Web 2.0 and PR 2.0—The Way Jaffe Looks At The Present
A White Paper
Go ahead—right now, Google yourself, your firm or your practice area and see what shows up. Only the very first page of results represents your reputation in the robust world of Internet enterprise. If you’re not there, you’re nowhere! The results of a lawyer’s or a law firm’s search can be positive, negative, or completely nonexistent. When the same search is done by a client, potential client, list researcher, recruit or a reporter—and you know that it will be—the results will determine whether or not you get the call.Web 2.0 and PR 2.0—The Way Jaffe Looks At The Present Presented By Jaffe Associates, Inc. July 16, 2008 Content Is Key – Some Things Never Change Good content—textual as well as oral—has always been of utmost importance in the field of public relations for lawyers and law firms. It is what sets you apart from your competitors as a thought leader in your selected area of practice. Content provides tangible proof of three important claims: that you know your area of the law, that you know how to apply the law in order to solve problems for your clients, and that you have mastered the legal and business issues of your clients’ industries. The value of content has not changed. What has changed dramatically, especially in the past five years, is the number of ways lawyers and law firms can effectively distribute their content—and the number of ways Internet users can find this content.
Every successful lawyer knows the value of networking—the creation of trust-based relationships that are the foundation of successful business development.
Web 1.0 – You May Already Know This, But Here’s A Quick Refresher Within the history of the Internet, Web 1.0 refers to the first generation of initiatives that took place between approximately 1994 and 2004. Lawyers and law firms launched Web sites on which they posted reputation-enhancing content about the firm, its lawyers, and their work. To get to these sites, a user had to know the URL. As a result, a lot of PR during the early part of Web 1.0 involved letting people know your URL—“where to find you” online. At the same time, lawyers and law firms, often reluctantly, started to use email to correspond with clients and to send electronic versions of their print content—including press releases, brochures, newsletters and alerts—to specific lists of people. Just 10 years ago, search engines appeared—sparking a revolution in the way people use the Internet. Google was founded in 1998, went public in 2004, and was added to mainstream dictionaries as a verb in 2006. A Web user in search of information—a phone number, a map, a definition, a product or a service—can now simply enter a name or keywords into a search engine and be taken to a list of reliable results. Within this environment, any referral source, potential client or media reporter will enter your name into a search engine before deciding whether or not to make a referral or give you a call. How do search engines find you? Via complex algorithms called “spiders” that ceaselessly sift through and rank every bit of content posted to public sites on the Internet. Just like spiders in the real world, Internet spiders are attracted by anything new that falls into their “Inter-net.” Lawyers and law firms that want to maximize their Internet profile must feed the spiders with a steady diet of fresh content posted to the Internet. Spiders also look for “keywords.” Lawyers and law firms should determine the best keywords— the actual words that people would use to search for them or their services— and include these in both the content itself and the coding behind the content. There is a science and an art to doing this well; copywriting has become contentwriting. Even articles originally written for print should anticipate an eventual home on the Internet. Web 2.0 – This Is The Stuff You May Not Know Yet Web 2.0 evolved from the widespread use and acceptance of Web 1.0. While still in its infancy, this next Web generation is growing with hyper-speed leaps and bounds. Web 2.0 is interactive, open to user-generated content and very inexpensive when compared with traditional media. Its tools and technologies are often referred to under the heading of “social media.” Simply put, a Web 2.0 site is launched and users are asked to contribute to (and often to rank) the site’s content. Web 2.0 is all about sharing content—and lawyers and law firms generate a lot of useful content in the course of doing business. It is an ideal medium. Some popular examples:
An RSS feed “syndicates” each item of lawyer or law firm content widely and attractively over the Internet—just like the New York Times traditionally syndicated its stories to other newspapers (it also now uses RSS feeds to syndicate its Web site content). This content can be text, audio or visual, or a combination. Web sites launching in the Web 2.0 era are usually built on RSS-enhanced blog software and include a variety of text, audio and visual Web 2.0 tools. Blogs are perhaps the best-known of the Web 2.0 tools (see below). Blogs encourage the consistent posting by their hosts of new content. The “categories” feature emphasizes keywords. Each post automatically generates an RSS feed. As a result, search engines tend to rank blog content higher than most Web site content. Readers can join the