OUR DISCUSSIONS

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OUR ARTICLE

This article, co-authored by Mary Margaret Gorman, Senior PR and Media Manager of Jones Walker LLP,  first appeared in Marketing the Law Firm’s April 2018 issue.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all witnessed our lawyers waste valuable time and resources nuancing an article, a blog, a newsletter, or a presentation only to have it distributed on a wing and a prayer, hoping people will see it…will intrinsically know the effort that went into it…will be instantly inspired to take action through the thought leadership contained within.

That euphoria of releasing the finished product is quickly tampered by a shockingly familiar bout of sadness when posts don’t get a lot of likes, snaps don’t get a lot of love, tweets don’t get a lot of retweets, the phone doesn’t ring off the hook, and inboxes stay disappointingly manageable.

Creating content creates opportunities to connect. It offers a reason for contact other than asking for work.

But there is a solution that’s easy and worthwhile: Develop content with a purpose in mind (i.e., know what you are going to do with it) versus simply creating content for its own sake. Retweets and shares are fine, but they shouldn’t be the end goals of a lawyer’s effort. Instead, creating content should be about enabling the lawyer to feel comfortable and easily engage with clients.

In other words, content will never lose its usefulness as a demonstration of expertise and driver of awareness, so firms should be more aggressive and use content to drive actual business development behaviors centered around client (and prospect) engagement, interaction, and collaboration.

To illustrate this point, consider this article an example: John, as a member of the Editorial Board of Marketing the Law Firm (MTLF), is invited to write three articles a year for the publication. His next article was due in March for the April issue (before the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Annual Conference in New Orleans). Rather than publish alone, John used the opportunity to create some goodwill and invite his client, Mary Margaret, to join him as a co-author, and she unsurprisingly jumped at the chance.

We hopped on the phone mid-February and talked through the idea and outline for this article. We agreed the purpose of our effort would be to: a) have an excuse to collaborate with each other and boost our personal professional relationship; and b) create something of value to share with and engage people important to us in the market (collectively together, and individually). We focused a lot on the collaboration itself and agreed to a simple production plan that included, as one of our goals, to be in contact on specific dates to finalize the article. (Note: Under different circumstances, as the client in this example, Mary Margaret would likely not know how many interactions John, as the consultant seeking more exposure, might hope to have – the client instead just feels special for having been asked and included.) Finally, we discussed this article’s “After Placement Plan” (what John calls his “APP”), which very specifically lists all of the ways we agreed to distribute and promote our published article beyond the outlet’s (i.e., MTLF’s) own reach.*

It’s Good to Be the King

Bill Gates famously said, “Content is King” and explained how content is an asset both in its ability to showcase expertise and be shared immediately and exponentially, especially in today’s always-on news cycle. But for content to be worthy of sharing, it has to have purpose. To gain purpose, content needs perspective; and to gain perspective, content creators need to thoughtfully consider their ultimate objective and ask questions like:

• Who are we trying to reach?
• How are we going to reach them?
• What do we want from them?
• How will we use this content to build our credibility?
• What other types of content and marketing can we create around our current effort?
• Which clients, prospects, and other VIPs will we share the content with after it appears?
• How can this content be used to secure invitations to produce more?

Asking questions like these upfront will help define your content’s purpose, save resources, and increase production efficiency. Strategically, answers to these questions will help you map the content into the sales funnel as an outreach, engagement, and collaboration tool.

Let’s Share the Spotlight

Creating content creates opportunities to connect. It offers a reason for contact other than asking for work. Asking a client or prospect to collaborate with you (on a blog post, article, or speaking event) is a gift of goodwill that keeps on giving long after the ask. Even if the person you asked said ‘no’ – the knowledge that you thought of them remains. The act of asking…of reaching out with them in mind…is an ego boost. And just think, if you have to ask 20 people before you get a ‘yes,’ that’s 20 people you likely hadn’t connected with in a while and were wondering how to do so without feeling ‘sales-y.’ Now, having been asked, they’re feeling flattered and inclined to respond more quickly when you reach out the next time. Asking a colleague to collaborate moves a cold business relationship to a warmer one.

Even better, an invitation to collaborate can quickly become a new matter. Consider the following comment by Nadia de la Houssaye, a partner with Jones Walker who we’ve been (successfully) working with to become a thought leader and “own“ the legal space around telemedicine:

“The telemedicine industry craves knowledge and expertise. For me, collaborating with others and developing content to feed that insatiable curiosity has fundamentally changed how I interact with my colleagues, clients, and potential clients. Content is a tool to not only credential my knowledge, but also to engage with key people in my industry. It’s much easier for me to start a conversation about new business opportunities when I’m calling to invite a client to collaborate on a speaking opportunity or to co-author a featured trade article.”

Clearly, like it has worked for Nadia, content is a validation and credentialing tool. When lawyers begin to view a piece of content and the opportunity to create it as an excuse to engage, prospects, clients, and other valuable professional opportunities will flow.

To prove this isn’t all just theory, as the title indicates, we created this article to share our goals and the results of our APP for it openly. So online here, we have posted audio clips from our phone calls together, as well as this article’s APP. We’ll also have reprints of it available at the LMA Annual Conference in New Orleans (Mary Margaret’s home town) whose attendees we hope will take it back to their firms to press our point to their lawyers. Lastly, to sustain a dialog about content as a client collaboration and engagement tool, we’ll use Hellerman Communications blog to track our results.

John Hellerman is the President of Hellerman Communications, an award-winning corporate communications agency positioning professionals to win business and navigate crises. John is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, was recently recognized in The National Law Journal’s inaugural list of “50 Business of Law Trailblazers & Pioneers” and was named Agency Executive of the Year by PR News. Follow him @jhellerman.

Mary Margaret Gorman leads the public relations efforts for Jones Walker, a 385-lawyer national firm based in New Orleans. For the past 14 years, she has worked exclusively inside of law firms managing public relations on the legal marketing team. Mary Margaret leads thought leadership campaigns for practice groups, manages crisis communications, and helps to connect lawyers with their ideal target audiences. Mary Margaret earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations from the University of Alabama.

OUR APP

A customized after-placement plan (or APP) to promote the content we’ve created.

OUR RESULTS

Stay tuned!

OTHER RESOURCES

• Content Creation Vs. Content Sharing by HuffPost’s Josh Gershonowicz (March 26, 2015)
• The Difference Between Content Sharing and Content Creation by Adweek’s Kimberlee Morrison (April 14, 2015)
• Content is king: How CMOs can harness the power of content marketing by Deloitte (May 10, 2016)
• Shared Content Optimization: What It Is & Why You Need to Care About It by HubSpot’s Oren Barzilai (October 11, 2016)
• Are You Promoting Your Content? Here’s Why (And How) To Do It by Forbes’ Jayson DeMers (February 1, 2018)