Do you want to get more media exposure for your real estate business? If you are looking to build your personal or professional brand, one great way to do that is to get mentioned in magazines, popular online or offline publications, and local news sites.

HARO, which stands for Help a Reporter Out, is a service that brings nearly 30,000 reporters an bloggers with over 100,000 news sources together with small businesses to tell their stories, promote their brands, and sell their products & services. To date, they have shared over 75,000 queries and facilitated over 7.5 million media pitches which has helped promote over 1,5000 brands to the media.

The best part about this service is that you can receive new media opportunities three times a day for free! You can also subscribe to their premium services which range in price from $19 to $149 per month for additional options such as keyword filtering your alerts, building a profile, text messaging alerts, real-time database search, and more.

I personally enjoy the free service as I discover other media opportunities that relate not just to my business, but to my personal interests. Sometimes, if we limit our focus down to a keyword filter, we don’t get creative with other ways to advertise in different verticals. For example, you might not think a realtor belongs in a parenting magazine. But if you really think about it, how great is it to be the only realtor in a magazine with readers who might be thinking about buying their first home?

Getting Started

To get started, sign up for a free account. This will give you access to the three emails daily which will give you a feel for whether you need the premium services or if you can just stick with the free account. You can always filter your emails into a particular folder, then do a search within that folder for real estate or other appropriate keywords.

Setting Up Your Alerts

Once your account is set up, you can customize your profile to include your basic information (name, company, email, etc.). Most importantly, you will want to select your HARO preferences. This is where you choose the topics to be emailed about when there are new media opportunities.

I signed up for the Master HARO as that will deliver you ever new media inquiry. After you have received a few emails, you can come back to this section by logging in to your account and selecting My HARO from the top menu bar to edit your preferences.

Monitoring Your Emails

From here on out, you will receive three emails - one in the morning, afternoon, and evening with new queries. Out of my emails, there is usually at least one request for information from a real estate professional daily, if not more. An example of one is as follows.

Responding to a Query

Whenever you see a query you would like to respond to, simply use the email provided to respond to the journalist. Be sure to give a great reply that fits their query, and include your basic information below it including your name, company, title, location, website link, phone number, and so forth. This way, if the journalist decides to use your response, they can credit you appropriately.

Have you used HARO to get exposure for your real estate business? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Contributing writer Kristi Hines is an online marketing consultant, freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast.