In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Michelle King discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"It's training your brain to think: How can I insert myself into this dialogue? In this topic? What's happening in the world? Why is this relevant to my clients? And what analysis and expertise can I add to the discussion?" — Michelle King
Connect with Michelle King:
Website: https://www.rep-ink.com/
Resources: https://resources.rep-ink.com/lawyers-published
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rep_ink_jax/
Blog: http://inksights.rep-ink.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reputation-ink/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellecking/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rep_ink & https://twitter.com/MichelleCKing
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reputationink
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Michelle King 0:00
So what I enjoy about working with lawyers as lawyers do, the kind of subject matter that they're dealing with has big impacts in our world. So we've mostly worked with corporate attorneys. So we're looking at what things are happening today that might have impacts for an attorney's clients, which are often there's an alignment between some media outlet and the clients that are reading those media outlets.
Narrator 0:29
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer, coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin!
Steve Fretzin 0:51
Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin. And hope you're having a great day so far. And again, you know, what we do here at Fretzin, Inc, is we help attorneys to achieve some pretty radical goals on their business development efforts. We do this in two ways. We have coaching and training programs that are pretty impactful, the goal for many to double or triple their book of business, and more importantly, to internalize how to do business development, so that it's sustainable through the rest of your career. That's really an interesting differentiator between what I'm doing and what some other crash courses might be. And then the other thing we do is peer advisory, or some might know it as mastermind groups where we take highly motivated intelligent attorneys, we put them in a group together in different practice areas, and let them help each other, let them assist with accountability and be a peer advisory for each other. And I facilitate I'm not there to coach and train, I'm there to facilitate interaction and to help people continue to evolve and how they grow their books of business and stay again, sustainable and impactful in the legal space in something that I don't talk too much about because it's not my area of expertise, being the business development guy is really about reputation and about media relations and thought leadership. And that's really an important thing for lawyers to focus on, especially if they want to become well known in their space. So I've got a top expert here and Michelle King. She's the principal and president of reputation Inc. Michelle, how's it going?
Michelle King 2:18
Going great.Thanks for having me.
Steve Fretzin 2:20
Yeah, it's good to see you and all of your many pets. We're just talking about pets before we got on and we both got dogs and cats and everything. So it's it's fun. What do you have? How many do animals?
Michelle King 2:30
I have two dogs and two cats. Yeah, I'm quite I'm quite an animal person. So but that's my limit. I don't go over four. So that's it.
Steve Fretzin 2:37
You've got you've got a number. And that's it. Okay,
Michelle King 2:40
I can't be the crazy cat lady.
Steve Fretzin 2:41
Okay. And they all get along.
Michelle King 2:43
Yeah, they all get along. Yeah. Wonderful. One big happy family.
Steve Fretzin 2:48
Good. Well, we don't want that to be your reputation. Oh, that's the thing. Right. But So tell me a little bit about your background and your business? I'd love to share that with my audience.
Michelle King 2:57
Yeah, yeah. So reputation, Inc, we've been in business for 10 years, actually, this year, which is really exciting. But we do. Mostly our bread and butter is public relations. So we are getting attorneys and law firms in the media, to, you know, boost their visibility, build the reputation, credibility, all those kinds of things. So we do a lot of kind of everyday pitching attorneys to comment on issues to write articles to, to have articles written about them. And we also do a lot of content development. So we're writing attorney BIOS, case studies, web pages, blog posts, any kind of content that can feel thought leadership campaign, so email marketing, social media, all of that. So I hire a lot of former journalists, because they have the skills that I needed, and then kind of teach them the nuts and bolts of working with law firms, because that's our primary industry.
Steve Fretzin 4:00
So yeah, and I love that you're doing more than just getting someone placed that you're actually taking it further with content and with social media and making it so definitely more evolved. program, it sounds that you're running then then just you know, straight up, you know, let me get you placed in Forbes or some paper.
Michelle King 4:15
Yeah it all intersects today. So a lot of this stuff, it all kind of overlaps. And there's an interplay to it. So if you're getting media coverage, you're going to want to promote that on social media. If you're writing articles, you're going to want to promote it to your email list. So it's important for us to be able to kind of advise on that. And sometimes there's topics and issues that might not be newsworthy at the moment for a media outlet, but it might be worthwhile putting it on the the law firms blog or the site, it might be a topic that's worthwhile, have a more in depth kind of content piece or a webinar that they want to produce. So yeah, we don't want to just stick purely to that. That Media Relations angle,
Steve Fretzin 4:59
okay. But to kind of put it together just so everyone understands. I mean, why is Media Relations important for an attorney that's looking to build that reputation looking to go beyond just regular posting on LinkedIn? You know, like I do, I post, you know, content and information. And that's all wonderful videos, things that educate my audience. What is Media Relations do that elevates the game, and it may be worthwhile for someone to take a deeper look into.