conversation by commenting on and ranking the usefulness of what has been posted. Many major news stories are now routinely being “broken” by bloggers and other citizen journalists. Recently, a military law blogger discovered and posted about an error in the U.S. Supreme Court decision dealing with the constitutionality of the death penalty for those who rape children. The next morning, the blogger’s story was the basis of an article that appeared on the front page above the fold of the New York Times. Lawyers or law firms in search of reputation-enhancing publicity must continue to target reporters and their media—but also all of the bloggers who cover their target market. In addition, a robust online presence means that a reporter or a blogger doing research via a search engine will find you to talk to—instead of your competitor. WIIFY - What’s In It For You? What does Web 2.0 mean for the PR and marketing functions for lawyers and law firms and those who work in the legal environment? PR and marketing continue to focus on the use of content to build reputation and the use of networks to find new business—but the opportunities for distributing that content and building those networks are now vastly expanded. To promote good news, there are many more ways to get your message before the public. A lawyer or law firm should incorporate Web 2.0 tools into its own PR 2.0 and marketing strategies and online materials. In addition, lawyers and law firms can contribute informative content to the user-generated content and social networking sites of others. As part of this process, the content will be RSS coded and syndicated across the Web. Just as you need to target which print, radio or TV audiences to target, you need to target the Web 2.0 sites that will best meet your needs. A consultant can often help with this process. The control of negative news is a two-step process. First, you need to know what is being said about you. Lawyers and law firms can use Web 2.0 tools to monitor the Web for any hints of negative publicity—sort of like the traditional news clipping service—but supercharged. There are many free products that will do this—like Google Alerts. There are also more comprehensive subscription products like Andiamo. Second, when negative items about you or your firm are showing up on the first page of a search, you need to know how to control them before they spread. News and rumors can be posted by any “citizen journalist” with a cell phone (text and photos). They can travel around the world in real time and spread virally via blog links. The conventional wisdom about real world customer satisfaction applies to the Web as well: “A happy customer will tell four people. An unhappy customer will tell 21.” Substitute “post” for “tell” in this statement—and supercharge it with the viral nature of the Web—and you can see the potential need for damage control. Once negative content has been posted, it is difficult to get rid of, but countervailing positive content is usually enough to push it off the first page of search engine rankings. The current Obama for President campaign, for example, benefited greatly from Web 2.0 tools when it came to its promotional, networking and fundraising efforts. Campaign managers recently saw the need to set up a separate Web site (www.fightthesmears.com) just to deal with the Internet rumors concerning the candidate and his wife. If you put “Obama rumors” into a search engine, the first page of results no longer yields the negative rumors—just positive news about the new Web site. Law firms have come to fear the power of sites—blog www.abovethelaw.com and message board www.greedyassociates.com—that often feature gossip and conversation about law firms. Above the Law attracts 100,000 site visitors daily. When Nixon Peabody recorded “Everyone’s a Winner at Nixon Peabody”—a firm anthem created to raise morale—someone immediately posted it to YouTube, where it was linked to by Above the Law—generating a tsunami of negative publicity for the firm. The need to monitor for negative conversation is not limited to computers. In a modern-day version of whispering to your neighbor, audience members at events are using a mini-blog program called Twitter, which works on cell phones, to comment to others in the audience about public speakers—while the speaker is making a presentation! Lawyers and law firms must continuously monitor their online reputations—taking steps to enhance the positive and mitigate the negative. The opportunities for PR and marketing professionals to assist with this process are virtually untapped. General Guidelines for PR 2.0 – And All Of These Might Change Tomorrow You must give in order to get. Lawyers and law firms are used to charging by the hour for everything that they do and keeping a close hold on their contacts. Web 2.0 is not built that way. Those who give (by generously sharing their content and their contacts) will get, in the form of an enhanced Internet profile and search engine results, leading to enhanced “brand” recognition and more and better business. You can manage, but not control. In the days of traditional media and the early days of the Web, a lawyer or law firm exercised complete control over most aspects of its content (unless it was dealing with a reporter). To take full advantage of the rich opportunities offered by Web and PR 2.0, lawyers