Use Bylined Articles to Generate Inquiries from Clients and Prospects

By David M. Freedman. He has worked as a journalist and author since 1978, and as a media relations consultant and web content developer since 1999. He is coauthor of Under Your Byline: 7 Steps to Getting Your Bylined Articles Published (www.byline7.com). He won a Your Honor Award from the Legal Marketing Association for public relations, and has won national awards for legal journalism, financial magazine editing, website content, and newsletter development. You can reach him at www.freedman-chicago.com

The Byline3 method is a three-step system for marketing the services of professional advisers. It is based on the principle that clients look for advisers who are authoritative, credible and reliable.

The three steps in the Byline3 system are:

1.      Publication. Get a series of articles published under your byline to build name recognition and demonstrate your authoritativeness, credibility, and reliability.

2.      Distribution. Send reprints directly to clients, prospects, referral sources; and invite them to contact you for further information or advice.

3.      Web optimization. Post your articles to your website, and use search engines and social media to drive traffic to the articles, where readers will click through to your home page.

Byline3 is cost-effective when used to market law firms of all sizes. For small firms, Byline3 may serve as the cornerstone of practice development, while large firms should integrate Byline3 into a broader strategic marketing plan. The system requires strong writing and public relations expertise, but modest capital investment.

You should be aware of any restrictions that your state bar association may have established on distribution and web communications.

Step 1: Publication

Getting published in respected or prestigious publications, including those that your clients and prospects read, gives you “third-party credibility,” because it implies an endorsement of your authoritativeness by publishers and editors. Getting a few outstanding articles published each year keeps you foremost in the minds of readers and adds an aura of reliability longevity.

The techniques of writing articles are covered in a handbook that I coauthored, titled Under Your Byline: 7 Steps to Getting Bylined Articles Published. It is available as a free PDF download at www.byline7.com.

If you do not have strong writing skills, or do not have time to write articles and don’t have writing expertise on staff, you can hire a freelance journalist, editor, or ghostwriter—one who has  experience in your area of expertise—to help you compose articles and get them published.

Once you get an article published under your byline, you can expand the readership by:

1. Revising, adapting, and updating it for other publications.
2. “Repurposing” it as a speech, website content or seminar handout, for example.
3. Expanding it (or aggregating more than one) into a white paper or book.

Step 2: Distribution

When your article is published, of course you hope it will be read by the clients, prospects, and referral sources. They will see your byline at the beginning and your bio, with contact info, at the end. A few readers will contact you to ask a question or request more information.

But chances are that not all, or even most, of your target audience will see the article in its original publication. So you need to take action to ensure that they do, by distributing reprints or photocopies of it to that specific audience by mail, if it is printed, or via e-mail if it is published electronically. Because e-mail is such an inexpensive means of distribution, you may include other stakeholders as well, such as partners and associates, prospective employees, alumni, colleagues, bar associations, and legal journalists.

When you distribute a reprinted or photocopied article in an envelope, enclose a concise cover letter with a personalized message. Without a cover letter, you are just dumping unsolicited literature on people, and they are likely to ignore it. The letter should occupy no more than a single page of your letterhead, and it should:

• Introduce the article by its title and the media outlet where it appeared.
• Tell readers how the article will benefit them if they read it.
• Provide an “executive summary” for people who don’t have the time to read the whole piece.
• Include a call to action: “Please call me to discuss how this issue will affect you, or to request more information.”

If the article is published online in PDF, HTML, ePub, or other electronic format, you can

• Print and mail it.
• E-mail it as an attachment. But do not send it as attachments unless you get permission to do so in advance. When you distribute by e-mail, the body of the e-mail message should be similar to the cover letter described above, but somewhat condensed and less formal.
• Post it to your website and e-mail a link to it.

Step 3: Web Optimization

The third step, optimization, should be executed concurrently with the second step, distribution, while your published article is still fresh. The objective of optimization is to generate traffic to the online version of your article, which you post to your website. Once there, visitors will not only read it but hopefully “click through” from the article to your website’s home page.

