Over the past few months, I’ve been working hard to get press for my other site, which is still very unknown. I’ve had amazing luck thus far, landing links from both the Huffington Post and How Stuff Works in the past week, along with some of the other press that you’ve read about on the blog.
Some friends have asked whether I’m pitching writers directly — I’m not. There’s an amazing website called Help A Reporter Out (HARO for short), which connects sources and writers, and this has been the source for much of my press. You need to be prepared to write eloquent, well informed pitches, and even go after things that might not be directly related to your site – for example, my How Stuff Works link is actually about the Aeron chair – but persistence does pay off.
Many of your pitches won’t be used, and some may net you a placement in the article but not a link to your site, but if you keep at it you’ll end up with some good PR. Btw, you will be rated as a source by the writers, so make sure you don’t respond to things just for the sake of responding, otherwise you’ll be quickly discredited!
Want to learn more? Check out my article about the topic on Medium.
You can also go the traditional route and submit press releases through services like PRWeb, but be sure to have actual news (survey results can be great), or else you won’t get much traction.
Another more difficult route is to post on sites like Reddit and hope that you get spotted by writers looking for viral content. Follow the rules for posting it in a Subreddit and hope that you get some traction!