Creating Relevant Content for SEO
You often hear that in order to be found online, you need to have good SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And in order to have good SEO, you have to have a lot of relevant content for your website. Well, how do you produce relevant content?
Answer Questions
A great way to start posting relevant blog posts is to answer everyday questions that your client asks you. Things that you now reflexively answer that seem so trivial to you are probably questions that your future clients have as well. If you answer them once for your own client, put it in writing and answer them for future clients.
Provide Added Value
I’ve seen a lot of companies offer lawyers “custom” website and “custom” phone apps. What I end up seeing is cookie-cutter websites and cookie-cutter apps that does nothing more than connect your client with a push-to-call button and a map. Apps and websites like that doesn’t provide any added value to your clients and doesn’t distinguish you from the rest of your competition.
For example, I have a divorce practice so I created a divorce calculator that allows litigants to quickly calculate alimony and child support. They can do it via my website or they can download an app to do it either on their iPhones or Android devices. This is useful because the courts do not provide a way for people to do this on their phones and in the courthouse. The courts only provide a downloadable PDF which is not useful if you don’t have your computer with you or have internet access when you’re in court. This is an added value because I’m providing something that is not available before.
If you’re able to do those two things – answer every day questions and provide some added value to your customers, you are well on your way to being found and being hired for your expertise.
The Power of Words
This video illustrates not only how the words we choose to use affects marketing, but it affects the way people perceive us. Choose your words wisely when it comes to marketing. Choose your words wisely when it comes to drafting documents, talking to clients or other attorneys. Attorneys are wordsmiths. Choose your words wisely.
Are Solo Attorneys Schizophrenic?
We must be. How else can you explain perfectly rational, intelligent individuals constantly referring to themselves in the third person and plural on their websites. You’ve seen the websites – “Attorney John Doe graduated from the University of East Dakota Law School. Attorney Doe, who started his practice in 2007, now limits his law practice solely to Estate Planning. Attorney Doe welcomes your inquiry, and offers a free 30 min. consultation.” Or similarly, “We welcome your inquiry and offer a free 30 min. consultation.”
Can you imagine if everyone went through life like this? How strange would it be to have a conversation like the following:
Waiter: Can I take your order sir?
Attorney Doe: Yes, Attorney Doe would like to have a salad and a bowl of soup.
Waiter: Will Attorney Doe be joining you soon?
Attorney Doe: I am Attorney Doe!
Waiter: I apologize. Is there anything else that Attorney Doe would like?
Attorney Doe: Yes, we will also have a Diet Coke.
I raise this point jokingly, but it is a legitimate issue that most solo attorneys grapple with as they design their websites. When I first started to practice, I designed my website to be in the third person and plural. Why? I’m not quite sure, other than I saw other attorneys doing it. The more I added to the website or changed it, though, the more uncomfortable I felt referring to myself in the third person or plural.
After much struggling with the approach of the web site, I finally decided to change it to be first person and singular. I started to realize that one way or the other, the client is going to find out that I am a solo practitioner. Why try to hide it? I decided that my best approach was to take advantage of being in practice on my own. Let the potential clients find out as soon as possible that I’m a solo attorney, that I understand their area of the law, that I’m easy to communicate with, and that they will be dealing one-to-one directly with me.
I will close by saying that there is no right or wrong with this issue. I have taken both approaches, and have decided that I feel more comfortable talking about myself and my practice in the first person and singular. That is just Attorney Baron’s opinion, though. He welcomes your comments. You can find out more about Attorney Baron by visiting his web site at: http://www.lawbaron.com. 🙂
The Will to Act
“The training is nothing. Will is everything. The will to act.”
I had the honor last week of presenting with some great speakers and marketing gurus for attorneys in the country. It was sponsored by the Massachusetts Bar Association and LOMAP and is available for free On-Demand if you are a MBA member.
My talk was towards the end of the program, where many a wiser speakers in marketing already came before me and spoke. They talked about social media, referral marketing, SEO and the like. I didn’t feel the need to repeat what they said but I did spend about 5 minutes telling the room everything that I do marketing my firm.
Why give away all my secrets?
Well, it’s because it’s not really a secret. Knowledge is no longer as powerful as it once was before the age of the Internet and Google. Almost everything that you need to know about the topics that the speakers were there to talk about, you can find more information about online. It is not a secret.
So why were they there? More importantly, why isn’t every lawyer marketing to their fullest potential and why are there lawyers in practice still struggling after many years? It’s simple – The will to act.
The ideas for marketing yourself and your law firm are surprisingly simple. The execution is hard work. It is not that we don’t know what to do, or at least where to find out the ideas. We drop the ball because we’re either too lazy to do the hard work or we’re too discouraged.
Laziness is easy to cure. You just need to get off your butt and do it. Being too discouraged is a bit harder to remedy. How do you tell yourself to do better; motivate yourself; inspire yourself?
The problem often is in your attitude. If you pay attention to people who fail, it usually starts with their attitude, which leads to their thoughts and words, which leads to their action (or inaction). Those who fail can usually find any excuse to fail. Once you believe you will fail, it is not hard to make it happen. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if you believe that you can succeed, you are no longer wasting your time thinking about excuses for why you cannot, but instead open your mind to the possibility of how you can.
So the next time you start to catch yourself thinking or saying “I can’t because…”, instead think or ask yourself, “How can I…?”