Michelle King 5:24
Yes, so Media Relations, I think about it in terms of the kind of fuel on the fire. So if you're doing, you've got all those many other aspects that you were posting to LinkedIn on a regular basis, maybe you have an email newsletter, you're doing those things, media relations, one, it broadens your audience. It expands that audience to to people that you've might not have ever been on their radar, but to it also gives you that credibility boost, which is incredibly important for lawyers in their marketing. So if someone's evaluating a lawyer, and they've got two choices, and you know, let's see this one attorney who puts out a lot of great content, but another attorney who's regularly quoted or featured, or their articles are written in key publications that that prospective client values, they're going to that's going to give them a sense of this guy, or this woman is the media has vetted them and said, Yes, they're a credible expert. So it really kind of does both things. You think nowadays, it used to be when I started out in this field, we had, you know, the separation of things like your digital content that you would do, and then you would do traditional media. Well, media coverage is a huge boon to SEO nowadays. So if you are if you're mentioned regularly in high quality media outlets, that's going to your other content that you're posting, it's going to boost that because Google says Oh, The New York Times forums, whatever mentions you You are now they build that into their kind of authority algorithm. And you come up a lot, a lot more often in search results.
Steve Fretzin 7:09
So it sounds like it's going to boost your authority as a subject matter expert on a number of levels from right, the actual article or interview or whatever that comes out in the publicity around that. And then on top of that, you're also getting links, and you're getting boost through search engine optimization on your website, or just on Google in general, to get more to the top of the search results if somebody is wanting to search for a lawyer in your space, or your name, things like that.
Michelle King 7:34
Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I have a lot of clients that say, Oh, you know, if I publish this one article, is that going to lead to business? typically not. But honestly, I hear that a lot. I hear the, you know, I published this article and such and such client called me up and said, you know, actually, we've got a need in the space. And we've been searching, and you really kind of outlined that issue very clearly. And it sounds like you know, your stuff, let's talk. So that kind of thing does happen. I you know, as you know, all sorts of marketing and business development activities are consistency is the key. So you got to keep doing. One offs are not really ever going to do much. But it does, it can and will lead to this,
Steve Fretzin 8:21
right. And I think people that are listening might be wondering, you know, like, Oh, this all sounds great. But am I interesting enough? Or is there something interesting about what I'm doing that would be media worthy? And so how do attorneys Understand? Or how do you help them figure out what's interesting so that there's something that they can talk about, or that they can get publicity around with your help?
Michelle King 8:43
Yeah, so what I enjoy about working with lawyers, his lawyers do, the kind of subject matter that they're dealing with has big impacts in our world. So we've mostly worked with corporate attorneys. So we're looking at what things are happening today that might have impacts for an attorney's clients, which are often there's an alignment between some media outlet and the clients that are reading those media outlets. So things that become newsworthy, or things that are one just timely, it's got a it's got to be happening now. That's, you know, inherent in the word news is happening now. So that's why as a PR person, I'm often just, you know, pushing clients to respond quickly, because it's fast. We have to talk about the issues as they're happening. But other things are does it impact a lot of people or does it if it only impacts a small group of people? Is that impact? Huge, I mean, think in terms of the COVID crisis that we had last year. I mean, that was the media consumed with that topic. And there were tons of relevance issues that came from that. So. So timeliness impact to an audience trends trends are huge. If we can look and identify a trend. I'll give you an example with COVID. We've worked with a Divorce Law Firm. And early on with COVID. The numbers were coming out that divorce cases were spiking from China. So we went and talked to this law firm and said, Are your are your inquiries spiking? And they said, Actually, yes. So, you know, we went out to the media and say, Hey, COVID leaving, leading to this rise and divorce filings, you know. So it's sort of that being able to kind of identify something, the media loves a trend. But the other thing that lawyers can do very well and effectively in order to get media coverage is help explain, legal from a legal perspective, what's happening. So I'll give another example, when the Muller investigation was happening. We had an attorney who had served as a special counsel on other investigations, he served on whitewater, he'd been the special counsel for an Alabama governor who was being impeached. And we pitched him aggressively throughout the Moller investigation to kind of help guide the media in terms of, you know, why did Muller do this today? What does it mean? what's likely to happen next. So the media, the media are not, they don't have a lot of grief. So they need someone to help kind of give them that guidance as to what's happening in the story. And if the lawyer can be helpful and kind of give that analysis and guidance, not just reiterate, this is what Muller did today. But, you know, here's my guess as to what his aim is, or you know, what's about to happen next, why, why is this important and relevant, that that's a critical role for attorneys to play?
