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Ready for a HARO (Help a Reporter Out) masterclass?
HARO is a platform that connects journalists with ‘experts’ to include their insights into articles. This is great for link building but can lead to a lot of questions on how to do it right.
Thankfully, Chris Panteli joins the Niche Pursuits podcast with Jared Bauman this week to shed light on:
- How and when you should respond to HARO queries,
- What you should say,
- How to vet reporters,
- How to follow-up,
- And a whole lot more…
All to save you time, increase your success rate and land more links.
Chris runs a purely white-hat, digital PR link building agency that averages 100 links per month.
And he has a ton of awesome insights to share.
He starts off by explaining some context. How valuable HARO links are for building credibility, increasing domain authority, and improving search rankings.
And how to succeed with HARO, it’s important to position yourself as an expert in your niche and have a well-optimized LinkedIn profile and website homepage.
Success rates vary depending on the niche and competition, but having expertise and credentials increases the chances of winning pitches.
He suggests starting by targeting websites your competitors have featured on their homepages and then expanding to high DR (domain rating) and high-traffic publications.
Chris also believes vetting HARO queries is crucial to save time and increase success rates. The key is to look for relevant queries from reputable domains and avoid low-quality websites. Engage with journalists and editors to ensure your link is included in the final article. And don’t be afraid to follow up to convert unlinked mentions into links.
Timing is also important in HARO link building.
And while subject lines are not a major factor, it’s important to follow any specific instructions from the journalist.
He even gives an awesome tip on how to use AI to assist with research and generating pitches in a way that’ll work like a charm.
It’s really a great and valuable discussion you don’t want to miss.
And Chris also offers a free vetting resource (in the shownotes below) and a 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} discount for Niche Pursuits listeners on link building services and a HARO masterclass course with the code NichePursuits20.
Hope you enjoy!
Watch The Interview
Topics Chris Panteli Covers
- How Chris got into online business
- What kinds of links he builds
- Use cases for HARO
- How to win with HARO
- How to pitch
- Optimizing your LinkedIn and site homepage
- Tips for vetting queries
- A great free tool for vetting
- Tips for following up
- HARO success rates
- How fast should you reply to queries?
- Query types
- When to (and not to) get creative in your response
- How to analyze queries and journalists
- Answering with a domain email vs. personal email
- Subject line tips
- AI tips
- And much more…
Links & Resources
Transcription
Jared: All right. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bauman. And today we are joined by Chris Pantelli with Linkify. Welcome.
Chris: Hi, Jared. I’ve heard that intro so many times listening to the podcast. So it’s lovely to hear my name in it this time. I have
Jared: to say I’m a creature of habit. I use the same intro every time.
It’s just easier that way, but the names do change. And we’ve got Mr. Harrow here with us today. Chris, welcome on board. He sounds like you are a somewhat of a listener. You’ve listened to the podcast
Chris: before. Yes, for a long time. Yeah, I think one of the first, uh, my first, uh, forays into the online digital world was when Spencer was hosting, of course, and then I’ve carried on through with you as well.
So, yeah, it’s been, uh, it’s been with me for a while now.
Jared: Well, good to have you. It’s, uh, a little, I, I know that, um, I listened to the podcast for, I mean, probably up to a decade before I, I started hosting it, and it was really fun to join the podcast. It was almost like, Not a rite of passage, but I don’t know.
I don’t know what the right term is, but it’s cool. So good to have you here and good to have a fellow niche pursuits listener on board or, you know, where you are a niche pursuits listener. I thought I’d just, uh, well, make sure we get both sides of that coin covered. So we’re talking link building today.
We’re talking specifically. about HeroLinx. You run an agency that builds HeroLinx. You’re going to give us, from our agenda, which by the way, folks, is probably the most extensive agenda I’ve ever seen. From our agenda, you’re going to give us a master class in HeroLinx building, but before we get into that, I always like to hear, and I know everybody likes to hear your backstory, maybe catch us up to where Linkify started.
Chris: Uh, okay. So I graduated from university, um, with a degree in economics. And then I did what most normal people do. I took over the family business of fish and chips. Um, so I ran that company for about 12 years, 12, 13 years. Um, And then just prior to the pandemic, uh, luckily I was getting itchy fingers. I was getting a little bit, uh, restless.
I could see the industry was in somewhat of a, of a decline perhaps. Um, and that’s when I started exploring, uh, online opportunities. That’s when I came across a niche pursuits, authority, hackers, you know, the, the online blog income reports. Uh, so I started a personal finance website. Um, which did pretty well in the first, um, in the first year, it got to like a thousand dollars a month and, um, I started doing, um, link building.
I did some, um, guest post link building and at that time I was still working a full time job, 50 hours a week in the, in the restaurant. Um, so I looked to outsource some of the stuff, um, some of the, the guest post link building. I wanted to run a skyscraper campaign, so I hired somebody. Who did that for me?
Um, got to know him a bit. Um, and he looked at my backlink profile and said, where did you get all of these like awesome links from these like New York times, Forbes, these links. And I said, I do, uh, I do Harrow. And he said, that’s cool. Do you think you could do that for any of my clients as well? Do a bit of an exchange of services.
So I was like, uh, yeah, I can’t see why not. As long as. You know, they give me a profile permission to pictures them. So we started doing that. Um, and then more and more people were sort of, he was saying, I’ve got more and more clients looking to get these sorts of links. Can you, can you help? And I was sort of approaching the pandemic, um, could see an opportunity here.
Uh, so we sort of went all in as much as I could whilst running, you know, a full-time business. So the pandemic came at the right time, really because, um, it gave me some downtime to really see if we could, uh, come together, start an agency together, which we did. Um, and yeah, it was about a year and a half ago and, um, sold the fish and chip shop about, um, about a year and three months ago, something like that.
And, uh, we built the team remotely. Uh, and I met my business partner for the first time in person in Portugal. which was awesome. Uh, and here we are today and yes, just gone from strength to strength and it’s brilliant,
Jared: man. Fish and chips. I’m a fish and chip. Uh, what’s the good fish and
Chris: chips? Uh, a good batter and clean oil.
Jared: Clean oil. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. All right. Yeah. Um, I want to be realist. I’d love to learn how to make fish and chips, but linkify is like you said, only a year and a half old. Um, Is it exclusively focused on Harrow links, or has it kind of spiraled out into other types of link building?
Chris: We only do, we use Harrow as an umbrella term for PR requests.
So, we don’t do any other form of link building outside of PR requests, and digital PR is something which we’re in our beta testing right now, which is going really well. But under the umbrella… Um, of pure white hat, um, digital PR. So, um, reactive PR is the thing that we’re slowly introducing, but PR requests is, is our bread and butter.
So that’s answering journalists directly, um, from, from their requests. And Harrow, obviously being the biggest platform, is sort of used as a, as a catch all term for this sort of link building. But we do, um, utilize other platforms, but we don’t do… Uh, like, we don’t, we only do white hat PR requests.
Jared: Got it.
