideas with you while you’re on the go as any good podcast dies.

Jay Feldman 0:59
Yep, absolutely. So on this one, super excited to drop some of our best knowledge in our first episode. So listeners, brace yourselves and take out some notebooks. This is gonna be fun, excited to talk about this stuff. We were discussing, help a reporter out or Haro, back in her office suite earlier today, Jake, let us know a little bit more about this so we can inform our audience. Sure. Before diving into Haro, I just want to pre face that this is a technique that we use at our PR most good PR agencies do. But you don’t need a PR agency to use Haro to get that media coverage because it’s free. Yeah. And what horo essentially is, is it’s a network of journalists and reporters, because they can’t just write pieces. They’re not experts at everything that they write about. They need experts, they need CEOs, they need subject matter experts in various topics. So Haro is where they go to get sources for articles for online pieces of Media TV, that they’re putting together where they need to quote somebody who is an expert in that topic to bring legitimacy and authority to that piece of coverage. And how Haro works is you enter into a pool, you either say I’m a journalist, or I’m a publicist. And the journalists will request specific types of experts with specific questions to this pool. And on the other side of that there are the sources and the publicists who are looking at this in a feed. And this is one of the ways that we get coverage for our clients, because our publicists are consistently monitoring this feed. And it really is first come first serve with the best expert. So we are on top of it, every time these reports come out, these requests come out. And there’s a specific way that you can kind of act on it in order to maximize your chance of coverage. And we’ll get into that soon. But it really is a cool and powerful tool.

Jack Shell 2:48
I’m excited about it personally, because one of the clients that we’re working with here at otter PR is a cryptocurrency client, and one of our other publicists within our facility said, Hey, jack, I’ve got horo, I help a reporter out, I go, well help me out with that. And then I was able to hook our client up with someone else looking to do a story about them, which only further amplifies their message and their brand.

Jay Feldman 3:13
Yeah, and you know, the best part about this is, is typically it’s going to be really high journalistic integrity, top tier publications, because they’re looking for experts. So when you are able to get this coverage, not only are they coming to you, but typically it’s going to be one of the higher tier more impressive types of coverage that you’re going to get. And not only that, ideally, you know, once your if that if your client is able to deliver their expertise and do a good job, it’s not going to be a one time thing, it could be an ongoing source of coverage for the lifetime of that relationship.

Jack Shell 3:46
And this, this particular individual is with Adweek. So you know, right on this is this is a big publication, and big service. And this is what we offer our clients all the time here at otter public relations, or otter PR, of course, for short. We do so much in terms of pimping out so many brands, I use the word pimping out, is that okay to say that, I mean, that’s kind of what we do, we pimp them out. their clients

Jay Feldman 4:09
need someone to pimp them out. I don’t want to do it on their own.

Jack Shell 4:13
So, I mean, they come to us because we have the ability to reach out to 1000s of sources. It’s incredible when you go online to some of our sources that to find out that there’s a publication, like you listen to a podcast right now, there’s a podcast for everything out there. We have the ability to hook our clients up with podcasts, and, of course, digital sources, magazines, in addition to more traditional forms of media, like television, and radio, how do we how do we do all that, Jay?

Jay Feldman 4:42
It really is a relationship game. Yeah. And it’s building relationships. The longer you do this, the longer you respond, the longer longer that you deliver for these journalists and reporters and sources, the better that better and stronger that relationship becomes. So it really is, how long you in the game and how how good are you at networking and providing value for those reporters and for those journalists, and there’s a lot of different ways that you can provide value. And this is important for anyone listening who wants to utilize things like help a reporter out as well. There’s going to be a lot of people responding to these requests. So what’s going to make you stand out? A lot of times your expertise isn’t enough. I really good kind of trick to landing these opportunities and use this for your clients to jack is if you have a client with an audience, whether that be a newsletter, RV audience, a social media audience, or just a significant individual who’s well networked, make sure that you lead with that. pimp them out, like you said, they have someone that an audience where they’re going to share this piece of coverage with a lot of these journalists and reporters are paid by how well how much traffic and shares that their pieces of coverage get. So if they’re interviewing an expert with 10 million followers on social media, and that expert says, Yeah, I would love to be your source. I’d also love to help by sharing this piece of piece of media, once it’s complete, I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a long relationship with that reporter.

