Content Generation Idea: HARO - Help a Reporter Out

Hello all! I hope you've had a nice Bank Holiday weekend! Now all the fun and games are over, it's time to have some more fun and games but in a different way. By continuing our 101+ content generation ideas! And today we're going to be talking about one website that can be awesome to use for coming up with new content generation ideas!

The website we'll be talking about today for this reason, is one that can not only help you to come up with content generation ideas, but one that can also help you to build some recognition to yourself, your site or your business too. The website is known as HARO (Help A Reporter Out).

Now the way that HARO works is it's full of reporters, that could be social media news reporters to actual TV news reporters as well. These people are using HARO to find people who can help them write their news story. This means that by helping those reporters, you can be featured in their news reports and articles!

But other than that, you can use HARO to see what's popular and trending in your niche. If you see something that is trending, the chances are that it's a great sign that it's something you can build content on. Now you'll need to sign up to the site first. But you can just choose that you're a source and go with their free package to get media opportunities sent to your email up to 3 times a day.

They do have different plans which all have their own benefits, but they're not needed for the purpose of this. Just go with the free option for now (you can upgrade later if you feel you need to but again, it's not essential to using HARO for content generating ideas.

Okay once you're registered/signed up and you're logged in, you'll need to update your account details, put some details there about you, your name, contact details, location and chose your preferences. The "HARO Preferences" are what you'll be subscribed to. Make sure to check the ones you want to subscribe to. I pretty much choose all of them, some you can choose but they aren't active right now but you can choose (tick) them if you want to anyway.

Make sure to fill in all the other details too like your other contact info, Facebook, Twitter, blog URL etc. Then that's it! Now just monitor your email inbox and you should get some emails come through from HARO that are of reporters seeking some help with a story they're making. Then, if you get a story come through that you think you can help a reporter with, just "pitch" them from within your HARO dashboard. The master emails are sent at 5:35 am, 12:35 pm, and 5:35 pm ET. The emails that you'll receive are going to be formatted like this:

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Paragraph or two of our HARO editors ranting about anything from history to celebrity news to technological advances.
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Query titles listed by category
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Full query texts listed in the order of their titles
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That's it! It's amazingly simple. Just reply to the email listed on the query to reach the reporter with your pitch. Here's a few tips on how to write a great pitch on HARO: http://www.bthinkforward.com/haro/

Now from this, you'll not only get a chance to get featured and talked about in that reporters news report. But from the emails that are sent to you, since they will be on things that are hot/pressing/buzzing and trending things, from those you can come up with some truly excellent content and topic ideas to write about!

So yeah, HARO, what a cool site for two reasons.

• Reason 1: You can get featured and spoken about by famous reporters worldwide.
• Reason 2: You can use HARO from coming up with content ideas on the latest trending things.

It's genius and it's effective and it's Content Generation Idea: 18 HARO - Help a Reporter Out.

Hope you like it!

Do you use HARO for these reason?

Have you ever helped a reporter out and been featured in some big news channel or website for it?

Thanks!

Mike.