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Using Press Releases to Market Your Practice: Special Excerpt from Women Rainmakers' Best Marketing Tips, Third Edition

By Theda C. Snyder

Every lawyer needs to market herself-so here, to help you in that mission, is a preview of the more than 150 tips contained in the new edition of a must-have marketing book.

Introduction by Jamie J. Spannhake, ABA Women Rainmakers Chair:

As part of the ABA Women Rainmakers 20th Anniversary celebration, an updated third edition of Women Rainmakers’ Best Marketing Tips, by Theda C. Snyder, is being released. The first edition of this book was created in 1994. It began largely as a contribution of ideas from members of ABA Women Rainmakers, including Ms. Snyder, to create a compilation of the very best ideas for rainmaking success. The second edition of the book was released in 2003 and included new material regarding the impact of electronic communications on marketing as well as the importance of branding.

The updated third edition retains many of the contributions from the earlier editions, with updated information, plus it contains new material about effectively using social media and Web sites, to provide over 150 tips lawyers can use to sell themselves and their skills. Ten chapters detail various marketing tactics, covering your marketing plan and image; networking and social media; Web sites; public relations; writing and speaking; entertainment and gifts; making the pitch; and communications via e-mail, telephone and snail-mail.

The following excerpt is from a section titled “Using Press Releases to Market Your Practice.”

Press releases are used to submit informational and promotional material to print and electronic media for distribution. All press releases are electronic today. Search engine optimization (SEO) can raise the profile of your release. SEO-friendly releases may include video, pictures, and links to Web sites including your firm Web site or social media page. In addition, press releases can include invisible metatags.

When you’re talking about press releases, you’re really talking about two things: the release itself and distribution to your media outlet list—i.e., who is going to get the press release?

Distribution services can send your piece to many outlets at once. In choosing a service, investigate to whom they distribute. Ideally, you want old media outlets as well as Internet postings. Business lawyers will want to include industry publications, both paper and electronic. All lawyers will want to make sure to hit niche publications and sites likely to reach the target audience. An electronic service can also work with you to include metatags to optimize your search engine visibility.

You can also send releases by e-mail to your personal media outlet list. You can do this as your exclusive distribution system or complement an electronic distribution by sending to personalized, smaller outlets. Wide distribution will certainly include the major dailies in your community and major business or industry publications. A supplementary distribution might go to neighborhood papers, local legal publications, and publications of organizations to which you belong. Personalize the piece for the recipient if at all possible. Identify the section where this information should go. If it is going to your alumni news, include the year you graduated and the school or the college. If it’s going to your neighborhood paper, make sure you indicate that you’re a resident of that neighborhood. In a big city, there are lots of neighborhood niche outlets.

Many Web sites provide free information on creating press releases, useful even if you are not doing them yourself. Promoting yourself along with your firm is easier if you build a working relationship with your law firm’s marketer. Help her, and she is likely to make herself available to help you.

A broad distribution news release should be used for information that is truly newsworthy. That could include the decision on a big case or a major appointment or award. More prosaic news may be most economically communicated via Twitter or LinkedIn.

The Writing

Everything else is useless if the release is not well written. It has to look like news of interest to the readers of that medium. Avoid lawyerese! You need keywords—those popular words and phrases people are searching for on the Internet. Use the same words too repeatedly, though, and your release will get electronically passed over as search-engine spam.

Here’s a guide for keyword density:

• Headline: main keyword should not appear in more than15% to 20% of all words in the headline

• Summary: main keyword should not appear in more than 2% to 10% of all words in the summary

• Body: main keyword should not appear in more than 3% to 5% of all words in the body

Don’t know the keywords related to your area? Sites such as www.wordstream.com can help.

Write in active, not passive, voice. In the first paragraph, identify who, what, when, where, and why. That may be the only paragraph that is going to be picked up by third-party sites and publishers. Include a quote for interest, and lead with the point you want to emphasize. Include links if appropriate.

A release can be written with several different leads, depending on the facet you want emphasized. For example, for a seminar, the lead could be the sponsoring organization, the seminar topic, or a featured speaker. Don’t be afraid to mention competitors, if appropriate. If the list of speakers at a seminar you want to promote includes lawyers from other major firms, go ahead and use the firm name. Web surfers searching for that firm’s name will find your release that promotes you.

Quote. Use direct quotes whenever possible. A good quote can make a routine story unique.

Be accurate. Be sure all your facts are absolutely true. Excessive use of adjectives, puffery, or exaggeration can lead to irreparable damage.

Grammar. Check your release for correct punctuation and spelling. Spell check is not sufficient.

Contact. Show the contact name, e-mail, and direct-dial phone number.

Format. Bold, italics, bullets, and subheads can make the page easier to read and enhance SEO.

Get their attention with a headline. Getting your release noticed among the river of communications created on any day requires a clean and catchy headline.

Include a summary. Describe the release in a sentence. Avoid filler words. Be terse.

Add photos and graphics. Action photos are ideal, but minimally include your picture, and describe the picture. Include your firm logo if you have one. Every rainmaker should have a “publicity still”—a head shot taken by a professional photographer for your Web site and other PR. A plain background is fine, although some lawyers like to be photographed in front of their law library. Some photographers who specialize in professional portraits, in fact, have a “library” backdrop. Photos tend to come in categories: the lineup, the handoff, the handshake, the ribbon cut, etc. Editors really prefer interesting photos if at all possible. Important for women rainmakers is controlling the photo—you want to avoid the cleavage or gam shot. Even if the medium has its own photographer, try to persuade your contact to use the photo you know shows you to best advantage.

End. Mark the end with ### or -30- (the traditional way to signify the end of a reporter’s copy.)

Sending it off. If e-mailing to individual addresses, send the press releases in MS Word. You can send your document as an attachment to your message, which may be the best way to save formatting. On the other hand, pasting the release into the body of your message may be more likely to get it read. Do not send uneditable PDFs. If you make your release uneditable, it cannot be incorporated into the target medium. Editors want to edit, and your release must be conformed to the medium’s format.

A press release posted on a social media site needs extra oomph to get noticed. Font size, color, and effects inappropriate for submission to print media are de rigueur for catching the eye of the casual reader scanning the posts.

Consider hiring a public relations consultant to help you put together press releases consistent with your marketing plan. Ask about other similar work the PR professional has done. Review samples of other product to see if it suits your taste. Make sure that you’re on the same wavelength. Using a PR professional doesn’t eliminate your time commitment to getting the job done.

Budget alternatives to hiring a seasoned PR professional include bringing a public relations intern on board for free or inexpensive assistance. Contact the communications or journalism department of your local college or university. Or get together with another business owner and jointly hire a new grad, each of you taking responsibility for half the employee’s time and compensation.

Because publicity is packaged as news, the information carries with it the implied endorsement of the medium. Some publications, such as neighborhood papers and your alumni news, may reprint just about any press release. Others may be quite difficult to crack. Keep trying. By the time an editor has seen your name on the fourth or fifth release, he or she may be convinced you’re someone special, someone readers should know about.

Excerpted from Women Rainmakers Best Marketing Tips, Third Edition.

About the Author

Theda Snyder is an attorney and Certified Structured Settlement Consultant for Ringler Associates in Beverly Hills, California. She can be reached at (888) 734-3910. She is the author of the Women Rainmakers Best Marketing Tips books and one of the founding co-chairs of ABA Women Rainmakers.

Women Rainmakers’ Best Marketing Tips, Third Edition, can be pre-ordered from the ABA Web Store