and law firms will need to relax, to share and to use criticism not as an attack—but as an opportunity for conversation. You can create a blog, for example, around a practice area. Thousands of lawyers and law firms have done so. You then have three options: you can disable the comments feature; you can censor comments on your content, only posting the positive comments; or you can allow all comments (eliminating only those that violate legal ethics rules). Lawyers will naturally gravitate to the first two options; only the last one will be perceived as a true blog that gains you respect in the blogosphere. As mentioned above, anything newsworthy that is posted to the Web will spread fast. This is a two-edged sword. When the news about you is positive, it is good. When the news is negative, it is not so good. There is virtually nothing that can be done to control the spread of content via PR 2.0. It can be managed and mitigated, however, by a steady stream of positive content. Timing is everything. In the days of traditional media, it might take weeks to get approval of the wording of something as simple as a single-page press release. PR 2.0 operates in real time. It is true that most bloggers post multiple stories every day and are eager to scoop the traditional media. If someone puts the news out there before you do, with their spin on it instead of yours, that is the version that will control the story—without a lot of management and mitigation work on your part. If a blogger emails you or calls you—it is wise to treat this person just like you would a traditional journalist. Respond immediately. Be completely authentic. When it comes to spin, the PR 2.0 environment is even less forgiving then the traditional environment. Your version of the news will be dissected by readers, listeners or viewers and ruthlessly dissected in comments. Not even U.S. Supreme Court decisions are exempt from this process. The social media are all about straightforward conversation. In the Web 2.0 world, this is called transparency. They provide wonderful opportunities for professional service providers like lawyers to start or join conversations on pertinent subjects and contribute valuable information. A major caveat: do not solicit for business on a Web 2.0 site (unless you have bought advertising and it is clearly labeled as such—like the ads that appear on a page of Google results). If you solicit, you are in violation not only of the written rules of legal ethics in all states but also the unwritten laws of Web 2.0. Never use Web 2.0 tools to spam a blog, members of a social network, or members of the media. The response will be immediate and painful. Think twice before you hit “submit.” In a traditional environment, a flawed document, letter or tape could often be recalled and destroyed before it had a chance to do too much harm. Not so in the Web 2.0 environment. As soon as content is posted, those hungry spiders (and aggregators, which we will discuss later) get to work. A nasty comment you make in the middle of the night on the blog of a competitor in Denver can be bookmarked, forwarded or printed out two minutes later by a blog subscriber in Taiwan. By the time you wake, it could be all over the Web and you could be answering phones calls from reporters. Because of the nature of links on the Internet, it is virtually impossible to completely recall a mistake. You can issue a corrective comment and/or hope to push it down with new content—but it will never go away. PR 2.0 Content – Here Comes The Leverage Social media allow lawyers and law firms to put existing content to work on the Internet, where it can be found and ranked by search engines. Content can consist of words, art, photographs or podcasts (audio or video), or any combination of these elements. Content can also be another program inserted into a Web site in order to increase its interactivity—like a blog or a wiki or any of thousands of “plug-in” mini-programs knows as “widgets.” The mini-program that inserts the current date and time on a Web page is a widget. A survey is a widget. Most Web 2.0 programs encourage users to create widgets that will work with the program. In the course of doing business, law firms generate a significant amount of written content—including print bios, practice area descriptions, case studies, proposals, brochures, legal documents and books. Traditionally, when dealing with clients, print or electronic versions of written content were distributed to a specific mailing list. When dealing with the media, print or electronic versions of press releases, articles or other content were distributed to publishers of newspapers, magazines or directories. A written speech was delivered to a specific audience at an event, often using PowerPoint slides. It could be a one-time event, or it could be recorded as an audio or video podcast and posted on the firm’s Web site—perhaps even put on a disk and sent to a mailing list. In the world of PR 2.0, a lawyer’s bio can appear not only in print and on the firm’s Web site, but can also be posted for free on any number of content and social networking sites. It is not sent to a limited mailing list; it is posted to the Internet where it can be found by anyone, anywhere, anytime. The more content that is posted to the Internet with an RSS feed, the more you dominate and control your Google results.
