The following insert is from a question and answer segment of a professional legal marketing video session:

Chase Musser: So we have a question about the Team Selfie Hack. “Is there a real need for it to be a selfie? Can we just take a photo of the location/landmark? Or is there something important about a person being in it?”

Andy Stickel: Yes. It’s actually very important because you’re going to upload them to the team section of your Google My Business profile. And that, basically, it gives you a reason why you have all these random pictures of these people. So if you just had a random picture of the Lincoln Memorial, for example, ( I don’t know why I’m thinking about Washington, D.C), that doesn’t make any sense. But if you have your administrative assistant standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, that, now, makes sense why it’s on your profile and it makes it compliant. Otherwise, Google could flag you for spam.

Summary

Google is always verifying and making sure that the information being passed on through their search engine is true and accurate. They spend a great deal of time and money to ensure people continue to use the term “Google it.” Do your part to validate the information you post and you will do much better with Google. It is much easier to stay on Google than to get back on Google after you have been penalized.

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Andy Stickel: Another cool thing that you can do, a really good opportunity, is when you’re creating this content with all these… When people have all these problems and all these issues, what you can do is you can also create these videos and send them to news reporters. Because right now, reporters are looking for so much content that they can put out there. Because there’s only so many… I mean, the coronavirus is a big story but there’s so many problems that other people have. If you can take these videos and also get them in front of news reporters and journalists and things like that, then what’ll end up happening is you’ll end up getting featured on the news as well. And then that’s even more credibility that you can go and share. And what that does is that’ll get you in front of more people. That’ll get more advertising, more free content, all that type of stuff. And then they’ll also form a relationship with you. Because people always take the path of least resistance. So when this thing is over – it’s only going to be a couple of months but this thing will be over – now, you’ve got contacts in the media that whenever they have a question related to immigration or criminal defense or estate planning or whatever it is, they’re going to come to you. And you now have that free publicity right there. So that’s something else as well.

Nicholas Werker: Yeah. And I’ve seen a lot of people on the chat talking about how they’re criminal defense attorneys and it’s slow. And this is something that you can do that Andy mentioned before. Tell people what their rights are if there is a lockdown, if there is a shutdown, if you have been laid off. And if you can be fortunate enough to get into the media and kind of deal with these things, you become, again, an expert. You become the guy that they want to go to. But I’m always surprised, when I deal with reporters and stuff like that, that they actually want to hear from me. I always assume that they’re busy and they have big stories to cover, but they’re looking and they’re interested to hear from you. So if you reach out to a reporter, they’re not going to tell you, “No. What you have is dumb.” They’re going to appreciate your feedback, and they’re probably going to feature you in at least a story.

Andy Stickel: Absolutely. You’ve got to remember anytime you can be valuable to anyone, it’s going to be in your favor. And reporters are human. I mean, they’ve got deadlines. Half the time, they’re going for clicks, right? So they’re always trying to figure out, “Okay. What else can I talk about? What else can I talk about?” And a lot of times, they don’t know. So if you can give them valuable stories.The thing is,  you should give him the best you have got. The best way to do this is to do as much work for them as possible. So rather than just saying, “Hey, it’ll be really cool if you do a story on this,” you should actually take the time, film a video, record the video. And actually, if you do a two-minute video, you can even send it to them on Twitter. Because Twitter is actually where most of the reporters hang out. So what you want to do is you want to go to Google and search for ABC wherever you’re located. So I’m in Tampa so it would be like ABC Tampa Local Reporters and then NBC Tampa Local Reporters. And just go through that for the newspaper and everyone and then just kind of start looking at which types of articles and what types of pieces they’ve put out. And then ones that have done things that are kind of similar, even somewhat similar to anything that you could talk about, start sending them story ideas. And do a lot of the work for you. And don’t just say, “Hey, you could talk about this,” but tell them why they can talk about this and how many people it impacts and what… Do a lot of the work for them. Because you’ve got to remember people will follow the path of least resistance. If you give them a story that’s pretty much ready to go, they’re going to use it because it’s less work. It’s just human nature.

Nicholas Werker: Yeah. Actually, Chase Musser posted a great tip. Twitter is a great place to find journalists. What you can do is you can go to your local media and just see who is writing the articles about what you’re trying to get into, and then try to find them on Twitter or you can find them on the website or just Google their name. I have a good example. I have a scholarship that we do every year with my company and we try to get it in local media and papers and stuff like that just for the buzz and to get more applicants so that we can help more people. So we reached out to this local Rhode Island newspaper. And my colleague Joe, he was a journalist major at Stony Brook years back. So he says the same thing. They don’t want to do any of the work. You do all the work for them and they decide whether or not they want to use that information. So we wrote up this whole human interest piece on this guy that we gave the scholarship to. We didn’t even really mention ourselves. And the scholarship ended up getting featured in the newspaper. And all the person wrote back to me was, “Oh, can I have his contact information? I want to call him, ask him about his childhood, his upbringing. And he just needs to sign this release form for us to use his picture in the paper.” And it went up a week later. So it’s really easy. They’re really easygoing. Everything Andy said, it’s true. Make them do less work than you think they want to do and just provide them with all the information. Because ultimately, you want your information to be featured in the piece and you to be the expert. So definitely, I vouch for that.

Andy Stickel: And what’s cool is they’ll keep coming back to you over and over and over again because they know that if they come back to you, if they go to you, you’re going to give them really good content. So it just works really, really well. We had a client last… Let’s see. Today’s Monday. So not last Friday but the Friday before that, she started doing this. She’s a personal injury attorney down in Miami. And she started tagging the local radio DJs. I’m not sure exactly what she was doing. But she was definitely doing something where she was providing them with a lot of information. She’s a personal injury attorney. She ended up… Now, she’s on their… They bring her on once a week. And she’s not paid for it. But she’s basically just giving them such good information that they brought her on last week. I think they’re having her on again this week. And it’s really blown up for her. And she’s gotten really good results out of it.

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