Legal Practice Pro» Legal Marketing

Does Your Press Release Do Your Law Firm More Harm Than Good?

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:41:15 +0000

Press releases can be useful for lawyers, even in this digital day and age. It’s a good way to get out the word about some newsworthy event like a major victory or new initiative, though cultivating relationships with the press before you have a potential story is far more likely to bear fruit. Still, sometimes the old ways are good enough.

Lots of lawyers are using online press releases as a means of attracting valuable inbound links and attention, thereby raising their SEO profiles. Nothing wrong with that, either.

The disturbing trend I’ve been seeing, however, is the dissemination of online press releases for evens that are far from newsworthy. It’s the online equivalent of broadcasting your child’s first successful use of the potty.

Actually, it’s worse than that because the potty trip is exciting for at least the parents and grandparents.

Consider, for example, the free consultation in bankruptcy. In many areas, the lawyer doesn’t charge for their first visit with a potential client to talk about bankruptcy. It’s a non-issue no matter how you slice it.

In spite of that fact, some lawyer in Los Angeles has taken it upon himself to pump out a press release claiming, “Los Angeles Bankruptcy Lawyer, Hamid Soleimanian, Offers Free Consultation for Personal Bankruptcy Cases.”

To channel the Church Lady, “Well, isn’t that special?”

Think that’s one-in-a-million? Guess again, my friend.

Another bankruptcy lawyer – this one in Tahoe, California – has put out a release stating, “Reputed Bankruptcy Attorney is Now Serving the Tahoe Area, California.” I’d let this one slide if it weren’t so painfully obvious that it was crafted solely for the perceived SEO benefits. Take this section of the, “release,” worded so badly as to make the reader doubt whether these lawyers can properly speak and write the English language:

“We help our Tahoe bankruptcy clients get out of debt and go on with their lives. Being in bankruptcy practice for more than 13 years, we have filed and handled thousands of cases and have helped them to save millions of dollars”, says the spokesperson of Bk-help.com, when commenting about their services.

Free consultation is offered by the law firm for Tahoe area residents who finds them in difficult financial situations. “We deliver a Tahoe bankruptcy attorney representation that is second to none with our focus on providing courtesy and excellence to all our bankruptcy clients”, the spokesperson adds further.

There are more, but I thought it best not to belabor the point.

A press release can be a useful tool, or it can make you look like you’re blatantly gaming the search engines with useless crap to clog up the pipeline. I’m willing to make a bet that after a few releases like the ones above, the law firms will never get a second glance – even in the event that these folks have something newsworthy to report.

The ones I’ve highlighted here do nothing of value to the world. They’re outright manipulations of the system, making the lawyers look bad. The first one screams, “Hey, I’m just like everyone else in town!” and the second proclaims, “We can barely string together a coherent sentence!”

That’s a shame, too; these may well be excellent attorneys who have much to offer their communities. They may be competent, caring and worthy choices for people looking to solve a particular legal problem. Their offices may be staffed with intelligent people who genuinely care about delivering the highest level of client service. None of that is remotely evident in these releases, though.

So next time you decide to promote your firm using a press release, consider whether it’s actually news or just a thinly-veiled attempt to get some SEO juice. If it’s the former then good for you. But if not then maybe not so much.

Image credit: BenSpark

A Sure-Fire, 100% Premonition For Legal Marketing In 2012

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:00:41 +0000

As December winds to a close, we’re bombarded with predictions for the upcoming year. Everyone wants to sound off about what’s going to happen next year. Blogging will be hot, Twitter will be super-hot, Google+ will be on fire, Foursquare will explode, and somehow Yellow Pages advertising will make a comeback.

The reality is that nobody can reliably predict what’s going to happen.

Case in point (and stay with me to the end, please).

There’s a musical group called Girls’ Generation, and they’re one of a growing number of South Korean pop bands hitting the U.S. and the rest of the world by storm. I’ve been listening to their music for the past year, and I’m betting you think I’m the only one who’s heard of them.

Not so. On October 23, 2011 SMTown, a South Korean entertainment company, sold out Madison Square Garden with their SMTown Live ’10 World Tour. Fluke? The L.A. stop on the tour, held at The Staples Center, was a sell-out as well.

