How To Get Your Business Featured In Major News Outlets For Free

Getting a major media placement for your business can take months. You do research, craft story ideas, track down journalists, pitch and follow-up, and even then a story isn’t guaranteed.

But sometimes, a major placement happens literally overnight, and it can make a huge impact on your business.

In the last month alone, I’ve been quoted here, here and here. All of those articles not only provide a ton of valuable information to readers, they drive traffic to my website.

These placements all resulted from using the same tool. It’s the same tool I’ve used to get my clients featured on The Huffington Post and in Entrepreneur Magazine, among others.

We’ll get to this tool in a minute, but first I want to make sure you understand why media placements are so valuable.

The Benefits

If you’re like me, you work overtime on your business. You create content, put it out there, engage with your customers, and sell your heart out—but there’s one problem.

All of that content is coming from you—a biased source. Obviously you’re going to talk up your business, because it’s your business!

Third-party reviews and quotes mean so much more in the eye of the customer. If the New York Times writes about you, it carries so much more weight than you writing about yourself.

It’s also free publicity. Sure, you’re reaching plenty of eyeballs on your own, but being mentioned in a media article brings your name in front of a whole new set of people who might not have found you otherwise.

Finally, if you’re featured in an online publication, it usually comes with all-important backlinks. In short, a backlink is when another website links to yours. Pretty simple.

Except in the eyes of Google, backlinks are big. When powerful, high-traffic sites link to yours, Google thinks hey, this site must be pretty legit. You get major credit in the eyes of the search engine, and higher placement in the search results.

Organic search is a huge traffic source for most small businesses!

Okay. So now that you’re clear on the benefits of media placements, let’s talk about the must-have tool to get them—no publicist required.

HARO

Have you ever seen a segment on the Today Show where they’re talking about a topic, let’s say extreme weight loss? They always have a man or woman on the show who has some incredible weight loss story.

Ever wondered how they found that person who lost 300 pounds?

One of the tools they use is HARO.

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a service that helps reporters find people to feature in their stories.

Every day, journalists submit queries to HARO with details about the kind of stories they’re working on. HARO then sends three daily email blasts, morning, afternoon and evening. Each of them are filled with these queries from journalists looking for sources.

Who answers these queries? You guessed it—everyday people like me (and soon, you) who subscribe to the HARO email blasts.

How To Use It

Here’s how it works.

Subscribe to the email blasts (for FREE) by creating an account here. Once your account has been registered, you’ll begin receiving the daily email blasts: 5:35 am, 12:35 pm, and 5:35 pm.

Here’s what they look like.

It’s super simple, just a long list of topics broken up by category. Clicking on any topic will take you further down the email to a brief description. It includes the reporter’s name, outlet, email address and specifics on what he or she is looking for.

Here’s one I recently answered.

The reporter is asking people to weigh in on how technology has made an impact on marketing. Right up my alley.

I typed up my response, included my contact details and sent it her way. If she’s interested in chatting further, I’ll probably hear back within the next day or two.

How easy is that?

But here’s the key.

When you get the HARO emails, you must open and read them.

I’ll say it again.

Open and read your HARO emails.

It literally takes three minutes to skim through and see if there’s anything appropriate for your business. Oftentimes, there’s not.

Depending on your line of work, you’ll find about one relevant lead for every four or five HARO emails. So sometimes you’ll find nothing, delete the email and be on your merry way.

Other times, you’ll find a query that’s perfect for you to answer.

Then it’s time to take the next step.

Crafting the Perfect Response

The thing about HARO is you’ve got to be quick. These are journalists on a deadline, that’s why it’s so important to open and read them as soon as you see them in your inbox.

If I have a HARO email from yesterday that I didn’t get to, I just delete it because most of the deadlines will have already passed.

The early bird gets the worm, as they say, and the early HARO source usually gets the placement.

When you see a query you want to respond to, do it quickly, and follow these guidelines:

Keep it short.

As a former journalist myself, I can say that reporters love nothing more than when a source makes things simple.

Don’t write out some long introduction explaining why you’re writing to them. HARO emails come back to the reporter marked in a specific way, so they already know what you’re writing about when they open your email.

The same goes for introducing yourself. A one-line bio with a link to your website will do. If they want to know more about you, they’ll Google you or respond asking for more information.

Answer their question directly.

Write your answer to their question directly in the body of the email, and write in complete sentences they can quote directly if they so choose.

Here’s the response I sent for the query I linked above.

Don’t pitch your product unless the query specifically asks for products.

If the query calls for doctors to share tips for boosting energy, don’t write in hawking your energy drink.

Instead of selling, focus on real opportunities to share your expertise in your niche.

And if you sell a product? Don’t you worry; there are plenty of queries asking for product submissions for just about every holiday.

The Payoff

As with nearly any business endeavor, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I’d guess that I answer 7-10 HARO queries per week for myself and my clients, and it results in about one placement per month. Consistency is the game to get results.

So, you’ve got all the instructions. All it takes from you is a few minutes of your time every day. Are you willing to make the investment?