Competition
Edited to add: It’s not clear from my post below but Profnet doesn’t charge journalists to use their service. PR folks pay to be in their database but journalists don’t so both HARO and Profnet were free for me to use.
Let me tell you a story. You all know I’ve been chasing sources for awhile now. I first went to HARO, which is Peter Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out 3-times a day email blast. It’s pretty nifty. Anyone can subscribe and thousands of people do. Then journalists can post a request like, “I need people who throw birthday parties for their dogs for a feature for a national print publication” or “I’m looking to review handmade socks for an online knitting site.” And Peter kindly posts it to his email blasts and hopefully at least a few of the thousands of people who are subscribed to it will be able to help that reporter out. It’s nice and it’s free.
I’ve been a subscribe for awhile now and truthfully I don’t always have time to read the blasts but I’ve forwarded a bunch on to folks I know and responded to some where I see to be a good fit for the reporter and it’s a nifty service. I like it. And I admire Peter Shankman’s creativity and industry in creating it.
I’ve also been using Profnet for years. This is a deal where PR people have to pay to subscribe (I don’t know details on this) so it helps screen the people who pitch you. I’ve used Profnet dozens of times — back when I was working at ePregnancy I used them to get on product review lists and I’ve used them lots as a freelancer looking for sources.
I never put all my eggs in one basket so I also dig for sources on my own — on my blog, on message boards, on Facebook and of course by trolling with my good friend Google.
I’d never used HARO as a reporter until this week. I tried it first because I wanted to give it a shot and so I filled out the handy form and waited for the responses. Unfortunately I only got about three (four?) and none of them were a good fit. This happens when you put out a call for sources. People who don’t understand PR (and this sometimes includes PR professionals) sometimes send out wild pitches where they’re an almost but not quite fit and it’s the journalist’s job to weed through them. And I figured I’d get some of those because HARO — being free — means that there’s a higher ratio of folks who maybe don’t quite know what they’re doing. That was fine. I posted about it here and Peter came on by and commented offering to send out the post again. That was nice and I really appreciated it. It’s a good way to be using your google alerts or stats or whatever (however he saw me talking about him). But I passed because I wanted to give Profnet a shot.
So I posted something on Profnet and they have more deliberate targets so I had high hopes. Sadly, nothing came through there either and I moaned about it on Twitter. Profnet twittered at me offering to send out another blast and put it on their Twitter. By now I was desperate so I said yes and I got three stellar (I mean STELLAR sources back)! Hooray! Hooray for HARO for being on the ball and hooray for Profnet and all was good, right? I was like, wow! These folks are both so teh awesome! I love the interwebz! (that’s web 2.0 speak there)
That’s what I thought only I was wrong.
So HARO/Shankman is also on twitter and he, again being an intelligent web guy, contacted me via email. I’m cool with that. I’m cool with him noticing that I twittered about Profnet and thinking, “Hey, here’s someone who might want to know about our service.” I mean, I see these two services as being useful in different ways. I appreciate HARO’s immediacy and I appreciate Profnet’s professionalism. I like them both. I LIKE that Profnet isn’t free because it screens folks a little and I like that HARO IS free because it makes it easier for PR on a budget. Personally if I was a PR professional, I’d pay for Profnet but I’d also subscribe to HARO because I’d want to cover all of my bases.
But Peter Shankman’s email to me didn’t feel all that kosher.
Help a Reporter’s Twitter stream has over 9,000 followers, along with 38,000 members who answer queries. Much bigger than Profnet, and 100% free for all sides.
Umm, you did NOT just bash the service that saved my editorial skin! An unsolicited commercial that dogged the competition in my inbox! Oh no!
I emailed back and said I liked Profnet and I liked HARO and they both seemed like useful services with different capabilities and Peter emailed back:
I would say, though - that all the PR people who use Profnet also use HARO - so give us a shot next time you need professionals…
So clearly Peter thinks that HARO renders Profnet obsolete and he wants ME to believe that, too (only I don’t).
I’m a business person, too, right? And I’d be royally pissed if someone was going after my clients and saying, “I notice you hired Dawn to write but I am more published, much smarter and prettier than she is. Hire me instead.” I know people do this — oh yes they do — but I don’t want to be a part of it. I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t want to work with someone who did this. Like I said, if he wants to keep track of people who mention Profnet and say, “Hey, I see you’re a person who uses Profnet and thought you might want to also check out our service.” That feels ok to me. I’m down with that. But don’t go bashing this service especially not the day after they save my hide by catching my whine on Twitter. Just don’t.