Okay. Okay. Um, and, uh, this is not an introduction to Harrow podcast, but just maybe 30 seconds on the concepts behind the digital PR that you’re doing, the Harrow style link building you’re doing. Like, what is Harrow? What is, like, what’s the general concept of link building in this form?
Chris: Okay, so, journalists want to make their articles better by quoting experts.
Um, when Harrow was introduced, maybe 15 years ago, I think it was like one of the first places that could bring, um, the one half of the equation, the journalists. Together with a pool of experts. So the journalists could ask the experts, they could source from the experts commentary, um, to help them with their articles to inject some pzz or expert commentary.
Um, and then if the journalist likes a, the expert, and B, the expert’s comments, then they could include. Um, that within their piece, and then us as SEOs, we obviously realized that that could then result in a link as well, which, um, is, you know, what we all want. Um, yeah, and so it sort of got hijacked by SEOs, but it’s still, there’s still some very, very good, um, journalists operating on the platform.
I think it’s still probably the number one place to go, um, in order to connect with that half of the equation.
Jared: And if you’re wondering, I am going to ask some tough questions about… Some of the things you just mentioned down the road, so, okay. It’s stay tuned if you’re listening, but I mean, how many I’m ready for it.
Do you guys, how many links are you guys doing a month right now? Like what kind of scale is link? I, and again, I’m just asking because, um, like we’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it, but I want people to kind of hear how many hero links you’re working with a month to kind of establish the, uh, let’s see, what would be the right way to say it?
Like the breadth of what you see in the hero landscape.
Chris: Yeah, I, I would, and don’t forget this is, uh, uh, all encompassing on, um, PR requests, which is 90{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} Harrow, but there are other platforms like PressPlugs, um, and then you can see PR requests directly from journalists on Twitter as well. Uh, but I would say we’re averaging about a hundred links a month.
Um, we’ve had better months, we’ve had our best ever month, um, but we are, we are growing and we’re getting, we’re getting better and better as we go as well, learning. Um, I’d say Harrow is one of those things that’s, that’s, uh, 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} luck. Um, and a lot of it is a game, and the more you learn the rules of the game, and the tricks of the trade, then you can get better and better and better.
So the, the more we refine our systems, the better we seem to get as well.
Jared: Well, let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s get into this. I mean, let me set the stage by saying that the majority of people listening to this are going to be… Uh, side hustling of some sort. Most maybe building a content website, an affiliate website.
Maybe an Amazon FBA business, drop shipping. I mean, I could go through all these different things that people are building. Uh, a SaaS, etc. Like, what does Haro, where does Haro serve them well? What do they need? I mean, let’s get into some of the classic use cases for Haro and your thoughts on if there’s any dilemmas that this poses for, for people in this space.
Chris: So the way we see it is, uh, it’s, it’s going to be building your EAT, uh, in the eyes of Google, um, it’s going to be, uh, good for your brand. So, um, we, we refer to it as a press badge. So, uh, if you’ve got a SAS, um, or, or any online, um, property for that matter, uh, you want to have a press badge, uh, if your competition’s got it.
Then ideally you want to have it as well. And this is where the big websites that people have heard of that you’ve been featured in, been linked from or quoted in. So if you go to any of the big websites in your space, that’s your competition, you’ll probably see that they’ve been featured in like New York Times, Forbes, Yahoo, MSN.
These big recognisable news publications. Uh, and that gives you the ability, if you get these links yourself, to, uh, align yourself with the biggest brands on the planet, um, and it gives instant visible credibility to the, the front page of your website, uh, from a visual, uh, perspective. Algorithmically, uh, from a, from a Google perspective, uh, it also gives you links from the sites which are closest to the seed sites in, in what might be called, um, Google’s, um, like link juice algorithm.
So the biggest sites in the planets are the ones that Google looks at in order to pass a page rank. Um, and you, I mean, this is like theorized, but probably widely accepted. But the, the biggest sites like New York times, these will be the sites closest, um, to where the page rank is passed. So, um, if you can get links from these absolute, um, massive websites, then you’re going to be getting much more like credibility being passed to your site.
Uh, and it’s gonna bring, lift up your overall domain, so your overall domain rating. Um, these are 99{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of the time homepage links. So, it’s an altogether different strategy than if you’re looking to, uh, bring the traffic up on individual pages or money pages. You would need to, I mean, if you’re a white hat, then you probably wouldn’t do this.
But if you’re, you know, A little bit more flexible. You might look for other sorts of links to get links to individual specific pages that you want to increase rankings to. But the beauty of Harrow is it’s completely white hat. Google knows that Google is never going to devalue a link from these big news publications.
So if you get one or two or 1000 of these links, if you get them in a short amount of time or over a long period of time, then Google just completely trust these websites. And, if you’re getting those links to your website, uh, to your homepage, then that page rank’s gonna come to your homepage and filter, uh, uh, across and throughout your website and lift the overall, um, authority of your website and hopefully bring up the traffic and, and everything else that you’re doing, be it your content plan, uh, your other link building efforts, it’s, it’s gonna, um, fire it all up.
Put it on, um, Overdrive.
Jared: Let me ask you about honing in on exactly that. This idea that you’re getting homepage links from trusted sources that are, we’ll say, close to the sun, right? Like, close to the sphere of influence, close to page rank being passed. And I totally understand the theory you’re talking about and there’s a lot of validity to what you’re saying, at least in terms of Google, even Google’s patents, right?
Like, they kind of outlined a lot of the stuff you’re talking about. I mean, how much of a, like, are there certain websites, are there certain, we’ll say niches, that I can do heroin? Or are there certain niches that I can’t do heroin? And what I mean by that is, sure, if I’m a finance website, going back to your example, probably a lot of people looking for finance quotes, the stock market’s going up and down every day.
Where does it, where does it break apart? Like if I do underwater basket weaving, can I use here? Like, how do I, how do I think about my niche and what’s your experience and what’s your successful, you know, success tips for people who have broad niches to stand out, but then also people have really narrow niches and how to actually
Chris: get included.
That is a great question. And that’s something we’re learning as we go as well. Um, So the, the, the key to Harrow, uh, and which is obviously, um, satisfying the needs of the journalists is expertise and credentials. So if we took a gardening website, then I, uh, my heart fills with joy because there’s loads of specific gardening queries.
And often people that own gardening websites are gardening experts, which means it’s quote unquote easy. It’s easy to get great links because they’re experts. It’s really, really clear to the journalist when they land on that person’s website that they are a gardener and therefore a gardening expert, and it’s easy to get the gardening links.
So, what was your example, Jared, that you just gave? Uh, weaving. Underwater basket weaving. So, yes. You didn’t have to remove that one, by the way. I just made something up. No, that could happen, so let’s go with that one. Um, so, you can still get Harrow links. What you need to do is, um, either… Leverage your own expertise and credentials in a way that makes sense to the website and the journalist.