Girls’ Generation’s YouTube video for Gee, a disposable enough tune that sticks in your head and makes you want to dance around the living room like a maniac, has been watched 60 million times. You click the insights bar next to the number of views and you’ll see that it’s been watched as much in the U.S. as in Asia.

Never saw THAT coming, did you?

Here’s the video. I don’t understand Korean, but suspect the lyrics aren’t all that deep.

My point, and I do have one (aside from getting you to watch the video and have the hook stick in your skull), is that our predictions are informed solely by our existing worldview.

We walk around with blinders, thinking that everyone in the world is just like us. I drink Coke Zero, so I assume you want one if you come to visit my house. You’ve been advertising in the Yellow Pages ever since you opened up shop 20 years ago, so you can’t wrap your head around the possibility that people in your area are getting their answers by asking friends on Facebook or interacting with lawyers on Twitter.

We can’t predict. Doesn’t matter what infographics you look at, or who you listen to. It’s an educated guess at best.

So here’s my premonition – not a prediction, but a lock-solid guarantee – of what’s going to happen in 2012.

2012 will continue the evolution we’ve seen for the past decade or more, as communication channels open up and consumers of legal services demand more of their service providers.

You never know what will be the next big thing. All you can do is keep watching the trends, learning every new skill you can pick up and soaking it all in.

Get cracking, folks. To channel Margo Channing, fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy year!

Got your own predictions for 2012?

Image credit: PiYe -

The Democratization Of Publishing And What It Means For Lawyers

Jay Fleischman — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:52:29 +0000

When I was in high school I wrote short fiction and dreamed of the day I’d be a published author like Heinlein, Ellison or Sturgeon. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get anyone in the industry to give it a second look. Good thing, too – it was atrocious.

If I were doing it all again, things would be different. The walls have come down. What this means for lawyers – for anyone, in fact – is monumental.

GalleyCat recently published Amazon’s Bestselling Books Of 2011. There’s some Grisham, Tiny Fey’s book, and the Steve Jobs biography. All good choices, none surprising.

But look more closely at the list and you’ll see something notable: two books, The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan and The Abbey by Chris Culver, made the list based solely on Kindle sales and were independently published using Kindle Direct Publishing. Chan beat out Grisham, coming in at #4. Culver got in the door at #9.

Two books brought to light without a publishing house, and sold on Kindle only.

A published book means instant credibility in your field and a level of authority beyond all others. It’s the gold standard, pure and simple.

Up until now, that credibility could not be garnered alone. Publicists, agents, promoters, publishing houses with millions of dollars in budgets just to get you out the door and into the hands of readers.

Now, 20% of the top books sold by arguably the largest retailer of reading material are produced without any of those levels.

Think about that for a minute.

The spread of information was once reserved for a chosen few, those with connections who could find an agent and a publishing deal. Now it’s in the hands of each and every one of us. Self-publishing existed, but the means of distribution were clunky at best. You could get 1,000 books printed and bound, but they’d sit in your garage unless you pounded the pavement.

Now Amazon and the other online book retailers provide you with that means of distribution. All you need to do is work your online and offline contacts to promote your work. It’s not like snapping your fingers, but the power is incredible.

Think you need the approval of a publishing house to put out a book that your prospective clients would find helpful and that would make you THE authority figure in your field? Not so much.

All you need to do is grab a keyboard and start typing. Save it to PDF, convert it to ePub or Kindle format and go through the simple steps of getting it onto Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s website, and iBooks. You’re now a published author.

What if you did a series of blog posts, packaged them into a Kindle book, and sold it online?

How about taking that client introduction packet you hand out and turning into a roadmap for people looking to hire a lawyer in your field?

What sort of authority would that build?

There’s no overhead, no inventory, and nothing holding you back.

What do you have to say?

The Long Tail Of Search Engine Optimization – RIP

Jay Fleischman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:04:08 +0000

Google uses Instant Search, social signals and freshness to rank websites. Panda kills the content farms and low-quality sites. Is the long tail dead? This infographic seems to think so.

Infographic by SEO Book

9 Reasons Google Analytics Is Critical To Marketing Your Law Firm Online

Jay Fleischman — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:00:56 +0000

John Wanamaker is famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Too bad he didn’t have Google Analytics.