Enhancements to Web 2.0 Content – And Here’s Even More Leverage Content on a Web 2.0 site is meant to be shared and commented upon. There are a number of tools that make this possible. RSS Feed As mentioned above, an RSS feed is a bit of code that can be added to a piece of content. This code “feeds” or syndicates the piece of content across the Internet—where it can be picked up by search engines and aggregators. If a user likes the content, he or she can subscribe to the RSS feed in order to get more content like it in the future—by clicking on the orange RSS icon and following the simple instructions. The major wire services all offer RSS-enabled news. Aggregator If an RSS feed “pitches” content, an aggregator (or feed reader) “catches” it. An aggregator is a user-created program that automatically searches the Internet for certain RSS feeds and collects (aggregates) them in one place. You no longer need to visit Web sites you like to see if anything has been added; any update to the site attracts the attention of the aggregator and is automatically brought to your desktop. In addition to RSS feed subscriptions, you can also put keywords (or tags) into an aggregator— creating a customized search engine that is constantly scanning the Internet for terms of interest and delivering the results to your desktop. Among the best-known RSS aggregators are Bloglines, FeedDemon, Google Reader and Technorati. LexMonitor is a recently launched aggregator of law blogs and journals. Search Engine Optimization This white paper focuses primarily on the distribution of quality content enhanced with RSS feeds in order to achieve search engine optimization (SEO). This is called “natural” SEO and is the main focus of PR 2.0. Clients can also buy advertisements on the search engines that are set apart from the “natural” results. This is called “paid” SEO and is how Google makes most of its money. Tags Tags are used like a file system to organize content on a blog. Also called categories, they are created by authors or viewers, depending on the system. A blog with no tags would just go on and on like a journal—organized by when posts were written, not by subject matter. It would be hard to locate what you were looking for. A lawyer writing a blog on the subject of climate change law, for example, might include as tags/categories “coal,” “carbon markets,” and “Clean Air Act.” When adding content to a public site, posters can choose from a list of “official” tags so that the site knows under which subject to store it. Search engines and aggregators look for tags. Tags are particularly useful when dealing with text-less audio and visual content like podcasts, art or photos. Without tags, there is nothing for the search engines to read. Social Media: Where to Post Your Content – Ask A 12-Year-Old How This Works Social media are Web sites that accept user-contributed content and comments—providing a wealth of new opportunities for lawyers and law firms to enhance their reputations on the Internet. Most of these tools can be accessed for free via a wide variety of public sites. Often, these sites offer enhanced and/or advertisement-free products for extra cost. In addition, the software behind social media can be purchased by lawyers and law firms and used to build proprietary sites over which you have more control—like your own blog or wiki. More than one type of social media will often be “mashed up” on a single Web site. Blog Sites A blog is an inherently interactive Web site. All new content is automatically coded with an RSS feed. The first blogs looked and functioned pretty much like online journals. Today, they are starting to look and function like supercharged entity Web sites. A lawyer or law firm can create a blog around a defined area of interest—like employment law for builders in Colorado. Since blog posts are generally short, posting content to a blog is much easier than writing an article. Since they appear immediately, blog posts are a perfect way to address breaking issues in the law. Each blog post will be sent automatically in real time to those who have subscribed to your blog’s RSS feed and to those who have the post’s keywords in their aggregators: clients, potential clients, industry experts and media around the world. Bloggers often use their own aggregators to keep current with breaking news and other bloggers in their fields. By including links to these posts in your blog, you enhance search engine optimization. By intelligently commenting on posts that appear on other sites and blogs, you enhance your reputation as an expert in your target market. Lawyers and law firms can use blogs to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Content Sites Content sites are sites external to a law firm that allow for the posting of many types of content. The basic service is usually free, with enhancements available at a charge. Because of the search engine strength of popular external sites, content posted on these sites is likely to rank higher in results than content posted on your own Web site. Some content sites are more like directories, focusing on the posting of lawyer and law firm profiles (which also form the basis of social networking sites, see below). Potential clients can search these directories when looking for representation. AVVO, for example, uses state bar association data to post the profiles of every lawyer in a state and then ranks them based on certain criteria. To improve rankings, lawyers and law firms must visit the site and edit