Reporter Connection Launches

We’ve been using HARO, Help a Reporter Out, for quite some time now. Three times a day, I get an email with a list of requests from reporters looking for sources, segment producers looking for guests, bloggers looking for products to review, etc. I scroll through the list to see if any of our authors are experts in subjects that match up with a request. If so, I send the HARO contact an email with more information on our author and his or her book. It’s led to some good coverage for books such as Flying Drunk, Surviving Military Separation, and The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine in newspapers and on radio stations, websites, and blogs.

Bradley Communications, who we turn to for lots of book marketing and publicity help, recently started a service called Reporter Connection. It’s in BETA now and I receive one email a day with a similar list of reporter requests for sources. That might increase to three emails a day as the program grows. So far the only differences I’ve noticed between HARO and Reporter Connection are:

• With HARO you send an email directly to the people who make the request (sometimes with a blind email address, like Craigslist uses). Reporter Connection uses an online contact form where you submit answers to general questions in a few different fields.
• The user interface for Reporter Connection seems better, easier to read but still basic enough to scroll through the requests quickly.

Will keep you posted as I compare the two.

Happy New Year to All!