For many businesses and entrepreneurs, securing high-quality press coverage and valuable backlinks is an essential part of growing their reach and establishing a level of trust and validity to prospective users and to consumers within your industry. For years, many organizations, including ourselves at Wills.com, have used HARO (Help a Reporter Out) as the default method for connecting with journalists and media outlets to get needed recognition in a specific marketplace, but given the news about its closure it is essential to seek alternatives. While HARO may have been a staple for many years, its closure has highlighted the need for innovative new alternatives that can efficiently help companies connect with valuable media outlets. This article will explore the challenges of using traditional systems such as HARO, and why they have been replaced, highlighting PressPulse.ai as a more robust solution for automating media outreach and securing backlinks, all while providing real life examples, drawing from the actual experiences we’ve had while working at Wills.com
The Frustrations of Traditional Outreach Methods (aka HARO)
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was a system that for many years, has become the goto approach for organizations that want to seek publicity. While it had provided an adequate option, there were many clear frustrations and flaws that it’s loyal base often noted over time. Some of the biggest hurdles faced include:
- Manual Process: HARO was labor-intensive, requiring you to carefully sift through countless daily queries in search of opportunities.
- Time Consuming: Filtering and reading countless queries takes a large chunk of time every day to track the perfect fit that is relevant to the values and the key features that make the organization’s unique voice stand out.
- Competitive Environment: High-quality opportunities on HARO would get so much feedback, and thus a response would quickly be lost or discarded amid many other emails with the same requests, which means your chances for selection are slim.
- Limited Feedback Loop: Once you have pitched your responses it was largely left into a vacuum, and your lack of access and feedback meant that the time you have already invested felt less like time wisely used.
- Lack of Efficiency: The system lacked the technology needed for targeted outreach or auto submission features that could create time savings and more opportunities based on those savings.
These limitations underscored a clear need for a better way to get media opportunities and backlinks, as more tech advanced business owners and creators, were always on the lookout for more user-friendly, faster, and also more comprehensive processes to achieve all of these business critical goals, as opposed to relying on archaic and time-consuming manual workflow options.
Introducing PressPulse.ai: A Smarter Way to Connect with the Media
PressPulse.ai is an innovative AI-powered platform that aims to simplify and automate the process of connecting with journalists and securing media coverage. PressPulse utilizes artificial intelligence to identify media outlets that match your target audience, auto-pitch your message for optimum relevancy, all while also analyzing keywords and trending industry-based information, that often allows for greater reach for less time investment than other more labor intensive older and outdated systems.
Here’s why PressPulse.ai is becoming a top alternative for many:
- AI-Powered Matching: PressPulse.ai’s smart algorithm learns about your business or project and matches you with media opportunities based on specific categories, and industry topics.
- Automated Outreach: Users of PressPulse.ai can leverage automated pitch suggestions and other workflow integrations so as to efficiently manage daily operations for various needs at larger volumes, or from other varying scales of your current growth plans and team capacity, regardless of manpower restrictions.
- Enhanced Time Efficiency: By automating most repetitive workflows with the assistance of AI technology, it will allow you to focus on creating relevant, interesting content, rather than sifting through irrelevant messages every single day.
- Real-Time Analysis: PressPulse.ai provides users with the opportunity to test and measure which workflow approach yields more positive results over specific periods, so you can stay informed, and plan appropriately for all potential scenarios based on that information,
- Tracking and Reporting: It provides real time data, and accurate workflow insights. By reviewing what content has worked or hasn’t worked before hand will make it easy for a company to understand why something resonates over time or what may need to be changed to keep results high, positive and useful to both creator, and reader.
Why Wills.com Relies on PressPulse.ai
At Wills.com, we’re always striving to provide the most relevant information to users in all industries and for a wide variety of professional workflows. Our need for constant feedback about ever evolving systems is paramount in what we are trying to achieve for both a user, their family and for business partnerships who wish to provide a platform for all their professional workflows. Therefore it was essential for our growth that a resource that offers real results for us be easy to use, reliable and also that delivers quality outreach and actionable solutions.
Here’s how PressPulse.ai has directly impacted our outreach strategy:
- Time Efficiency: By saving countless hours that were once allocated to manual workflow practices of filtering through HARO emails and writing repetitive cold pitch replies to queries, has now enabled Wills.com staff more time to focus on other crucial needs. We are no longer bogged down with repetitive admin tasks that can easily be managed with tech.
- Expanded Opportunities: With AI matching we are now able to connect with high value outlets we may not have previously discovered and take more informed risks based on specific types of target demographic. This helps us with the process of reaching even more demographics in different parts of society we would not otherwise find a pathway to with limited manual support or old school legacy tools.
- Data-Driven Results: The workflow and actionable feedback enables data driven decisions and testing on our strategies by monitoring a clear history of successful outcomes. The value from knowing why something worked means that this becomes scalable repeatable data for future work streams.
Unlocking PressPulse.ai: What You’ll Gain from Switching Platforms
For all the businesses that were using older methods like HARO before and need something similar:
- Expand your reach : Connecting to credible and reputable news sites.
- Reduce wasted time with a streamline automated workflow.
- Reach highly targetted potential partners by focusing your pitch and time investments on specific targets you would have been unable to previously find or even notice.
- Take greater risks based on collected analytics about why different types of copy performed well. Use testing for ongoing improvements.
How You Can Benefit From a System Like PressPulse.ai
PressPulse.ai provides access for its users to all aspects of the workflows involved in finding a right connection, and you can use it to better inform and connect your own ideas, with new outlets through real automated data driven workflows. Whether you’re looking to:
- Secure media coverage and valuable backlinks.
- Gain authority within a given topic and an increased profile for that knowledge base.
- Streamline a consistent PR strategy that has low overhead.
By choosing to step away from old manual workflow practices, it allows for faster testing, better strategic partnerships and quicker adaptation and scalability, that in many instances you will be forced to adopt anyway due to new trends that constantly evolve the way consumers interact with your message, all from within the complex framework of all the changing and evolving legal landscape in modern global life.
Ready to Transform Your Outreach Strategy?
While legacy systems like HARO served their purpose, the technology of today provides us with something greater. By using PressPulse.ai or similarly automated tools, it gives companies the edge and access that their company can grow quickly by adopting new innovations in efficiency. In closing this method creates new strategic choices to further explore when and where your assets should be placed for maximum effect for your long-term viability and success in the crowded competitive marketplace. You owe it to yourself, your product or your mission to find these options and test what best meets your requirements today. Learn to master what you already know today, so you are prepared to dominate whatever is coming in the future.
Try PressPulse AI Today (Free Trial)
Disclaimer: This article is not a paid endorsement and does not guarantee any outcome using a third party service. It is essential to use third party services at your own risk and due diligence must be considered prior to making any financial commitments. This article is not legal or financial advice. If you want legal advice, you should consult with a lawyer. If you want financial advice, you should consult with a financial advisor.