If you work in PR, you likely have some familiarity with Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the popular service designed to match reporters with expert sources all around the web. You may have even used it a time or two. But I’ll bet you haven’t exploited it like my coworkers and I have.

That’s because our marketing team at JotForm went absolutely ham with HARO for an entire year. We had our usual marketing tasks, but we often scheduled whatever we were doing around the fact that HARO emails pitch opportunities at 9:40 a.m. and 2:40 p.m. PT every single day. So, like clockwork, we were prepared whenever we got HARO opportunities knowing that the earlier the response, the better chance of getting published. We kept a spreadsheet of who we emailed so we didn’t double pitch, we argued, we wrestled for prime pitch opportunities… it was chaos.

In roughly a year of consistent HAROing, we landed JotForm in 119 articles. Let me repeat that: one hundred and nineteen articles mentioned our company, JotForm, just from HARO alone. That’s one JotForm mention in the news every three days. So what’s the catch?

A Caveat

We got media hits. That’s for sure. But does that mean there were 119 instances where a reporter was curious about the nature of online forms and how to create them? Hell no.

We were indiscriminate with our methods. Any possible opportunity to get our company mentioned — even completely out of context — was on the table. That meant our marketing team weighed in on how to get the perfect credit score, why millennials move to big cities, how it’s difficult to buy a house in this economy, and which company PR disasters we thought were the worst, just to name a few winning subjects — all in the interest of getting our company mentioned in the attributed quote.

HARO is illuminative of working in PR in general: it’s easy to get in the news when it’s the reporter’s story; it’s much harder to place your own.

On the plus side, we got JotForm mentioned all over the place. Huffington Post, BBC, Forbes, MSN CIO, Sitepoint, Inc., USA Today, US News, and scores of other sites included quotes from our small room of versatile subject experts.

The ROI

I’m not going to lie. The numbers are hard to look at. Even the posts that drew some traffic to the JotForm site had a difficult time converting anyone to a JotForm user.

Because if you’re reading an article about the best low-interest credit cards, why would you suddenly feel compelled to click on a link to a SaaS product that helps you create web forms? And once you clicked on the link, why would you possibly sign up? This also showed up in Google Analytics. It’s not pretty.

I looked for the top HARO referrers during our year-long binge. Our top ten combined for a total of 247 visitors to the JotForm site. Of those 247, one signed up for JotForm (which is free, by the way).

Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t always the biggest sites that even produced traffic. Here’s a look:

Here are some screenshots to show how they’d show up in Google Analytics.

Can’t complain about our company getting a link in Inc., but we didn’t have a lot to show for it.

Levo League thought to include us on four separate occasions, and we even got an elusive signup from one of the visitors.

Even the best HARO placements were a pretty sad affair when it came to bringing solid traffic to the JotForm site or signing up new users.

Not a Complete Loss

I won’t go so far as to say HARO was a waste for us, because every now and then we actually found a relevant, topical way to incorporate JotForm into a news story.

CIO ran a story on tips for running a successful subscription business, and used JotForm quotes. That was in the ballpark of relevancy — we do operate a successful subscription business, after all — and it was a nice publication to boot. Newbreed Marketing ran a piece on SaaS marketing tips and included quotes from our VP of Marketing. That one contextually placed our VP of marketing as a thought leader in the SaaS world. Also not bad.

An additional, but difficult-to-prove benefit is the SEO boost we may have gotten from having dozens and dozens of backlinks from quality websites. Our SEO demonstrably improved after we spent so much time placing our company in HARO stories, but it’s also likely due to a myriad of other reasons, like fixing old broken links, creating better site content, and redesigning our homepage.

I think there’s something to be said about brand awareness, too. There were thousands and thousands of people who at least read the name of our company in various stories. There’s also something to be said for the vanity of it — we were able to say we were getting press, which turned into a morale boost for company employees and a bit of showmanship for our users.

Still, there’s a reason we exercise a bit more precision when we check HARO nowadays.

Conclusion

HARO is a stick of gum when you’re hungry for a steak. It’s something in your mouth, sure. But it’s not substantial, and it’s certainly not what you crave.

However, it serves a purpose and it’s worth checking. I wouldn’t expect that most companies have something of value to contribute to a reporter’s story every single day, but every now and then there’s a great match — and you have to be ready for it.

For what it’s worth, I consider HARO worth if it fits this criteria:

1) It’s a high-ranking, tier 1 publication.

And/Or…

2) My professional expertise or my company’s product adds something substantive to the story.

Ignore the rest.

For the time you’ll spend doing HARO, you should also consider seeking writers who cover businesses in your industry, and craft a custom pitch. But remember, even if they write about you, it’s still their story. So find out how to be a part of it.