Jack Shell 6:02
You have to look beyond traditional forms of media to get those sources these days. And sometimes a source can be somebody who’s an online influencer, someone who’s on Instagram who has a million followers or someone with a YouTube channel. How do you go about finding those people? Yeah, you

Jay Feldman 6:20
know, it’s true. And it’s funny, you know, what makes someone an expert, I used to be PhDs and degrees. Now, I think the most read Wall Street financial blog is by someone with no traditional financial education crazy. And that’s the case across so many different categories and industries. So really like what makes someone an expert, you might be an expert, and not even know it. There’s health coaches, and health influencers, all over social media that have no traditional health experience, but have some of the most well trafficked health blogs out there. Dr. X is a chiropractor. He’s got the Number One Health website in the world. absolutely incredible.

Jack Shell 6:55
So we talk about thought leaders a lot. And this is kind of what your dovetail dovetailing into here, I imagined, the term thought leader is a new buzz term, you know, how do you become a thought leader?

Jay Feldman 7:06
Yeah, how do you become a thought leader, there’s a lot of trajectories, you know, one, you can stay in school forever, get all the PhDs and degrees. And that’s super helpful. Obviously, that helps you jumpstart the credibility button. So people automatically take you seriously, if you’re well educated. But then having an audience in a specific topic is almost more important. If you’re a double board certified physician, and you have 5000 followers. And then you have a health coach sitting next to him with 10 million followers, who’s the expert who, right? where people are gonna want to quote in their article who’s gonna, who’s gonna, who are they gonna want on the interviews? It’s kind of a crazy thing. When someone

Jack Shell 7:42
has a million followers on their Instagram, and they seem to be an expert on something by Gosh, that’s a pretty good leader of thought if he asked me,

Jay Feldman 7:51
yeah, no, I agree. And when you’re going back to Haro, that’s essentially what these reporters are looking for. They’re looking for experts are looking for thought leaders. And if you don’t think you’re one, just you know, take a step back, because they come in many forms, you might be a thought leader without even knowing it.

Jack Shell 8:04
Somebody who cooks on a regular basis could be a thought leader in the kitchens, someone who likes sports, a lot could be a thought leader in terms of sports, you could really be a thought leader in any kind of category. There is

Jay Feldman 8:15
Yeah. And also going back to Haro, there’s a lot of different category requests out there. You’d be surprised the diversity of questions that are asked do you had one on crypto today? Yeah, to wonder there may have been a request for a sex therapist. You know what one under it, it may have been some ecommerce marketing guru. It’s just so diverse and so fertile, for anyone to come in and just look, look and see what’s going on. What are those requests?

Jack Shell 8:40
What’s exciting about this role for me in terms of being a publicist without our PR is the things I am learning on the job. And we’re all doing this and we’re all hyperactive and excited to gain information because I’ll tell you, I didn’t know anything about cryptocurrency until I came to work here. And now in the last several weeks, I have done a deep dive into this category to help my client out and to get their information publicized and in front of the media, and you kind of have to do that and we get so excited to learn new things and we cover such a broad variety of topics here at auto PR that not only are our reporters excited to hear from us, but we are learning along the way and which also helps our clients out in the end.

Jay Feldman 9:23
And I am excited that you’re learning cryptocurrency never been a better time right? Yeah. Most most of people my parents age not that you’re there not not even close jack. Just a couple years ahead. But anyways, cryptocurrency super exciting. We’re not going to go into it on this show. Now jack is going to be an investor very soon we’re going to guide him along this journey. All because of otter PR and the clients that he’s working with.

Jack Shell 9:47
If my wife approves, I should say what crypto huh. You know, not everybody’s in on it. But hey, it’s it’s all we’re taking a look at. We cover so many different topics and kinds of clients at otter PR, we talked about thought leaders, entrepreneurs is another subject that we get involved in. Tell us more about that, Jane.

Jay Feldman 10:08
Yeah, so and this is makes up about 50 60% of our clientele now, which is not just entrepreneurs, but CEOs that want to build their personal brands, which is so important nowadays, for anyone who’s starting a business, specifically in a service space, and building that personal brand for entrepreneurs, for CEOs. so important. And just by nature, by starting a business, you are a thought leader, you’re a thought leader, whatever your business is, you’re automatically going to be looked at as a thought leader, because you’re, you know, the leading the pack for whatever service or product your businesses provide. You’re a thought leader in that space, but also in the entrepreneurial space, you started a business, you’ve gone through that journey. So now you’re an expert, and entrepreneurship and business, maybe not as much as so many, some some people, right, but to a degree. And you know, with just kind of jumping back into horo, I will want to, I do want to say that for a lot of people listening to this, you don’t need to be a publicist to take advantage of something like Haro, you can be an individual, you can be an entrepreneur, you can be a thought leader, and you can sign up to get these notifications and respond to them. You don’t need credentials, this is something that you can do. Granted, it’s time consuming. And there’s a lot of tricks and ways to go about it to guarantee success. But this is something that you can take advantage of for free. Why would somebody want to do this who was involved in a PR agency? Yeah, so an individual who wants media coverage and grant and maybe doesn’t want to pay the fee to be working with a publicist and have somebody doing this for them because it’s time consuming. And it takes a level of expertise right to media to communicate with the media, there’s certain ways to talk to them. There are certain things that we know that they want to hear that won’t get ignored in their inbox. And then the follow up being able to continuously give that reporter and journalist everything that they need to use you correctly. Not misquote you make sure that your presence is all positive on online because you may respond to a request and you might regret it later. I have seen that happen a few times as well. So definitely takes it is a profession. And it is a level of expertise. And something to be said about hiring an expert to do this.

