12 Things You Should Know About Peter Shankman and How He Views the World

Peter Shankman

The venerable Peter Shankman came through Chicago last week.  For those of you who don’t know of him, he is the marketing mastermind behind HARO (Help a Reporter Out). In less than two years, the website has quickly become the go-to resource for reporters who are on a tight deadline and need sources. (Plus it’s a website that is making money. $1.3 million in 15 months, according to Shankman.)

How? By killing its competition, PRNewswire’s ProfNet, on response time.  (And with more than 100,00 sources.)

These days speed kills.

Reporters, who are already stretched thin, still have the proverbial editor screaming down their throats to get something up quickly and need sources, experts and resources fast. While, of course, maintaining accuracy and context, and all the other lovely pillars of  journalism. So Shankman, 37, crafted this set-up where reporters can receive responses in hours, instead of days, in part thanks to a Twitter following close to 54,000. (See @Skydiver.)  

Shankman originally set up HARO as a Facebook page, but when things took off and he maxed out at 1,200 followers, Shankman launched the website.

Being a freelance journalist who now finds myself in the thrusts of learning how to market myself and my craft (not a skill most journalists typically possess), I plunked down $24 and $2.31 in processing fees in the hopes of gaining some insight. Chicago P.R. and Marketing Network hosted Peter Shankman at the Merchantile Exchange followed by a cocktail hour at the Morton’s The Steakhouse on Wacker Place.  

I caught up with Shankman one-on-one during the cocktail hour.

Here are 12 Things You Should Know about Peter Shankman and How He Views the World:

1. He has Serious ADHD. He really acts like he’s on speed. (Picture the Pixar animated movie UP where the talking dog freezes when he sees a squirrel.) When listening to him be prepared for hilarious Twitter-type feeds that change topics faster than a hurricane. (Sometimes at the expense of ex-girlfriends.)

2.  If You Were on an Island and Wanted to Get Off….Shankman is creative and resourceful. He’s proven that time and again. He’s wore a cardboard sign and handed out resumes in Manhattan in the late 1990’s. When he was broke, Shankman took his rent money, $1,800, to Times Square during the Titantic craze. He walked around with 500 T-shirts imprinted the words, “It Sank. Get Over It.” Less than two hours later he’d sold all of them making back his rent money and several thousand dollars profit. He then called an editor at USA Today, on a slow news day, and explained what he’d just done. Then he made thousands more after the story was published. 

3. Give the Man some Patrón. He usually drinks Diet Pepsi, but when he’s not it’s tequila with lime. Patrón or better.

4. Biggest Mistakes People Make? Listening to naysayers, says Shankman. Biggest mistake for people in public relations; not doing their homework. Biggest mistake for journalists; thinking all p.r. people are morons.

5.  Adrenaline Addict. Shankman loves action and adventure. But more than anything he is willing to take a risk. Hence his Skydiver nickname.  Shankman made his first jump in 2000 as a publicity stunt with 150 CEOs and “got hooked.” “It’s so scary, but it’s the greatest feeling,” he says. He just completed his 200th skydive on Sunday and typically goes to Florida, New Jersey, New York, Arizona and California. (He also likes to run and has competed in several Olympic-distance triathlons and more than a dozen marathons.)

6.  HARO launched with a Chicago Tribune request. Yep, the site officially launched on March 20, 2008 with a Tribune reporter’s search for an expert. A year later the total number of queries reached 24,500.

7. He has Two Overgrown Psychotic Cats.  The cats, Karma and NASA, wake Shankman up at the insane hour of 5 a.m. As Shankman described, the one cat just starts pawing my head (Feed me) and the other (less smart one) just chimes in on the other side (Feed me.) (I’ts like a boxer punching a bag, except it is Shankman’s head.)

8.  Shankman Likes to Be in the  Know, At Any Expense.  Much to the chagrin of his parents, a 5-year-old, Shankman got his head stuck in the bars of a railing on the second floor of their Staten Island home. The fire department had to come rescue him. Why he did he do it?  ”I wanted to see what was going on below,” he says.

9. Transparency is important. If you make a mistake, apologize and say how you are going to fix the problem. Don’t lie about it and try to cover it up. An apology and fixing the problem goes a long way. Consumers and clients are more likely to return to the company on a 4 to 1 ratio, says Shankman, if you do. (As a society, we build people up and tear them down, but we like the Rocky-style return-glory-predicament.)

10. Be Relevant. Ask yourself, how do you relate to your audience? Are you on topic or off topic. Don’t asssume you know what they want. Ask them and do it in a personal manner, not through blanket surveys.

11.  Be Brief.  More imporantly be concise and to the point. The attention span of most people is 2.7 seconds or 140 characters. Shankman jokes about three types of emails. The ones you can answer with one word responses and then delete. Emails that are concise with direct questions that can be flagged to respond in a timely fashion.  The wordy emails that take five paragraphs and you still don’t know what the person wants. (Those are left behind and deleted months later or are later apologized for with the “It went to my spam inbox comment.”)

12. Use Your Network. You worked hard to build it, now use it. Shankman used the example of Paramount Pictures’ executive Barry Diller who would meticulously go through his Rolodex and call different filmmakers on a daily basis to touch base and find out what scripts they were working on. So several times a year a filmmaker would get a call from Barry. When it came time for films to be produced, the filmakers could go through the red tape at another studio or just call Barry.  The personal connection help Paramount go through a huge boom, Shankman says, with blockbuster hits like Top Gun. The modern day version of that: call people in your social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Take 10 or 15 minutes at the start of the day to wish people Happy Birthday when you see it come up on your Facebook feed.  Re-connect with people. Don’t pretend you know what is going on in their lives. Just ask. What are you working on? How’s it going?