Farewell HARO.  In September 2023, I attended one of PRSA IPA (Independent Practitioner’s Alliance) excellent business building webinars (disclosure, I am a proud member) that featured Peter Shankman; entrepreneur, journalist, author and creator of Help a Reporter Out.  It got me reminiscing about when HARO, as it became known, first came on the scene.  It was not long after that I started conceptualizing PRToolFinder.

How great tools are born

They say necessity is the mother of invention.  HARO, was an original; created to solve a specific issue experienced by most journalists.  An online service   to get content and pitches from PR pros and the public for stories these writers were developing; emails with requests went out twice a day and PR Pros scanned them right away for potential opportunities for their clients.  It worked really well, and best of all it was free, at least in the beginning.  So, I was disappointed when shortly after I read an article by Melanie Marten (The Coup) called Why HARO is dead and you shouldn’t waste your time with it.

Earlier this month, I read Frank Strong’s monthly tool article Today, we say goodbye to HARO [PR Tech Sum 52] with more about HARO’s history and evolution which was really insightful because he was the Vocus Director of PR at the time of HARO’s acquisition.  It’s really interesting reading and he provides a list of HARO like alternatives for those in the market. (These are all also in PRToolFinder)

So Cision HARO is now Connectively which appears to be an entirely new brand.  What exactly does that mean? 

If you’re an existing customer, you have to first “Join” the new platform, you can’t just use your old email and log in even though that’s what it says first so that was a little confusing.  When I tried that first, I got a message that my password could only be changed by an administrator.  Cision is using Okta, an on-demand service that allows you to easily sign in to all the applications you use through a single login.  I sent them a message.  Then I tried to Join and got an error message “Sorry something went wrong, try again later.”

Granted, I hadn’t used HARO in a while so that could be the issue, but it’s still not a promising first user experience.  How soon support responds to my message will be another indicator.  Knowing how hard it is to get a new venture off the ground however, Connectively looks to be heading back to HARO’s original mission and they promise to listen to user feedback ongoing so in the spirit of second chances, perhaps it’s worth a go.

According to the FAQ, there will be a free version and several paid options.  With the free version you will be able to:

• • Access HARO queries feed
  • Search queries by keyword
  • Send 10 pitches per month
  • Create 1 saved search
  • Search for other users
  • Email support

But you won’t be able to:

• • Set up email alerts
  • Will have a limited view of public profiles; or
  • Create single profile

After creating a saved search, you can activate email alerts for that specific search.  You will then receive related queries in your inbox.  It also looks like Connectively will preserve your previous pitches.

And if you need to send more than 150 pitches in a month, you can buy more pitches in quantities of 5, 25, or 50.   I have to point out having written this several days ago, support still has not gotten back to me.  Not a great sign.