If you’re a savvy business owner and an expert in your field, getting quoted in articles is a great way to help more people know about you and your brand! Want to get more media mentions? Start by placing yourself as an authority figure on the web by having a website that clearly communicates your skills and services. Next, write educational blog posts and social media posts. Then, work on getting yourself some media mentions!

Getting yourself media mentions is not as tough or pricey as you might think. PR firms can do a LOT for exposure and making connections, but if you don’t have a big budget, don’t stress. Pitching yourself to a journalist is not as stressful as it sounds – keep reading!

One way to get free press is to sign up for HARO (which stands for “Help a Reporter Out”). We absolutely love HARO. They provide experts (like you) with media opportunities and these opportunities are delivered to your inbox. Best part, it’s FREE.

How HARO Works

First you sign up for a free account as a Source. (You can upgrade your account to get keyword alerts, but the free account works totally fine!). After you sign up, you will begin to get three sets of emails Monday through Friday with queries from journalists. You will have to read through these queries and see if there’s one that matches your expertise. If there is a query that matches your expertise, you’d have to pitch yourself via the email they provide. 🙂

What to Include When Pitching Yourself to a Journalist

  1. Answer all questions the journalist asks. Journalists receive many pitches so it’s important to be clear and succinct as possible. We suggest answering the questions in the body of the email and not uploading your responses as an attachment. Adding an attachment to an email is one extra step the journalist has to go through. Plus, since the email HARO provides is a masked email, we’ve noticed that sometimes the attachments don’t go through.
  2. Include external links to your website so the journalist can learn more about what you do.
  3. Include your contact info. The journalist might need to reach you with clarification questions. Journalists are usually working with a tight deadline, so put contact info you actually check.

If the journalist approves your content, they will add your advice in their article (yay!). Once the article is live, you can add it to your press page (click here for an example of how a press page looks like) and share it on social media and on your blog. Press is awesome because it elevates you as an authority figure in your field and it builds your credibility!

What If You Pitch Yourself to a Journalist and They Don’t Reply

The majority of the time when I pitch a client to a journalist, I don’t get a reply. They get so many replies, they don’t have time. So here’s what I do:

I sign my client up for Talkwalker Alerts. This is a free service that emails me whenever new content about my client’s name or business pops up on the internet.

Next is the waiting game. I usually wait about two months to hear from the journalist or to receive a notification from Talkwalker Alerts, letting me know my client’s expertise was published in the media. If no mentions happen after two months, I go back to the original email sent, paste part of the pitch on Google to see if any mentions about my client pops up. If it looks my client’s pitch wasn’t posted, then I use the content I sent to the journalist to compose a blog post for my client. Nothing goes to waste here! 😉

Through HARO, we’ve gotten clients and even our team in major publications like Women’s Health, U.S. News & World Report, Shape Magazine, and more. We heart HARO, big time.

To sign up for HARO, click here. (This is not an affiliate link..we are not getting paid for this. We just love HARO so much and wanted to share the love!)