Monitoring Your Online Reputation
As a lawyer, your reputation in the community among your peer and clients is everything. If you’re a great lawyer, fellow attorneys and old clients will refer you business because they know of your good work. If you’re a lawyer that cheats people out of money – sure you could probably pull it off for a little while, but sooner than later, it will catch up with you and people will know that you have a reputation as a bad attorney.
It is because our reputation is tantamount to our success, that we need to be cognizant of what that reputation is. What does the community think about us? What does our client think about us? Due to the internet, it is commonplace for clients to rate services from restaurants to plumbers to lawyers. They have a myriad of places they can do this – either to say how great you are or how much you suck. They have services like Yelp, Avvo and Google Places, just to name a few.
The best way to monitor what people are saying about you online, is to simply set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a feature that does a continuous search of the internet to find key terms that you tell it to look for and either places it in your RSS Reader or emails you when it finds something new. Here’s how to set it up:
First, go to google/alerts and you’ll find this
Enter in the search terms you want to search for and create an alert either by email or RSS feed. Repeat this process for multiple search terms. This is what my Google Alert looks like. Notice that I do a search for my name, law firm name and all of my website just in case someone links to any one of my sites, I know instantly.
What it means to be a Weapon of Mass Connection
I’ve talked about the right way to network in the past. But that is simply a ‘means’ – what is the ‘ends’?
The ultimate goal is to make yourself into a “Weapon of Mass Connection” (WMC). You want to make yourself the hub, the center, of a group of people where you are the thing that connects them. You want to be the go-to person when making connections or getting referrals. You want to do this because 1. you want to help people 2. you want to make money for other people; and in return, the unintended consequences is that 3. you’ll be on the top of people’s mind all the time and 4. they will send you business.
To actually make yourself into a WMC take a lot of work and a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to build relationships with people – not just superficial relationships, but real ones. You want to be able to refer a plumber to a friend just as easily as you would refer a criminal attorney to your client. Your web of connections has to be vast and wide. You’re an attorney, but don’t limit yourself to knowing just attorneys. Your connections should be from all walks of life because you are dealing with clients and colleagues that have issues from all walks of life – not just legal problems. If you can establish yourself to be the go-to guy for good referrals, then you will have achieved being a Weapon of Mass Connection.
What type of marketing should you do?
I presented at the first annual GP/SOLO Symposium today at the Mass Bar Association and I got to hear a lot of speakers talk about building a law practice. There was a lot of talk of using technology in building your business with tools such as social media marketing, time management programs, and using dual monitors. There was also a lot of talk about traditional methods of building a business such as referral networking (my topic), building your reputation in the community, and just generally being a nice person (not just a lawyer).
It still surprises me that there are so many different ways to build a successful practice. Those folks telling you that you must blog or you must use social media and optimize your website obviously have no clue that there are many lawyers not doing that yet they’re still making a living. Personally I think you have to do a mixture of these traditional methods and the new ways. There’s always a danger that when you rely heavily on a certain medium, that if that medium is made obsolete or becomes less relevant, you’ll lose your base. It’s good to use facebook and LinkedIn and twitter to market your brand, but if that’s all you’re doing, then you have to ask yourself, what if LinkedIn and facebook and twitter goes the way of Friendster and Myspace? Then what? What will be left to drive your marketing?
As with good financial investing, diversification is also key to good marketing.
What came first – the general practice or the niche?
There are lots of people, resources, blogs and law practice management gurus who will tell you that in order to have a successful law firm, you must have a niche. I agree with that assertion and it took me my first year in practice to understand that. However the truth of the matter is that many new solos cannot afford to NOT take every case that walks into their door. Another truth is that no matter how many times they’re told that they should specialize, it’s one of those things in life that can only be learned through experience and time.
I was asked out to lunch by a solo practitioner today and while we were talking, he said something that made me think of writing this post. I was talking about how he must have a niche practice. He commented that first he must have a general practice and take whatever comes in through the door and then, once he made enough money, he can market to a nice practice area.
So the question is, what comes first – the general practice or the niche? What should come first?
In my opinion, you should form a niche practice from the start but you can also feel free to operate a general practice. In other words, tell people through networking and marketing that you’re a <insert type of law> attorney but in practice, take other cases. Don’t operate a general practice with no thought of finding a niche until you’re more successful because you’ll never get there. Remember, no one looks for a general practitioner. People look for attorneys that specialize.
Years down the line when you’re looking to expand your solo practice like I’m doing right now, remember that the same niche ideology holds true. While I’m taking on additional associates to do other areas of law such as immigration and bankruptcy, I will always be a divorce attorney. The distinction is that I’m expanding my firm without diluting my expertise.
So you’re hanging a shingle – now what? (PODCAST)
I had the pleasure of talking with Attorney Kyle Guelcher on his new podcast show on the Legal Talk Network. His new show is called New Solo and he’s going to be interviewing guests that will be able to speak about being a new solo or giving advice to new solos and how to practice law.
http://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/new-solo/2011/01/new-lawyer-new-solo/
Using Facebook Email for Business
DON’T DO IT!
Using the new facebook email address makes as much sense as using an aol, yahoo or gmail address for business. But then again, I know plenty of lawyers and professionals who do. And guess what? I do lose a bit of respect for them. You might be saving $10 or $20 a month by not getting a @yourbusinss.com email address, but you will end up losing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of business and credibility by not doing it.
And since I’m on the subject, the same goes for free business cards from places such as Vistaprint. Nothing says “newbie” or “I don’t care about quality” more than a vistaprint logo on the back of your free business card.