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How law firms get free publicity in newspapers, on TV & Radio

PressReleasePros.com’s pitch that law firm press releases lead to being sourced as an expert for TV, radio and newspapers is a bit dated.

I’m told by newspaper folks, including legal publishers, that they receive up to 100 press releases a day. That’s 12 an hour. Think they get time to read them?

Here’s how you’re assured to get media coverage using the latest technology.

  • Publish a blog. 40% of reporters use blogs and RSS as a source at least once a week. The Wall Street Journal has labeled blogs and RSS as the lazy man’s way of investigative reporting.
  • Subscribe to blogs published by reporters, editors, and columnists. Post a comment on their blog. Bloggers get to know those who comment on their blog. Comment about one of their posts in your blog. They’ll see your post by monitoring their name and url via RSS.
  • Set up RSS feeds by key words and key phrases at Google News so as to see relevant newspaper and TV stories. Blog about stories of interest to your target audience. Send an email to the reporter letting them know you shared their story with your readers. Your email should include the title and url of your post. Also let the reporter know you’d be happy to be a resource for future stories.

This stuff works. Both LexBlog clients and I have been regularly interviewed and quoted by mass media and trade media across the country. Two times the last week for me.

  • http://www.lawfuel.com John Bowie

    All good points. At Lawfuel.com we handle news releases from a wide variety of law sources and one point I’d note on the pure, press release writing is the continued lack of initiative, flair – call it what you will – in writing. Some, like the US Attorney’s LA office media man Tom Mzo – can still enhance a story by picking a good angle. But what can happen so often is the good point, the interest, the emotion is buried in a pile of often tedious, self congratulatory or simply non-new ‘news’.