PR for Small Businesses | Five Places to Connect With Reporters
Get Free PR for Your Small Business Through Reporter Websites
Years ago, small businesses needed to hire a public relations firm in order to gain PR. Thanks to the Internet, you no longer need powerful PR connections to earn attention from the press. As a small business owner, you can directly connect to reporters, journalists, and bloggers through reporter query sites. The principle of these sites is simple: Reporters need great sources to interview for their stories while subject matter experts, including small business owners, want the press to pay attention to them, so why not create a site where these two demographics can connect with each other? Here are five great websites that make it easy for small business owners to connect with reporters.
Help A Reporter Out
Hire a Reporter, or HARO as it's popularly known, is one of the best known sites on the Internet for connecting reporters and experts who would like to be quoted. Every day HARO receives approximately 200 queries from reporters seeking sources to quote. To see queries, users must either sign-up for the HARO email list or follow HARO on Twitter (@helpareporter)
PR for Small Businesses Is Easy Thanks to HARO
Pitch Rate
Pitch Rate publishes queries from reporters but it also allows experts to create profiles about themselves so that reporters seeking a particular type of expert may search the database for those users and contact them directly rather than submitting a public query. Another great feature of Pitch Rate is their numerous resource articles, which allows small businesses who are new to the world of public relations learn more about the field.
Expert Click
Expert Click is one of the oldest reporter connection services. Their yearbook of experts was first published in 1984. Expert Click allows anyone to create an expert file on their website. Reporters can then search the database of experts to find sources relevant to the stories they're working on. The free version of Expert Click places Google Adwords on your expert profile, but a paid version is available starting at $28 a month and includes a variety of bonus features.
PR Manna
PR Manna makes it easy to find reporter queries you can comment on by publishing queries on an RSS feed, via an email newsletter, and on Twitter (@PRManna). They even organize queries by category on their website, making it easy to find queries that may match your business' expertise. For example, if your small business focuses on green products, you could look directly in the category green/eco to find reporter queries directly related to that topic.
Reporter Connection
Bill and Steve Harrison's Reporter Connection is a daily email newsletter that lists stories that reporters are interested in finding sources for. Each query is accompanied by a question set that the expert must submit in order to be quoted as a source. This makes it much easier to become a source as you don't really need to pitch a particular angle to a reporter, you just need to answer the questions they ask. The Harrison's also sell a great library of products to help you get PR for your small business.
Tips for Getting More PR for Small Businesses
Connecting with reporters through these sites is just one step you can take to improve your small business public relations efforts. I offer even more tips in my article 4 Proven Ways to Earn Media Attention for Your Restaurant. Although the article focuses on restaurant marketing the information within it can be applied to virtually any small business in need of a better PR strategy.
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