Steve Fretzin 11:34
Yeah, definitely. And again, if there's opportunities to get those interviews and those types of connections to share your expertise, it's nothing but gold. How do attorneys get some of this done on their own? Are they able to get publicity on their own? And if so, what are some things they can do to get publicity on their own and make things happen, just through their own sheer through their own efforts?
Michelle King 11:57
Sure. And we actually have a guide on our website, if you go to our website, rep dash Inc, info the cage comm if you go to the legal page, there's a download for it's called the attorneys guide to getting published in the media. So we kind of walk attorney step by step, if you want to do this on your own, this is how to do it, you know, the first step would be to really, really actually focus on the media that you want to be covered in. So if you are an attorney that gets a lot of referrals from other attorneys, you need to be consuming the legal trade media get a sense of what kind of issues that's the best way to kind of understand what a media outlet covers, if you want to be covered on a cable business show, watch it kind of analyze, what are they what what kind of experts do they tend to have on what kind of topics do they tend to cover, and you can kind of get a good sense of, Okay, this is what they're looking for. And then you contact the relevant person, most media outlet websites have a contact page where you can figure out who the right person is and who the right contact is. And it tends to be, you can find the reporter who covers that feeds on bigger print outlets. It's an editor who might cover a specific area who's an assignment editor who signs out reporters and topics. And then of course, in broadcast that's a producer, but you kind of have to do a little sleuthing without a PR firm doing it for you. And but you can generally or you can just see who has that byline on the story. So if you're you've been following a column for a while or a certain beat, you start to notice, okay, this is the the journalists tend to write about the topics that that I would love to be covered on. One step is to just introduce yourself. So if you identify that you want to start getting media coverage, we call this our fancy term, it's called sourcefire. Like so journalists keep in the old days, a Rolodex of sources that they would turn to and they, they've learned, okay, this is my source for this kind of topic. So you're just kind of reaching out and saying, I'd love to contribute in some way. Here's my background, here's what I do on a day to day basis, here's what i think i can contribute. That's not necessarily going to lead to a an interview or story right then and there. But it's going to kind of put you on that radar. And it might, we've had cases where so will often start with a client will make that introduction. And the journalist goes actually I'm you know, I'm writing a story on such and such. But then once you've made that introduction, it is then kind of regularly brainstorming topics. So the way we work with clients is we have regular calls where we start we just sort of do this brainstorm of you know, what, what are the questions your clients are just getting right now? What do you think's coming around the corner with your you know, your clients that they need to be aware of? Is anything changed? You know, is anything new happening, any new law in regulation to any case just happened that might impact your clients? And then it's really kind of sending an email to that targeted journalist to say, I think this is an interesting topic that your readers are using You are going to be interested in, I'm available, here's why, you know, here's why. You know, this is a topic that your your audience is going to be might be interested in. And I'm, I'm available to do an interview, I'm available to write an article. So it's, it's that I often describe our job as kind of being a matchmaker. So but certainly, just like with dating, you don't have to have that Matchmaker, you can do a lot of that legwork on your own. I think you also sort of have to start training, I personally can't watch the news without thinking about angles for clients. So it's kind of training your brain to think how can I insert myself into this dialogue and this topic? So often it is what's happening in the world? Why is this relevant to my clients? And what analysis and expertise Can I add to the discussion?
Steve Fretzin 15:53
For example, if an attorney recognizes that in the news and in the media and all that estate planning is shifting, because of new laws, and new things that are coming up the pike and all that, and so they might start writing about it, or they might start speaking about it, and then they've got maybe the forefront of that particular subject, and then they could either use you or they could approach the media, you know, with an idea with a concept. Okay.
Michelle King 16:20
Yeah, exactly. And it's funny estate planning, you know, we have a new vitamin, the new administration, under Biden, a lot of discussion right now about possible changes coming down the pike in terms of estate planning that we've got Pinterest going out right now about that. So a change in administration is huge fodder for potential media articles, so exactly reaching out, but it's, it's taking what's happening in their area, their their practice on a day to day basis, and presenting it to the media. And if they can present a trend to journalists before a journalist is aware of it. That's the sweet spot of great Media Relations. So
Steve Fretzin 17:01
That might be I'm sorry, the sweet spot?
Michelle King 17:04
Well, people who can spot trends, and one, you know, we all follow certain thought leaders, certain people who tend to be able to think that way to be able to kind of assess the landscape of their in their particular business area, and really say, I think this is what's You know, this, this is happening, and this is going to happen a lot more going forward. The media loves to work with people like that, because that helps them do their job better and help their audience. Be aware of those kinds of trends.
