In June 2010, Peter Shankman sold Help A Reporter Out (HARO), his very popular website that matches reporters’ requests for sources with companies that could provide the information, to public relations software company VOCUS. Ever since, writers have wondered what effect the acquisition has had on the service.
When Frank Strong, a spokesman for the Lanham, Maryland, company commented on a recent post here that mentioned HARO, I took the opportunity to ask for an interview. He agreed and offered to include Shankman on the call.
Since the acquisition, there have been some changes and a lot of growth, but one thing Shankman is adamant about: he may have sold HARO, but he hasn’t sold out the journalists who rely on it. “We have no plans to charge anyone for HARO,” said Shankman, on the call from his office in New York City.
HARO was a hit with reporters almost since the two-year-old service launched. According to many writers, and as testimonials on the site attest, the service did better job of helping them find sources – often on very short notice – and provided a wider variety of sources than its main competitor, ProfNet.
It’s easy to see why Vocus was interested in HARO. Vocus owns PRWeb, a web-based press release service that competes with PRNewswire, which runs ProfNet. Adding HARO to Vocus’ other businesses would make them more competitive.
But lately, not all writers have been happy with HARO. At least a few have complained that queries take longer to post, the individuals or companies that reply to queries aren’t as on target as they used to be, and in some cases, responses are little more than spam. Given that Vocus sells software to PR firms to manage media contacts and campaigns, some writers have questioned whether the business is using HARO to collect their email addresses and selling them to agencies or other companies to use for email marketing purposes.
The basics of HARO haven’t changed, according to Strong and Shankman. HARO is and will continue to be free for journalists and sources. The service is supported by sponsors who pay $300 to $1,500 to place ads in one of three daily email blasts (some sponsors pay less than that based on volume discounts).
As for collecting and sharing writers’ information? “That question pisses me off,” Shankman says. Most queries are auto-forwarded and sent out with an anonymous email address, so nobody’s looking at them, he says. “Once your deadline is passed, your email dies, and is no longer linked to your account. That prevents you from getting spam from people who try to harvest” email addresses, he says.
The only time a HARO staffer – there are two in addition to Shankman – open queries is if isn’t filled out completely, is for a startup publication they can’t find online, or for a publication with an Alexa ranking above 2 million.
There are a couple other things that would cause HARO to hold or follow up on a query: if the writer is asking for products for free or if they’ve previously misrepresented themselves. “If you’re asking to have the latest gaming system sent to you to review for your blog, it’s not going to happen,” Shankman says. He also recalled an instance when a writer represented him or herself as being with CNN when in fact they were an assistant editor at a CNN affiliate.
What has changed about HARO:
- HARO is growing. Both the number of journalists using it and the individuals or companies that receive its 3X a day email blasts are up 15 percent since the acquisition.
- The number of writer queries has also risen and is now between 70 and 75 per email.
- HARO’s source pool has grown to approximately 150,000 companies, the majority of them small businesses.
The service’s rapid growth is one reason journalists my have to wait longer to see their queries go out, Shankman said. “If we sent out each one (immediately) we’d have 275 queries (per email) and no one would answer,” he says. If you’ve got an urgent deadline, mark your query as urgent, he said. Even if your query isn’t urgent, he suggests including a deadline that’s well in advance of your actual story deadline.
Writers who think they’ve been spammed should alert HARO’s staff by sending an email to flag@helpareporter.com, Shankman says. If HARO receives a complaint from a writer about an off-topic pitch or other problem, the source gets a warning. If problems persist, the source or the source’s agency could be banned from the service. According to Shankman, he’s banned 400 sources from the service in the past two and a half years, including two PR firms that are barred from ever using HARO again.
As far as the future is concerned, after Vocus bought out HARO, the company agreed to maintain the status quo for a period of time before considering making any modifications, Strong and Shankman say. That time has passed, and Vocus and Shankman now are discussing possibilities. While nothing’s set in stone, one they’re considering is adding a premium tier of service over and above the free HARO service. Whatever they end up doing, “We wanted to move methodically and make sure it’s well though out,” Strong says. “We want something that will be consistent with the free HARO.”
Coming on Wednesday: 6 tips for crafting a killer HARO query. Peter Shankman shares tips and tricks that writers can use to ensure they get the bes possible responses to their HARO queries.
The problem of queries not going out quickly is a real one for me. I’ve had to either drop HARO for some queries when I know I’ll get a better result from Profnet, or I’ve had to put in a deadline ahead of my real deadline. If I don’t, the query goes out at near to the last minute, which leaves me stuck. If I say I need a response by Tuesday, sending it on Tuesday doesn’t work. I understand that the number of queries may have become a problem for the service, but ultimately the journalists can’t care. If HARO isn’t responsive enough, no matter what the reasons, the writers will have to go elsewhere. And there are a lot of alternatives, either established or trying to start up.
Erik:
One of the tips that Shankman gave me, and that I will include in the follow up post on Wednesday, is to do exactly what you’ve started doing, that is, to include a deadline in your query that’s ahead of your real deadline. I agree with you that journalists can’t care about HARO’s inner workings. It’s a good reminder that as writers we shouldn’t rely on one channel for obtaining sources. There were umpteen different ways to find sources before HARO, and they’re all still there. HARO just made life a lot easier, but it’s probably safer to use it in addition to everything you used to use, or could be using.
Michelle
Michelle,
Doesn’t it seem completely screwy that the representative of the service says to game the system with a fake deadline because they otherwise they won’t run things in a timely manner?
Signed,
Perplexed.
I have seen Shankman speak, I have watched his meteoric rise, and I am one of those who believe the “Titanic t-shirts in Times Square” creation myth that started his path to success. I think he has a gift with ideas and he typically intends the best. In general, I’m a fan.