So you can do this in two ways. You can look at the broader niche for what the very tightly defined niche is in. So in terms of underwater basket weaving, I would see that as like a DIY crafty as the broader niche. Um, and then if you yourself are a D. I. Y. And crafting expert and your absolute skill is the underwater basket weaving, then position yourself as a D.
I. Y. And crafting expert, even get a little bit of additional content on the website, maybe even on the home page, just so the journalists can see that you have, um, these broader expertise within that, um, within that broader niche. Um, and then that opens up all of those DIY and crafting opportunities on the Harrow and from PR requests, which you see regularly.
Um, if you don’t possess those broader expertise, then I would do internally. We call it Harrowify. So we have a service where we can do this for you, but you can easily do this yourself. You would leverage the expertise of somebody else. So hire somebody. to that is an expert and has those credentials, get them to produce a few pieces of content for your website.
Um, obviously you want to negotiate and discuss this prior to hiring them to produce the content and ask if they would be comfortable with you positioning them on the website as either a lead contributor or a senior editor. And also if they would mind, uh, if you could pitch. Under their name on Harrow for a duration of time and we’ve had lots of success with that and that works really well You do run into some sticking points especially if the person you get is a real expert like not a real expert but like a quite a visible expert and they’ve got another website So we’ve done that and we’ve pitched the expert for the client website and they’ve pitched back to the experts website instead But you can email the journalist ask them to change it There’s there’s lots you can do but if you utilize this strategy, then it’s a really really quick way to get great links because the journalists want to link experts and if That person’s got a LinkedIn profile, which demonstrates those expertise as well.
Uh, and then if you can ask that writer just to pop on their LinkedIn profile, even for just a short period of time, that they’re currently the, um, senior editor or contributing editor to your website. Um, even if it’s just for the duration of the, of the, the time that you want to pitch Harrow, because it’s probably not something you’ll do indefinitely, but maybe just for a few months to target the four, five, six main links that you think you can get.
Um, and then they can remove that and then you can either move on. If you’re in a, in a fairly broad niche, so, um, underwater basket weaving, uh, we said DIY and crafting expert. You, you might have some content on, on wood specifically, maybe you might take a carpenter and then there’s loads of carpenter contracting queries on Harrow.
Uh, the more you look at Harrow, the more you see the types of queries that there are, the more you see which experts you could fit within your niche. That’s the way I would play that.
Jared: It sounds, and I don’t want to, I don’t want to put you down a rabbit hole here, but it sounds a bit like you’re saying. To think broadly based about your, about your, about your industry, about your niche.
And then, um, and then pitch based at pitch accordingly. Do you have any tips on how to pitch? Like, let’s say I’m an underwater basket weaver. We’re going to run with this today.
Chris: Okay.
Jared: Let’s say I’m an underwater basket weaver. I like your ideas. Like it involves wood, it involves crafting. So I’m going to be pitching to carpenter, uh, you know, Harrow pitches, like tips for how to, because it’s a bit of, I don’t want to say a stretch, but it’s, it’s definitely.
Broadening what I, what my expertise is. Do you have any tips on how to land harrow queries when you’re broadening, when you’re taking your really niche topic and broadening, like how do you make yourself look really attractive to wait in your pitch? How do you make yourself look attractive to like a journalist?
Chris: Well, I mean, if you’re pitching the carpenter queries, you’d be leveraging the expertise of the carpenter that you onboarded.
Jared: Okay, so you bring a carpenter on in that case, and then you can leverage a broader query. Okay. Yeah,
Chris: yeah. But if you’re, I mean, if you’re going to pitch as the underwater basket weaver, um, initially, then…
You would just want to, um, position your, your opening template, your opening gambit as, as, as being as broad as possible. So in that case, that’s very much DIY and crafting, I would say. Um, so if you can make your homepage just. Look a little bit like it’s got some of that content on as well, some broader DIY and crafting, um, make sure that you’ve got, uh, a really good, uh, profile and about page with, uh, your expertise, um, and then there are loads of DIY and crafting queries, so you could, you could definitely answer that, um, and then if you wanted to then, once you, if you’ve managed to land two, three, four links, As the underwater basket weaver expert that you are on your own site and you want to get more harrow links and you feel like you’ve been a bit pigeonholed and you need to broaden the expertise, that’s when I would then look to see what else is closely aligned and related to that niche.
For example, carpentry or, I don’t know, um, I think carpentry is a good one or maybe scuba diving. Maybe. That’s probably too far away. But, uh, yeah, if you start getting too far away, the journalists notice and you’re not going to get linked. But definitely DIY and crafting, for me, I think would be perfect.
And we’ve done that with clients and it does work.
Jared: And to be fair, underwater basking is a very niche down. Yeah. Yeah, that was a hard one. Are that niche down.
You’ve mentioned it a couple times now. Uh, I’ve heard you say homepage a couple of times, and I’ve heard you say LinkedIn a couple of times. So, let’s talk about that a little bit. Talk about why these elements are so important, and maybe the things that are important on them. Cause like, I have a LinkedIn profile page, but is it optimized to land a Hero query?
Obviously my website has a homepage, but I’m kind of like wondering, is my homepage positioned correctly to land a query on Hero? Like, what are the things that go into these?
Chris: Yeah, um, this is a really fast moving space, uh, with the onset of AI, um, and people spamming Harrow with AI content. Uh, and as well with like journalists, uh, looking to, um, provide, you know, you know, steer far away from fake news and, and all of this, they, they want to be able to, uh, use verifiable people within, within their credentials.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t win harrow links as a fake persona, even like you can, but let’s for us, uh, let’s assume for this example that you’re using real people, which is a much better approach, then you, you need to. Quickly make it obvious to the journalists that these people are real and they’ve got the expertise that you want because the journalists do check.
So we interview a couple of journalists, New York Times journalists and the Forbes journalists inside our course, and they gave us like a behind the scenes look at what they see on their side. And they’re not really looking for anything crazy, like, you know, especially when you first start doing Harrow, you think, Oh, I’m never gonna win at this, like this big link.
It’s, you know, it’s. It’s quite scary. I remember when I won my first Harrowling, I couldn’t believe it. But really what they’re just looking for is like a real authentic voice. So if you can, if you can show them that, uh, really quickly, LinkedIn is one of the best ways to do that because often they check for the LinkedIn.
It’s a double edged sword because some of the big, uh, publications now are just linking to the LinkedIn as opposed to the website and they’ve changed their linking policy. So it was good to know those websites and avoid them. Uh, some will link to a LinkedIn, but they’ll convert it. to your homepage if you email the right editor on the editorial staff, but that’s maybe for later.
Um, but the LinkedIn is a way the journalists can quickly see your pitch, see the name at the bottom, see the website you represent, and then they’re going to want to see, okay, is this definitely not a spam bot AI robot? Click on the LinkedIn if they can see some followers, some activity. If you’ve said that you’re a DIY and crafts expert on the LinkedIn, does it say that you represent the website that you’re working for?