Steve Fretzin 17:36
Okay, and here's sort of an I don't know, this is maybe off the wall a little bit. But can media also be used if somebody let's say, is a lawyer, but they have something unique about him or her? Like they have been to more cubs games than anyone else in the world? Or they have just something unique about them? Is that worthwhile to get mode media exposure for them? Or is that not really impairing the way that it would be? Yeah. So it depends.
Michelle King 18:03
Yeah, it depends. So there's a lot of, especially in the legal trades, but maybe even in business trades where they have regular features of people. So human interest stories, so and they're just they're looking to kind of fill that pipeline of stories about interesting attorneys, interesting people. So in general, those are a little bit harder to place than sort of your more issues base, because everybody wants a glowing article. That's all about them. So the competition for that is higher. But yeah, certainly, if you've got some unique interest, it's worth a pitch. And ideally, if you can find a regular column that features that kind of thing, even better. The other thing, you know, the legal industry is overrun with awards and all of that kind of mess. But there are very credible ones, like let's say the national law Journal's trailblazers series. So they are they regularly put out a call, hey, we're looking for trailblazers and employment law. We're looking for trailblazers in, you know, litigation. So that's an opportunity to get this glowing profile article just about you, the attorney because that media outlet wants those stories. So we do a lot of responding to those drawing up pitches and stories about attorneys that way.
Steve Fretzin 19:28
Okay. Yeah, really interesting. from a standpoint of one thing that just popped in my head, I used to do press releases, and I stopped doing them because I was like, I don't even know that this is doing anything. Our press releases still a thing. People putting up a release on Yeah, and sometimes.
Michelle King 19:42
That means the press release is just a format. It's It's It's information written in a news format. So that's really all it is. And we did we do a lot of press releases on case wins. That's kind of a very standard example of when we do press releases, cases. If a new attorney is fired if one practice group is brought, a new practice group is brought on any of those kinds of changes. a press release is just a format that journalists are used to. And every time we talk to journalists, so we do a lot of I tried to in my own podcast and on our blog, we try to feature key journalists and kind of talk about what they are looking for and what they want. We asked them, if they pay attention to press releases, and 100%, they all do it. Again, it's just kind of the format of getting news in our hand is written in a way that they're used to. I will say, though, let's say you're you've just had this big case when, and you want to get it out to the media, sometimes, because we work with a lot of litigation firms, and there's multiple law firms involved, there's client involved. And so everybody wants their hands in that press release, it ends up taken three days, you know, to get that press release iron out, well, the case was decided, you know, three days ago, it's old news by them. So in order to align with the media's timeframe, often it's best just to get an email out saying this case was just decided, here's the core documents that are already publicly available. I attorney, you know, argued this case, and I'm available to talk about it. So then later, you can work if your client wants a nice massage, float, and you know, a good formal announcement on your website, do that. But don't go through all those hoops because the media are going to cover it. And often what we're trying to do is, the worst case for us is if the media covers the story, it doesn't mention our firm or doesn't float our attorney that's worth fighting to get they're going to cover if it's if it's a newsworthy enough case, they're going to cover it. So that's why sending an email out to the people that you think you're going to cover that case quickly and saying, Hey, I'm available to talk to you, it's more important than putting together that formal press release.
Steve Fretzin 21:57
Really terrific. Well, I think this has been helpful on a number of levels from lawyers understanding what they can do on their own and whether it's research or reaching out to the media directly and in the approach that they should take or some of the the higher level or higher function things that you're doing. All super helpful. And again, you know, this is marketing, media, business development, social media, it's all like part of a pie. And they're all these slices and you've got to kind of pick the maybe the two or three I can focus on and sometimes it's good to outsource you know if you don't have the time or the knowledge to do something well yourself you know, find someone that's what they do. Yeah, get that knocked out. And it can be a game changer. So people want to reach out to you and use you or talk to you about their about your services. What's the best way for them to get in touch?
Michelle King 22:44
Yeah, I thought our website it's rep REP-INK, that's a reputationInk.com, and we've got a lot of valuable resources on there. And like I said, that guide to for attorneys who want to get published in the media and do it on their own is there but and then links to all our social media and our email newsletter sign up for there as well.
Steve Fretzin 23:04
Okay, and we'll have all that in the show notes as well so people can reach out or get that do it yourself, you know, white paper, whatnot. But thanks again, Michelle, this has really been great. You've been you're clearly an expert in this area and working with lawyers and law firms. So I appreciate your coming on the show.
Michelle King 23:19
Thanks for having me.
Steve Fretzin 23:20
Yeah, and thank you everybody for taking some time to listen hopefully you got a couple of good notes scratched out and that you're one step closer to being that lawyer someone who is confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Take care everybody be safe be well.
Narrator 23:39
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website Fretzin.com for additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.