Partners in the largest law firms may have dedicated public relations staff who can take on the work of developing podcast guesting strategies to build on their existing reputation while further increasing name recognition and law firm visibility. For everyone else, appearing as the expert guest on a podcast whose content has a clear connection to your area of law can be a highly effective tool for accomplishing the same goals, but you will likely need to do much of the work of vetting podcasts and pitching ideas for a guest spot yourself. You will obviously want to maximize your returns on those “non-billable” hours, so it pays to take some time upfront to consider what goes into an effective strategy for leveraging podcast guesting to grow your law firm.
How To Pick a Podcast
Every now and then, an attorney may be lucky enough to find that a podcaster is seeking them out because the podcaster (or their programming/production team) already recognizes the lawyer’s expertise and has a specific legal topic in mind for presentation to the podcast audience. This scenario may sometimes unfold when a podcast is developing an episode or series on a subject with which a specific attorney or law firm has substantial experience.
In most cases, however, the decision to try podcasting as a tool for increasing awareness of your law firm will likely come first, and it will be up to you to take the first steps toward making your podcast debut a reality. In that instance, you will need to start by choosing a podcast to which you can pitch effectively, based on the “fit” between your legal expertise and the podcast’s themes and target audience. Each situation will be unique, but there are a few general factors most aspiring podcast guests may find helpful to consider.
What To Look For: Audience
For many people, their first instinct in identifying a podcast where they might like to make a guest appearance is to look for a program they themselves listen to and appreciate. It’s natural to “start with what you know,” but unless the people you would most like to reach are very much like yourself, pitching to a podcast that you personally listen to may not make sense.
Ask yourself whether your priority is to reach other lawyers vs. to put your name and expertise in front of people who might be interested in hiring your law firm. Both goals are valid, but they imply different audiences and therefore different approaches to podcast selection. If you really want to reach other attorneys to cement your professional reputation, then a podcast aimed at unpacking important questions and challenges confronting the legal profession may be worth sending a pitch. If you primarily hope to educate people in the groups from which your own clients typically come, then you may need to do some brainstorming to identify content areas (and therefore podcasts) that enjoy popularity among the represented groups.
You may also want to consider whether there are groups (defined by age, by interest, by location, and so on) that seem like an ideal fit for your law firm’s services, but from which you get fewer clients than you think you should, or than you would like. Identifying a podcast whose audience has substantial overlap with your base of prospective clients can be a highly effective strategy for creating targeted awareness with the people who can “move the needle” in terms of your law firm growth.
What To Look For: Topical Coverage
There is really no point in developing a pitch to send to a podcast’s programming staff because the podcast’s audience has a strong overlap with your prospective client base if the podcast itself does not consistently handle topics you can speak to with authority. In some instances, you may have the task of explaining, in your pitch, a legal question that connects to a recent or (even better) recurring theme for the podcast.
For example, if you work in an estate planning firm, then the nuances of tax planning or the specific details of state law concerning homestead property might be useful to the audiences of a financial management podcast. If you run a small family law practice, then the issues people commonly overlook in drafting their parenting agreements may be of interest to the listeners of a podcast on parenting more generally. Make sure you can clearly articulate how the knowledge you offer addresses a need or interest of the podcast’s audience, and aim to draw explicit connections between your subject matter expertise and the podcast’s typical programming.
What To Look For: Tone and Other Guests
“You will be known by the company you keep,” as the saying goes. This is not an argument for snobbery but be sure that the podcast host is someone whose professionalism you trust, and that the program’s (other) guests are typically people you feel comfortable being associated with. Depending on the type of law you practice and the way you prefer to position your firm, you may not want to appear back-to-back with guests known for their extreme “hot takes,” or in a context where the overall discourse suggests a lax commitment to ethics. As a related consideration, reviewing recent episodes to get a sense of the professions and perspectives represented by the selection of guests can also help to clarify whether a specific podcast is truly a good bet for your pitch.
What To Look For: Format and Frequency
Listening to a few past guests can give you a feel for the overall format of the podcast, as well as who appears in it. Take the time to listen to a few complete episodes of any podcast you have identified as a good potential fit. Pay attention to pacing: How long does the host generally allow for a guest to develop their thoughts on a question before moving on to the next topic? How frequent are the other topic changes? How long is each episode when aired? Are multiple guests interviewed in each, or do episodes commonly feature several short conversations?