Does it say you’ve got some experience in DIY and crafts? Boom! If it all tracks through, the journalist is, is monumentally more likely to link to you, just because of those few core elements and that, uh, care, um, and attention to detail. Because so many people won’t be doing that, and, and, and that will just instantly put you in the, the few pitches that they’ve, they’ve whittled down and get you into.
You know, the next step towards actually winning the quote,
Jared: let’s talk about, um, cause you mentioned it and you teased it. It’s in our, it’s in our agenda here. So let’s, let’s kind of move into that. I want to, I want to hear from you on how to vet which Harrow queries to respond to, which ones aren’t worth it.
What the, you know, how to kind of make a refined list of which ones you should be going after. Like, let’s talk about that because Harrow is overwhelming. Like if you haven’t signed up to get the Harrow emails, um, you know, you kind of imagined this nice, extra. I don’t want to say it’s a bad experience, but when you open the first Hero email, which most people listening have probably opened a Hero email, it’s like, uh, you know, and so your mind starts going, like, what do I do?
And I start searching for keywords. Do I start, like, how do I filter and find to make this process efficient? So I just, I know we have it in our notes here. What about domain, article, pitch, selection, and process tips do you have?
Chris: Yeah, this is, this is definitely a massive part of increasing your win rate and success rate.
I remember when I first opened it and I was, I read every query and I thought, Oh, that’s interesting. And it’s like, sometimes there’s maybe 50, 60 in a single email. Five emails across five categories, three times a day, and you could be reading the query and you could start thinking, Oh, that sounds good.
But my website was personal finance at the time, so I’d go, Okay, personal finance. That looks good. This website, then I’d click and I’d look at the website. I didn’t have a trust at the time, so I just visually does it look like a good website and you get a bit further down the query and then it’s a Um, can you answer questions about people using credit cards?
I think yes, I could answer that. And then you get to the bottom and it would say, uh, only taking video interviews from U. S. sources, you go, Oh God. Okay. Next one. Then you’d read through and then you, so there’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of junk on Harrow. Uh, you have to read the requirements, but the, the first place to start to whittle down the opportunities is domain.
So as a beginner to Harrow, what I would do is. Take your website, your niche, find some people in your competition that have got a press badge, a homepage press badge, and if it’s got five or six big juicy logos on the front, chances are they’ve won those big juicy logos from Pitch and Harrow. Go on Harrow and just look for queries that are coming in from from those domains and try and get those as well.
If your competition’s got them, You want to get them. If they’ve got them, you can get them. So that’s the easiest way to start. Once you start pitching Harrow more frequently, you want, you want to broaden your, um, abilities to answer because Harrow is limited in the sense that once you’ve got every Harrow link, you can, other than new domains coming on, um, or.
Other opportunities then, um, it does become difficult, but what you can do, um, is you can look at the, um, the metrics, which isn’t a perfect system, but what you want really is, is really high Dr. And really, really high, uh, organic traffic. Um, and you’ll get a lot of more. News, publications, publishing on a variety of topics as well, and you’ll often find the really niche topics in here as well.
So, publications like Metro, USA Today, um, The Sun, The Express, like UK publications, um, Daily Mail. You’ll get places like New York Post as well. Um, these publications will often publish on a wide range of niches and you’ll get interesting topics. So you get your underwater basket weaving, possibly once a year, maybe.
Who knows? Maybe it doesn’t come up. But if it’s going to come up, then it’s going to be on probably one of these broader, uh, big news publications, especially if it’s in the news at the time, let’s say, um, Brad Pitt’s just taken up underwater basket weaving, then there’s a chance there’s going to be quite a few publications asking if anybody has got expertise in this.
Jared: The golden day of underwater basket weaving, that would be the golden day of it. Of course, yeah.
Chris: Um, and. You’re going to know these big publications, probably by name anyway, which would avoid having to do any sort of like analysis or looking at metrics. Uh, you will have heard of New York Post, New York Times, uh, Forbes, uh, Metro Readers Digest, these sorts of publications.
Um, but then, um, get to know them, learn them, and if you have access to Ahrefs or even, um, Ubersuggest, look at some metrics. You want to see, um, You want to see high domain rating or domain authority and high organic traffic. Millions, ideally. Millions of monthly organic traffic. There are exceptions to this.
Um, more industry specific websites. Uh, especially SaaS websites, real businesses, tools. These can often have quite high, um, domain ratings and lower organic traffic. Because they’re not, um, heavily invested in their SEO in their organic search because they’re making their money either from paid ads or, you know, Converting from their content isn’t a primary primary focus of theirs, but they’re a real business.
They’re a genuine website So you don’t want to avoid these and these can be great opportunities as well. What you want to avoid is Really high inflated DR and like no traffic. 000 even. These are like, not very good websites. They can be toxic websites as well. So you, you do want to be careful. You don’t want to be getting links from toxic websites.
Although it’s, it’s rare on Harrow. And from PR requests, very rare. It’s not, um, it’s not like a censored platform. Um, so they may be moving away from that. They’re converting everything over to Connectively at the end of the year, I think, so we need to keep an eye on what happens with that, but for now, um, my best piece of advice is go for the sites that your competition’s got, and then outside of that, if you’ve got a tool, go for high DR, um, high organic traffic.
Jared: You mentioned, like, some won’t give you a link, some will give you a link to your LinkedIn profile, which, let’s be honest, we’re SEOs, we don’t want that. Nope. Any way to know that except, like, just by getting kind of hosed and writing down that that domain is what does that?
Chris: Uh, that is practice and getting to know.
We’ve got a free resource which you can use on linkify. io forward slash freebie. Uh, that’s our internal, uh, database which shows you, um, the DR. The traffic, the likelihood historically from our experience on whether or not the domain will do follow, tag the link or no follow, tag the link. And there’s also a column in there called follow up, which means from our experience, have we been successful with a follow up?
So be it the we want to quote, but it was an unlinked mention and by following up with either the journalist or the publication. We were able to get that in unlinked mention converted into a link or we have been successful historically with a no follow link with a simple email getting that converted into a do follow link.
Although that’s rare, that that’s, uh, that’s become a lot more rare as well. Over the past few months, these bigger publications tend to have a set in stone sort of SEO policy, which can change. But whatever the policy is at the time that that will be the policy, which is why some domains have started linking to LinkedIn.
Um, profiles only. Now the interesting thing is, um, when an SEO is not involved. So, when you win a link from a journalist, the journalist will, um, put together the article, and then it will normally go through an editing process. So the journalist is not an SEO. They want to write the best story, they want to quote you as an expert.
But they will have to adhere to the, uh, editorial standards of the publication that they’re writing to. So the journalist may put a link in. Now, when it gets to the editor, the editor may or may not be an SEO either. So if the editor is following the editorial process of the website, uh, they may remove the links.
They may turn a do follow into a no follow, or they may swap it out for a LinkedIn, uh, link instead. Um, but if the editor isn’t an SEO either, then mistakes can happen along the way, and your article can go live, your quote can be included, and your link could be missing, or tagged as a no follow. Now, this is where it gets interesting, and this is where we’ve…
Been successful with probably of the links that we get per month, up to 40{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of the links come, come from what happens after the pitch has been sent. It comes from having the link or the unlinked mention go live and following up with a number of different strategies. To then get that turned into something because a simple email to the journalist and the journalist goes.
Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot and then the email the journalist emails five minutes later. It says updated and you’ve just got a link added to a DR 90 website with 15 million organic monthly traffic and it just took 22 minute email just to send to it. Other times it can be a back and forth, the journalist could say I need to contact the editor, and then the editor could email you and say, Oh, I’m sorry, you know, the editorial policy doesn’t allow for this.
I’ve had an example where I emailed, um, Two editors, because the one editor didn’t get back to me. Um, and then on the same day about a week later, the one editor that hadn’t got back to me for a week emailed me and said, uh, the policy of the website is no links can be added after, after publication. And then the other editor emailed about five minutes later and said, I’ve just updated the article and we’ve put your link back in.
So it’s like, you really don’t know. So you have to, you have to take those shots because, um, that’s where the, that’s where the extra comes. That’s where the magic is. One
Jared: time growing up. We had to change the airline reservations. My dad got on the phone and someone said, Company policy, we can’t do this, we can’t do that.
And he said, okay. You know, he tried. He hung up and he picked the phone right back up again. I was like, what are you going to do, dad? He’s like, I’m going to call him back. I was like, well, they just told you that’s the company policy. Who knows? Talked to somebody totally different in the exact same department and they totally took care of his request.
It’s a good reminder like
Chris: Yeah, you’ve got to try you’ve got to have no shame and just try because you know We want the link as long as you’re polite, you know, just be polite I used to we used to do a strategy where we’d where we’d Uh, a few times I thought maybe it would be a good idea to, to threaten that, you know, if you’re not going to link for, for, you know, me, obviously representing the client, if you’re not going to provide credit for the quote and link, I would very much like you to just remove the quote altogether.
And I think the two or three times we tried that they’d, they’d, um. They said, okay, we’ll remove the quote. So I’d rather have the unlinked mention than threatened the, you know, uh, but yeah, as long as I’d stay polite, um, just ask, uh, the worst they can do is say, no, the best is you’ve just got yourself a link for, you know, a few minutes work
Jared: from a high level.
And I, I totally get it. And you feel free to explain this, but I totally get it’s niche dependent, right? Like some niches have a lot more opportunities and some niches are gonna have a lot more competition, but like for someone brand new and hearing this and saying, I want to dig into this. What sort of success rates, like, should people get themselves ready for?
How many pitches do they need to make, roughly? Again, knowing it’s wide, but like, just to give people some ranges to kind of consider. And I’m more speaking to that person who sends five pitches, doesn’t hear back, and then says this is, this is, uh, this is not, this is not worth it. Like, what kind of should people expect if they’re going to embark on, on making Harrow a go?
Chris: That’s, that’s a really interesting question, um, because it’s, it’s quite a unique time in this space with, with the onset of mass produced AI content. But it also provides, in our opinion, a real golden opportunity, um, because you can really stand out amongst the crap now. Um, if everybody’s producing the same crap, and you write, handwrite, really well put together, Pitch to a really perfectly aligned query and you have good expertise as well, then that will stand out and you will be much more likely to win that.
So when we take on new clients, if we take on, like I said, a gardening client, who’s a gardener? Who has a gardening website and we pitch a gardening query on homesandgardens. com. I’m just waiting for the email or to see the alert that we’ve won that link because I’m confident because everything it ticks all the boxes.
So if you’re starting out, um, or you want to try and, uh, maximize your win rates to reduce how much time and effort and resources you’re putting in. Then I would, um, try and make sure you have the expertise in for, for the niche you’re in and for the queries that you’re going to answer. That’s really, really key.
You know, if you’re just, um, especially in the YMYL niches as well, obviously you can be an expert in crafts, gardening, travel to an extent. Um, if you’re in any, um, YMYL niche, then you really, really would need to have like credentials. Um, so finance, uh, CPA, CFP, although finance is different. You can be a.
Personal finance expert, but definitely, um, health, um, You need sort of credentials and credentials will massively increase your win rate. So I’m not saying make up credentials at all I’m saying if you’ve got those credentials Publicize it if you haven’t consider hiring someone who has and allowing them to pitch harrow on their behalf Take your your niche find the three or four or five links that you haven’t got that you really want to get So let’s say you’re in gardening, homes and garden, uh, homes and gardens, better homes and gardens, um, best life, there’s good gardening queries, living, etc.
Three or four domains and just keep pitching those websites over a few weeks, um, and you most likely will land those links. You might, you’ll most likely get a win within, within a couple of weeks, I would hope, if you’re writing a good pitch and you’re answering the query. Um, another thing, I don’t know if we’ve got time, if we get onto and give some tips on, on the different sorts of queries and.
What to look for and how to answer that will save you time as well knowing what these sorts of journalists wants from these different sorts of publications And yeah, just keep at it and you you will get What’s the word you will get disappointed as well because you you’re you’re answering with content You’re giving your time and most of these journalists will not reply.
You won’t hear Anything back. If it’s good or bad, most of the times you don’t hear anything, you’ll either, if you’ve got your Google Alerts set, or you’re doing manual searches, or looking in Ahrefs, you’ll either see a link appear a few weeks down the road, or, that’s it, you won’t get a reply saying, great pitch, but we’re not including it in this article because of X, Y, and Z, you know, the journalists don’t have time for that, some journalists do, but rarely they don’t, so it can be really down heartening, and it can get sort of really frustrating, but when you get the first one, That’s when you want to go again, and you want to go again, and you want to go again, and that’s when you’ll start learning what the different journalists like.
You’ll start to hone your skills on crafting pitches. You’ll get faster at scanning the Harrow emails, faster at going, okay, I’ve got a link from them. I’ve got a link from them. Ah, they don’t link. I tried those before. And then your whole system, your whole workflow will improve, and you’ll just start doing better and better.
Jared: I do want to get to that query type. It’s on my list. I have two questions before that, then we’re gonna get there. I asked a few people. Uh, in anticipation of this podcast, Hey, I’m gonna interview a hero expert. Any, what, one burning question. And two people will reply with the same question. So I’m gonna ask it.
How fast should I reply? There’s a theory that says, As soon as that email comes in, man, you start going. You gotta be the first to hit the journalist box. There’s also a theory that says, You look desperate. You look like AI. You look like all the things a journalist doesn’t want. Actually wait. Uh, then there’s a third theory that says, Just do it whenever you have time.
And it doesn’t matter either way. I mean, you guys land 100 plus things a month. What are your thoughts on timing?
Chris: Uh, so we we interviewed a New York Times journalist for this, and I asked her the same question because it’s a good one. Um, so They like to see, um, they will often set their, their deadlines, um, before their actual deadline.