the profiles—providing the level of detail that AVVO is looking for. AVVO is also a public rating site—allowing visitors to comment on their actual experience with a lawyer or law firm. Other sites are more focused on content. There are online “e-zines” that focus on almost every legal and business topic under the sun. These sites are always interested in quality usercontributed content, which they will post along with your tagline and contact information. (In addition, you can always create and post your own e-zine.) Another category of content site focuses on legal documents—which in a social media environment can be searched for free rather than by subscription. JDSupra, for example, accepts not only lawyer and law firm profiles, but also actual articles and legal documents which can be searched by potential clients looking for a work sample, by other lawyers looking for research on a legal topic, and by reporters (there is a special “Scoop” section) looking for background and sources for articles they are writing. YouTube is an example of a content-contribution site that is focused on videos. Flickr is a content-contribution site that focuses on photos. CNN.com is a mainstream news outlet that has opened its pages to user-generated content. Through its iReports feature, CNN.com accepts user-contributed text, photos, audio and video from “citizen journalists.” It also solicits reader opinion via its daily “Quick Vote” survey. Lawyers and law firms can contribute to content sites to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Entity Web Sites Most successful business Web sites have been enhanced to maximize their effectiveness in a social media environment. Most lawyer and law firm Web sites, however, have not. At the very least, traditional sites should focus on adding a steady stream of new keyword-rich content. The sites should be retrofitted to allow RSS feeds. Any Web site being created or revised today should be built on a social media platform. A Web 2.0 lawyer or law firm Web site can include traditional (although RSS-fed) Web site content along with various social media applications that encourage two-way interaction with clients—like blogs, visitor surveys, social networks, and wikis. They can include a stream of real-time subject-specific headlines and news generated by an aggregator. They can include mini-sites, in which a practice area can focus on its unique keywords and RSS-enhancement efforts. Lawyers and law firms should rebuild their entity Web sites in order to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Message Board Sites Message board sites, forums and Listservs are the original social media Web sites. They are usually organized around groups or interest areas—much like the LMA Listserv provides a forum for members of the Legal Marketing Association. A user poses a question or comment, and other members provide answers or additional comments. Because they have been around so long, message board conversations are more difficult to enhance with RSS feeds. Many social networks (see below) are adding the question/answer capability to their sites—and it’s likely that the “message board” function eventually will be assumed into the social networking function. If an organization you belong to has a message board, join it and use it. It is yet another low-cost way to demonstrate your expertise and get your name and contact information in front of a targeted audience. Do not use the medium to solicit. Monitoring the constant flow of questions and answers lets you know what is on the minds of potential clients. When posting an answer on the message board, keep the text short enough so that your email signature appears on the first screen. To make it easier for users to follow up with you in person, include your tagline and links in your email signature. To keep your name and expertise top of mind among listserv members, try to post at least once a month. Lawyers and law firms should join and participate in message boards in order to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Social Bookmarking Sites Internet users can share their favorite items (including their own items) on a certain subject with others on the Internet by posting the links to social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us or Digg. By subscribing to these services and using their existing tags, lawyers and law firms can add their icons at the end of each item of content. By clicking on the icon, Internet users can weigh in on the value of the content they have just read, listened to or viewed. As a result, good and informative content on a subject rises to the top of results. Bad or self-promotional content sinks to the bottom. Social bookmarkers can also post comments about your content. You can also “share” a list of items you have bookmarked with visitors to your own Web site. Lawyers and law firms should submit links to their content to social bookmarking sites in order to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Social Networking Sites By now, everyone has heard of public online social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace. There is also a wide range of more specific public and private social networks like Legal OnRamp for the legal industry. Like other social media sites, social networks provide an opportunity for you to post your own content—in the form of an RSS-feed enhanced profile. Profiles can include links to Web sites and blogs. Unlike other social media, social networks also use keywords and