How to automate HARO

Whether you’re a subject matter expert, thought leader, content marketer or some other professional, establishing your brand’s credibility online is essential these days. One way to boost your reputation is to strategically answer HARO queries.

However, responding to HARO requests can be time-consuming with little pay-off if not done right.

Here are our expert tips for professionally automating your HARO responses for best results.

To make the process of responding to HARO queries as efficient as possible for you and your PR team, we’ve put together expert automation tips.

First, you can help automate HARO responses by only receiving relevant queries. There are several ways to go about this. First, you can choose categories in HARO for the type of queries you wish to receive.

In addition, you can pick keyword modifiers by upgrading to the HARO standard plan (or above). This way, if you want to answer queries about “AI,” you can filter to only receive queries with this keyword.

A few third-party tools can also help with this, such as Parsio or MonkeyLearn, though they may require a more involved set-up.

Gmail’s Templates Feature is nifty for saving an email with the formatting you want for your HARO responses.

You can do this by creating a typical HARO response and then clicking on the three dots on the bottom right-hand corner. Then navigate to “Save draft as template” and add a template name.

Later on, when you compose an email, you can simply load this template and personalize it as needed. Easy-peasy!

Another great way of saving time as you respond to HARO queries is to set up Text Expanders. Basically, you can eliminate the repetition of typing out the same snippets of text. For dynamic content, it also ensures that you don’t forget to personalize certain areas of your email.

Take advantage of tools such as Gmail Snippets, TextExpander or Text Blaze to easily update dynamic snippets of your email for each unique HARO response.

It’s also a good idea to have some of your thoughts organized before HARO responses come your way. Think about making a doc or taking notes to collect insights on a regular basis. In this way, you’ll have unique ready-to-go ideas when queries arrive. Some tools you can use to help you save notes on the go include Google Keep, Joplin and Notion.

Reporters are busy people. Ideally, you’ll get a heads-up if your response is selected for an article, as well as the link when the story is published.

Just in case, you can get the most up-to-date notification by setting up Google alerts for your name. This will also help you share the article ASAP once it’s up.

HARO is an excellent PR tool to establish your credibility and enhance SEO. With our automation tips above, you’re sure to nail your next HARO response!

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