Obviously, that’s, that’s, they need time to go through the, the responses and put together their pitch. So, what she said to me was, um, early replies or early, the earlier replies are good, because they’ll often do a sort of a first look, a first scan of what’s come in. See what sort of responses there are, what sort of, um, what the, the source qualities like, the expertise, the credentials, um, I think if you send a reply in two minutes, you’re, it’s gonna, you’re gonna be an AI bot detected, um, so that’s mental, I wouldn’t do that, and you need time to absorb the query and do your research, think about how you’re gonna put together your pitch, um, but, you know, if you’re at your computer for one of the Harrow, um, one of the Harrow times in the UK, currently, I think the, the afternoon one is, So if you’re at your computer at 6pm, um, sometimes, this is where again query type can come in.
Sometimes the queries will not specifically be asking for questions, but they’ll be sourcing the expert with the questions to come at a later date. So, the journalist may say, I’m looking for someone who is an expert at underwater basket weaving. If there’s anyone out there, please get in touch and I will send you some questions if I think you’re a right fit.
I would send that one as soon as possible. Um, because you’re going to get at the front of the list. I mean, I don’t know how many underwater basket weavers are queuing up behind you to answer that, but that sort of query is, you know, as fast as possible because they’re not sending, they’re not asking you to answer questions.
They’re sourcing for their expert there and then. If you, um, have more time, Then, and you need more time, I would take your time, because the journalist, the New York Times journalist, also told us that they’ll often come back to the box, come back to that particular query, um, and they’ll do like a second round of sourcing, and also as well, this, obviously, every journalist is different, this is just one journalist’s opinion, um, and then what they’ll often do is they may look to inject or do like a final look, so you’re probably best to do early if you can, um, Or, as, like, as early, uh, as possible.
Reasonably early. Reasonably early. Um, or as close to the deadline as possible. Because when, they will come back and check to see if there’s anything else left before their deadline. This is the key thing, and this is why you shouldn’t get, uh, down heartened if you, if you don’t win a pitch. There’s so much luck involved as well.
If you are an underwater basket weaver, and a Harrow query comes out asking for an underwater basket weaver, and it just so happens that there are two other underwater basket weavers doing Harrow at the same time you are, and… The email goes out in a time zone that you’re in, and where the other two underwater basket weavers receive the emails, you know, hours before you even woke up, and they sent their pitches in, and the journalist loved it, and she was only going to source and quote two people for that particular article.
It doesn’t matter how good your pitch is, it doesn’t matter what time you send it in, you have not got a cat’s chance in hell in getting quoted, because they’ve already picked the two underwater basket weavers that they’re going to quote. In that particular article. So that’s why you have to have an element of volume to your pitching because there is so much looking involved.
So that’s why you need to dedicate a good run at it, put some time and effort into it and, um, keep trying until eventually you will get that first one and then you’ll, you’ll get, you’ll get the hang of
Jared: it. Sounds like dating, you know, don’t respond too fast, don’t take too long, but it depends. And it depends on the type of person.
I’m never good at that. You can handle this. Um, no, that’s a fair, that’s a fair answer. And I’m glad you went into depth on it. Because I think that this process is, I’m not going to speak for you, but from everything I’m hearing, it is nuanced, right? This isn’t kind of a thing where it’s like, set it, forget it, and just hammer away at it.
Like, the nuances, I’m sure that, you know, you’ll probably get a few links that way, but the nuances of how you approach the journalists and the query and the response, the nuances are what actually kind of helps separate you a bit. So I’m glad you kind of went
Chris: into that. And it’s a very human thing as well, isn’t it?
It’s, it’s one human to another, like, and every journalist is completely different. There’s some journalists on Harrow which are really, um, what’s the polite word? Uh, like, they can, they’re really, um, stringent on, on, on, and sharp, they can be very sharp in their, in their replies even, if they’re asking for additional information.
There’s other journalists, which are absolutely lovely, you know, they’ll, they’ll say, Oh, thank you so much for this, this quote. You know, it really resonated with me. I loved your experience. Would you go into some more detail on this particular point? And then other journalists will say, need more information on this.
Get back to me by then. And your reply. You don’t hear back from them, they don’t say thank you, and then a week later they quote you and link to you. So, it’s just you’re dealing with other people. And one other just quick thing I’ll mention which I think is really important. This is something we’ve noticed which can really elevate your success rate.
Is what actually gets quoted in the article. So, if I just quickly touch on query types as well, so, um, Go ahead and just start. I’ll just quickly do it because it lends itself into this other part. So, uh, certain queries. Uh, from certain publications from certain journalists. So a B plus C, uh, are looking to leverage the expertise of the source.
So if that journalist is working for money dot com, let’s say, or another huge finance website, um, and they’re looking to ask what is, uh, a credit card interest rate. Okay, they know the answer to that question. Okay, so they’re really looking for an absolute expert, the requirements, it will probably be clearly labeled in their requirements, but there’s no room or space within that particular query type to get creative or inject personality into your quote.
And what I would do in that situation is I would look at the domain, I would look at the query, I would look at the requirements, and I would think, okay, am I? A real expert here, because they’re asking for what is a credit card interest. Unless I’m like a CFP or, you know, I used to run HSBC’s Hong Kong branch, then probably I’m not going to get quoted here.
So I’ll leave it. Then you’ll get a query type which is looking for sort of expert. And that’s where you can get a lot more creative, and that’s what’s really interesting. Everything below that sort of query type is where the journalist, and in fact even for that query type, what journalists like to do is quote interesting linguistic tone and terms of phrase.
So the amount of quotes that we’ve won and been successful with, because obviously we have multiple clients in the same niche, so we’ll send multiple pitches to the same query from… Like multiple clients, and we’ll see which ones win and then which ones didn’t. And what’s interesting is the single or an element of the quote that they include will be a really interesting turn of phrase, or a saying, or like an idiom, or some sort of use of the English language, which is just ever so slightly different.
Um, and that’s what they pick up on. So you might be answering sort of the same question in the same way. And this is where AI will let you down because, um, Everybody has their own interesting tones of voice, styles, turns of phrase. And I think it’s really obvious when you read through a human generated pitch and where that shines through.
Um, I don’t think it needs to be all the way through. You don’t write a poem or, you know, or try and recreate Shakespeare. But if you can, um, highlight a certain point with an interesting, um, Word or a flurry of the English language that stands out really really strongly to the journalist because we see that time and time again When we win when we win pitches when we win quotes I’ll see how we won that one because they said that well We won that one because they said they said that like that and that’s I think really really interesting
Jared: the the Along the query type the opinion one.
So you’re basically saying like if I read and into it, are you saying to? I don’t want to put you to, like, are you saying we could be a little edgy, like, maybe have personality stand out in the inbox, like, take the answer, like, why are mortgage rates rising, and actually try to give some sort of edgy answer, or are you saying try to be unique in the way you answer, like, I just want to kind of Put a fine point so people can kind of get a vision in their head as it applies to their
Chris: niche.
Okay. I think you need to take the cue from the query. So do not get edgy. Do not try and be unique. If it’s asking you what is a credit card interest rate and it’s from a big publication and it’s on a very authoritative website and even don’t answer the query unless you’re super credentialed. That’s my point for that query.
