Do you still think that writing blogs is just for people with either an axe to grind or too much time on their hands? And that Twitter is just an inane waste of time with absolutely no possible positive ROI?
As Kevin O’Keefe describes in a post this week, Peter Horrocks, the newly appointed director of BBC Global News, recently told his news reporters that they should use social media as a primary source of information. You read that right: BBC reporters are now required to use social media.
And you also read this correctly: we’re talking about the British Broadcasting Corporation. For the record, the company was founded in 1922 and it’s safe to say that the BBC has never been known as a group of impulsive kids randomly jumping on the latest fad. No, this is the ever-so-reliable, familiar and comfortable “Beeb,” as its devoted fans across the world have fondly referred to it for decades. But perhaps this really says it all: the BBC is an 88-year-old British institution with its own coat of arms.
The takeaway here is that perhaps you should give a good listen to what the BBC Global News director has to say about social media. In an internal newsletter earlier this month, Horrocks said, “This isn’t just a kind of fad from someone who’s an enthusiast of technology. I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things. It’s not discretionary.” And he later says, “If you don’t like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn’t right for [you], then go and do something else, because it’s going to happen. You’re not going to be able to stop it.”
So, erase that image in your head of the doddering old Beeb, for we see that the BBC is actually wide awake and energized in these Twitter-infused times. In fact, the organization is operating with a keen understanding of the truly revolutionary changes that have occurred in how information is aggregated and disseminated.
And what does this mean for you?
Well, John Schwartz, the National Legal Correspondent for the New York Times, recently spoke to O’Keefe about just how popular RSS readers have become with reporters everywhere. These reporters use RSS to follow particular blogs, in addition to following keywords and key phrases in Google Blog Search. The great thing for you about that last point is that these keyword searches can lead them to new blogs that they hadn’t known about, including, perhaps, yours.
O’Keefe, who as the founder of LexBlog, Inc. has helped nearly 3,000 attorneys build their blogs, continues:
If you’re covering timely legal issues in your blog, you’ll get seen by reporters. Reporters aren’t stupid and looking to waste their time Googling search terms looking for an old article or even being sillier yet, waiting for your PR person to turn them on to experts at your law firm.
The point he’s making is that you’ll likely mention cases, regulations, and companies in your law blog, and when one of those subjects becomes newsworthy, your blog post will be instantly picked up by the RSS readers of reporters covering that subject. Ultimately, there is a good probability that you could get a reporter’s call, or that something you wrote may be cited in a reporter’s article. Either one would be fine with you, right?
The only problem is that neither of these great things will happen unless you do the work to put yourself out there in the blogosphere. The good news is that there’s still time to catch the train. But you’re going to have to run.
I hear you say that you weren’t born to blog or tweet. Fair enough; none of us were. And none of us has the time to do it, either. But I’m pretty sure I heard Horrocks say to his reporters, “Change or die.” It’s being said a lot these days. In fact, in a small, flat world, it’s the new mantra.
