The short story – A blog post was posted about someone at a party who yelled at a volunteer. It wasn’t me. However, under the influence of too much tequila, I posted a comment on Twitter inside the TechKaraoke party that was taken totally out of context. I was talking about Karaoke, and from the comment, it was inferred that I was slinging some power to be let into a party. People put two and two together, and assumed it was me. For the record: It wasn’t. I have countless people (both old friends and new friends) who were there and have already set the record straight. I’ve also talked via telephone to the party organizer, Jen Wojcik, and we’ve resolved the case of mistaken identity. I’m a huge fan of her events, but more importantly, I don’t talk down to ANYONE, regardless of where I am or what I’m doing, be it at a party, or the local bodega. That’s simply not me. This paragraph had to be written to give this blog post some context, but this blog post isn’t about me, or what I did or didn’t do.

Please note: Any suggestions I offer in this blog post are directed to anyone who feels they’re worth adopting, INCLUDING ME. I’m calling myself out here too.

Here’s the deal guys. At the end of the day, life comes down to RESPECT. That’s it. Life comes down to respect. I don’t care how big you think you are, or how many “Successes” you’ve had. If you’re not respectful, you won’t be long for this world.

My mom and dad were teachers all their lives, in the working class of New York City. And they taught me respect. They taught me, most importantly, to never forget where I came from. And I hope that I’ve shown them respect by trying to live by that creed. Do I fail occasionally? Hells to the yes. We all do. But it’s bigger than that.

NONE OF US ARE EVER SO IMPORTANT THAT WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO TALK DOWN TO THOSE WHO WE FEEL ARE NOT.

The gist of Thomas Myerman’s blog post was thus: This small event, South by Southwest, has, in a way, become the victim of its own success. When people like Ashton Kutcher show up and ride the Zappos happiness bus, it’s no surprise that the douchebags of the industry will show up, also. Not calling Ashton a douchebag by any means, just making a point.

Myerman simply stated that way too many people showed up at South by Southwest, believing their own hype. As such, this year’s event had several “bad moments,” far more than any other SXSW in previous years.

And he’s right.

Ladies and Gentlemen of my industry: I propose a credo: “WE ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS WE THINK WE ARE.”

Say it with me.

There is NEVER any excuse for talking down to a volunteer, raising your voice, or putting on airs about how great you are – EVER. Let’s fact it – Doing it at the door of a party won’t help you anyway, because chances are, the person working the door is a volunteer who has never heard of your ego-inflated ass. And yes, your ass looks fat in that ego. There. I said it.

If we want to continue to be taken seriously as an industry, we need to remember that we’re not rock stars. We’re not playing sold out stadiums, and we’re most certainly not curing diseases, or helping mal-nourished kids get food or get healthy by writing a fucking treastise on how you can market your brand better by using FourSquare.

We need to step back and realize this. All of us, some to more of an extent than others. And yes, from time to time, that includes me. And chances are, from time to time, that includes you.

I, for one, don’t want to see South by Southwest turn into a conference no one wants to attend because all the assholes attend it. I saw this happen in 2000 at another massive conference that started out small, at a little hotel in mid-town Manhattan in the mid-90s. By the time it took over the entire LA Convention Center in 2001, it was painful to attend. We can’t let this happen. I for one, will go on record and attempt to do my part to MAKE SURE this doesn’t happen.

I built HARO on a foundation of helping people. In the process, it turned into a good company, a solid company that generates decent revenue. But the core has stayed intact – We, as leaders in the social media space, or hell, even as just users of the tools, need to take a more proactive approach to helping people, and a less active approach to making sure people know who we are.

Because if we continue with the latter, everyone will know who we are – And they’ll go out of our way to avoid us. We can’t let that happen because we our egos have clouded our vision. Our actions, and how they serve other people, are a billion times more important than how we come across. Because if our actions don’t help to serve the greater good, we’ll come across like assholes. We need to remember this.

