Only 8% under age 35 to rely on newspaper for news : Law firm PR has got to change
Picked up from The New Yorker, via Pat Thornton, that per a recent study, 39% of those under 35 said that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper ('Abandoning the News,' published by the Carnegie Corporation). More shocking is that only 19% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 claim even to look at a daily newspaper.
That ought to send shock waves through large law firms with expensive PR and communication programs designed to get their lawyers quoted in print. Unfortunately it's not.
I continue to run across law firm heads who know little about online publishing - unless you count archiving old articles and newsletters on websites. Chief Marketing Officers and PR heads in large law act like blogs, by far and away the largest producer of online niche news & information, are for kids. Mention RSS and newsreaders, the way innovative business people and reporters syndicate and receive news, and I'm told that's too techie, we're not into that stuff around here.
Even worse is that there's little being done in large law to adapt. Marketing and communication heads hire outside agencies they're comfortable with, often whom have no experience or taste for online publishing through blogs and RSS. Heck, some PR agencies representing law firms have a conflict of interest in seeing such new ways of PR work, they'd be out of a job.
Although there's some education in the legal marketing profession on new methods of PR, there's not enough. I'm amazed when I get out and speak that legal marketing professionals know little about the subject and ask me why thete's not more people presenting on the topic.
As The New Yorker's Eric Alterman wrote about the web, '[Content] distribution is frictionless, swift, and cheap.' That's why individual lawyers in large law firms who are publishing blogs are garnering significant press. Being quoted in two to three stories a month is not unusual.
Law firms need to wake up. Those who do will hold a significant competitive edge.
Great post. But I'd make a couple points before dismissing traditional media altogether.
1) The firms' most influential clients likely remain over 35 and are still washing the ink from their fingertips after their morning coffee.
2) Nearly every story that appears in the print media today is posted simultaneously online, impacting search engines and available to online readers and for linking by bloggers.
I tell client that the main reason for traditional media relations is to get independently written stories about them onto the web. Then I tell them they shouldn't wait for the media to write about them, and that they should start a blog...
Thanks for the comment Ken, your points well taken. I don't want to dismiss traditional media.
But look at it this way. 75% of reporters are using blogs and RSS for locating experts and insight for stories they are working on. Law firm one kicks out info they used to kick out in alerts, newsletters, articles, and press releases in a blog with a RSS feed. Reporters subscribed to keyword and key phrase searches at Google Blog Search and Technorati get RSS feed of law firm's stuff into their newsreaders. Lawyers get seen by and quoted by reporters for traditional media.
Law firm two kicks out information the old way not utilizing RSS. Their content is not picked up by the RSS newsreaders of reporters. Their lawyers are not quoted by reporters or the subject of print stories nearly as much.
Being innovative and using new technology such as blogs and RSS increases chances dramatically that lawyers will be quoted or in the print. You're killing 2 birds with one stone - getting online copy as well as offline copy.
Thanks for the comment Ken, your points well taken. I don't want to dismiss traditional media.
But look at it this way. 75% of reporters are using blogs and RSS for locating experts and insight for stories they are working on. Law firm one kicks out info they used to kick out in alerts, newsletters, articles, and press releases in a blog with a RSS feed. Reporters subscribed to keyword and key phrase searches at Google Blog Search and Technorati get RSS feed of law firm's stuff into their newsreaders. Lawyers get seen by and quoted by reporters for traditional media.
Law firm kicks out information the old way not utilizing RSS. Their content is not picked up by the RSS newsreaders of reporters. Their lawyers are not quoted or in print nearly as much.
Being innovative and using new technology such as blogs and RSS increases chances dramatically that lawyers will be quoted or in the print. You're killing 2 birds with one stone - getting online copy as well as offline copy.
Exactly...Agree completely! The whole point of working with "print" reporters is because you'll get the online story... If it doesn't live on and help you with SEO past the recycling bin, it's not worth the trouble... and a blog may well be the best way to get found and engage once found.
I've noted ... not uniquely ... that there needs to be a shift in PR and marcomm from "media pitching" to "online content creation and engagement"... but that many orgs ... not just law firms ... just aren't staffed to create content on a nearly daily basis...