I don’t know why Peter Shankman wants to bash Profnet anyway. He’s offering his service for free, right? What does he care if other people are charging? You know how I said I’d hate another writer to chase my clients and bad talk me? I’d hate it even more if they ended their pitch with, “Plus I won’t charge you a thing!” Because that’s my grocery money you’re trying to steal from me. That’s my mortgage. It’s dirty enough pool if you’re trying to swipe my clients to pad your own paycheck but to do it for no other reason than you want to be bigger, badder, more important? That’s just play mean.
Now I believe Peter Shankman isn’t a mean person and I believe that he just wasn’t thinking when he hit send on that email. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I’m putting it here to say that this is not what I want to see out yonder on the great big wild world of the internet. And I hope that Peter might come on by again and say, “You know, maybe that isn’t all that kosher.” Because there is room for two of ‘em and this reporter is grateful for them both.
Good post, moominmama. Thanks for tweeting it.
I hadn’t heard of Help a Reporter Out before reading your post, so I went to check it out. It’s an intriguing resource for writers. As an entrepreneurial venture, however, it is a little puzzling.
On one hand, this is a free service (”100% free for all sides”). On the other hand, Shankman prominently bills himself as a “CEO, Entrepreneur, Adventurist.” So what’s HARO’s business plan? When does Shankman start charging and who pays?
As a journalist I’ve never been crazy about being solicited by PR professionals, but the truth is that sometimes there is that perfect guy out there — the researcher of sleep habits, or the MIT prof who designs A.I. applications — and you would never have known about them if not for the Profnet, or for the list of experts that universities, hospitals etc. routinely put together for the media.
It doesn’t bother me that universities, hospitals, think tanks & other research institutes seek increased exposure for their experts, since there’s no other way to find out about them. It’s a business model I understand and I don’t see a conflict as long as I’m not being gulled into writing promotional copy under the guise of journalism.
What makes me uncomfortable about HARO is that I don’t know what Shankman’s profit motive is. Who ARE HARO’s resources — just random people who volunteer? What biases might exist this particular cross-section of people based on self-selection? Would I being hearing from PR people this way as well, without knowing that they’re PR people?
I don’t mean to cast aspersions — HARO seems to be a creative, good faith attempt to harness the power of social media for journalists. I’m looking forward to trying it out.
But the hard-sell you got raises questions about who is paying for it and why. It raises questions for me, at least.
Hi Dawn.
I didn’t expect to be quoted in your blog, but I’m happy to reply.
My goal has never been to get people to “stop” using Profnet. Quite the opposite. My goal is to get reporters to get the source they need, as quickly as they need it.
If Profnet worked for you quicker than HARO in this instance, that’s great, and I’m happy you were able to get your sources. You said in your email,
“ProfNet is better for contacting higher-level professionals and academics while HARO is great for everyday folks. ”
I was simply saying that to put HARO into the category of “only regular people” is an inaccurate categorization - Quite the opposite, in fact, is true - there are thousands of professionals who use HARO - and probably hundreds of them use Profnet, as well. But to imply that HARO is only for “everyday people,” is simply an inaccurate statement. That’s all.
As I said, use whatever gets you the best sources - that’s the goal of any leads service. And when a leads service such as Profnet, who charges for sources limits the leads you can get based on who pays, then it might limit your search. That’s all.
@LilaTovCocktail I’d be happy to tell you about HARO, and my profit motive, and anything else you’d like. I would suggest, though, that your job, as a journalist, is to determine whether a source is a legitimate source or not. That’s fact checking, isn’t it? Profnet does no such vetting of sources. If they can pay, they can join Profnet. HARO does the exact same thing - (Except is not social media, per se, it’s crowd sourcing - semantics.)
HARO makes revenue from advertisements at the top of the query emails that go out to sources. Profnet makes revenue by charging people for the same leads. That’s the only difference.
Happy to talk more - Both of you know how to find me.
All the best,
-Peter Shankman
Your point about vetting sources, Peter, is my point exactly: it’s easy to find “Current Events Experts on the Williams College Faculty” on Profnet, Google them, and check their publications etc.
It is also easy to recognize product-launching press releases (”Carfax Launches Online Auction Tool”) on Profnet.
Yes, you still have to fact check, but you start out with a context and information about who the professional is (or claims to be) and what their motive for joining ProfNet is.
HARO sources could well be just as easy to vet, but HARO’s structure — both the medium of twitter & the website’s minimalist design — don’t give any indication of who you’ll be calling out to when you use HARO. You wrote Dawn that “there are thousands of professionals who use HARO,” but would I know that from looking at HARO’s website?
I understand why you prefer the term crowdsourcing to social media, Peter, but as I understand HARO, it is not, in the strictest sense a crowdsourcing tool. An open call does go out to a large, general group of people. But that open call isn’t asking for community participation.
Unless people are carrying on twitter conversations on the topic (”I don’t know anyone like that. But maybe the reporter could find someone at NIH”), then the problem hasn’t be outsourced to the crowd. The open call is for one (or 2 or 3) sources who can offer individual contributions to the open call.
