Assuming you want ALL THAT COVERAGE, as your boss has told you that you do, these are, without question, the top five ways to get it. Make sure you follow EVERY single rule here, and you’ll be well on your way to getting tons and tons of coverage!

1) Make sure to pitch completely and totally off-topic, with absolutely no regard to what the journalist covers. Hey, times are tight, right? They should be LOVING you for pitching them at all! They cover finance? Make sure to pitch them on a home entertainment system for 8-15 year olds. They’ll love you for it, and if they can’t use it, you know they’ll be happy to pitch it over to their friends who will write about it! Just make sure you put “and if you can’t use this, can you send it to the person at your outlet who can?” It’ll be the least they can do, they’ll be sure to help you out!

2) Don’t EVER believe the reporter when they tell you how they like to be contacted. They’re only doing that to TEST you! They say email? You say HOME PHONE! They say “No Attachments?” Please – You say “FIFTY MEGABYTE FILE TO THEIR BLACKBERRY!” Remember – They’re just testing you! They want to see how smart you are! Get around it!

3) FOLLOW UP, FOLLOW UP, FOLLOW UP! You should start phoning the reporter (at home, preferably) no later than FORTY FIVE MINUTES AFTER YOUR INITIAL PITCH. Continue in two-hour increments, handing over the night-time duties to a subordinate – Remember – The squeaky wheel gets the grease – In this case, squeak every two hours until the reporter covers you.

4) If for some reason, the reporter has written a story about your industry and not included you, well… Let the mayhem begin! This reporter – Who does he think he is! Start with the angry emails – You’ve every right to get angry! Call him names – Best of all, threaten to go to his superior and threaten to pull all your client’s advertising from the media outlet. They’ll see the error of their ways RIGHT quick, and you’ll be in like Flynn! Don’t forget to cc your legal team, and say “our legal team is cc’d. We hope it doesn’t come to having to use them.” That’ll scare them right quick!

5) Finally, reporters LOVE a challenge – Make it TOTALLY difficult for reporters to find you – Don’t include your phone number OR a mobile phone. When you schedule interviews, make SURE to reschedule them at LEAST three times – Hey – The reporter has to understand that your client is a LOT busier than they are – They’re just going to have to rearrange their schedule for you – And they will – Remember – They want your story, and in the end, they work for You!

Just follow these five rules, and you’ll be rolling in story placements faster than you can say “PROMOTION!”

What other great ideas can you recommend that guarantee placement? Leave them below in the comments.

PS: If you’re really so stupid as to not realize this is complete and utter sarcasm, and you should NOT do anything listed above, close down your computer – You’re too stupid to be using the Internet.

1) HARO will remain free.

2) The HARO you know and love will remain free.

3) The HARO you know and love will NOT CHANGE from what you know and love. The queries will still show up, on time, 3x per day, Monday through Friday, FOR FREE.

4) I’ve said this. The CEO of Vocus has said this. The CEO of Vocus has said this. HARO will remain free.

5) Am I working with Vocus to create some brilliant new additions to HARO, IN ADDITION to the HARO you know and love that’s already free? Of course I am. That’s called progress.

6) Will some of these new additions potentially have a revenue component to them? I.e., will some of the new additions possibly cost money? Possibly, sure.

7) Will any of the new additions affect the current HARO you get, or make the HARO you get NOT free in any capacity? NO.

8 ) Will you have the option to purchase, if we make them available for purchase, any of the add-ons we might add to HARO? Yes.

9) Do you have to? NO.

10) If you don’t, will you still get the same HARO you’ve always gotten, and will it still be free? YES.

11) Do you really think I’d allow what my name is staked on to piss off 100k people? Come on.

12) Will the HARO you know and love stay free? YES.

I really, really hope this cuts down the rumor mill. Come on, guys. Lindsay Lohan is supposed to get out of jail later this week. Isn’t that MUCH more important?

I’m going on vacation now. That is my current goal for the next nine days.

Enjoy, all…

-Peter Shankman

PS: Did I mention the HARO you know and love will always stay FREE? Good. Just checking.

As you’ll see in the video below, NOTHING CHANGES. HARO will still be free. You’ll still get the most helpful media queries in the world, three times a day, right to your inbox. I’ll still be running HARO, and still writing the ads, and updating you with my little blurbs each day.

But… Great things will now be able to happen. We’ll have a kick-ass infrastructure, which will allow us to grow HARO better than ever before. Different countries. More lists. Breaking news queries! You name it. It’s gonna be an AMAZING ride.

To everyone who has EVER used HARO in any capacity whatsoever, I say THANK YOU! It’s because of YOU that HARO has grown to what it is, and I’m just beyond excited that Vocus saw that, saw my vision, saw YOUR vision, and wants to help me take it to the next level.

From a Facebook group with two overweight cats, to a 100k+ person mailing list used by thousands upon thousands of journalists and sources, (and with two now more slightly overweight cats,) this has been one HELL of a ride. I can’t wait to see where we go next.

And of course, Meagan, Mike, and Laura, I couldn’t have done any of this without you. I love you guys.

Can I get a WOOT!!

Hey gang!

(A somewhat long read, but worth 2 minutes out of your morning coffee if you read the HARO.)

One of the things I ALWAYS mention when I talk about HARO and how we’ve grown as fast and as well as we have is that simply, we LISTEN to our audience – Our members, our reporters, our sources, we LISTEN when you ask for things. And if enough of you ask for the same thing, we listen to our audience. We know that in the end, our AUDIENCE dictates the flow of our company – not the other way around – If we ever start believing that WE dictate the flow, and not our audience/members/sources/journalists, we’ll be out of business in a heartbeat.

