Most of you probably already know that digital PR is just a digital approach to public relations. Maybe it’s just because digital technology has been developing so quickly it always feels like it’s “new,” decades after we all started using digital tools as part of our everyday workflows, but I think the “public relations” part is the piece of digital PR that many attorneys are inclined to take for granted as they plan their digital marketing strategies. Thinking about who your “public” is and what it means to develop and manage your law firm’s relations with those people sets you up to make better, more informed and targeted choices in choosing guest posting opportunities and integrating them into your digital PR.
What Digital PR Is and Is Not (for Law Firms)
Digital PR is obviously related to digital marketing. A desire to grow your law firm as a business by reaching more people so that you can sign more clients is probably the driving motivation behind your law firm’s PR strategy. However, public relations has to mean something more than the sales-centric approach to communications many people associate with marketing (that isn’t a great way to think about marketing, either, but we can save that conversation for another day).
PR has to cover a lot of activity, like building a history of thought leadership, that creates a presence people (a.k.a, potential clients) can find, recognize, and appreciate, when they are ready. Effective digital PR means showing up online in ways that demonstrate your value, instead of selling your services. There is a fine distinction that is easy to miss here. It’s the difference between making an attractive offer and becoming someone whose offer is attractive. Any offer you make is going to be more persuasive if the person considering it has already come to regard you as someone worth listening to.
Why Guest Posting?
Guest posting is obviously not the only way to establish that sense of connection online, but it can be one of the most effective (it also typically costs nothing, which sets guest posting up to achieve an exceptionally high ROI). Guest posting gives you the chance to not only “show off” (demonstrate your value), but to do so in front of people (public relations) you were not reaching through your own established networks and channels.
With assistance from your digital marketing team (yes, PR and marketing go hand-in-hand), you can also take advantage of guest posting opportunities to generate high-quality backlinks, which are absolutely golden for your law firm website’s SEO (search engine optimization). In other words, a well-placed guest post can:
- Reach a “new” (to you) audience
- With content that showcases your legal expertise
- In a way that makes it easier for even more potential clients to find you
We love to see it!
Making the Most of Guest Posting for Digital PR: Choosing a Website
To get the greatest benefit from guest posting as a lynchpin of your digital PR strategy, you will need to start by getting permission, or better yet an invitation, to create a guest post for someone else’s website, and you will need that website to have an authoritative reputation, both with people who could reasonably become your clients and with search engines. The typical content of this website should be relevant to your practice area and client base.
“Relevant” here might be defined in terms of topic: An estate planning attorney might write a guest post for a digital magazine aimed at seniors, or a divorce lawyer might write a guest post for a parenting website addressing when to seek child custody modifications. You could also think of relevance geographically: A new local rule or a change to state law might be of interest to readers of a website focused on local or community news, for instance. Either way, the goal is to choose a website that has some consistent, logical interest value for the people who would be most likely to hire your law firm, and to also make sure that this website is one those same people will trust and that search engines will recognize as an authoritative source of information to return in their results pages.
Making the Most of Guest Posting for Digital PR: Picking a Topic
Part of choosing a topic is always going to be collaboration with the party owning or managing the website where your guest post is going to be published. Some of the back-and-forth involved in this kind of development is likely to be about what the website needs to offer their visitors in relation to what you would like to offer to showcase your expertise. If your goals are actually opposed, then this particular collaboration may just not be a good fit; what happens more often is that you and the website manager or publisher are likely to be thinking about topics and approaches from different angles.
For best results, start with a general topic and aim to get a sense of how much the website’s regular audience already knows about that topic. Then “narrow down” by identifying an aspect of that topic that:
- The website’s audience likely will not be familiar with
- You can write about from a basis of professional authority
- Is not exhaustively explained by many of your competitors
A narrowly defined topic to which you can bring a depth of expertise not readily found elsewhere is guest posting gold.
Making the Most of Guest Posting for Digital PR: Writing for Readers
The way you go about crafting the actual test of your guest post will depend on the length of the post, the nature of the website and audience, and your own comfort level with writing outside the context of legal briefs and pleadings. If you generally enjoy writing and appreciate the chance to explain concepts important to your practice area for the benefit of an audience not yet familiar with them, then have at it! If writing a guest post feels less like an interesting change of pace and more like getting a root canal, then you may want to take a different approach.
