Getting the influencers to write about you and your newly launched law blog is usually overlooked by lawyers and legal marketing professionals.
Ironically, as I explained to a couple law firms this last week, it needn’t be hard to get the influencers to do so.
Influencers are those people who influence your audience of clients, prospective clients, referral sources and association leaders when it comes to taking notice of you, your blog and your credibility.
Influencers include mainstream media, trade media, bloggers and social media users who cover and discuss matters in the niche upon which you are or will be blogging.
Influencers by definition are those with a decent sized audience, and whom are viewed by their audience as a credible source of news, information, insight and commentary.
In the early days of blogging, lawyers launching blogs often contacted other bloggers and the media announcing the launch of their blog. Occasionally it worked to get some publicity. Most of the time, it did not.
Today, I don’t see lawyers or law firms seeking publicity on the launch of their blogs, whether via a press release, email or otherwise. The initial launch of a blog is not really news and most influencers would laugh it off.
But one way to get influencers to take note of you, your blog, and your credibility is to ask for their feedback.
How so?
- Make a list of the influencers and their sources.
- Follow what they are writing/reporting/blogging.
- Share in your blog, via a block quote, what some of your influencers are “saying” and offer your take.
- Let them know you shared what they had to say with an email letting them know, a tweet mentioning them as a source or a posting on LinkedIn mentioning them as a source in your blog post shared on LinkedIn.
- Once your blog is up and going for about 90 days, drop some of your influencers an email asking for feedback on your blog. 90 days gives you some credibility and demonstrates some commitment to blogging.
How so?
- Tell them you’re a follower of their work.
- Let them know you are new to this world of citizen journalism, or blogging. That you are just figuring out the right ways and wrong ways of doing things. Figuring what “works” and what doesn’t.
- Knowing they’ve been in journalism and, maybe, blogging in particular, compliment them on their work in this regard and ask for feedback on your blogging.
There is no guaranty they will write about you and your blog, directly, but you have a decent chance of them beginning to cite you and what you are blogging.
The reason being is that you took a down to earth and sincere approach to engaging them. Being that other lawyers and law firms are marketing and pushing content at people, this approach is welcomed and well received by the influencers.