I’m not going to censor any comments left here. I’ll approve them all, good or bad. Want to say something? Say it below.

PS: Heather Whaling wrote a similar piece yesterday – Worth the read.

Notice the second item that comes up in search? NOT in the Google ads, but in actual organic search?

Here’s a photo, in case you didn’t.

Yes, that’s HARO right there as number two, right behind Wikipedia, and in FRONT of a domain with the word “Publicity” in it.

Thank you Evan, at First Page Sage.

I was never a real believer in SEO, thought it was too much math, and figured it better to get people to link to us, which would help grow our ranking in Google. I still DO believe that – no doubt. But I also have been converted. Search Engine Optimization WORKS, and if you’re not including it in your marketing plan, you’re not truly marketing.

Then Evan, a HARO member, and founder of First Page Sage, emailed me – “Hey, can I do some SEO for you? If I can do it right, mention it, ok? I met him for coffee – He’s like – eleven years old, I think. But he’s brilliant. And he’s already started and sold a bunch of companies.

He’s a younger me. So I gave him a chance. And he proved it. Man, did he prove it.

I don’t know all the details as to why it works – but I do know that Google is essentially nothing more than one giant algorithm, waiting to see what sites are playing the game the right way. At the end of the day, I’m talking about “Good” SEO – not “Evil” SEO. Google is smart. Doing “stupid” SEO will be pointless – but doing “smart” SEO, “Good” SEO, where you’re using industry approved techniques to help grow your company, should be part of any marketing plan.

We’re number two on a WORD. A WORD! That’s insane.

Give Evan a shout at First Page Sage. I RARELY give recommendations in my blog. This kid deserves one.

When I first launched HARO on the web in March of 2008, I never ever could have imagined that in under two years, we’d become the de-facto standard for how crowd-sourcing is done. I never imagined over 50,000 journalists would send queries out to over 150,000 sources – that people would wind up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Oprah, Shark Tank, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Fortune, Forbes, the NY Daily News… You name it – Almost every media outlet in the country has used HARO – and here’s one of the best parts – 93% of all journalists that have used HARO, come back to use HARO again. We’ve really grown up.

Along the way, I brought on some wonderful brains to help me grow a little more – our Editor-in-Chief, Michael Griffin, his loyal partner in crime Laura Spaventa, our COO, Thom Brodeur, and of course, the wonderful Meagan Walker, who offers me read-only access to my calendar, and for good reason. I’m so proud of what we’ve created, that it can only be surpassed by what’s coming next.

On Tuesday morning you’re going to receive the HARO as normal – But we also encourage you to head over to http://helpareporter.com and check out the fundamental changes we’ve made to HARO.

First off, you’ll create a password. This will allow you to do many things – You can determine what emails you want to get – See, on Tuesday, we’ll also be launching “Vertical HAROs” – Every section of the Master HARO you receive today will also be available as an individual list – It’s the number one request we’ve had – “Can I just get the tech queries?” “How about just feeding me lifestyle queries?” Now you can get them. From the feedback we’ve gotten, we know you won’t leave the master HARO list – but rather, will keep the Master HARO to look at when you have time – We know that the beauty of HARO is not only the queries you can answer for clients or your company, but also the ones you can forward to friends, colleagues, family, and the like. And we want you to keep doing that. So you’ll be able to subscribe to the individual HARO emails, as well as the master list.

You’ll also, if you desire, be able to answer queries directly from the website – which, if reporters choose to do, will allow them to rate your pitches – did they like them? What did you miss? How could you have improved your query? We hope this will become a valuable tool in helping you to learn how to pitch reporters.

And get this – Reporters who use us will no longer have to worry about SPAM – EVERY SINGLE QUERY WILL HAVE THE REPORTER EMAIL MASKED!! For reporters, this means that instead of joe@theoprahshow, sources will now send queries to 34531@haro.net, or something similar! AND, even MORE, reporter email addresses will SELF-DESTRUCT as soon as their query deadline is reached! No SPAM! No harvesting emails! We’ve officially created the largest SPAM FREE/HARVEST FREE source repository in the world! CAN I GET A WOOT!!

