If you’ve spent any time on our blog at all, you know how much we love HARO. It’s one of our favorite free PR tools. You just sign up, and 3 times a day, you get an email containing a huge list of queries from reporters looking for sources for their stories. It’s an easy way to find media opportunities and potentially land huge coverage for your brand. What’s not to love about that? It would be awesome if there were more sites like HARO that made it easy to receive journalist requests and pitch yourself as a source, right? Well, it turns out there are, and while HARO might be the cream of the crop, there are some other great tools out there for finding journalist requests.
- ProfNet—Like HARO, ProfNet is all about connecting journalists with expert sources for their stories. However, ProfNet requires a paid membership. According to the website, “journalists and bloggers send thousands of story leads every month to ProfNet users.” A membership entitles the subscriber to receive emails with journalist queries, an online profile to establish themselves as an expert, the ability to pitch journalists your expert perspective on trending, breaking news stories, and more.
- SourceBottle—While SourceBottle is another service that allows journalists source requests, what makes it unique is that these queries aren’t just emailed out to subscribers 2 times a day, they are also searchable through their website. It’s a great service that’s easy to use and can connect you to fresh requests you might not find through HARO or other similar services.
- PitchRate—Another service that allows experts to view media queries, PitchRate is unique in that it actually rates your pitch on a scale from 1 to 5 stars. Journalists can then review their pitches and sort them based on rating, ideally helping them find the most relevant pitches and best sources for their story. The only potential issue is that the ratings aren’t done by humans. They are generated based on how well keywords in the pitch match the tags set by the journalist, so that opens the door for some inaccuracy.
Note: Reporter Connection was previously one of the best alternatives to HARO, but the service has been discontinued.
What are some of your favorite alternatives to HARO? Did we leave any off the list? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (https://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Download your free copy of 7 Cheap PR Tactics for Success in Any Economy here: https://www.ereleases.com/free-offer/cheap-pr-tactics/