Jack Shell 12:15
And I feel that you’ve led into a topic that will be discussed at a future podcast about keeping your nose clean online. Because as we’re talking about becoming a thought leader, you really wouldn’t want somebody to bite you in the rear end because of something that you said in the past that may discredit you, as a leader of thought in your specific topic.

Jay Feldman 12:35
You got it, we’re gonna be having a lot of fun, canceled culture, reputation management, active crisis communications, crisis planning, as well as Media Relations and some of this fun stuff like personal branding, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. There’s a lot to get to get to here in this discussion here on the otter PR show. And boy, do we have How much time do we have on this thing? Oh, let me do a few more minutes here. And just for the listeners listening to this first episode, I appreciate your loyalty. We are in the process of coming up with a more official name. Bring it to you in the next couple of episodes.

Jack Shell 13:12
Would it be possible to allow the listeners to vote on a name? Yeah, sure. It’s make it a little bit more interactive? I don’t know.

Jay Feldman 13:21
Yeah, well, we’ll put some names together and have them have them maybe decide. It’ll be a maybe we’ll pick on like the 10th episode and make it fun like that. Fantastic. Love it. So kind of wrapping things up people who are listening to this episode, like how do I get involved? How do I sign up for Haro? How do I get these requests? Let’s get into that. And this is something that you went through today.

Jack Shell 13:40
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so I got a horo from one of our fellow publicists in our office, and then I reached out, and I’m still waiting on a reply. But I think that this is really gonna work out considering the client that we’re working with today fits exactly what they’re looking for. So this is true horo, I

Jay Feldman 13:58
think my definition, absolutely. And and if you want to sign up on your own, it’s help a reporter.com. It’s actually a sub service through scission. We also use as one of our PR tools. And you can sign up either as a source or a journalist. So for you, you’d be a source if you want to log in and create an account. And you’re really just get email updates every day with topics and questions from journalists. And if one fits you, you email that journalist and you wait and you keep your fingers crossed, then it’s it’s pretty simple and it’s genuinely effective, hoping to find a Haro about digital signs and other one of my clients right now writing this down to

Jack Shell 14:37
Jay, this is exciting to learn all this I’m learning right along with many of our listeners right now about public relations and how the industry works too. And and about how I can better help our clients too. So this is really exciting for me as we go through this journey together.

Jay Feldman 14:50
Yeah, man, you couldn’t have asked for a better host Jack’s got years of experience in radio, as you can probably tell from his voice.

Jack Shell 14:57
Yeah, I did radio and I’ve been telling people stories on the radio for a long time more than half my life. So the opportunity to come here and tell the stories of our clients at otter PR is a very exciting new venture for me. And I couldn’t ask to work with a more exciting group of young people who are really, really thought leaders in this field.

Jay Feldman 15:19
We’re excited to have you jack. Alright, let’s wrap up this first episode. I thought this was really well thought it was fun. I think we we learned something here. And the listeners did too. What do you think?

Jack Shell 15:28
I mean, pretty good for a couple of guys just walked into a room we’ve never used before and started talking behind a couple of microphones. You know, I’d say Dr. Jay, you’re quite the Pro.

Jay Feldman 15:36
I appreciate that. listeners. If there’s any topic that you do want to hear more of or any feedback on this episode. Let us know happy to adjust the content and what we talked about based on your needs and wants and we’re here for you

Jack Shell 15:47
and we’ll have some tasty recipes and upcoming episodes and you know, fantastic housekeeping tips. Of course it just getting back to Jay Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Check us out again next week for another fantastic episode of the soon to be renamed otter PR show. JACK shell J. Feldman. See you soon.

Meet The Host

Jack Shell

Jack Shell

Jack Shell is a seasoned media professional with over twenty years of experience writing and has been an air personality on some of America’s biggest radio stations. He is a creative mind, a voice-over talent, a writer, a gourmet cook, and daddy to two cats.

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