So, you know, if, um, If the Guardian. co. uk, you know, one of the biggest news publications in the UK is asking a question about, um, uh, should you take painkillers for a headache? And they’re asking for medical professionals. If you run sort of a holistic wellness website, don’t answer that query, okay? If you are a doctor and, you know, you run a health website, answer the query, but don’t take a unique take or, you know, have an opinion if it’s asking for an opinion.
But oftentimes it will just be asking for something they already know. Like a factual, um, they’re looking for, um, someone to reinstate what they’re already writing about. Um, so that’s the time you don’t want to get creative. When they’re asking for a more opinion, like an expert opinion on, on a subject matter, I think you can get creative in your answers.
Um, but also you need to think that, um, oftentimes they’re looking to put together the article to include, uh, a list of points that they may have already, um, pre decided or, or have drafted out. And they’re looking for expert quotes to enhance those sections of that article. So get, get creative in your tone of language.
So, um, add an interesting line. If you’re trying to make a point which you, you believe in, you know, if it’s asking for your opinion on, um, different strategies, um, to, uh, build up, um, your retirement, um, and one of them is to, to build an emergency fund, probably 50{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} of the people replying to that query are going to suggest an emergency fund.
Like it’s one of the things which everybody suggests because it’s a good idea, but if you can add either an interesting way of phrasing it, so, um, you know, an interesting anecdote around that. Um, or you could, I mean, I can’t think off the top of my head, but if you could think of a, you know, an interesting way to say an emergency fund, saving for a rainy day, you know, as a cliche, but something better like that, then that’s going to stand out.
Then the other query type is like a product recommendation. And this one, uh, you want to be able to recommend. Products that they are probably going to want to include in their article. So they’re going to be writing an affiliate article, probably, for this query. Even if it’s on a massive domain. So, Reader’s Digest, uh, Real Simple, um, the Spruce, these websites, they’ll make affiliate articles that will be outsourced to journalists.
So they want journalistic integrity in the products they’re recommending, and they want expert commentary on people that have used these products or can make suggestions on buying these products and how to make buying decisions around these products. So if they’re going to ask you for the product and then your opinion on the product, use a product which is on Amazon.
If it’s a com publication, pick an Amazon. com link. If it’s a co uh, UK publication, pick a co. uk link. Makes it much easier for the journalist to Plot that product into their affiliate article and then give them an interesting take on the product as well. And then you’ve got, um, I make sure the product is something which is like something that you could see being in that article.
If you pick some random product which isn’t on Amazon, then the chances are they’re not going to include it. So that’s where you need to look at all the different types of queries and answer accordingly. What
Jared: about the broad ones? Like I see when I pull up here and I’m looking at him now, like, um, you know, you kind of alluded to.
So let’s stay down that road like Like, uh, saving tips for 2023, like super broad, like, like you said, like emergency fund, there’s going to be 15 other people that submit it. So should I go kind of wacky, like, you know, um, go with a wacky, like, are those the type that could get landed when it’s a general, very broad request?
Or is it about the way I phrase something that’s a little more standardized?
Chris: I, what can you, have you got in front of you the publication that that queries for? Money. com. Money. com. Okay. So Money. com is a huge website. So a really, really big website. I would look at the journalist’s name, um, uh, see the prior articles and have a sense of who it is they’re quoting.
I know Money. com is a big website. They’re, they’re not looking for radical ideas there. Uh, uh, opinions on how you managed to save, you know, to get a new car by picking up quarters off the side of the road. They’re not going to put that in that article. What they want is they want to leverage the expertise of the person they quoted.
So I would go for not the most obvious, like maybe emergency fund, but think of something which they’re definitely going to include. Look up some of their previously published articles under the same topic, but make sure you have credentials for that query because money. com isn’t going to quote. You know, someone who has got a little bit of experience with finance.
They want to quote CFP, an accountant, you know, an ex investment banker, blah,
Jared: blah, blah, blah, blah. The last five minutes have definitely been a master class on how to analyze Harrow queries. But I think you bring up a really good point that I just wanted to double down on, which is just like SEO, right?
When we’re about to write an article on a certain topic. You don’t just sit down and put pen to paper, even if you’re an expert on it, you do go look at the SERPs, you look at what’s ranking, not saying you copy it, but you do look at it to see what Google, what types of things Google is looking for in the top couple of results.
I love that you say, Hey, it says a journalist name right there. You can go to that money. com website and find that journalist. Look at the last couple articles they wrote. Look at the type of people they’re quoting. Look at the way that they quote things. That’s really, really smart.
Chris: Yeah. And then you start to get a sense as well then, like, we blacklist a lot of domains.
There’s some excellent domains. on Harold, that they just have a no link policy. So they just don’t link. And they’ve been, you know, they’ve stun in dir eighties with millions of monthly traffic. Um, and we’ve tried, we’ve won the quotes. They’ve been unlinked. Uh, we tried again to get them converted. They don’t.
So we have to. Blacklist that domain. We don’t pitch that domain anymore to not waste resources. Every now and again a new domain will come on to Harrow that we haven’t seen before. And that’s exciting because then we can, um, we can do some pitches, see what the journalist, what the journalist is, um, is responding to.
If we win one or two or three links for clients all of a sudden from this journalist, we’ll get an instant picture of the sorts of pitches that this journalist, um, that this journalist likes, the sorts of person this journalist is, can quote. Uh, What, um, the editorial standards for that journalist at that publication are, you know, are they leaving if they sometimes will get journalists send us drafts?
They’ll send, they’ll send us, as the client, the draft of the article before it goes live. So, they’ll say, uh, I’m going to include you in my article, here’s a draft, let me know if there’s any amendments, if I’ve got your surname correct, blah blah blah blah. And you’ll see in the draft that they’ve linked to you, and you think, Ah, yes, I’ve just got to wait for it to go live, the client’s going to get a link.
Article goes live, link’s been removed. So, obviously, in the edit, in the editing process, that’s, that’s been removed. So, the more you, you can sort of practice, and, and, and another thing as well, if you see a domain, And you want to quickly check. You want to know whether or not it’s worth pitching. Let’s say you can’t be bothered to use our database, or let’s say it’s not in our database, it’s a new domain.
Quick trick, um, find the journalist’s name, find their previous articles, go and look at their previous articles, and just get a free no follow, do follow, um, Link, uh, extension. Go and see if a they’re linking. If they are, you can see whether or not they’re do follow, no follow. If it’s a massive domain and, and they no follow, I’d go for it.
Get that. No follow. It’s still a great link. Look, if they’re linking, Instagram is another big one, especially in like the DIY and craft websites. They’re starting to link to Instagram instead of websites. So if you go. Oh, this looks fantastic. Great domain. I’ve heard of this website. It’s brilliant. Let me click on the journalist.
