Death of press releases?

Got to love this tombstone I picked up over at Micro Persuasion. Image courtesy of Dr. Dugan.

Senior partner in Florida law firm asked today “What’s a blog published by our firm going to do that the money we’re already paying for PR doesn’t do?” This from a firm that is the state of Florida’s leading authority on a niche area of the law.

My response. One, I do search at Google for Florida plus your law topic and your firm is no where to be found on pages one or two. Two, with 40% of journalists using blogs as a source once a week and the Wall Street Journal labeling RSS feeds on keywords as the lazy person’s way of investigative journalism, do you think all reporters are waiting for your law firm’s press releases?

Could have added more but that was all they needed to hear. Plus the law firm marketing person added that it looks like PR people better change the way they do business or they are going to be in trouble.

PR people with rolodexes with valuable media contacts are still valuable. They are not going away. But blogs are not taking a back seat to those rolodexes or any other method of PR.