other data to track and reveal the (often hidden) relationships that exist among members of a social network. Once you post a profile on a social network, you can have the program search your personal contact files for individuals who belong to the same network. You can use the program to invite them to be your friend or connection. Once they accept, you have access to all of their connections—as well as the connections of their connections. LinkedIn, for example, which focuses on a more professional membership, tracks and reveals relationships within three degrees of separation. Depending upon the activity level of your connections, this list can grow exponentially. This author has just 34 carefully selected firstdegree connections in the field of legal marketing—but 16,300 second-degree connections (approachable using a connection) and 1,876,100 third-degree connections (approachable using a connection of a connection). Your list of connections can be searched using a wide range of criteria like employment skills and geographic location in order to come up with a list—like the network profiles of all forensic accountants in Omaha. As a result, social networks are very popular with headhunters—who pay extra for full access to the public lists. In addition to searching, most networks allow members to ask and answer questions (like a message board). Most social networking sites allow users to form affinity groups of members—around an entity, like all lawyers, incoming summer associates or alumni of a particular law firm, or members of an organization—or around an idea, like all those interested in a conversation based on intellectual property law for medical devices in China. Lawyers and law firms are even creating avatars (a computer user's representation of himself or herself) and participating in visual online social networking systems like Second Life. The avatars of Harvard Law School’s intellectual property law professors teach the avatars of online students (some with wings) in online classrooms in Second Life. Law officers operate and collect fees. Lawyers and law firms should take advantage of social networks—to post their profiles, to create, search and question networks, and to form groups—in order to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. Wiki Sites The best-known Web site built on wiki software is the user-generated Wikipedia—an encyclopedia in which users contribute all the content. The founders of Wikipedia primed the site with information that was already in the public domain and then opened up to the entire world for addition, comment and correction. When Wikipedia first launched in 2003, the scholars scoffed. Today, it is among the top 10 Web sites in the world—home to 10 million articles in more than 250 languages. What’s more, research shows that the content on Wikipedia is just as accurate as and certainly more up-to-date than that content in mainstream encyclopedias (electronic as well as print). Scholars themselves now post to Wikipedia. A lawyer or a law firm could create and post an issue-related site on wiki software— branding it with its own name and priming it with its own content categories and documents, but opening it up to the content and comments of others. What you give up in control by allowing others (including your competitors) to participate in the wiki, you gain in reputation as a confident thought-leader. Lawyers and law firms should take advantage of wikis in order to enhance their profiles and search engine results on the Internet. What Is Most Important For You To Know Right Now? – You’re Close To The End Maybe the most important thing for you to know and recognize is that we are all going through a period of major change in the way we communicate. And, as soon as you learn everything we have talked about in this white paper, it will probably be obsolete. Is there a lot to learn? Of course there is, and that is the hard part, but on the other side of the coin are opportunities for communication that we can only just now begin to imagine. We will be able to communicate with our chosen audiences better, faster and with feedback that we were never able to get before. It is a challenge today and not something that can or should be left only for the “young” to figure out at some point in the future. Web 2.0 for law firms and PR 2.0 law firms are about all of us and must now become an integral part of our professional skill set. While some might equate the current change to moving from a quill to a ballpoint pen, we see this change as moving from crawling to rocket launching in the time frame of only a few years. And, don’t blink now, for you are surely to miss something. Stay tuned for more. Jay M. Jaffe President & CEO jjaffe@jaffepr.com (970) 328-4305 Liz Bard Lindley Director, Public Relations and WritersForLawyers llindley@jaffepr.com (201) 767-2690 JOINING THE CONVERSATION
JAFFE ASSOCIATES: WEB 2.0 SERVICES For any business, a Web site is successful when it helps meet business objectives. For law firms, the same principle applies. Today, interactive tools make Web sites powerful transmitters of your brand story; and, perhaps more importantly, active receptors for your WEB SITE CREATIVE DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY & CONTENT
Differentiating your business today requires a serious approach to the image you project through the World Wide Web. Jaffe will work with you to make sure the look and feel of your Web site reflects your company’s image, values and commitment to quality.
