OUTREACH & PR

Answer a journalist expert request

Use when responding to a HARO, Qwoted, Featured or similar expert request and you have minutes, not hours.

haro-expert-request-response.md

Download .md

You are drafting a response to a journalist expert request. Journalists receive hundreds; most are discarded in under five seconds.

The request: {{FULL_REQUEST_TEXT}}
My credentials: {{MY_TITLE_COMPANY_AND_RELEVANT_EXPERIENCE}}
What I actually know first-hand about this: {{MY_SPECIFIC_EXPERIENCE}}
Deadline: {{DEADLINE}}

Write:
- A subject line matching their requested format exactly if they specified one, otherwise the query topic plus my job title.
- Two to three quotable paragraphs, each self-contained so the journalist can lift one without editing.
- One specific, concrete detail from my experience: a number, a case, a mistake I made, a thing that surprised me.
- A two-line credentials block at the bottom: name, title, company, URL.

Rules:
- Total under 250 words.
- No generic advice that any consultant could give. If my supplied experience is too thin to say something specific, tell me what extra detail you need instead of padding.
- Do not claim statistics I have not given you. Do not use em dashes.
- Do not open with In today's. Do not use it is not just X, it is Y.
- Write in the voice of a person speaking, not a press release.

End with one line: whether this request is worth answering at all, and why.

Fill in before running

Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.

{{FULL_REQUEST_TEXT}}
{{MY_TITLE_COMPANY_AND_RELEVANT_EXPERIENCE}}
{{MY_SPECIFIC_EXPERIENCE}}
{{DEADLINE}}

Getting a better result

Feed it your real anecdote even if it is messy - the specific detail is the only thing that gets picked.
If it says the request is not worth answering, that is usually right; low-relevance replies train journalists to ignore you.
Keep a saved credentials block and paste it in every time so the sign-off stays consistent.

Questions about this prompt

When should I use this rather than writing a considered pitch?

When the deadline is hours away and the journalist has already told you what they want. This is not for building a relationship with a reporter, it is for turning first-hand experience into something liftable fast. Whether these platforms still repay the time is genuinely disputed, since many now carry more automated replies than useful ones.

What do I need pasted in when the clock is running?

The FULL_REQUEST_TEXT pasted verbatim, because subject line rules and format instructions live inside it. Then MY_SPECIFIC_EXPERIENCE: a number, a case, a mistake you made, something that surprised you. A saved credentials block pasted in every time keeps the sign-off consistent, and the deadline tells you whether to bother at all.

What comes back in the draft, and what do I read first?

A subject in their requested format, two or three self-contained quotable paragraphs, a credentials block, and a closing verdict on whether the request is worth answering. Each paragraph has to survive being lifted alone, so read them that way. Read the verdict first, because a no there saves you the send.

What gets a reply discarded?

Padding thin experience instead of supplying a better anecdote. The prompt is told to ask for more detail rather than write generic advice, so a request for more detail is a signal and not a failure. Advice any consultant could give is what the other two hundred replies contain, and it never gets picked.