• My HARO success rate is 14.3% using this guide
  • Include my actual pitching template that you could plug in right away
  • Insider tips to improve your pitch and increase your success rate

What is HARO?

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out, a website matching journalists with experts. You sign up via HARO to receive email from journalists, and answer their queries.

If the journalist picks your answer, he/she will likely credit your website once the article is published => Hence, backlinks built.

The Homepage of HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Sign Up for HARO:

HARO sign up is pretty straightforward. Use your email to create an account with HARO, and fill in the information. Once finished, you’ll start receiving emails from HARO, in 3 time slots (Eastern time):

  • 5:35 a.m
  • 12:35 p.m
  • 5:35 p.m
Example of the queries of HARO (sent to your email)

Tips for this part:

  • Use a professional and custom domain email to sign up for HARO. Ideally in this form: {first_name}@{domain.com}. Who do you think the journalist will trust more? A generic gmail, or a custom domain email?
  • Take note of the above timeslot where HARO emails are sent. The quicker you reply, the higher the chance your response will get picked by the journalists.

Set Up Your Pitch Properly:

You’ll come to the main part of the HARO campaign: The pitching.

As mentioned above, when the email comes, you look through it to see which queries you could respond to. Here’s an example of one particular query:

All the query has these common attributes:

  1. Name of the Journalists => Always address the journalist by their name in your response
  2. Category: What is the topic of the query
  3. Email: Send to this email, and the journalist will receive your response. This is to protect the journalist’s email from being exposed.
  4. Media Outlet:
  5. The actual query: The query may contain multiple questions. Ensure to answer all of them. Use bullet points and spacing liberally to make your answer as easy to read as possible.

When you identify the query that you could answer, now it’s time to write the pitch. Here’s the format that I use at my agency HARO Guy, that converts 14.3% of the time.

The Pitching Template

—– Start of Template ——

Hi {first_name},

My name is {persona_name}, the {title} of {website_name}. I’m writing to answer your question on {topic}, as I {quick_summary_of_why_I_qualify_to_respond}.

{the_actual_response – Use bullet points and spacing liberally to make sure your answer is easy to read as possible}

Here’s my information:

  1. Name: {name}
  2. Website: {website}
  3. Avatar: {link_to_avatar}
  4. Twitter Link: {link_to_twitter}
  5. LinkedIn: {linkedin_link}

Best Regards,

{name}

{title} of {website_name}

—– End of Template ——

Here are my additional tips to maximize the success chance of your pitch:

  • Stay clear of the obvious answer: Always strive for originality. Do not answer with the first answer that comes to your mind. Dig deeper, and try to deliver the “Wow, I’d never think of that” response from the journalist.
  • Utilize story telling: You could use a story to illustrate the point you make. It helps you stand out.

Conclusion:

The above is the actual guide I made for my team (HARO Guy) to deliver HARO links to our clients.

We’ve landed hundreds of links for our clients using the exact template I share with you.

In case you are aware of the power of HARO and how it could benefit your site, book us to land you powerful HARO links to uplift your website rankings and performance.

P.S. I started a Facebook Group to support you in getting HARO links. As the group is new, I can answer all your questions related to HARO link building, content marketing, or anything related to SEO (my full time job is SEO Manager).

==> Join the group here! <==