ANALYSIS, STRATEGY AND PLANNING
Jaffe Law Firm Web Index Tool: BUILDING AND MAINTAINING WEB SITES
Jaffe Web Development Suite - A Complete Suite of Web Site 2.0 Development and Design Services:
Jaffe Simple Web 2.0 Content Manager: Keeping your Web content fresh is critical in the Web 2.0 world. Quite simply, the more content you put up the more potential you create for your Web site to be optimized for search engines. Maintaining a robust Web site need not require that you have a know-it-all-developer on staff at your firm. Jaffe Web developers can build easy-to-use custom tools that allow your firm to have tight control over your Web site and its content without having to contact a developer every time you need to make a little change.
SOCIAL PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGY, PLANNING AND EXECUTION
Jaffe now offers a full range of cutting-edge PR 2.0 services and products to reach a virtually unlimited audience on the Web and to maximize results on search engines. Each campaign is designed to constantly evolve as the word spreads online.At Jaffe, we can help develop the content and build the platforms for exciting new social media tools like blogs and wikis. But, perhaps more importantly, we create a Social Media plan and then we execute it through writing, production and distribution services. Blogs, podcasts, Webinar broadcasts and e-mail newsletters can live on your Web site to efficiently repurpose the work that your attorneys are already doing when they speak at conferences and forums, publish articles or appear in news stories. Adding easy-to-share tools helps your thought leadership to spread around the Web. An example of how this works: A law firm publishes a blog around a defined area of interest—like employment law for builders in Colorado. Since blog posts are generally short, posting content to the blog is much easier than writing an article. Since they appear immediately, blog posts are a perfect way to address breaking issues in the law. So when there’s news to spread, it’s posted on the blog, sent by RSS feed to blog subscribers. Then, the blog post can be used as content for an e-mail newsletter published by the firm. “Share this” buttons on the blog and newsletter lets your readers do the work of spreading the news for you. Jaffe PR 2.0 tools include:
Jaffe can create social networking environments where your employees can manage their own profile (with details such as “about me,” photo galleries, video galleries, individual blogs, send and receive comments), add individual designs on their page, create and participate in surveys, create and participate in groups, and so on. All employees included in this configuration can talk to one another, send individual internal messages, and e-talk on subjects in the general forum. ABOUT JAFFE DEPARTMENTS
Jaffe Associates provides a full suite of business development services and products to law firmsbased in North America and Europe. Jaffe's professionals in three departments – PublicRelations, Business Development Consulting, and Creative & Web Services – help clients in law firms and other organizations tackle their most challenging and complex issues, from the setting of clear goals through to the full implementation of strategies and techniques needed to grow and sustain business.
Public Relations Jaffe leverages its significant media contacts, strategic approach, and innovative services such as RankingsForLawyers™, LexSpeak™ and WritersForLawyers™ to effectively craft your messages and obtain the increased visibility and favorable media coverage you need to support your business development efforts. We use a blend of classic public relations techniques with the technologies we call PR 2.0 to develop a customized program for your specific needs. Business Development Consulting Jaffe Associates is the largest company in the world specializing in helping law and other professional services firms with their business development, marketing, organizational and management needs. Creative & Technology Services Jaffe’s creative team develops groundbreaking advertising campaigns, innovative Web site designs, strategic content for Web sites, and trend-setting logo designs and identity packages that instantly raise our clients' brand awareness and position them as leaders in today’s aggressive markets. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: info@jaffepr.com or Jay Jaffe at jjaffe@jaffepr.com Or, if you can’t wait, call Jay at 301-881-6991 |