Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Blawgs, Law Firm Marketing

More readers are trading newspapers for web sites per a recent article in the New York Times.

The circulation declines of American newspapers continued over the spring and summer, as sales across the industry fell almost 3 percent compared with the year before, according to figures released yesterday.

The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.

On of the ways lawyers enhance their reputation as an authority is being quoted in newspapers on relevant stories. Getting quoted has not been easy though. Usually took a little luck and in many cases, some PR folks with a nice rolodex of reporter contacts.

But online newspapers open more doors for lawyers to showcase their expertise.

• Local newspapers often allow comments to stories, offering an opportunity for you as a lawyer to add your take just as if the reporter had called you for a quote.
• Virtually all newspapers have blogs. Leave a comment, with your name, email and blog's url. Readers click on links to commentors blogs.
• Newspapers are looking for citizen bloggers, other than their reporters. I've seen more than once a blog run by a lawyer on a consumer or small business law topic. Approach your newspaper with the idea. Show them your blog as evidence of your abilities.
• Quote online newspapers in your own blog adding your own take. Email the reporter a link to the post letting them know you shared the story with your readers and you'd be happy to be a resource for similar stories as you regularly publish on the topic at your blog.
• In time, newspapers are going to become information centers incorporating blog feeds from local citizens. Getting known by the paper now gives you a leg up that your blog feeds will be included.

No question there is a disintermediation of PR professionals and reporters going on. Not taking advantage of it is your loss.

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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.

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Atlanta journalist, Steve Burns, asked at LinkedIn 'How many blogs do PR/Marketing types read/subscribe to regularly?'

Answers ranged into the hundreds for some with the vast majority of professionals subscribed to feeds from at least 20 or 25 blogs.

Tells me that PR people are using blogs for a few purposes. One, as a means of following what's going on in areas they're working on for clients. Two, learning new skills and methods from thought leaders in the PR and communications field. And three, for networking with fellow professionals and mentors.

I question whether PR and communications employed in large law firms are monitoring that many blog RSS feeds in newsreaders. I talk to a lot of law firm marketing professionals who are not using RSS feeds from blogs and keyword searches at all. Some PR and communication professionals have even told me it sounds like a waste of time getting information from unreliable sources.

What are you guys seeing? If you're a law firm marketing professional, how many blogs do you subscribe to via RSS feeds?

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Getting bloggers to cover you, your law firm, or company is an art. It's not done by sending press releases and cold emails to bloggers.

I probably get 30 press releases or announcements a day from organizations looking for me to blog about them. Can't remember the last time such an an email from someone I didn't know caused me to blog about what they sent me.

Uber blogger Robert Scoble, recently of Fast Company, offers some sound advice on how to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere.

Read Robert's whole post but here's the highlights.

• Go where the bloggers are. Create a list of few dozen bloggers and get to know them. If possible, go to events such bloggers are attending. Looking at Upcoming.org's event calendars frequently, you can figure out which events a preponderance of bloggers say they're attending and keep track of them.
• Read the blogs of the people you want to cover you. Send them a note within minutes of their posting, blog about their posts, link to their blogs from your own blog, and add public comments to posts. Not only does each blogger get to know you, but their readers do too.
• Send bloggers interesting stories -- especially about other people -- that you think they would be interested in. When you have something about your own business to announce, those bloggers will be more receptive to you than to some PR firm that only flacks for its clients.
• Start blogging. When a blogger hears an interesting story, they go to Google and start searching other blogs so they can read more about it. Tell your story on your own blog.
• Don't send press releases. The blog world is built on relationships.

Bloggers matter when it comes to PR. LexBlog's grown from the garage to a company with 14 people serving law firms across the country and internationally largely by my networking with other bloggers. Not once did I send out a press release.

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Defies logic that law firms spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on Public Relations and ignore Blogs.

Sure, there's a place for law firms use of PR agencies, but lawyers who are blogging effectively are regularly being interviewed and quoted by reporters. And they're getting these interviews without any PR support.

I agree with Rich Brooks at Business Blog Consulting who business blogs can bring you killer PR.

Let's face it, journalists are having to do more with less, so they're more and more likely to turn to Google and other search engines to track down 'experts' in a given field.

As you continue to build your blog over time, creating great content in a specific niche, Google's more likely to return your blog as a result when a journalist starts researching a column or article. I've never hired a PR firm, and I work out of the top right corner of the US us locals call 'Maine', but I've gotten quotes in Inc., BusinessWeek Small Biz, and other periodicals and the local evening news because of our Web marketing blog.

Rich is not alone. LexBlog's lawyer clients are regularly quoted in mass and trade media publications. Some are getting interviewed a few times a month. And LexBlog clients aren't alone. At the ABA TechShow last week I spoke with any number of lawyers publishing blogs who are amazed at the media attention they are getting via their niche focused blogs.

Only makes sense. 75& of reporters are using blogs and RSS as a means to locate experts and get insight on stories they are working on. One Wall Street Journal reporter has called the ability to subscribe to keywords via RSS feeds from Google Blog Search and Technorati the lazy man's way of investigative reporting.

If you're a lawyer who would like to be quoted by reporters or you're a law firm business development/communications looking to get your lawyers quoted as experts, you could do a lot worse than a blog.

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