The successful retailer may not have actually said it, but the sentiment was certainly true in the pre-Internet era. Nowadays we have Google Analytics to close the knowledge gap to strengthen your law firm marketing results.

Google Analytics is a free product that helps you track how many people visit your website, where the came from, what they did while on your site, and what they found compelling (or not so much). By digging into some of the elements of the application, you can unearth a treasure trove of information to make your marketing efforts more effective for your law firm.

What Information Can You Get From Google Analytics?

How many people are coming to my site? When you log into the service you’ll be able to see not only how many visitors you’ve had, but how many of them are new visits to your site. You can choose whatever timeframe you’d like, making it easy to see how things are going long-term.

Where are my visitors coming from? If you’re looking to market your Idaho bankruptcy law firm online, learning that 90% of your traffic is coming from Arizona means something’s wrong with your content or promotional efforts. It could also explain why your law firm keeps getting phone calls from people who live thousands of miles away.

How many visitors are taking action? You may look at your website visitor logs and see 10 people a day. Maybe you see 500 people a day. Without knowing how many of those people take the step to set up a consultation and hire your law firm, there’s no way of knowing whether the website is an effective marketing vehicle. If 90% of those visitors hires you, that’s pretty good. Conversion is far more important than raw data, and Google Analytics gives it to you.

Which pages of my site are causing action or, in the alternative, repelling people? For most lawyers, your home page is the primary point of entry for your website. If you’ve got a high bounce rate from that page, there’s something amiss. Knowing that means you can focus on fixing a few things rather than blowing up your entire site.

What sources of traffic are the most important to my online marketing success? Let’s say you get 30% of your traffic from Twitter and 70% from Google. Your Google traffic has a high bounce rate overall, but the Twitter visitors are far more likely to send your content to their networks on various social networks. Those visitors, in turn, are those who are most likely to hire you. In terms of law firm marketing tactics, it starts to make sense to put more of your energy into Twitter as opposed to SEO for Google.

Which search terms are driving the best traffic? You’re marketing your bankruptcy practice, but the most highly-trafficked page on your website deals with immigration issues. Perhaps that means your audience is comprised of people who aren’t from the United States, as well as those who live and work with them. What other sorts of issues would those people be interested in learning about? Give your best visitors more of what they want to convert more of them into paying clients.

Which pages of my website need some help in the SEO department? You really want to get more Chapter 13 clients who have mortgage issues, but the pages of your website that speak to those problems are the ones that aren’t getting many visitors. It’s time to boost some of your search engine optimization work on those areas of the site.

How is my traffic growing or declining over time? The market is slowing, but your website traffic has been growing by 5% each month. Given the fact that most bankruptcy clients spend a month or two doing research before coming into a lawyer, chances are good that your coffers will remain well-stocked for some time to come (assuming you can convert those visitors to clients).

How important is mobile traffic to me? Google Analytics can tell you what platforms your visitors are using when they come to your site. Not only do I know how many of my visitors are on a Mac as opposed to a Windows machine, I also know which ones are on Android devices versus iOS or BlackBerry devices. I know which pages are most frequently loaded from mobile devices. Once I have this information, I can consider ways to make my website more effective on mobile devices. That, in turn, will drive more conversions.

Your Law Firm Marketing Efforts Hinge On The Data

This only scratches the surface of Google Analytics and how it can help your law firm marketing efforts. At the same time, these points are some of the most powerful takeaways from using this application. You’ve also got the ability to define goals, do some neat real-time visitor tracking, and drill down in a bunch of different ways.

Remember, without data – and understanding how it works on your site – there’s very little opportunity for honing your law firm marketing tactics. Assuming you own and control your online presence, given the right information you’ll be in a good position to make quick changes. That’s what helps conquer the market.

What sort of information do you get from Google Analytics? And what other nuggets would be helpful for your law firm marketing efforts?

Image credit: Dunechaser

Stop Renting Your Website

Jay Fleischman — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:00:27 +0000

When you’re on vacation and need to get around easily, you rent a car. When you’re back at home, you buy one. It makes no sense to rent a car for the long run. Why, then, do you rent a web presence for your law firm?

