The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/51267
BEST PRACTICES The Less Obvious Stuff • Turn the Article into a Webinar or Podcast: Inexpensive technology tools now enable us to quite easily extend a static article into a multimedia bundle of content. Your article on a cloud-based DMS can be transformed into a 45-minute podcast on the same topic with the inclusion of experts that can share more information than the original article. • Contact the Editor or Publisher About Contributing on a Regular Basis: If you enjoyed writing your article and like what you see on the exposure and feedback front, it might behoove you to seek a permanent contributor role with the publication. Many legal publishers are understaffed and low on resources, and oftentimes they are happy to add a regular columnist to help fill their pages. • Offer Your Services to Others: Look for other media outlets (magazines, blogs, websites, e-zines and newsletters) that might be interested in what you have to say. Send them the article as an "FYI" and offer yourself up as a subject-matter expert. They'll know who to call the next time they need an expert who deals with, for example, cloud-based security risks. • Encourage Feedback by Rewarding It: Editors love to know what their readers think about certain articles and topics, but usually only those with complaints take the time to voice their opinions. Turn this paradigm on its head, and foster collaboration among your readers by rewarding them for being vocal. When promoting your content via social media tools, incent your community to comment on your blog post by offering up affordable freebies such as gift cards, t-shirts or other promotional items. • Manage Your Online Identity: As you begin to amass content and increase your online exposure, take some time to manage your online presence. Companies such as Vizibility, for example, will help individuals or companies organize and share their online identities, including personalized Google search results and handpicked professional profiles. This provides a "one-stop, one- search" look at all your content and contributions. • Leverage QR Codes: A Quick Response (QR) code typically points to an online resource, such as an individual's profile or related articles, quickly accessed via smartphones and mobile devices. A recent Vizibility survey, "Infographic: QR Code Usage in Legal Marketing," found that 86 percent of law firms plan to use QR codes to market their individual attorneys, with more than half pointing individual QR codes to biographical information and contact details. Why not use QR codes for your articles as well? • Integrate It All: While achieving an integrated marketing approach to everything you publish will most likely require some heavy lifting from your marketing group, the value of having everything you say and do in one place, with the same message, accessible to a diverse target audience is incredible. Case in point: Fulbright & Jaworski recently published its latest "Litigation Trends Survey Report" and made it accessible via a dedicated Web page with options to attend a results-focused webinar, join a LinkedIn and Facebook discussion or follow key stats via their Twitter feed. The website also included links to official press announcements, as well as articles and blog posts dedicated to the topic. SPREAD THE WORD Whether you decide to pull out all the stops and leverage the tried and the new when promoting yourself and your subject-matter expertise or you stick to simply adding a link to the article on your firm's website, it's important to expose what you have worked so hard to create. But remember, your competition for clients, jobs and authoring/speaking opportunities is spanning the globe, and it might just come down to who has the most positive exposure. ILTA 12 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer Jobst Elster is the Head of Content at InsideLegal.com, an online community and advisory resource for legal technology vendors, law firms, legal technologists and thought leaders. He has spent the past 13 years in the legal industry, working with vendors, consultants, the media and law firms on various marketing consulting, public relations and marketsurvey initiatives. Jobst contributes to publications, including and , and has presented at ILTA's annual conference on increasing media exposure for IT leadership. He can be reached at elster@insidelegal.com. BtoB Magazine Attor ney at W to Peer , Legal Management, ABA GPSolo ork, Peer