So… With that said – We’re making a change to HARO. Nothing major, but something you should all know about.

One of the big things we implemented when we switched to HARO 2.0, as it were, was the ability for masked email addresses from reporters. That meant that joeblow@nytimes.com now became x123a14@helpareporter.com, and when their query expired, so did their email.

This was met with a resounding cheer from both journalists and even from sources, who understood that we were doing it to virtually eliminate spam – And it worked – We’re the largest source repository in the world that does NOT spam reporters – If someone spams a reporter, one of two things happen – They do it while the email address is still active (within deadline) and they get reported to us and banned from HARO for life, or they do it after the email address has expired (after deadline – otherwise known as “harvesting emails”) and it doesn’t matter, because that email is dead, and will never link to the reporter again. Everyone’s happy! Of course, as Biggie Smalls once said, “Mo good HARO, mo problems.” (No, seriously, that’s what the original lyrics were.) Anyhow, we’ve run into a similar situation:

We have a “rating system” as it were, for who can use HARO from a journalist side. Either you’re a reporter or freelancer from a major media organization, or, you’re someone “known” to us with a minor org – i.e., if you’ve used HARO before for the NY Times, and are now freelancing for a small blog, we trust you, and we’ll let your query run. If you don’t fit into either of those categories (i.e., we’ve never heard of you, or we don’t recognize the blog,) we go to one of the top industry standards, Alexa, and we determine how many other people know of your blog. Suffice it to say, if no one’s ever heard of you, chances are, we won’t burden our HARO members with a query to help “fill pages” for you – That’s not the purpose of HARO.

And with this system, all has been good.

The most known logo for journalists and sources... EVER.

Except for one minor thing…

Sometimes, people have been sort of… “abusing” the “anonymous” feature we’ve had on HARO. See, before we had the masked emails, we had an anonymous feature for top level reporters (say, major papers or TV news outlets) who didn’t want their emails shown for fear they’d get slammed or email harvested, or because they didn’t want to let their competitors know what they were doing. And it made sense – If they wanted an anonymous email, we simply created a subject line specific query, and used a Google email account (helpareporter or helpareporter1) to auto-forward to their address. Everyone was happy.

When we went to auto-masked emails for everyone, we left the anonymous feature in, even though, since all emails were masked anyway (joeblow@nytimes.com became 123ed456@helpareporter.com, etc.) we technically didn’t need it.

That’s where the problem came in. Journalists started checking the “Anonymous” button more than 50% of the time – and most of the time, it was people who didn’t “need” to be anonymous in the first place – i.e., small blogs, independent media outlets who had no need to be anonymous other than “it seemed logical to do.”

Now we get it – We get the “cloak” that HARO provides – Hey, submit a query to 135,000 people without revealing your name, and people will respond to you on the off chance that you’re top-level media – and you win. Problem is, that doesn’t work forever.

In the last few months, the responses to “Anonymous” checked queries have dropped by over 50% – Which means that sources, be it agency, small or large business, or regular person, don’t want to share their expertise without knowing who they’re sharing it with.

And get this – We totally and completely understand that, and we support that opinion!

I wouldn’t want to tell a “reporter” about how I started HARO unless I knew it was a “reporter” and not a “competitor” with a “blog.” (Waaaay too many quotation marks in that sentence.)

So… Starting Monday, May 10th, 2010, HARO is eliminating the Anonymous checkbox for reporters.

But WAIT AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH, TOP-LEVEL REPORTERS. That doesn’t mean you still can’t be anonymous when you submit your queries!!

Remember – Emails are automatically masked – and always will be. So if you’re one of the top-tier media outlets who never shows who you are, we’re not taking that away – Simply enter “Reporter” in the name box, and “Top-tier Outlet” in the outlet box” – We’ll see your regular email address when we edit your query to run, and if you fit the “reason to use anonymous” logic, we’ll let you go through.

But here’s the kicker, for those who were abusing the system, and didn’t have a valid reason for anonymity – We’ll still let you do what those reporters with a good reason are doing above – for now – you can enter something other than your name and outlet, and we’ll let you run – again – for now – but – if our audience comes back to us and says “Hey, that anonymous outlet was some guy at a PR firm who had a blog and went anonymous so other PR firms would give him info” or similar stuff, we’ll shoot you an email and let you know you can’t do that again – then we won’t let you.

Make sense? At the end of the day (and I know – we all hate that term…) There are certain journalists who have worked hard enough to enjoy the protection that an “Anonymous query” affords them. And we’ll continue to give them that protection. But it’s not for everyone. And we’re not the only ones playing judge and jury here, guys. It’ll come from our audience – like every change and new implementation we’ve ever made on HARO has, since the very beginning You control how HARO works.

So – End result? We’re losing the “Anonymous” button, but those who feel they need to can still be anonymous, since the emails will continue to be masked. But – Abuse the privilege, and if our sources tell us you are, you might not be able to use HARO anymore. So like all things, moderation is key – Moderation is the way of the universe.

Any questions? Comments below, or peter@helpareporter.com. We’re doing this because you asked us to – And in the end, we think less anonymous queries are actually better for everyone – both sources, who know who they’re pitching, as well as journalists, who will get double, triple, or even quadruple the query responses if a source knows who they’re pitching.

Thanks for listening, guys – And of course, as always, thanks for using HARO. Nothing we do, could ever be done, without the wonderful audience that is you.

Blue skies and long surfs,

-Peter Shankman