Constant Content : Legal Ghostwriting & Content : Janet Raasch : Copy for Lawyers & Attorneys, Law Firm Business Development

Here is part four of my article on broadcast journalism for lawyers and law firms:

Using the Internet, lawyers and law firms can bypass the traditional mainstream media entirely and self-broadcast their own video and audio – on their own Web sites or on sites that accept user-generated broadcast content.

 

When lawyers appear on television or radio, law firms can post links on their Web sites or blogs or even request the files for posting.  In addition, using inexpensive equipment and applications, they can easily create their own video and audio podcasts for download from law firm Web sites.  It helps to have a good video/audio editor on staff.  In this day and age, no lawyer presentation should go unrecorded.  Law firms can also “broadcast” these reputation-building podcasts to clients and prospects via email alerts.

 

Once created, law-firm-generated video and audio can also be posted on a wealth of online content sites, which provide automatic RSS feeds that attract search engines.  (RSS should also be added to any of your own Web site content.) 

 

The line between print, broadcast and online news has become increasingly blurred.  Print publications host audio and video on the Web sites – some of it generated by professionals and some of it contributed by “citizen journalists.”  Television and radio station Web sites also include text and photographs.

 

A law firm, for example, that cannot get the local TV station to cover the opening of its remodeled lobby can now make its own video and post in on the station’s well-optimized Web site.

 

All modern media sites host blogs by their reporters, which can include links to video and audio.  All of them offer versions for mobile devices.  All of them offer subscriptions via Facebook, Twitter, RSS, email or text.  All of them accept user contributions.

 

Law-firm-produced video and audio can also be easily posted on a wide range of social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Martindale-Hubbell Connected.  It can be added to social content sites like JDSupra, Legal OnRamp and HubStreet.  Legal Talk Network is a “talk radio” vehicle for lawyers and law firms.  Savvy lawyers and law firms are even posting their own videos (and broadcast ads) on YouTube.

 

Finally, use Twitter to send out a short notification and a link every time you appear in the traditional broadcast media or self-broadcast your own video and audio content.

 

Be that lawyer!  By consistently and carefully pitching, catching and self-promoting -- using traditional and online broadcast media -- lawyers and law firms can optimize search engine results and successfully spread the word about their professional expertise.

Here is a link to the entire article:

Lawyers and law firms:  Broadcast your expertise, build your reputation

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Here is part three of my article on broadcast journalsim for lawyers and law firms:

 

In the case of a breaking news stories, news directors and reporters often come to you – looking for a comment (if you are directly involved in the story) or background (if you are an expert in a particular subject area).

 

If you are involved in a newsworthy event, understand that “no comment” is a terrible response to a media inquiry – especially if you are captured fleeing on camera with your hand in front of your face.  If the case or matter is truly newsworthy, the story will appear with or without your input.  Strategize with your client and, with the client’s permission, make sure that your client’s point of view is included in a dignified fashion in the report.

 

If you are asked to provide background on breaking news in which you have no direct involvement, it is usually because you have let the stations know ahead of time that you are an expert, are available to comment, and can speak coherently and intelligently in front of a camera or microphone.  Do not be afraid to make this contact.  Broadcast reporters are always interested in deepening their pool of qualified legal experts.

 

It never hurts to be on-site, either.  When terror suspect Najibullah Zazi was inside the Denver Federal Courthouse, hundreds of reporters were waiting outside for hours in the frigid winter weather.  Local lawyer and media commentator Craig Silverman was not sitting behind his desk waiting for the phone to ring.  Instead, he braved the weather to circulate in the crowd of local, national and international reporters.  As a result, his face and voice were all over the evening news.

 

Be aware of a major change in the way modern news directors and reporters “catch” their stories and expert commentators in the Internet age – Google and other search engines.  According to recent reports, 85 percent of all reporters use Google on a daily basis.  If you want the call to comment on a particular legal development, your name must show up in Google results for the keywords used by a researching reporter.

Here is a link to the complete article:

Lawyers and law firms:  Broadcast your expertise, build your reputation

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“Pitching” to the traditional broadcast media

Here is part two of my article on broadcast journalism for lawyers and law firms:

When “pitching” news to the traditional broadcast media, remember that it has to be real news – and not self-promotion.  News is information that a station’s viewers or listeners need to know in order to make good decisions about their personal and business lives.  Always emphasize how your story will be of value to viewers or listeners.

 

In other words, news is important to people outside the law firm – not inside the firm. It often contains an additional element of new, first, best or most.