Very importantly, you will also want to confirm how often and how regularly new episodes are released. Check any download or view numbers, if you can; a larger audience for the podcast obviously means a larger potential platform for your expertise, but well-established, already-popular podcasts with large followings may also be more challenging to pitch successfully. Aim for a balance between visibility and your chance to craft a pitch that stands out among those received by the programming team.
Post-Pitch Protocol
If you receive an instant yes, great! You can coordinate with the podcast host (or their program development staff, depending on the size of their operation) to find a date and make sure your talking points are prepared to address the core concerns of the podcast audience. If you receive an immediate rejection, don[t let it discourage you; take the moment as an opportunity to review your pitch and look for ways to further refine your technique so that you can try again, with a different program. If a few days go by and you have received no response at all, there are a few “next steps” you can consider taking to secure your best chance at a podcast guesting spot.
You will probably want to plan to send more than one follow-up message. Similar to the email sequence you might send to a “warm” lead (but with different content), these messages can be staggered over a few weeks. Aim for a “soft” check-in to touch base (and put your name in the podcast host’s inbox again) about three to four days after your initial pitch. If more time passes and you still have not heard back, write a follow-up email reiterating the main points of your pitch and underscoring why you are eager to work with this podcast and how you think you can serve their audience. Aim to send this message somewhere between 10 to 15 days after your previous check-in. If this second message also gets no response, then let this particular podcast go (for now!) and look for an alternative program with which you think you might be a good fit.
Once You Land a Guesting Spot
Of course, getting a slot to appear on a podcast is only the beginning. You will also need to prepare comprehensively for the interview itself. While preparing for depositions has undoubtedly given you plenty of experience in anticipating as well as formulating tough questions, the informational and attentional demands of a podcast interview are quite different. Even if you and the podcast host review potential “leading” questions you plan to work from as the conversation develops naturally, on a podcast that accepts calls from listeners the potential range of questions may be less predictable than you would expect to find in a more controlled setting.
If you are appearing on the podcast because you submitted a pitch that was accepted, then the points you raised in that pitch will obviously be your first consideration. If you are fortunate enough to appear on a podcast by invitation, then the host and/or programming team will likely have specific topics they know they want to cover while you are on the show. Either way, you can put yourself in position to deliver a strong performance by asking the podcast’s programmers tailored questions about their listeners, based on the topics you expect to come up.
Take the time to find out if there are any particular points of law or procedural matters about which the individuals behind the podcast already know the audience consistently has questions about, and spend some time reviewing the details of case law and any technicalities that you often see tripping up lay people or your colleagues (depending on the podcast). You may also want to consider taking the time to prepare some hypothetical or anonymized examples that you can pull from as needed, so that you do not find yourself trying to avoid potentially compromising client confidentiality as you illustrate complex concepts and processes on the fly.
A Word on Podcast Guesting and Professional Ethics: The Advantages of Educational Content for Attorney Advertising
For many individuals working in the legal profession, one of the most compelling reasons for developing effective podcast guesting strategies is that attorneys tend to be somewhat limited in the techniques they can use for soliciting new clients. Obviously, law firms can and do run marketing campaigns of various kinds, but many of the more aggressive options for reaching out to potential clients that might apply in some other industries are off-limits to those engaged in the practice of law.
With podcast guest spots, you have the opportunity to enhance your law firm’s name recognition and foster associations between your name and genuine value, which in most cases will come in the form of helpful answers to questions members of the podcast’s audience actually have, and offering insights into perspectives they may never have considered. By contrast to the norms you may see with some other creative marketing models, in a podcast guesting strategy education, not self-promotion, is the name of the game. During your guest spot, keep the focus on providing thorough, helpful answers to the questions the podcast host raises or those that are called in by listeners. Approach your explanations as if you were teaching a class or helping a client understand crucial procedures. Demonstrate the expertise that makes you someone clients would want to work with and someone to whom colleagues might feel comfortable sending referrals, and leave it to the podcast host to underscore the source of the valuable information you have shared.
Annette Choti, Esq. is the founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency that helps growth-minded law firms increase their online visibility and convert more clients. She is also the author of “Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide for Law Firms” and Click Magnet Academy. Annette used to do professional comedy, which is not so far from the law if we are all being honest.
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