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Coaching bill format for Public Relations

hey y'all it's zach the legal tech advisor here at lawyerist today i'd like to touch on public relations for your law firm recently i sat down with tamara from postali to talk about the three fundamentals of lawyer pr have a listen let us know what you think hi i'm tamara and i am the pr manager at postasoli i am in charge of helping our legal partners improve their visibility online using any type of earned media opportunities like being in an article on wall street journal being in a podcast sponsorships etc tamara thanks for joining us today um i think this is a topic that a lot of lawyers don't really know that they're already dealing with or don't know that they've already started doing part of this but they're not necessarily doing it in a holistic or intentional way so i appreciate you coming and uh kind of talking to us about it previously you and i had had discussed what's the what are the things that we need to know as lawyers to do this and so you said the first steps were laying a good foundation can can you expand upon a good foundation for pr efforts in our law firms definitely so there are three top things they are one making sure your website's up to date and reflecting how you want your firm to be presented to the world two you want to make sure your branding and your messaging is on point and three making sure you have an updated and active social media so those are that's it in a nutshell it seems simple enough but i think that a lot of us as lawyers don't don't even have any of those really really consistently going and those three things seem to be connected to each other pretty well you know having a good website also necessitates having good branding um because part of a at least with lawyers for our best law firm websites we look at the branding at the voice and so what are the things that people need to know or need to think about when they're setting that first issue of having a good website for sure so with your website you want to make sure it reflects exactly what you want your firm to be seen as so does it say your title does it say what practice areas that you actually help with and represent does it have an about section is there a way to contact you can we see a photo of you and a lot of lawyers prefer not to be the face of their brand but that's what especially when you're in a solo to mid-size space as a law firm people want to know who you are um so do we have professional photos of you can those be used you know as a headshot like what what is on the website that's presenting or being a selling platform for you to sell you when a journalist comes to your website they are also looking for credibility and credibility as much as we may not want to think about it does include appearance and that's what your website does for you well i want to expand upon that a little bit when you say when a journalist comes to your website i i want to tease out the difference between you know pr and marketing marketing is you know you advertising out to the world but what we're talking about is having a good website for when you send out pr campaigns to try to connect with somebody a journalist or something like that to kind of promote you as well or promote something that you're saying right yes correct so of course when we're talking about marketing we obviously expect a consumer to come to our website right if we're you know marketing to other businesses we expect them to come to our website we always think about again any business but especially for law firms we tend to think about the person who's going to convert into a case as our audience when you actually add pr to your digital marketing mix you have to also then think of a journalist being part of your ideal audience now when they come here do they get a sense of who you are do they feel like you're a thought leader i know we use that term a lot but do they feel like you're an authority on a specific topic and usually they can tell by how you talk about something like what you have on your blog a lot of people sometimes like next the blog but that also can actually bring you some good press or get you linked in an article actually because you have something that's very thoughtful and informative right um do you have a title underneath your name like for example saying that your trial attorney doesn't really give you too much insight into what topic you talk about but saying that you're a family law attorney or saying that you're an estate planning attorney can tell me that this is what you talk about this is what you're an advocate for um so there's things like that just think beyond just your title and think how can i show that i'm an authority on a subject with my website so that leads into branding on on your site for yourself all of that how you look to the outside world and we're and again we're not just thinking about branding for our potential clients but for other thought leaders journalists things like that so what what are kind of some ideas that we need to keep in our heads behind good branding biggest thing is what are your goals so sometimes when you start with your website or your branding you may not think about a journalist being part of your audience when you do make that switch though you then have to reconsider an ad enhance your website with that option right one of the ways you can do that is by creating a press page on your website um which yeah so a lot of lawyers tend to miss out on that um but it's definitely important to add a press page because it gives a journalist instead of them getting caught in the weeds of what might be more focused for an individual consumer that's calling you for a case you can have a press page dedicated to showing a journalist what you talked about what you may have been featured in in the past whether that's a trade website trade journal trade magazine an award that you've got you can then put all of those in one place and make it easy for them to also contact you if they want to learn any anything um but you also want to think about messaging i always say what do you want to be known for probably said it multiple times today but what do you want to be known for that is key for example if you're a personal injury attorney it's very probable that you do a lot of things you have a lot of practice areas you probably need dog bites and medical malpractice and premises liability and car accidents and all of these things but what do you want to be known for maybe you want to be known for being a road safety advocate or a driving safety advocate so you have to make sure your messaging now aligns with not just your title but what you want to be known for and that's a little bit more specific than what area of law you practice so that that is what we're talking about with branding not necessarily the color of your website you know the hex codes but that you know that and the logo and things like that are obviously part of good branding but we're talking about good branding from the perspective of presenting yourself for pr that press page is interesting to me it yeah it's i had always thought of that as hey clients here's the press about me and it seems like it's actually hi press here is here's where you can get where i've worked and played well with others you know correct and so it doesn't i kind of want to emphasize that it doesn't come off as um it doesn't come off poorly to have a press page you know no not at all because i think a lot of lawyers keep that in mind they're thinking well if i have a press page then people are going to think that i think a lot of myself and hey you should think a lot of yourself correctly yes b it has a purpose to it so yeah beyond that when the press when somebody from press journalists somebody like that who's looking to connect with you um comes in they they want to see that you are are active on social media as well why why why do they care about that this is definitely another aspect of credibility so in the pr space they want to talk to the source pr as pr professionals who are really facilitators we're putting you in front of someone we're positioning you we're helping you with your messaging um but at the end of the day the journalist the writer they want to talk to you so when they look at their your social media they're using it as a way to get a sense of who you are whether it's your own personal page um or even the business page you're trying to get a sense of who you are outside of the website like what's your tone what's your voice what's your personality are you human like social media is all about humanizing your brand so they're trying to understand that because again you can be an expert and maybe not be a great collaborator with the journalists too there is that aspect of it and usually as pr pros we definitely and like do media training and make sure that we prepare you for those kind of conversations but they are looking at who you are as a person a lot of them actually use linkedin which is very much loved by lawyers to again verify that you're a real person that's the first one um and then just again to get a sense of who you are and most people use linkedin as a list of their achievements so it can be a good uh stop gap if you don't have a press page yeah okay um and and obviously i think this goes without saying but we're gonna say it you need to keep that social media profile up to date yeah instead of having an instagram page of your travels to you know mount rushmore from 2019 which i'm sure was wonderful for pictures um but you know you need to have something a little bit more recent on there i agree well tamara thank you for for talking about this i think this is a pretty good primer for um people that are just getting into we're just starting to think about shifting some of their their focus to public relations for their law firm i appreciate your time you're welcome happy to be here