Karasma Media Legal Marketing Blog by Kara Smith » Blog Archive » 3 Reasons For Legal Marketers to Start Thinking Like Journalists

3 Reasons For Legal Marketers to Start Thinking Like Journalists

You’re Informed - It’s time to engage your audience
As a professional marketing legal services, there is a need for you to distinguish your services. Obviously, all information is not created equal, and it is more important now than ever for you to reach out to your audience as a viable information source in your area of specialty. You need to provide a venue for them to be able to interact with you easily, and these interactions will translate into the quality clients you want to attract.

News and information sources today have never been more accessible and anyone with an internet connection can contribute to the broadcast of information. A new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism makes clear, we have become a nation of news grazers whose “relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory.

But as the concept of “journalism” expands to include citizens with cellphone cameras, Twitter Facebook, and LinkedIn, the survey’s responders reflected something we all feel, with 70% of them feeling overwhelmed by the amount of news and information from different sources, and 72% think most sources of news are biased.

journalist

All of us consumers want to be connected to the people and products we can trust. There’s no better way for professionals marketing legal services to distinguish their credible information from misinformation and propaganda than by being in control of their online presence. Journalists will seek you out as an expert and when you approach one of them, being able to reference articles your online articles written by firm members and associates will be invaluable.

Your Results Will Reflect Your Efforts
I published an interview I conducted with Social Media expert Chris Brogan last week, reviewing his perspective of social media’s impact on legal marketing services. The next day, I featured the article in my e-mail newsletter and posted it on the Karasma Media Platforms on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

It’s important to note that fresh information is kept flowing on these platforms on a daily basis. Since the article’s initial publication (8-days ago at the time I’m writing this):

The Alexa rating of the Karasma Media Marketing Blog has gone up more than 15%, which translates into an increase of almost 40 readers per day, three calls from prospects and two requests for in-person interviews.

Once legal marketers put their infrastructure of information into place infrastructure is in place and the information is flowing, your potential clients and legitimate journalists are going to use it. Today, legal marketers need to think like journalists because they are increasingly serving as informational gatekeepers, both by creating and publishing original content online and by passing on (and thereby endorsing) news and information created elsewhere.

The Federal Government’s Providing Educational Support
The Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, which was released last month, offers an important opportunity to increase news-literacy education to millions of students. The plan, authorized in the $787 billion stimulus package last year, is a long-overdue effort to shore up our digital infrastructure by extending high-speed Internet access to the entire country.

The online infrastructure’s in place, and the government is backing it. Now is the time to put your legal information structure into place and bring your online platform up to full speed.

USA Today article referenced: As Journalism Changes, So Must You