Peter Shankman - Help A Reporter Out

Learning is human nature. Even if your not plugged in to the working world, chances are you know something about something - and this is precisely where Help A Reporter Out™ comes in.

Peter Shankman, founder of HARO and author of the PR book Can We Do That?, has put together a website that brings together reporters and people with all types of specialized knowledge. By registering at the Help A Reporter website, you will receive regular email inquiries from reporters looking to interview people on specific topics.

This service provides a great opportunity to develop a relationship with one or more media sources. This is a fabulous way for a small business owner to be quoted as an expert and obtain some PR in the process.

And guess what? If you do a good job at helping a reporter out, they just might pass on your name to someone else. What starts as a few minutes of your time helping out a journalist can grow to become a great source of leads for your business.

An Interview With Peter Shankman

Peter Shankman
Founder of HARO

All you need to do is to identify the leads that are appropriate to your products and services and reply to them.

It is very important that you match your knowledge and expertise to what the journalist is requesting. Once you have a match, respond quickly and succinctly as there will be plenty of others responding to the same inquiry.

In order to understand this service a little better, I recently interviewed Help A Reporter Out™ founder Peter Shankman.

Corte Swearingen: Peter, your site www.helpareporter.com matches news sources with reporters. Tell us, what was the motivation for developing the site?

Peter Shankman: I ran a PR firm for 10 years before starting HARO. The majority of my time was spent helping reporters find sources - not to help me or get anything out of it for myself, but rather, just to be nice. Help A Reporter Out™ was born from the concept of "Being nice."

Corte Swearingen: A lot of small business owners I work with never even think to pursue PR as a form of marketing communications. They assume that PR is reserved for much larger corporations that can afford the time and money to hire an expensive firm. How can your site help small business owners that are working by themselves or have just a few employees?

Peter Shankman: We simply level the playing field. We have roughly 150 queries from all types of media each day - we level the PR playing field - for free - it's no longer just for large companies that can afford it. It's for anyone.

Corte Swearingen: How are you able to provide this service free of charge?

Peter Shankman: HARO has one small, four line ad at the top of each email. Those pay for the service so I can keep it free.

Corte Swearingen: Can you share any success stories of how a smaller business was able to use your service to garner favorable press attention?

Peter Shankman: Companies ranging from small one-person start-ups to fortune 100s have used HARO successfully. The key is simply to read what the reporter is looking for and answer correctly.

Corte Swearingen: Have there been any drawbacks to the service?

Peter Shankman: Only for those who pitch off-topic, or don't offer the reporter exactly what they need. If they do that, they get banned from HARO.

Corte Swearingen: How many reporters do you have registered on your site?

Peter Shankman: Over 30,000 reporters have used HARO in just over a year.

Corte Swearingen: I couldn't help but notice the tag under your name - "CEO, Entrepreneur, Adventurist." Give us a brief synopsis of your accomplishments in these three categories.

Peter Shankman: I'm a licensed skydiver who runs marathons, and has successfully started and sold two companies.

Corte Swearingen: Your site looks incredibly successful. According to Compete.com, you are pulling in very large traffic volumes. In addition, Yahoo! states the number of inbound links to your site at over 18,000 with an overall PageRank of 5. This is quite impressive. Did you work to acquire these links? What else have you done to build such a successfully trafficked site?

Peter Shankman: Word. Of. Mouth. End of story. Create something beneficial to people, and they'll tell everyone about it for you.

Corte Swearingen: Any marketing advice you'd like to offer the small business owner?

Peter Shankman: Your job is to make other people do your PR for you by providing great service for them.

Thanks to Peter Shankman, you can now build relationships with reporters no matter how small your business!