While I vaguely knew about HARO for years, it wasn’t until recently that I took full advantage of the HARO community based on my client needs for strong thought leadership and well balanced, evidence-based content.

Forward-thinking clients and customers no longer want pure self-promotion and unsubstantiated claims because their savvy consumers know better; they no longer trust brands at face value.  They want brands to be in the conversation to truly engage with their brands. I turned to HARO for editorial support, and now see HARO as a blogger’s best friend.

Today, I’m able to use HARO to quickly poll the community, spot trends, identify experts and sources, get story ideas, round out my story with balanced points and counterpoints from verified sources, and meet fabulous and passionate PR partners in the process.

Most recently, I was working on a holiday campaign to get my client’s brand top of mind for holiday gifts and be seen as a high quality, premium brand.  I was able to pull together two strong gift wish lists through my HARO network, one for dads who love quality and another for gifts for quirky wanna-be YouTube celebrities.  In both cases I was able to quickly query the community, write my gift list, and place the stories in the national media in time for Cyber Monday.  The stories drove sales and increased brand impressions by over 200,000,000.

Thanks to HARO my stories my campaign has appeared Forbes, Inc,  VentureBeat, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed and many other locations.  See if you can spot all the quotes from my trusted HARO sources!  Glitch PR loves HARO!

– Aaron Cohen