Best part? Nothing here is mandatory – You can do nothing, and continue to get the Master HARO, three times per day. These are all added features we’re building in, for you.

Finally – Are you, or do you want to be an advertiser? Now, instead of going through me to book an ad, you can sign up, see a specific calendar for your list (want tech only? Master and lifestyle, etc.) and see what’s available, when. Pick a date, choose how many you want (with discounts for multiple buys) and simply enter your credit card. It honestly doesn’t get any easier to reach a large, listening audience, ready to buy! And hey, let’s not forget about targeting! Only want tech sources? Only lifestyle? Done!

One final thing – Every single upgrade we’ve made to HARO has come from you – You told us what you wanted – So we listened.

Check us out on Tuesday morning, January 19th – Let us know what you think – either here, or at http://getsatisfaction.com/HARO – And thank you. We can’t WAIT to share the second phase of our HARO lives with you.

Much love, happiness, and of course, blue skies,

The HARO Team (Peter, Thom, Laura, Meagan, and Mike)

As you know, HARO is experiencing explosive growth. It’s beyond insane how quickly HARO has grown – we’re beyond thrilled, of course, but with this new power, comes awesome responsibility, as it were. So on Wednesday, HARO will be moving to a new email service provider (ESP). Take five seconds and read this this message, because we’ll touch on what you need to do NOW to make sure you continue to receive the HARO without a problem.

WHAT

After a multi-solution review, HARO has selected CheetahMail as our new ESP. CheetahMail is going to allow us to provide you with a higher degree of deliverability and timeliness for receipt of your HAROs. As you know, getting a 5am deadline query at 11:30am doesn’t help anyone.

WHEN

Wednesday morning, October 14th, starting with the morning issue of HARO, we will be delivering through CheetahMail from that point forward.

HOW

If all goes as planned next week, this will be a seamless transition. We’re simply migrating all existing subscribers over to the new provider. Wednesday morning you’ll receive the HARO as you always have. Those of you who are on the Gift Bag list will also receive that as you always have. Same HARO, different newsboy delivering the news.

CHANGES THAT MAY POSSIBLY AFFECT YOUR RECEIPT OF HARO

Effective Wednesday morning, we are changing the FROM: headers in both the HARO list and the GiftBag list. Note that if you have previously added peter@shankman.com to your address book or to your IT department’s whitelist as a trusted sender, you don’t need to change that.

You DO, however, need to add the following addresses to your address books. Especially if you are an Earthlink or Mindspring customer, you will need to add the following to your spam blocker address book via your web interface. If you do not know how to do this, please contact your ISP for help, but chances are, just adding the addresses below to your address book should handle it.

HARO NEW SENDER ADDRESSES

The new sender addresses for both the HARO and the HARO Gift Bag Product List are haro@email.helpareporter.com

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE HARO STOPS COMING? (I.e., our #1 question: “WHERE’S MY HARO?”)

This is, by far, the most frequently asked question we receive at the HARO Help Desk. To make it clear: We have NEVER not sent out a HARO on time. However… There are many places along the line between us and your desktop where HARO could be mistakenly filtered. The two most common ones are your corporate firewall or your organization’s spam filter and your desktop email client. 99% of the time, the problem is on your end, not ours. It doesn’t mean we don’t love you, and chances are, we didn’t ban you for off-topic pitching. It just means you gotta fix it. So here’s how:

1. Add the new sender addresses to your email client’s address book.

2. If you know that your company or agency is using a server-side spam filter (Barracuda, etc.) that filters for spam before the email reaches your desk, it’s probably a wise idea to notify your IT department of the new sender addresses above and ask that they be added as trusted senders to any and every solution that they have in place that filters inbound email to your firm. IT Department whitelisting involves whitelisting the sender address at the mail server or corporate network spam filters. If your IT department has any specific questions, they can reach our deliverability team by writing to support@helpareporter.com.

