If you’re in public relations, you've heard the news: HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is shutting down. For over a decade, it was a daily ritual for many of us, a go-to tool for landing quick media mentions for our clients. Its closure leaves a significant gap in the PR toolkit.
While the immediate reaction is to search for a direct one-to-one replacement, the smartest PR pros are taking a step back and asking a bigger question: Is this an opportunity to upgrade our entire strategy?
Instead of just finding a new way to chase text quotes, let's talk about a more impactful approach for building authority in 2025: earning conversations on podcasts.
Why Chasing Quotes Was Always a Flawed Game
Let's be honest, the HARO model had its limits. It was a high-volume, low-impact game. You would spend time crafting the perfect reply, send it into a crowded inbox, and hope your single sentence was chosen.
When you did win a placement, the value was often short-lived. A quote buried in an article rarely builds a deep connection with an audience or establishes true thought leadership. It was a numbers game, not a relationship one.
The Real Opportunity: Earning Conversations, Not Quotes
Podcast guesting offers everything a single quote doesn't. It moves you from being a small part of someone else's story to being the main focus of an entire episode.
- Build Deeper Connections: Instead of a 15-word quote, you get 30-60 minutes to share your expertise, your story, and your personality. This is how you build genuine trust and affinity with an audience.
- Create Evergreen Assets: A news article is old tomorrow. A podcast episode is a permanent asset that works for you for years. It lives on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, can be featured on your website, and can be sliced into dozens of social media clips.
- Reach Highly Engaged Audiences: Podcast listeners are dedicated. They choose to spend their time with a host they trust. When you appear on a show, you are welcomed into that circle of trust, making your message far more impactful.
This is the future of podcast PR: building authority through genuine, long-form conversations.
How to Build Your New Podcast Outreach Engine
Pivoting to a podcast-first strategy requires a different toolkit. You need to move from reacting to queries to proactively finding the right shows and building relationships. Here’s how.
Step 1: Find the Right Shows with a Smart Search Engine
The old way was waiting for a relevant query to land in your inbox. The new way is to proactively find podcasts that perfectly match your client's expertise. A modern podcast search engine is your starting point. You can filter for shows that actively feature guests, search for niche topics that have been recently discussed, and identify audience sizes that fit your goals.
Step 2: Get Verified Contacts Without the Guesswork
Once you find a great show, the next hurdle is finding the right person to contact. This used to mean digging through websites and social profiles for an email. With a comprehensive podcast database, you get instant access to verified host and producer contacts, saving you hours of manual research.
Step 3: Craft a Pitch That Builds a Relationship
A generic HARO reply won't work for podcast outreach. Hosts want to see that you’ve done your homework. The best podcast pitch connects your client's expertise to the show's recent content and proves you can provide real value to their audience. Using a tool that helps you draft a personalized pitch, which you can then edit and send from your own email, is the key to getting replies.
So, What About Direct HARO Replacements?
Platforms like Qwoted, Featured, and Help a B2B Writer are emerging to fill the query-based media relations gap. They can be useful for continuing the old strategy of sourcing quotes for written articles.
But if your goal is to build deep, lasting authority for your clients, a reactive tool isn't enough. You need a proactive engine. You need a platform designed for the new rules of PR.
By dedicating a portion of the time you used to spend on HARO to strategic podcast outreach, you can generate more significant, measurable, and lasting results for your clients. It's time to stop chasing quotes and start earning conversations.
Ready to build your modern podcast outreach engine? Podseeker streamlines the entire process, from finding the perfect show to pitching hosts and tracking your success. Discover the all-in-one platform that helps you execute a smarter PR strategy.
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