As LMA 2019 kicks off, I thought it would be a good idea to republish this post from LMA 2018 as a reminder of the excellent content we heard last year.
Choose your launch sector for Content creation wisely
When we launch at a new client we will typically ask our clients to choose a sector - they will almost invariably (and very understandably) choose by the characters involved. "Penny's great at blogging... Bob's all over Twitter."
Fortunately Arielle Lapiano, Director of Communications and Public Relations, Paul Hastings LLP has a better plan - simply choose the sector with the Highest Possible Growth, And the Lowest Present Visibility.
In other words, choose the sector that can benefit most in the short-term (because of its low visibility in the market) and long-term (because of the size and growth in that sector).
Obs! ... but I didn't see it for several years.
Launching your advocacy program:
Jennifer Simpson Carr, Senior Business Development Manager, Lowenstein Sandler, made the point - which I whole heartedly agree with - that trying to sign up lawyers (and this is true of all the brainy experts we work with) to any thing that sounds like "Employee Advocacy" or a "Social Media Program" will immediate get you off to a bad start.
And quite right too. Firstly it sounds like some awful kind of management twaddle and second, they will quickly work out that actually they are simply being asked to pump out pretty random news items to their network - and use up precious personal capital - in return for nothing much, thanks.
If it is interesting content that they and their colleagues are creating - well that changes things. It really is all about the content ... but to quote Arielle again, remember:
"We are not in the news breaking business, we are in the news analysis business."
Thanks also to Gina F. Rubel, CEO, Furia Rubel Communications - an excellent compere - and Jessica Haarsgaard, Business Development Manager, McNair for her thoughts on using localised motifs to ground your marketing campaigns - in the case of McNair: Peaches!