I’m about to do just that. Just over two years ago, we started Shorts on Long Term Care as a service to the North Carolina long term care industry (and yes, as a marketing tool too). It was so popular (with a readership of more than 1,200 now, including providers, regulators and consultants) that we decided to start a second newsletter to promote our growing hospice expertise. We called that one Hospice Endnotes, a name we chose from a contest at one of our training sessions. We also started a quarterly newsletter for North Carolina hospitals, called Corridors.

In early April, our trio of healthcare newsletters was awarded first place in the Promotional or Collateral category by the Legal Marketing Association during its "Your Honor Awards" ceremony in Washington, D.C. The "Your Honor Awards" are the "Oscars" of the legal marketing world. Historically, these awards go to large national or international law firms with 500+ attorneys (and much bigger marketing budgets), so as the event emcee dubbed us, we were the "Slum Dog Millionaire" of the competition.

Our firm also took top honors in the Media Relations category for our media campaign about the firm’s move to downtown Raleigh in October 2008, and second place and an honorable mention in two other categories. Our fabulous Client Services Department makes all this possible with the layout, design, editing and publication of our many firm publications.

But you, clients, friends and readers, also made this possible. Without you, we wouldn’t be publishing the newsletters and we wouldn’t have that gorgeous hunk of crystal (the award) sitting right outside my office to keep us going on weekends and at nights when we write Shorts, Endnotes and Corridors. So, thank you, and keep those story ideas coming. ~ Ken