If people ARE brainstorming together to help journalists find sources, then HARO is even cooler than I first imagined and I can’t wait to try it.
One consideration given today’s newspaper industry: journalists are focused on the local more than ever, so their best bet is usually to look for sources within the community they cover. A guy with Tourette’s in Boston won’t be as valuable to my editors or readers as a guy right here in town.
It would be great if there were enough HARO users to cover a wide geographical spread as well as whatever relative positions they occupy on economic, medical, social, religious or educational scales.
All said, HARO is creative and promising service.
But that’s a thing apart from the hard-sell email and the dissing of competitors. It clearly raises red flags for at least some of your intended market/audience.
Lila
But Peter, you dissed them. You dissed them before you knew who I was (someone who’d talked to you via this blog already). Your first email to me said: “Much bigger than Profnet, and 100% free for all sides.”
Since you say, “My goal has never been to get people to “stop” using Profnet. Quite the opposite. My goal is to get reporters to get the source they need, as quickly as they need it.” I’d suggest that next time you email or tweet a Profnet user you could say something like, “Profnet is a great tool but I wanted to make you aware of another one” then sell me on HARO. Go ahead and tell me how many users it has — don’t diss Profnet when you do it. Go ahead and tell me it’s free for both sides — don’t assume that that’s a selling point for me (as a journalist). Because like I said, I LIKE that Profnet costs money; it helps weed folks out.
@Dawn: Agreed. And I’ve said many times that Profnet is good for some things. I’d recommend you also take a look at various sites, like this article in the industry standard, http://tinyurl.com/5qofco - and others, where Profnet has accused me of “stealing leads,” as well as their sales people, who (and I have this from several first person sources) have told customers, “Oh yeah, he’s stealing our leads, we’re suing him, he’ll be gone soon.”
I think in the long run, I’ve taken quite the high road. If that includes my saying “Hey, Profnet is a fine tool but,” I have no problem doing that. But I strongly encourage you to check out the real story here - Remember - HARO moved from Facebook to a website of its own after a phone call from the “Head of Profnet” came in threatening to “squash me into the ground.” http://shankman.com/so-i-get-this-phone-call/ - If you really want to talk about “dissing…”
Thank you for the opportunity to respond, Dawn. And @LilaTovCocktail, I hope that this gives you more information as well.
All the best,
-Peter Shankman
I should also add - I can’t tell you how many subscribers Profnet has by numbers because they won’t release it. but I’ve HEARD from more than one source somewhere around 14,000 members. I have, as of this writing, over 33,000 subscribers that receive HARO emails 3x per day. This does not include pass-alongs.
So I’ll rephrase:
“Dawn: According to the best information I can come up with, since Profnet does not release their numbers, I believe my list of sources is currently more than twice the size of Profnet’s list. I stand by my comment of “100% free for all sides,” because, as you know, Profnet charges a membership fee to their query receivers. I do not.
Best regards,
-Peter Shankman
Peter, so if they’re nasty to you, you can be nasty back? Nope, I don’t buy it. Take the high road. Let the post re., the phone call, let other people’s experiences speak for themselves.
My issue is that you chased me down to bash the competition. You caught me twittering on Profnet and came to tell me that your service is better. If you had written just to say, hey, I have a service. Here it is. Then great — I’d appreciate it. But when you bash them in the same breath, you look petty. And here you’re telling me that you don’t NEED to be petty because you guys are just that awesome. So let the awesomeness sell folks — don’t trash another service.
I don’t think you’re hearing me on this. I’m not talking about who is better (because I can figure that out for myself and just because Profnet was better for me this time around doesn’t mean that HARO wouldn’t be another time). I’m talking about being really bothered by the way you marketed myself to me. And you’re telling me that you don’t care because you’re justified. Ok then. I still think HARO is a valuable service and appreciate you putting it out there for the PR professionals and reporters at large but I’m not so crazy about Peter Shankman’s biz practices now.
If you had responded to this with, “Mea culpa. In my enthusiasm for HARO, which is a service I’ve grown with lots of love and attention, I trashed the competition and I see that was offensive to you. I apologize and will rethink my strategy. And I hope that you’ll use HARO again and discover just how awesome we can be.” I’d have said, “Cool, Peter, thanks for hearing me.” And I’d have a lot of respect for the way you handled an awkward situation.
Dawn is brave!
Dawn makes good points and Shankman needs a reality check, is there any service monitoring the claim to 33,000 subscribers? Glass houses>stones> learn from it.
That’s why I unsubscribed from the HARO list. The emails 3x a day were pretty annoying and then the tone of the emails were starting to grate on me for some reason. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but I guess it was the overall tone of HARO is better than everyone else. It’s unnecessary, really.