How a Freelance Writer Reviews HARO Pitches, and What Makes a Good One

As a freelance writer, I have a love-hate relationship with HARO. On one hand, HARO is an excellent tool for helping journalists connect with niche experts that can be hard to find through regular searching or social media. However, seeking sources via HARO often means more time on the journalist’s part, as it takes a while to sift through responses and find the good ones, opens up your inbox to a lot of spam, and can be overwhelming depending on the volume of pitches that come from a query.

That said, I’ve forged relationships with a lot of publicists over the past few years through initially connecting via HARO, and sources I’ve found through the service have resulted in many high-quality sources for stories, too. Here, I walk you through the steps on the side of a freelance writer when it comes to reviewing HARO pitches, cover what makes a good versus a bad HARO pitch, and outline what it might mean if you don’t get a response (and why you should keep trying).

My Freelance Writer Process for Reviewing HARO Pitches

When I submit a query, I get an email from HARO confirming approval and the day and time it will go out in an email. After the query goes out, I usually begin seeing responses within the hour, sometimes sooner.

First, I search my inbox for the subject line of my HARO request. If anyone has responded to my query and changed the subject line to something else (or emailed me separately), it may not come up in my inbox search if he or she hasn’t used the keywords.

Second, I scan the pitches one by one, and copy and paste any that look legitimate at first glance into a master Word document where I can review each response together after I’m finished going through emails. Any pitch that’s not relevant or spam, I’ll mark as such through a link HARO provides and delete.

Third, it’s time to review all the pitches at once. Read one to learn what makes a pitch stand out to me, and what not to do.

A good HARO pitch is:

Concise but informative. Around 150-200 words depending on the prompt is great as it’s easy for me to skim. What to include? Introduce yourself and your client/expert briefly outlining their experience and why they’d be good for this piece. I don’t need a 200-word bio on the person, but I do need to know what they might know about the topic. Also include where they are based. Sometimes publications require U.S. sources, so if you’re pitching someone from another country it won’t be a fit and I need to know that right away.

Relatively quick. If I don’t receive a pitch within about 2 hours of the HARO query going out, I probably won’t look at it later; if I’m on deadline, I’m usually reviewing the responses pretty quickly after they come in. There’s no way for freelance writers to manually close submissions currently on HARO, which is unfortunate. I’ll always choose the most qualified experts that come in quickest to interview for stories. On the flip side, though, if you respond super fast — say, within two minutes of my query going out — I’ll suspect something’s fishy. I always question any response with full answers written out in a timeframe that feels too quick, as it makes me wonder if those have been used elsewhere, compiled for another publication, or even posted already on a company blog post. (If I read through a response like this and it is good, I’ll always ask right away if it’s been posted elsewhere before pursuing, as I most often cannot use it if it has.)

Clear. Detail if the expert or company you’re pitching is a client, a friend, yourself or something else. You should always disclose your relationship to the pitch subject as it can be hard to tell. It’s important for a journalist to know if you’re simply suggesting an idea (i.e., pitching someone they know who fits the bill) or pitching a client that they’re willing to work with you to feature (i.e., setting up interviews, passing along questions, gathering images, etc.).

Specific. If a freelance writer is requesting an expert source for an article, don’t pitch a general company and suggest they can interview or talk with someone from that company. We need to know who (a specific person, including credentials) and why they’d have relevant expertise for the story.

A bad HARO pitch is:

Overly promotional or offering salesy experts. It’s OK if you pitch an expert who’s a key player, such as CEO or VP, with a big company relevant to the particular angle of the article. However, the pitch shouldn’t be all about a product or company. Tell me about why that source in particular would be a good fit – how many years of experience in the field? What kinds of questions could they answer? Are they willing to talk about consumer questions on a topic versus just promoting their product?

Too short. I get pitches saying not much more than what company they work for or represent and that they can have a source speak to me (without telling me who or why). That tells me nothing and does not convince me to pursue them as a source for the story.

Duplicated. If you see my HARO request, avoid responding through HARO and then also emailing me separately. Choose one or the other and be sure to use the right subject line with correct keywords so I see it.

Expecting coverage from a single email. Sometimes I’ll get responses to HARO where someone has answered a few questions or submitted a “comment” to my prompt, and then in the same email asks when the story will run. That’s not the way it works the vast majority of the time. I’ll rarely be able to use something from an initial email without at least one follow-up, and I’ll always let you know ahead of the story running if I plan to use anything you pitched me.

Writing the article for me. A company in India responded to a recent query with two full articles that appeared to be generated by bots based on keywords. These types of pitches are automatically deleted. For some reason I often get responses of people offering to write my story for me, which is also a delete.

Submitting a blog post on the topic. I can’t use or quote information from articles that have already been published, whether it’s in on your own website, your client’s blog or another outlet. It’s not helpful to submit links to pieces like this as a response to a HARO query as I’m looking to report my own story, not rewrite pieces that have already been done.

Unrelated. If you see a journalist covering a topic through a HARO query that’s tangentially related to one of your clients, that’ great if you want to look up said journalist on your own and send them an email to introduce yourself. But please don’t pitch something unrelated or not specific to the article at hand by going through that HARO query. It clutters up inboxes and can also be misleading to a freelance writer. For instance, if I think I have 20 responses to a HARO query and half of them turn out to be unrelated to my exact story, it can put me in a bind when I go to review them and realize I don’t have enough qualified sources after all.

So, what should you do if you think you’ve done everything right, but are still not hearing back from freelance writers regarding your HARO pitches?

Be patient. Again, it can take a while for a freelance writer to go through pitches from a HARO request. Once for a national article on wellness-focused hotels for spring break, I got more than 200 pitches from a single query. It’s overwhelming and takes time to go through them all to find the best ideas (for a piece like the example, at least a few days, if not a week).

Follow up. One follow-up for me is good. Each writer is different, but in most cases three or more emails on a single pitch are unnecessary. You’ll most always hear from me on the second follow-up if there’s a chance it’s a fit.

Keep trying. Just because you don’t hear back on one pitch doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pitch that writer again. There are many reasons a freelance writer may not respond to your HARO email, including too many responses, your response came in too late or after a story was completed, you didn’t provide an appropriate source, you were off topic, or perhaps your email even went into spam. (Sometimes HARO emails also appear in our inboxes as a long email chain if there are multiple pitches submitted at the same time, which can also cause a writer to not see your pitch.) Take a look at what you sent and see how you can improve your pitch for the next time.

Also, there’s always a chance that it’s not you, your expert or your pitch at all. A good freelance writer takes diversity of sources for any story into account— not only in demographics but also regionality, job title, expertise, credentials and other factors — so that also plays a role in what experts get featured in articles.

From the perspective of a freelance writer, throwing out queries on HARO is not something to take lightly, as you can see it requires a lot of time, energy and careful vetting of sources. The same should apply for publicists responding to queries, too. Be sure the query is a strong mutual fit for the source you’re pitching as well as the freelance writer before sending.