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Lawyer blog can be picked up in local media

I‘ve been telling lawyers that most local newspapers have tech columnists who have written about blogs, have a blog or receive news feeds via RSS (real simple syndication) like blogs offer. More than likely, all three are true. For this reason dropping your local newspaper columnist an email may well get you and blog coverage in the local paper.

This is exactly what happened in the case of board-certified family physician publishing a general medical blog in Ohio. The Akron Beacon Journal reported that the doctor’s blog, Medpundit, was “A sophisticated, meandering compilation of new research studies, graphics, references to everything and anything medical, with cheeky asides.”

Blogs are new. Lawyers providing free practical legal information, not advise, is new – at least to most folks. Put the two together and you have a nice little news story. Reporters, though starved for interesting stories, are tough to sell on doing a story about your law practice. But this is a new slant and one worth a shot.

How do you do it? You already read your local paper or regional newspaper. Make note of the name and email address (included at a the bottom of most news stories) of the reporters covering tech, law related, business or lifestyle stories. Better yet do a search in the on-line edition of the paper for ‘blog’ or ?weblog? and see what you find.

When you have a nice legal blog going, drop the reporter an email saying you got hooked on blogging as a way of helping people and how your blog has grown. Reporters often do not want to do a story on just one person or company. Give them the name and contact info of other blogging lawyers whose sites they could see. If worried about competition, give an example of a lawyer across the country. If you want to hit a home run, give the reporter a name, with permission of course, of a consumer or business person, who got some helpful info off your blog.

At lexBlog we include our contacting local media in our law blog packages. Most lawyers are not familiar with press releases and the like so I thought it would be a good idea.

But any lawyer who can carry on a conversation with a reporter who has a nice blog has a shot at getting local media coverage. And a favorable article in the newspaper is worth a lot more than a paid advertisement.

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