March Madness: Public Relations is a Team Sport

In the spirit of March Madness, we will be offering you a series of blogs that will highlight the strategies we present for making you and your team as good as the top seeds in the sport of PR for law firms. Yes, PR is a sport, exhausting at times, but invigorating too. But, everyone has to play to win.

An employment attorney was presented with the opportunity to write for a blog published by a well known retail industry publication. The editor did not have anyone covering that area of the law, so it was a slam dunk for this attorney to become a stand out in the industry. But, the attorney was much more excited about doing an ad campaign in the publication thinking this would make a bigger impression on the audience. While I do believe advertisements have their purpose, delivering fresh, timely content that is relevant to the audience will make a bigger, lasting impression.

I’ve written in the past that content is king. Saavy lawyers understand that they need to continually present themselves as thought leaders in their area of expertise and one of the best ways to do this is through writing. The issue however inevitably comes down to time. Any good BD, marketing and PR professional will tell you it is critical to make the time. Just as a star athlete has to practice, a thought leader has to make time to write. What are the pay offs?

Good content can attract a new client or be used as handouts at speaking engagements or for follow up after the conference. It may get you ranked on Google when a reporter does a search for that topic. Client alerts and blog posts can be expanded into articles that will be seen by a wider audiences.

FEB 27 2014

Professional services public relations requires attorneys to get off the bench and get into the game. It’s a team sport where the PR professional identifies, then passes the opportunity to the attorney which requires the attorney to run with the ball. So often we find that attorneys rely on PR to do all of the work. PR is part of a team effort. Everyone has to play to win.