Thanksgiving begins the strange time of year when most lawyers don’t have much new business to handle. People are more concerned with their holiday shopping than with their legal issues, so the pipeline dries up a bit. You can rattle around in your office surfing the Internet all day or you can take some action to make sure your legal marketing efforts continue to roll on once people come back to reality when the ball drops on January 1.

Here are 10 of my legal marketing tips for slow times:

1. Review your business card: Your business card is for many people the first impression they have of you. When you hand it out, the recipient often puts it into a pocket or wallet and forgets about it until later. Does your card show your field of practice? Your direct dial phone number? Your website address and email account? If not, get cracking on an update.
2. Update your website: When you’re busy, your home on the web goes stale. Check the bio section to make sure everything is fresh and up-to-date. If you’ve spoken at an event, had a decision published, or done something interesting then you need to make sure it’s online. One more thing – if your picture wasn’t taken in this decade then it’s probably a good idea to replace it with something more current.
3. Look at title and description tags: The title and description tags for your web pages are critical to your search engine optimization success. Take a look at them and make sure they’re optimized with your keywords and other critical information to create not only better placement in the search engines, but also to spur searchers to click on your listing rather than someone else’s.
4. Install Analytics: Google Analytics is simply the best way to track your website or blog traffic. It provides a mess of tools and data to help you keep your site on top of the search engines.
5. Prepare Client Satisfaction Surveys: Whether you survey your clients online or by snail mail, getting feedback is critical to improving your processes. You’ll never know how to do a better job for your clients than asking them. Caution: send them out after Christmas or they’ll get lost in the shuffle of holiday cards.
6. Brainstorm blog post topics: One of the reasons you don’t blog is because you don’t have time to think of stuff to write. Well, now you’ve got time. No excuses!
7. Call a colleague for coffee: Making a human connection is the cornerstone of getting referrals. Go out and meet a colleague for an hour – not to talk shop, but just to talk. It’s the original social networking platform!
8. Hop onto Twitter and start playing around: 140 characters never seemed so intimidating. But the good news is that you can’t break the Internet. Sign up, log on and poke around a bit. Listen and learn, then dip a toe in the water.
9. Clean your office: That mess in your office isn’t going to get any prettier when the new clients come flooding back in January. Clean up – it makes a better impression on people who are deciding whether you’re organized enough to be trusted with their legal issues.
10. Relax: This lull in business isn’t going to last for long.  You’ll need all your energy if you’re going to do good work for people when they show up asking for your help.

Photo courtesy of sfllaw.

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