Let me go to her last three articles. Uh, every single person she’s quoted, she’s, she’s linked to their Instagram. Then just skip it. You know, you don’t have to waste your time because they don’t link to anything other than Instagram. So yeah, you can get your cues like an SEO from what’s come before.
Jared: Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. We’re coming up on time. I’m going to hit you with two questions. You can give me quick answers to them if you want. If they need long answers, feel free to do it, but Um, how important is it that I use an email address to pitch journalists that’s my domain name? Or can I use a Gmail email address?
Chris: Uh, I think a domain email is important. I don’t think the domain… I think you’ll have a higher conversion rate with a domain email. I don’t think the domain email needs to be your domain email, but our domain email. So, as long as it’s not Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook. Like, if you’ve got… If you’re pitching for…
Multiple sites that you own, um, and you’ve got like a generic domain email, like let’s say you own jaredborman. com, then that, well actually that is your name I suppose, but you know, if you had a more generic, you know, housing company domain email, um, but having said that, um, people still win quotes with Gmail accounts, so I wouldn’t overthink that, but I think if you’re gonna go beyond those sort of five or six links that you can get from your own, uh, yeah, if you’re gonna try and, uh, take it to the next level, then consider doing it from your
Jared: domain email, yeah.
Second, kind of rapid fire question, how important is my subject line? Because it doesn’t auto generate a subject line. I don’t hit reply, right, like I have to create an email to send to them. And as we know in email marketing, or at least as I know from running a marketing agency, the subject line is massively important to the overall open rate and thus the experience and click through rate of an email.
So how important, and any tips, if it is important on subject line for my email to journalists?
Chris: Okay, first tip on subject line, read the requirements of the query, because sometimes the journalist will specify the subject line that they want. And that’s probably them doing, like, an easter egg or some sort of filtering on, uh, whether or not you’ve read their query and their requirements, and they will instantly not read your response if you haven’t adhered to their request on the naming of the subject line.
So, number one, do what the journalist asks. If the journalist doesn’t ask, our experience is we make the subject line simple. A journalist isn’t that bothered about a subject line. They want to get a good source. So… I wouldn’t waste your time. Having said that, we haven’t AB tested that yet. Maybe it’s something we’ll do in the future.
May I would love to hear if someone started doing creative subject lines had a massive increase in success. I’d be really interested to hear that, uh, from Mike’s from our experience pitching and from what I’ve heard when I speak to the two journalists inside of our course, subject lines, not not massive deal.
Jared: There’s still so much on our list that we could keep going into. So what I want to say is this broadly speaking, is there anything we haven’t covered that you think is really important? that we should touch on before
Chris: we finish. Ah, interesting. Um, AI, um, we have to, we live in a world where it is now, so you have to recognize that, and you can use it.
I think it’s good that people are mass producing AI pitches on Harrow, because the journalists instantly see them, and then we can stand out above them. Does that mean we don’t utilize AI? No, it would be foolish not to. AI is great at research. It’s really good at exploring ideas outside of like your wheelhouse, especially if you’re having like writer’s block on what is really good at.
And this would be my number one piece of advice for someone beginning, if you are an expert, okay? If you are an expert, and you’re thinking, Oh, I can’t be bothered to write all these pitches, then don’t, okay? Look at the Harrow query, you’re an expert anyway, so you can probably answer it, with your mouth, just talking, casually.
Take a notepad, on your… iPhone, and answer the query with your, with your, with your voice. Have ums and ahs, and just answer the query using your own interesting flurries of English and, um, tone, uh, ideas and whatnot, and you’ll get a big block of text. Put it into ChatGPT, and tell the ChatPTT to tidy up the text, maintain the linguistic tone, um, but correct grammar and spelling, and you will instantly get out a passable pitch, which is in your own style of voice, will 100{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} pass the AI checks, and You’ve saved yourself loads of time banging away on a keyboard because you already know how to answer the question.
It’s way easier to speak and it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong because the AI will tidy it up.
Jared: That’s good. I’m glad we touched on that. Good. So you can use AI, just use it smart.
Chris: Yeah, if you, if you just put the question into chat GPT and then send that answer. The journalists now are actively testing for, um, AI produced responses.
So as soon as that becomes, uh, like, uh, an easy, I know quoted, I think, um, it’s a auto checking within their platform and harrows move into connectively at the end of the year. So it’s, it’s definitely going to be, um, a part of them dismissing pitches, but also it is a great way to put together content.
Like, like I said, you can throw together a load of ideas. And get it to put it all together is that I produce content, I suppose it is, but you’ve also done all of it, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s as well. If you’re an SEO as well, you don’t really care. You want the links. So it’s a game. It’s a game for them.
It’s a game for us. Um, I is changing so quick that if we had this conversation again this time next year, the landscape will probably be completely different anyway. So it’s just testing, tweaking, trying to stay ahead of the game and trying to stand out. And, and always authenticity and genuine experience will always shine through.
Jared: So let’s give a couple things. You have a free resource, which, um, you told me you had a free resource. I hadn’t really dove into exactly what it was prior to the podcast. It sounds actually very interesting. I’m gonna go download it myself. What’s the URL for the free resource and you know, obviously that the, the elephant in the room is, this is a lot of work.
If people don’t want to do this work or aren’t ready to do this work or want to do this work in addition to having you help them share how people can get in touch and learn more about the Harrow link building services you offer. So the free resource and then also a little bit more about link, uh, linkify.
Chris: Okay, well we have, uh, the database at linkify. io slash freebie. Uh, I’m gonna give Spencer a code so, uh, NichePursuits20 can give them a 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} off on our packages if you want us to do all of the link building for you. So we’ll just onboard you, um, and then you can sit back and we’ll pitch until we fulfill your order.
That’s what we’re good at. Uh, we also have a course in there which, um, I will also make sure gives them 20{57b8cc37fd24bce1cf64c8b05d9407ce9171516056c1f5e762677747187a0de4} off the course. That’s our harrow master class course. If they want to, uh, find everything I’ve just said, but in like loads more detail and that course, we’re going to be updating as well for when connectively comes out.
So if they get that course now, they’ll be on the lifetime. So they’ll get the updated version down the road as well.
Jared: That’s great. Okay. And I will get that in the show notes, so that if people want to click through on that, that’s a, that’s a wonderful offer there. Um, and the freebie, looking forward to getting that.
Um, wow, Chris, that flew by. Uh, I said that, that one, that was, uh, and I’d like, folks, I wish that you could see our agenda. What, you think we covered half of it, probably?
Chris: Yeah, maybe. I did give you a lot of bullet points, didn’t I?
Jared: I asked you for a good working agenda, and I got it. I got it. A Hero Masterclass, technically.
Yeah. No, it’s great, man. That was, um, that was a really great deep dive into Hero, and, um, I hope people really got a lot of it. But thanks for showing up, and, um, and just… Dropping a lot of knowledge bombs on everyone. I really appreciate you
Chris: being here. Thanks, man. It’s been an absolute like a dream come true to come on niche pursuits.
So thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Jared: Cheers. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon. Thanks.