PR Pros: SourceBottle Has Arrived in the U.S. with a Non-HARO Niche
Some of you may have heard of SourceBottle before. It's the Australian version of HelpAReporterOut.com (HARO) or ProfNet. I recently learned that SourceBottle has officially launched a North American version of this popular "down under" resource.
SourceBottle is a free, online journalist-to-PR resource that enables you to identify reporters and bloggers in need of sources. You can then pitch your story to them and make a PR-media match made in heaven!
There are some differences between SourceBottle and HARO. For one, SourceBottle U.S. is only for media/bloggers seeking sources in women interest topics such as parenting, relationships, style and beauty and women in business.
The other difference is that, at no fee, you can tailor your email subscription to target only specific topics vs. getting an email blast with everything you may not be interested in.
If you ask the U.S. owner of SourceBottle why she chose to focus only on women's issues, she would tell you it's because 85% of consumer purchases in the U.S. are made by women. In her email blast (which I received on June 21, 2012) she calls it the ‘she-conomy’ and says companies are generating more products and services for female consumers, and that businesses are more focused than ever on reaching female demographics.
The good news? You can sign up for free to get their email alerts and find out if your client or your company can serve as a "source" to reporters and bloggers in need.
The bad news? We're still waiting to see if SourceBottle takes off like the overnight success of HARO. Can SourceBottle find it's niche? Can it get journalists to post juicy stories that PR people will jump to pitch and that they can't find on HARO or ProfNet? (Wouldn't that be terrible just to duplicate source requests from HARO - that would create more work for us already overworked PR folk). The story of SourceBottle in North America is yet to be told, but it will sure be fun to watch!