 

News that an associate has made partner, for example, is not likely to generate coverage.  That happens all the time.  News that the new partner is a deaf, orphaned, immigrant associate who worked his or her way through college and law school in the mail room at your firm might generate interest.

 

Make the story as easy as possible for the reporter.  Never mail a press release.  Call or email the right reporter with your story idea.  If the reporter expresses interest, send additional information.  New on the scene is the electronic press release, which includes not only background, but also direct email links to your experts as well as online links to photos, audio, video and other related news stories and Web sites.  Imagine how helpful this material can be to a reporter rushing to complete a story on deadline!

 

Broadcast news directors and reporters like to produce exclusives – stories that none of the competitors can cover.  Offer exclusives – and honor them.

 

Once the station has expressed interest in your pitch, time is of the essence.  Broadcast news directors and reporters face multiple deadlines each and every day (with Internet publishing, the deadline has become “right now”), and are driven to feature their stories in a timely fashion – preferably sooner than anyone else.  Make sure that you are actually available, at work or at home, in person or by phone (in the case of radio) to do the interview on deadline.

 

Think like a broadcast reporter.  Television stations like stories that offer more than “talking heads.”  They can be attracted to a story that includes a good visual setting, physical activity and interesting props.  Radio stations find “value added” in stories with interesting sound effects (like an IP case involving recorded music).

 

Finally, know what you are going to say and who is going to say it – even before “pitching” the broadcast media.  Practice in advance the 30-second “sound bites” you will use.  Videotape and review them.  Work with a media expert if necessary.

Here is a link to the complete article:

Lawyers and law firms:  Broadcast your expertise, build your reputation

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Recently, I posted an article on broadcast journalism in the Internet age.  The article was based on a panel discussion and I felt, after I'd written it, that I wanted to expand the article to include points not made by the panelists.  So I wrote another article on the subject of lawyers, law firms and broadcast journalism.  Here is the introduction (the entire article will appear over the next few days):

“Hey, you’re that lawyer!  The lawyer from the TV news about that case last night!  The lawyer who was interviewed on public radio regarding that issue last week!  The lawyer on the podcast about pending industry regulation that I downloaded and listened to last month!  You’re obviously the expert.  Let’s talk.”

 

Under national and state bar ethics rules, lawyers usually cannot call themselves experts in a given subject area.  But they can use broadcast media to position themselves as experts in the eyes of consumers of legal services.

 

Until recently, it took a lot of work with a public relations expert for a lawyer to appear on television or radio as an expert.  Broadcasters owned and controlled the airwaves, and access was limited.

 

Over the past ten years, with the advent of the Internet, the rules of the game have changed completely.  Today, users own and control the Internet, and access is unlimited.  There are many more opportunities to “broadcast” your expertise than ever before.

Upcoming sections include:

       "Pitching" to the traditional broadcast media

       "Catching" from the traditional broadcast media

       "Self-broadcasting" in the world of social media

For the impatient, here's a link to the entire article:

Lawyers and law firms:  Broadcast your expertise, build your reputation

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Any time I talk to a lawyer who questions the value (or the propriety) of social media marketing, I bring up the story of Tom Goldstein -- who went from solo to head of the Supreme Court practice at Akin Gump using social media like his SCOTUS Blog and SCOTUS Wiki to make a name for himself in this very exclusive area of the law.  He has also made a number of non-self-important videos that he has posted on YouTube.

In today's Wall Street Journal Law blog, Ashby Jones reports on a Variety story  that NBC is developing a TV show based on Goldstein's remarkable success story.  The working title is Tommy Supreme -- "depicting a likeable guy in an unlikeable profession."

Now I have even more ammunition to use when attempting to persuade  lawyers and law firms who think that social media are too undignified for the law or their particular practice!  What is more dignified than a Supreme Court practice?

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The good news is, lawyers and law firms seem to be increasingly aware of the value of blogs and other social media when it comes to establishing themselves as thought-leaders within a given legal practice area -- and showing up well in search engine results for these keywords.

The bad news is, many lawyers are having a hard time creating and posting the amount of content they need in order to maximize social media.

As a result, I am getting a lot of requests lately to "ghost-blog" -- requests that go nowhere once the lawyers realize the cost of creating a steady stream of good blog posts.  I counsel these would-be clients that it is almost always more time- and cost-effective for them to write and post their own blog posts.  It is also, in the spirit of social media, much more authenic.