No dumping

If you convert an article from Word to HTML format, do not simply “dump” the article onto your website as is. You should adapt it for the web by doing four things:

1. Condense (because attention spans are shorter online)
2. Insert descriptive subheads (because readers browse, looking for specific information)
3. Build links (to make it interactive)
4. Create a printer-friendly option (for longer articles).

If the article requires updating from time to time, do so – do not ever let it become obsolete or inaccurate, or you’ll shoot your credibility. Add a note that shows the date on which the article was updated. If the update is substantial, distribute it again!

Search engines and social media

Web optimization involves two parts: search engine optimization and social media optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) is something you do once when you post an article to your website; it is not necessarily an ongoing process, although you might have occasion to fine-tune the SEO strategy and update certain articles accordingly. Social media optimization (SMO), on the other hand, is an ongoing process over weeks or months after an article is published.

I said earlier that the objective of optimization is to generate traffic to the online version of your article. The narrower objective of SEO is to get your article ranked high in search engine results so that people find it quickly when they search for information on the topic. The narrow objective of SMO is to spread the word through various online communities that your article has been posted, how it can help people who read it (its benefits), and where to find it (via a hyperlink).

Search engine optimization

Each page of your website, including your bylined articles, should be optimized for search engine ranking. Search engines rank web pages primarily on the basis of:

1. Their relevance to the search terms
2. Their popularity in terms of visitor traffic and inbound links
3. The depth of their content in terms of drill-down and outbound links
4. The effectiveness of their metatags (hidden code that contains the article’s subject, description, and keywords), among other criteria. Search engines also love content that is narrowly focused.

SEO is very important for companies that conduct business primarily online, such as e-commerce, commercial portals and subscription-based news media and research sites. For those companies, SEO requires an understanding of search bots, ranking algorithms, key word density, and other complexities. But for lawyers whose business is primarily people-to-people, SEO can be a lot simpler.

One hard and fast rule for optimizing bylined articles: Write article for readers, not for search engines. Readers must appreciate your articles, or the system fails.

Social media optimization

2009 is the year when online social networking came into its prime. Users don't just consume on the Web, they participate—thanks to simple tools that let them comment, review, rate, rank, tag, publish, and share content, all without web programming skills or HTML knowledge. Content now flows every which way and back again—it’s a conversation.

There are many ways to use social media to spread the word virally about your article. You won’t have time to exploit all of them, so select a few that you feel most comfortable with, among the following:

• Join a professional network like LinkedIn, or a social network like Facebook (if that’s where many of your clients hang out), and post a network update about your new article, providing a link to the online version.
• Join discussion groups on those networks in which your clients and prospects participate. Follow the discussions, and when you have some ideas or information to contribute, join in. Mention your article, with a link to it, only if it adds value to the discussion—not in an overtly promotional manner.
• Read blogs in your industry or area of expertise, and comment whenever you have some constructive ideas or criticism, or to correct a factual mistake. Again, mention your article if it helps to illuminate the subject.
• Start your own blog, and post a summary of every new article you add to your website.
• Write or edit entries on Wikipedia, and refer to your articles (again, only if they are relevant and add value to the discussion).
• On the page where your article is published, use plug-ins that let readers share the article with their communities, including Digg, Delicious, Share This, and others. That can result in hyper-syndication of your article, which means it gets spread throughout those communities.

Tracking and analytics

Measure the response from that social media participation, using both human and electronic tracking systems and analytics. As in traditional marketing, ask clients, prospects, and other inquirers what prompted them to contact you, and how they found your article online. Electronic tracking and analytics may have an aura of accuracy and certainty, but still leave a lot of room for interpretation. It’s difficult to measure the improvement in name recognition and reputation that do not get measured by clicks, page visits, and responses.

But to the extent that you can analyze response to your SEO and SMO efforts, adjust your strategies (and topics for future articles) accordingly.

Byline3 execution

Anyone with strong writing and PR skills can employ the Byline3. If you do not have those skills on staff, you can hire a freelance journalist, editor, ghostwriter, media relations consultant, or PR professional. One final tip: not all journalists have expertise in optimization, and not all media PR pros are good journalism-level writers. So be sure you hire an individual or firm with that broad range of expertise.