September 11, 2008

Hurricanes and HARO

There’s a little hurricane heading our way here in Texas called Ike. Many places along the coast have been issued mandatory evacuation notices, including Houston, one of the largest and sadly also one of the fattest cities in the country. Houston has also still been working on integrating all the permanent victims of hurricane Katrina (2005) that evacuated to their city since then.

The schools here in Austin are closing early tomorrow, airports are in a muddle, and far more importantly for all of you college football fans out there, they have actually rescheduled the UT Austin vs. Arkansas football game that was going to be held this Saturday! Of all the things that have been happening, I think rescheduling a college football game in a college town that’s not directly in the landing path of the hurricane speaks volumes about the fears and concerns of the people around here as well as the anticipated amounts of rain.

So shifting to HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and it’s relation to hurricanes, it might be a stretch but Peter Shankman (the founder) seemed to bring it out from nowhere a few months ago and now he has tons and tons of subscribers – both reporters and sources. He’s managed to make ProfNet/PR Newswire nervous because he’s giving all his leads out for free and us resource and money constrained entrepreneurs are loving it. He even got on the radar screen of Seth Godin who mentioned Peter and linked to HARO on a recent Getting reporters to call you post.

I can quickly scan the queries and make a decision as to whether to try to pitch based on my company and my personal background. Because of HARO, I don’t have to pay tons of money to get access to these great queries from reputable sources. I have had couple of people interested in learning more about Babble Soft (mostly bloggers) and am crossing my fingers that I’ll soon have the opportunity to share with national/international reporters my ideas on how the world of parenting is changing and how technology can support that transition! I guess I’m hoping that by using HARO I can eventually create a hurricane of activity around my company.

So may you all be safe and avoid the disastrous effects of Hurricane Ike but also take advantage of HARO (tell your friends). I, for one, am glad the last two big hurricane’s have male names instead of female ones like Katrina. I was getting a bit tired of all the jokes/innuendos surrounding the big hurricanes being referred to as feminine and destructive.

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