3. Read up at this link below, find your email client or ISP and make sure you follow the instructions to ensure delivery success:

Instructions for Delivery Success

4. We are telling you all of this NOW, on Monday, so that if Wednesday rolls around and by 9am Eastern you haven’t received the morning HARO, but you HAVE done all of the above, we’ll be able to look into specific issues and get you back on track right away.

5) One final point: Prior to this change, when you wanted to email me and ask a question about the HARO, or ask about advertising info, or just invite me over for Pizza, you could simply respond to the HARO. With this change, the HAROs will no longer come from peter@shankman.com. That said, continue to invite me over for pizza – just drop me a regular note at my email address. Replying to a HARO won’t work.

Hopefully there will be very few problems if you follow the above instructions prior to end of day Tuesday, but if you do have trouble on Wednesday, please feel free to send an email to: support@helpareporter.com. When and if you do write, it would help tremendously if you provided your phone number and the name of your Internet Service Provider, so we can get a sense whether any delivery issues are specific to one ISP and know who to call.

We’re excited for this – It’s going to be a good move, one which will allow us to scale at the speed we want to scale. And by the way – this is just phase one. In the next month to 45-days, you’re going to see more amazing changes at HARO. We’re stoked. You should be, too.

Blue skies,

Peter Shankman

Despite how much I hate press releases, the group that manages HAROs PR suggested that it could be a good idea to issue one stating the differences between what HARO was, and what it now is. I reluctantly agreed. The release is at the bottom of this blog post. Some of the key takeaways, though:

HARO’s Growth Figures Include:

In August 2008, there were 1500 journalists using HARO, sending out 650 queries per month to about 20,000 sources.

Today, there are 30,000 journalists who have used HARO, sending out more than 3000 queries per month to over 80,000 members.

The number of advertisers for HARO’s free-for-both-subscribers-and-journalists service skyrocketed 3900% from August 2008 to August 2009. The HARO staff rose 400 percent in the past year. (in Non-PR-speak, that means we hired four people.) Revenues over the past year have leaped from $15,000 as of August 2008 to just over $1MM as of August 2009 with advertising inventory on HAROs already sold out for 2009.

That’s the part that really blows my mind. from virtually nothing to over $1,000,000 in revenue. I mean, damn, right?

Back then, we had one list. Now we have HARO and the Gift Bags… But the coolness of all of this is what’s to come in a bit under two months:

Future expansion will include additional break-outs with specific HARO notices for specific industry verticals.

My COO is fond of saying sound-bite-y things like “Today, we’re powering a PR, marketing and sales eco-system for the engine of our economy – small and mid-sized businesses.” and attributing the quotes to me. Which is fine. He also calls us a social media success story. I agree. I do think though, that in the end, it comes down to this: We’ve created something here that people like. Something people use, something that saves time, helps people and companies grow, and helps journalists better do their job. We’ve kept it fun, had a good time creating it, always listened to the feedback of every single member, and tried to run it less like a business, and more like a family. It was always about good karma. It will continue to be.

So enjoy the press release below – and watch this space… Cool stuff be-a-coming.


HELP A REPORTER OUT (HARO) RELEASES 2009 GROWTH FIGURES
Second Year for HARO Social Media Service Produces Dramatic Growth in
Members, Advertisers and Revenue

Founded in 2008 by serial entrepreneur Peter Shankman, Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is one of the fastest-growing social media companies in North America. Every day, HARO brings nearly 30,000 bloggers, reporters and journalists, over 80,000 news sources and thousands of small businesses together to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services. Since its inception, HARO has published more than 60,000 journalist queries; has facilitated nearly 7,000,000 media pitches, and has marketed and promoted over 2,500 brands to the media, small businesses and consumers. HARO is entirely free to sources and journalists and unlike a majority of social media companies, is independently owned and funded and has been profitable since day one. For more, www.helpareporter.com.