Now if you really can't manage to get anybody to write a story about your app or about your business then 1
another thing that you can consider is a service called HelpAReporter.com. 2
So this is shortened to HARO for most people, help reporter out. And what they do is they help journalists 3
find sources for their stories. 4
So very often you'll get some big name publications like Huffpo, Techcrunch with their journalist looking 5
for a particular expert or somebody who works in a particular field to comment on a story so that you 6
can act as a source. 7
And the way that HARO works is that you get sent I think two or three emails daily with a whole bunch 8
of journalist requests looking for people from all over the world who can help them with a particular 9
story. 10
Now the downside to that is if you want to be diligent about this, if you really want to pick up on that 11
golden nugget of a request, you're going to have to trawl through a pretty much 2000 word essay three 12
times a day which is not exactly a great use of your time if you're a startup founder when you're already 13
working 14 hours a day and sleeping for 2 hours. 14
This is probably not the best use of your time. 15
But here's a trick that you can use in order to save your sanity and still get the benefits of finding 16
those relevant journalist requests. 17
So first things first sign up with your Gmail account. 18
And if you don't have your own Gmail account get one right now. It is the one decision that you will never regret. 19
So in your Gmail account 20
head over to the settings icon, the little gear icon and go to settings. Next 21
this will bring up this settings pane with a bunch of tabs. 22
Head over to the filters and blocked Addresses tab. 23
And what you can do here is you can click on Create a new filter and that filters all the incoming messages. 24
And then you're going to add in the From field the email address where all the HARO requests get 25
sent through which is haro@helpareporter.com. 26
And then what you're going to do is you're going to put into this field where it says "Doesn't have" the 27
thing that you want to have. 28
Now that seems a little bit unintuitive but bear with me. 29
So say if you only want to see the requests from Techcrunch journalists or say if you only want to 30
see the requests which have the word coffee in it, then you put your key word in here and then you press 31
create a filter with the search. And what you can to do is you're going to click the box that deletes 32
all the emails that don't have your key word. 33
So that means the only emails that come through to your inbox requiring a manual review are the ones 34
that contain the keyword that you want. 35
So maybe something to do with coffee or maybe something to do with babies and whatever it is and that makes 36
your life so much easier. 37
So you don't have to trawl through a million lines three times a day. 38
Now besides help a reporter, there's two other services that I quite like. 39
One is called JournoRequest.com and the other one's called Response Source. 40
Now for those you guys who are based in the UK 41
Response source is pretty much only UK based and they have a seven day trial which you can check out. 42
But the pricing model after the seven day trial can be a bit steep. but they do have a nice way of filtering 43
out requests and getting requests immediately when they're made. 44
So have a look at all three of these resources and start monitoring for journalists requests in the niche 45
of your app. 46
Now if you still can't manage to get any journalist to cover you, the next best thing to do is to run 47
an app give away. 48
So this means giving away a hundred or five hundred copies of your paid for app free to a particular 49
tech blog. 50
So this is usually really easy to do. From the journalist side it requires maybe you know a paragraph 51
of writing which they can do in 10 or 15 minutes and it gives their readership something of value. 52
So this is pretty much a last ditch resort that you can try. 53
But in the past I've seen quite a lot of people have success with this and getting into some big name 54
tech blogs. 55
So well worth giving it a go.