One of the positive things to come out of lockdown last year was that I started exercising more by walking in the park for about an hour before I started my work from home routine. I enjoyed it for many reasons, not least because it became one of the only reasons that I would leave my house.
As life returned back to ‘normal’ and I became busier, I found that I was walking less and less until finally, I just wasn’t walking at all. Wanting to revive this healthy habit and develop some others, I decided that I would incorporate ‘become more healthy’ into my plans for 2022.
But by the following month, I had succumbed to the statistic about people tending to give up on their resolutions by February. It started out well enough, drinking water and moving around more, but I found that this quickly escalated into feeling guilty about eating certain foods or beating myself up when I didn’t sweat that day.
I also found myself becoming more critical of my body, frustrated that after all of my sacrifice and effort, I couldn’t see any ‘positive results’ to make it all worth it. “You didn’t even start this journey to lose weight, though,” I remember saying to myself out loud in response to my negative self-talk. “You just wanted to be healthier.”
It was then that I realised that I had internalised diet culture’s message that healthier means thinner and that certain foods were inherently good or bad. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in myself. These were thoughts that I had not had since I was a teenager who loathed her plus sized body because the world told her to. It had taken me a long time to shed those beliefs and truly love myself, only to find that I had never really formed new ideas of health that included me.
In order to rectify this mistake, I interviewed experts like:
Monique Melton, anti-racism educator, author, international speaker and founder of Shine Brighter Together
Chrissy King, writer, speaker, fitness and strength coach, and creator of The Body Liberation Project
Trina Nicole, body confidence advocate, dancer and founder of The Curve Catwalk
and collated their expert advise into an article on How To Become Healthier Without Succumbing To Diet Culture for Black Ballad.
Continuing in this spirit of rectifying mistakes, today I'll be switching gears from talking about my recent blip with diet culture to talking about the ones that I had with HARO initially and what I now do to avoid them (so that you can too!) For example:
#1 Not meeting briefs
As previously mentioned, HARO posts come with a brief. This typically includes details of what the editor would like you to include in your response back to them (your pitch) e.g. how many words it should be, the types of experts that they want to hear from, the topic that they want you to speak about and so on. However, sometimes it's not as straight forward as this. They may also want a link to a headshot, your social media profiles or for you to respond via another platform. As obvious as this sounds, it's really important that you read each brief properly and not just assume that it's the same as other briefs that you've come across. I've made this mistake before and kicked myself for it- especially when I know that, that pitch could have been an easy PR win but I disqualified myself through carelessness.
#2 Missing deadlines
In addition to everything mentioned above, HARO briefs come with deadlines. Another thing that's caused me to kick myself in the past has definitely been missing them; so one of the things that I do now is I copy the opportunities from HARO emails and paste them into separate cards in Trello. I also set deadline reminders (on Trello) to make sure that I don't miss them. This works well for me because I use Trello daily. If you don't, consider setting an alarm on your phone, putting it on your wall calendar or in your diary- anywhere that's going to be highly visible to you and actually help you remember.
#3 Waiting to be notified that you've been published
The great thing about my recent experience with my article on How Journaling Helped Me Be More Calm, Mindful And Resilient for Authority Magazine is that they gave each author a link to a spreadsheet letting us know when our interview would be published. Some editors will email you to alert you that they've featured your contribution but this doesn't always happen. In the past, I took no news about my HARO pitches as bad news. Now I know to Google myself or search the actual publications for my name every so often because, a lot of the time, publications will simply feature you without letting you know.
#4 Taking no for an answer
After searching with no joy, it can become apparent that a particular HARO pitch was unsuccessful. I used to take this as a sign that it sucked and should be tossed aside. With experience, I've come to realise that, that's not what it means at all. Just because a pitch has been rejected by one publication, it doesn't mean that it can't be repurposed and pitched to another one with great success- so, don't take no for an answer!
Bonus Tip
Speaking of not taking no for an answer, if you ever do miss a deadline, don't despair! Do this instead:
Take the HARO request as a sign that the platform that requested it is interested in hearing about that topic, add an alternative spin to their request and pitch that to them outside of HARO instead
Take the HARO request as inspiration for an article that you can pitch to another platform since it's obviously a hot topic at the moment
Since you know the topic is trending, use the HARO request as a writing prompt for content marketing on your own platform- however you normally do it (be it a blog, podcast episode, YouTube video etc)