I'm not saying I won't do it if the right project comes along.  I am just saying it won't be cheap.

Think of blog posts as poetry.  Fiction writers like to say that writing novels is hard, writing short stories is harder, and writing poetry is hardest of all.  I think that non-ficture writers would agree that writing books is hard, writing articles is harder, and writing good Web content is hardest of all.

To be a good ghost-blogger you have to be a good writer -- and know how to write for social media sites and search engines.

You have to take the time to know the client in order to "channel" his or her voice and values. 

You have to work with the client to develop a list of topics that will resonate with a target audience. 

You have to take the time to understand the subject matter and industry that the client is targeting. 

You have to create an aggregator to follow experts in these subjects and industries online so that you can comment on and link to their posts in your own posts.

You have to create at least one (and preferably more) posts each week, gain approval from the "author," post the content (including Tweets and social network links announcing new content) and monitor the post for any comments.

That's a lot of work for what might end up being relatively few words.  The traditional formula of charging "by the word" for books and articles falls apart when a writer is asked to come up with an estimate for ghost-blogging.  Lawyers and law firms should not be taken aback.

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I didn't post a "fresh" blog entry last week because I am currently devoting one hour a day to tedious -- but extremely important -- blog housekeeping tasks.  I have 115 blogs and Web sites on my aggregator.  Each day, I am methodically adding ten links to those blogs to this relatively new blog of mine -- and then individually contacting the authors to let them known that I subscribe to their blogs and have added a link to them on my own blog.  I am then requesting that they take a look at my blog and, if they find it useful, subscribe and link in return.

I am halfway through this process and it seems to be working well!  My site statistics continue to improve each day, as do the Google results for my blog.  The blog itself has finanlly surpassed my LinkedIn profile (although not yet JDSupra).

When it comes to blogging, "The bee that gets the honey doesn't hang around the hive" is a much better slogan than "If you build it, they will come."  They won't come unless they know you are there.

If you want good results for your blog or other social media site, you have to "work" it -- making sure that links to your site appear on other sites and making sure that other prominent bloggers know that you exist and are regularly monitoring (and perhaps commenting on) your posts.  You want to return the favor by mentioning and commenting on their posts as well.

Time for online spring cleaning!

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The Constant Content Blog is engineered and hosted by the wonderful folks at LexBlog.  Over the years, I have interviewed Kevin O'Keefe a few times for articles I was writing on social media.  He always had something pertinent to add to my articles and was always generous with his time.  When it came time to start my own blog, Kevin and LexBlog were absolutely "top of mind" in MY mind.  This week, the tables were turned.  My blog and the strategy behind it were featured in an interview with Lisa Kennelly on Kevin's own site, Real Lawyers Have Blogs.  Actually, because it was so long, it was featured twice -- in Part 1 and Part 2.

Thanks for the Google juice!

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The world of journalism has been revitalized by the input of enthusiatic citizen journalists writing for new online media.  This world will never be the same.  However, there are a few "tricks of the traditional trade" that would help these writers improve their posts.  One of these is headline-writing.

Back in the day (I taught journalism for ten years), "how to write a good headline" was part of the curriculum at any j-school.  Headline writers were the poets of the journalism world.  It was their job to condense the gist of of story into a certain number of characters that would fit meaningfully into an allotted amount of print space -- in a way that would attract the attention of the reader. 

The same rules apply to the headlines we write for blog posts and online articles (usually 160 characters) -- and especially posts on Twitter (140 characters)!  Many of these headlines appear in aggregators -- where they are skimmed by readers who make an instantaneous judgment about whether or not to open the headline and read further.  I have more than 100 blogs in my Bloglines aggregator -- which I use as a daily "newspaper" for my work-related news.  I can't tell you how many headlines I skim over each day (rather than opening and reading them) because the headline does not catch my attention as "something I need to know in order to do business."

Generic writing does not work in a headline -- in print or online.  Good headlines should let the reader know why they need to read further.  What is the news or value proposition you are offering in exchange for their time?  Use important nouns (keywords) and active verbs.

Bad:  New law takes effect in 2009

Good:  ADAAA takes effect Jan. 1:  Employers with disabled workers must make changes

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Today's audiences are active and interactive consumers of business information.  Increasingly, they expect their lawyers and law firms to communicate with them interactively, using the next generation of electronic communications tools.  In this September 2005 article, a panel of public relations specialists discusses new-media tools like RSS feeds, blogs and podcasts.

RSS feeds, blogs and podcasts -- oh my!  New media marketing tools

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