No matter how much I like Peter, however, the quality of HARO has declined for journalists—queries are met with dubious replies, timeliness is an issue. These appear to be the pains of a crowd-powered internet company unprepared for its own growth. I have no doubt that these issues will improve as growth stabilizes.
Unfortunately, however, the misuse of journalist’s contact information continues. I don’t believe Shankman is directly involved in this. The inappropriate distribution of contact information occurs either consciously by Vocus or via the shady tactics of desperate PR firms. In any case, the abuse may kill the company entirely. Vocus purchased HARO to compete with PRNewsWire’s ProfNet, but the merger has had the opposite effect—ProfNet’s popularity has instead resurged.
Of course, none of this really matters: Quora and Twitter are making all of these services obsolete. 😉
It’s an interesting perspective Ron, but Michelle got the story right in this blog post, both in terms of contacts and business motivations for the acquisition. I would be happy to address any concerns you might have.
Frank: Since this post went up I’m continuing to hear from writers – privately as many don’t want to leave a comment – that they get a lot of spam that they believe is the result of the Vocus-HARO relationship. Aside from HARO, is Vocus stepping up its efforts to cultivate writer/reporter email lists? Is there an easy way for writers to request to be taken off said lists? And if writers feel they’re being spammed by Vocus clients, is there a mechanism they can use to contact Vocus about it?
Michelle
Nice update on HARO. From the source perspective, my most sobering HARO moment was when I drafted a pretty good response to a “reporter” request on a reasonable business topic. It took 2-3 hours of my time, I lined everything up with a client spokesperson, and the response was sent the same day. Then, with no response from the “reporter,” I scanned deeper into the Web link from the query. Turned out I had lined up a business story source for a couple of Canadian teen-agers with a dream. Certainly my fault for not thoroughly vetting the “news site.” The fact is HARO does not limit any source (professional PR person/agency or a business) unless certain rules are broken. Likewise reporter wanna-bes can waste everyone’s time. HARO’s growth is great, but that also means it’s more of a numbers game these days — can you be the first out the gate with a response in the hopes of beating the other several hundred or thousands of responders. And regarding the off-topic pitches: seems simple enough just to not respond or delete the mail, same as my Canadian “reporters.” HARO now conceals your direct e-mail address, so you are protected. If Vocus is selling info or other details, I guess Shankman will have to do what he has done in the past: shame the company in public. And if Vocus wants to pitch or sell me its services, I have no problem with that. They actually do that already. The word “no” still works.
Ha – I just asked you on FB to comment here, not realizing you already had. Thanks!
There are actually limits Joel…to prevent exactly that from happening, and HARO took flack for it too (see this post: http://bit.ly/fOoPHu). Peter also discussed what these parameters were with Michelle on the interview.
Michelle, just read your latest and came back to review the comments here. I am only seeing now that I missed your response earlier.
Submitting a query does not put you on some list. Anyone that says, suggests or insinuates otherwise is flat out wrong. Doing so would tip the balance of the HARO community and diminish the value of what we acquired.
A part of Vocus’ motivation for acquiring HARO was to address this very issue, not contribute to it. Through HARO, we are doing something especially helpful for journalists, reporters and bloggers.
It’s also why we sponsor events like the SPJ. It’s why we spend time and money bringing in industry experts for educational events and Webinars for PR pros. It’s why we were the first of any of the dozen or so services like us in the space to put an unsubscribe button in by default. It cannot be removed. It is not negotiable. It’s in our interest and yours to work together better.
To be clear, I understand the frustration. I get literally 300 emails a day on one email account (I have three addresses), according to statistics from Xobni. Everything from story pitches from confused peers, to vendors pitching products for purchase. I get a lot of unwanted stuff from many media publications too.
You can see the time stamp on this comment. My alarm clock still goes off at 6:00 a.m.
Michelle, you have my contact information. Any writer that you know is having issues, feel free to give them my email, and I’ll personally look after them. If someone is really, really, really desperate, my cell is 202-352-5920.
Also, as I mentioned on our call, we also do have a dedicated hotline for journalists, reporters and bloggers. You’ll find a research team on the other end — all of them former reporters and journalists from print, ratio and TV — quite sympathetic to your needs:
http://www.vocus.com/content/journalisthotline.asp
Thanks for the additional information Frank. I agree that if writers are having spam trouble rather than just delete a message they should take whatever action available prevent getting something from the same source again.
MVR
Mr. Strong has not answered the question I am most interested in: Does or has Vocus in the past sold a list of journalists names and email addresses to PR firms? I have asked that question of every PR firm that has sent me spam in the last two weeks and every one that answered has told me that, yes, they purchased a list from Vocus. While entering a HARO query might not put you on their list, I registered a long time ago, so even when I wasn’t using HARO (and I didn’t use it for more than a year) I was getting spammed by PR companies. And for the record, the question I asked them was, “Could you tell me where you obtained my contact information?” I did not mention Vocus. They did.
Hi Carole, Vocus absolutely has a media database. It’s had this product since 1999, and perhaps a few years earlier. It is not connected to HARO. And Vocus does not sell “lists.” There is a clear description of how it works, and written for writers in the link I provided. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.
What interests me is that this service is marketed as ‘free’and being supported by sponsorships however when you sign on they ask you for what monthly payment scheme you want and offer no free trial period. Free? I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem to be worth the money. Sharon
It’s free for reporters to use to find sources, and always has been. I’ve never tried using it to promote myself so I am not acquainted with the fees they charge small businesses to read the daily mailings they distribute of reporters’ queries. Maybe someone else reading this knows more.
Michelle