Strategies for Drafting the Guest Post
One option is to work with a “ghostwriter”: Give this person your key points to make, and some idea of the style in which you would like to make them, and then add your own touches to the completed draft, as needed. This approach can be especially useful if the website for which you are writing has strict style and formatting requirements of its own, since people who are used to balancing these kinds of very specific guidelines with clarity and the authorial voice and tone of the person for whom they are preparing their text have usually developed a skill base that enables them to tackle this type of challenge with finesse.
Obviously these days many people also write with the assistance of AI tools, rather than human writers; AI writing assistance can be a good option for attorneys who enjoy writing overall and are drafting their articles for a website that gives guest bloggers “free rein” in creating their content. On the other hand, if the idea of writing 1,000 works for an unfamiliar audience makes you wince, or the website that will publish your guest post has a detailed style guide, an experienced writer who can take the points you wish to convey and compose them into an article with the tone and panache you want to achieve, while meeting the style sheet requirements of the host site, may actually save you more time and create a product that better fits your needs. Your digital marketing agency may be able to recommend someone, or they may even have a writer with the right kind of experience already on their staff.
Centering the Goal
Regardless of the method (or methods) you use to achieve it, the goal is always to create an article for your guest post that is clear, thorough, authoritative, and conscious of its audience. Considering the age and interests of the host website’s typical audience, as well as their likely familiarity with the concepts your guest post will discuss, can make the difference between a byline that does nothing for your bottom line and a guest post that contributes meaningfully to your law firm’s digital PR.
Making the Most of Guest Posts: Seizing the Moment for Self-Promotion
You will want to set your guest post up to integrate with the rest of your digital PR strategy in two ways. The first way is encapsulated in the attorney bio you provide to the content manager or other contact person behind the website that will be hosting your article. Take the time to review your bio on your law firm’s website and your own LinkedIn page, update these as needed, and then make sure that the bio you send is current and in alignment with these two other places where individuals who read the blog post can find biographical information about you. If the content management team at the host website allows, you may also want to incorporate a link to your (own) website bio, and perhaps to a relevant blog post on your law firm website.
Once the guest post is “live” on the host site, the second stage of self-promotion activates. Here you want to promote the guest post widely across all of your own digital surfaces: your law firm website, of course, but also your LinkedIn, your law firm’s social media accounts, and any newsletters your law firm sends. To get even more benefit from the guest post, make it a point to have your digital marketing team add the page on the host website to the “Same as” property associated with your “Person” tag in your website’s schema markup. This small adjustment helps to confirm for search engines the breadth of your reach and cement your association with authoritative content across the web.
Next Steps
The backlinks and impression of authority created by a single guest post can be valuable. However, one of the characteristics of digital PR is that each element deployed to enhance your online presence is more effective when it is integrated within a cohesive strategy. To truly capitalize on the opportunity a guest post affords, work with your digital marketing team to “connect the dots” by ensuring you showcase your authority on closely related topics across multiple digital surfaces: podcasts, webinars, and of course your own law firm blog. This kind of integration has a cumulative effect, building an authoritative presence that is more than the sum of its parts.
Guest posting and digital PR are not one-time tactics. They are long-term investments in your law firm’s credibility, visibility, and authority. By consistently contributing valuable insights to reputable publications, building relationships within your community and industry, and amplifying those efforts across your own digital channels, you can strengthen both your brand and your search presence over time. Whether you manage these initiatives internally or partner with an experienced legal marketing agency, a strategic approach to guest posting and digital PR can help position your firm as a trusted authority while creating lasting opportunities to attract and convert new clients.
Annette Choti, Esq., has over two decades of legal experience and is the Founder & CEO of Law Quill, a concierge legal marketing agency for law firms. Annette authored the bestselling book Click Magnet: The Ultimate Guide To Digital Marketing For Law Firms, hosts the popular Legal Marketing Lounge podcast, and founded Click Magnet Academy where she teaches professionals to leverage the powerful LinkedIn platform. As a sought after speaker for Bar Associations, Legal Associations, and Marketing Conferences, Annette provides legal marketing insight along with an entertaining twist. Annette used to do theatre and professional comedy, which is not so different from the legal field if we are all being honest. Annette can be found on LinkedIn or directly through email at Annette@LawQuill.com
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