Bob Ambrogi made clear in his talk last week that the future of legal journalism is founded on law blogs. Law blogs, rather than treaditional legal journalism and reporting, are now the primary source for legal news, information and commentary.
Law blogs whose content is now being aggregated and curated by LexBlog into a meaningful network of content and contributors segregated by channel, industries and topics. And which content is distributed via the Web, email and social media.
Rather lawyers, law firms and some legal tech companies hiring public relations and marketing agencies to get them in what they perceive as the news, these organizations are creating the news with their niche blog publications.
No gate keepers. No relying on reporters whose publications are often behind behind pay walls.
Sadly, the vast majority of legal technology companies have chosen not to participate this legal journalism of today.
If there any one group spending a lot of money PR and marketing an attempt to get coverage, while at the same time producing so little of their own journalism,. it’s legal tech companies. The same legal tech companies heavily represented at Ambrogi’s talk on the future of journalism – founded on the contributions of companies just like them.
Legal tech companies regularly tell me “We’re going to hire someone to handle our blogging and social media, then we’ll be covered. As if a 25 year old employee with no domain expertise on your technology and its role in the industry is going to help.
A credible alternative would be to look at doing six to twelves pieces a year and have those pieces flow into LexBlog and across social media.
You’ll pick up each a company profile page, a personal profile page and a page for your independent publication – a publication indexed on your domain, not LexBlog’s domain.
Need a platform and an independent publication site, LexBlog can do it for you. But we’ll do all of the above, including circulating your commentary, for free.
If this is too hard, then you should revisit why you have a company to start with – or at a minimum question whether you understand news and marketing today.
- Six to twelve posts a year. That’s six to twenty hours a year.
- Posts of 400 to 750 words, no one is looking for 1,000 words, unless it’s necessary to get your point across. This is true journalism, not some lengthy word count that marketers are encouraging companies to do for SEO.
- Share what you’ve been reading and what it means; answer common questions; share what transpired at a recent conference. We’re not talking seminal brilliance here, it’s what you already know and are observing.
We’d all be the richer having legal tech entrepreneurs as legal journalists. Lawyers, law firms, other tech companies, conference/show coordinators and investors. All better informed, advancements through ensuing discussion and educated buyers.
Straight talk from the people in the know with no intermediaries, whethe those intermediaries are marketing or PR professionals packaging the message for legal tech companies or third party publishers.
Legal tech companies would be light years ahead. Trust, relationships, and spending much, much less and getting much more when it comes to brand awareness and business.
Legal tech company could have their own publication for $600 to $1000 a year (LexBlog prices) and have their insight and commentary further reported and syndicated by a publication headed by the dean of journalism and legal tech reporting, Bob Ambrogi.
There’s an awful lot of PR and marketing professionals chasing Ambrogi – and guys like me – to get coverage on behalf of the legal tech companies they represent. Some, unfortunately, with shallow messages that do more to hurt ther client than help them.
Seems so simple, but legal tech companies, their founders and their marketing/Pr agencies are always reluctant to enter the world of citizen journalism.
What a missed opportunity.