You want your law firm to stand out, and you want a professional job done. You want it to be as easy and hassle-free as possible. So you call one of the big companies that offers you a deal – for only $1,200 a month they’ll design the site, write the content for the site, and host it.

The site goes up, and it’s lovely. Some of the words aren’t quite what you would have chosen, but the web people say it’s good for your rankings. They want you at the top of the search engines, or so they say.

I’m sure they’re not saying the exact same thing to your competition down the block. No, they’d never do something like that.

A few months later you read about something in the news that could really benefit your clients. You dash off a quick email to the web people, and they tell you it will take a few weeks to get the page ready for you. Of course, by the time the page is ready the news is long past.

You have no idea if people are visiting your site, though the web company swears you’ve got access to their super-duper site tracking package. Maybe you get lucky and can log in once or twice, but it’s like reading a foreign language. Even if you get past the raw numbers, you have no idea what people are typing in to the search engines to get to you in the first place.

Maybe you fall behind in the payments and find your site has been taken down by the company for non-payment. Or you find out that when the contract ends, you don’t get to keep the content or the design because that’s the company’s property.

Whatever the scenario, you’ve been renting your website at a premium price. You’ve got no control over the content or the design. In some cases, you may not even be the legal owner of the domain name.

So what’s to be done? You need to take control.

Realize that putting up a website or a blog for your firm isn’t that difficult. In fact, if you pick up the phone and call one of the major hosting companies they can walk you through the process in about 10 minutes. You can install an easy-to-use website and blog platform such as WordPress in as much time as it takes to watch an episode of Big Bang Theory.

Get to know how web analytics works, even if you don’t spend your days and nights poring over statistics and reports.

Even if you choose not to do it on your own, it’s worth taking an hour or so to know the questions to ask and understand how the answers impact your online efforts. It will save you money, time and hassle. And just as important, it will enable you to know what work and what doesn’t when it comes to your online marketing efforts.

Image credit: hownowdesign

Has Your Law Firm’s Identity Been Stolen?

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:51:23 +0000

It begins with the feeling that something’s not quite right. A letter in the mail from a strange company, talking about an account you can’t recall. A phone call from a bill collector when you know you’re up-to-date. A confirmation email out of the blue.

The US Federal Trade Commission received 250,854 complaints about identity theft during 2010. That’s 20% of the complaints the FTC received overall. And for every person who lodged a complaint, you’ve got to wonder how many others either dealt with the issue privately or not at all.

From friends of mine who practice in the field of identity theft, it’s a complex web of Fair Credit Reporting Act and criminal law issues that can level the strongest of people. Billions of dollars in financial hardship each year are caused by people who play fast and loose with someone else’s identity.

Our online identities, however, seldom get the same attention. Where our law firm ranks in the search engines is of only passing concern. Where our name shows up – our individual name, not the firm overall – is lower down the list.

Even more important, and always overlooked, however, is the site for which our name appears. Basic search engine optimization isn’t that hard to do, especially when you’re looking to show up first in the search engines for your own name.

If I look for your law firm online, does your website or blog come up first? Or am I more likely to see your LinkedIn or Facebook profile? Will the rest of the first page of results point me to other online properties owned by your law firm, or am I going to get directory listings like Yelp, Manta, MerchantCircle, Nolo and FindLaw?

If my quest for your law firm leads me first to pages and websites that you do not own, what am I likely to see? Is your phone number and law firm website URL correct? Will I be confronted with a neglected review site filled with harsh words and negative feedback?

In other words, did you do the minimum amount of search engine optimization work necessary to ensure that your own website or blog outranks a directory site?

LinkedIn is awesome. MySpace used to be great, too. And before that, Friendster.

You’re busy. I get it. This is all a foreign language to you. I get that, too.

Chances are pretty good that you don’t know much about how to repair your central air conditioning system, either. But once summer rolls around, you know well enough to figure out how to make sure it works.

Here’s the takeaway. If you don’t own the domain and the content of the first result for your law firm name, you’ve been hijacked. Your online identity has been put at risk.

Someone else owns your name. What can they do with it?

Blizzard Coaching 2.0 Is Coming

Jay Fleischman — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:00:08 +0000

If you can’t see this video, please click here.

Now that the California bar exam is out of the way, I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been working on since the end of July (aside from, you know, practicing law and such).