We all know that “Google” has become a verb. Well, now we would like to introduce a new verb: HARO, like HARO yourself! A real benefit of “going HARO” is getting strong publicity and exposure. Because it allows you to access global media in an exciting and convenient way, now you have the opportunity to appear where you never imagined.

If you’re not familiar with HARO (Help a Reporter Out), you should be. HARO is an online service created for journalists to collect information from the public for a wide range of media, including newspapers, magazines, TV shows, blogs, podcasts and radio. There are over 29,000 members of the media posting an average of 216 queries daily. This website helps journalists find qualified sources in the blink of an eye. HARO enables experts to share their expertise and potentially gain media coverage for their business, product or book etc. Every day more than 41,000 releases are sent.

“HAROed” and we have our first success story to share. We have shipped four releases in the last two months. One of our most recent releases was in response to a query submitted by a personal finance writer seeking advice on how small businesses can use Twitter effectively. We feel six basic Twitter tips for posting. We understand that journalists are super busy and don’t always respond to pitches. So we weren’t surprised when we didn’t hear anything back.

About a week later, while checking our daily Google Alerts, our company name appeared in an online article, “How to Tweet Your Small Business.” We were quoted in the article several times. We had no idea! Being a young company, we were excited about our first real press coverage.

The original article was published on Financial Edge, an online trading investment site managed by Forbes Digital Company. It was later posted online at SF Gate, home of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Since this article was published, our search results have improved considerably on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. We went from hanging out on the second and third pages, to being featured prominently on page one for our main keywords. There is a direct correlation to our improved search results listing and the publication of this article. Don’t misunderstand my point, the article alone didn’t push us to the front page by itself. We have a good amount of other content available for search engines to find. But he played an important role.

The HARO field also had other benefits, it was a great story. He also made a funny post on Facebook. Hey, we even got a blog topic from that! We are pleased to say that we have been featured in a well-known online newspaper. For a launch that didn’t require a significant amount of effort, the benefits were fantastic.

So the moral of the story is, tune in to HARO and start HARO. It is worth the time to respond to queries. You never know where you can read about yourself.