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Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was great until it was acquired. Today, HERO is the real hero.
May 01, 2024

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was great until it was acquired. Today, HERO is the real hero.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Help a Reporter Out (HARO)

Connecting our clients and their stories to reporters seeking sources for stories they're actively developing is a critical process that leads to important results. We use Help a Reporter Out (HARO) (and similar tools) to learn about these opportunities. When we find a suitable match between a reporter and the experts we have to offer, we make the pitch and hopefully turn it into coverage.
  • Identify active opportunities for coverage with reporters that need qualified sources
  • Create more opportunities for clients to earn coverage in a wide range of media outlets
  • Provide an ongoing source for leads that can help us meet our goals.
  • Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was recently acquired by Cision, which drove it straight into the ground.
  • Cision's idea to turn Help a Reporter Out (HARO) into a subscription service was a death knell. Making these opportunities available as a resource for journalists and PR practitioners alike, without having to pay for it, was what made it so great.
  • Help a Reporter Out (HARO) founder Peter Shankman revived the idea and launched HERO, which essentially captures everything that was great about HARO.
  • As a free resource, the ROI was off the charts. As a subscription service, not so much.
  • When we can bring clients wins, regardless of how they were sourced, that keeps them happy and helps us maintain strong long-term agency/client relationships. In that regard, subscribing to a free resource like HARO (or now HERO) is a no-brainer.
  • It's unlikely that we'll subscribe to a service that doesn't do as good a job as it used to, especially when we pay so much for other services that are required to do business effectively.

Do you think Help a Reporter Out (HARO) delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Help a Reporter Out (HARO)'s feature set?

No

Did Help a Reporter Out (HARO) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Help a Reporter Out (HARO) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Help a Reporter Out (HARO) again?

No

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was (and today, HERO is) an incredibly valuable tool that effectively bridges the gap between journalists and PR practitioners, and it filled a need on both ends. A perfect solution to an ongoing industry problem.

When I have a client that needs media coverage, and a lead is shared in the daily email that fits the client's expertise, it creates an opportunity that we may never have otherwise been able to identify.