content marketing

6 Things to Remember When Writing Online

June 15, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

In legal practice, it’s easy to become so accustomed to writing for clients, judges, and other attorneys, that you forget how to write for the common, everyday person. When you’re writing content online, though, that’s exactly what you have to do.

If you don’t write for your target audience, it won’t take readers long to become confused (or distracted, or bored)… and they’ll hastily click the “back” button to find information elsewhere.

Here are six tips to help you write effectively when you’re marketing your practice online:

Write in first person, not third person. It might seem more comfortable to say, “John Smith is a bankruptcy attorney working in the Long Island, New York area. for the past 15 years, he has…” The problem is, writing in the third person doesn’t engage your readers – they feel like they’re reading a newspaper article instead of a blog or web page. “I’m John Smith, and I’ve spent the past 15 years working as a Long Island bankruptcy attorney…” is much more engaging and personable.
As much as possible, avoid “legalese” and technical terms. You’re writing for someone who is looking for solutions to their problems, not a legal professional. If you need to use a legal term, make sure you explain it in plain language.
Keep paragraphs short. When you write in long paragraphs, readers tend to skim over the content… and they often miss the most important parts. A good rule of thumb is to limit paragraphs to three sentences each whenever possible.
Numbered lists and bullet points are great for breaking down important information. These features provide a means of visual separation, so the reader can easily digest the information they contain. Plus, breaking down information into a list or bullet point format makes it easier to remember.
Vary the length of your articles or blog posts. This keeps your pages from looking overly structured, and is more inviting for your readers.
Be concise. When internet users are looking for information, they want it now. Posting wordy, meandering content is one of the quickest ways to make sure that visitors leave your site quickly (and never return).

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blawg, content marketing

7 Reasons Why Content Matters

May 21, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Bankruptcy lawyers face a tremendous challenge when trying to market their practices online. Sure, there are millions of consumers looking for information to help them find solutions to their debt problems… but there are also many more attorneys looking for a piece of the action online than there were even six months ago. If you want to have any chance of setting yourself apart from the competition, you’re going to have to provide better, more relevant content than then next guy looking for clients online.

Here are seven reasons why exceptional content is crucial to a successful internet marketing strategy:

Consumers want to “get” before they “give”. Even the most desperate consumer knows that there is no shortage of bankruptcy lawyers to choose from. Yes, some will choose an attorney based on price… but many more are frightened that they’ll hire an attorney who cares more about making money than about helping them obtain relief from their financial woes. Providing useful information gives website visitors the impression that you sincerely care about helping them.
Being seen as an expert carries a lot of weight. The last thing a debt-ridden consumer wants is to be saddled with an attorney who doesn’t know how to navigate the bankruptcy process. When you offer valuable online content, you show potential clients that you can be trusted to get them what they want – financial peace of mind.
Good content is viewed favorably by search engines. Yes, keywords are important, but search engines today are very sophisticated animals… they know the difference between reader-friendly content and keyword-laden garbage.
If your content is valuable, blog owners and webmasters will link to your pages. This not only helps you obtain traffic by “referral”; it also improves your site’s visibility in search engine rankings.
The more useful your content is, the more likely it is that your pages will be submitted to social bookmarking sites. These sites are like popularity polls – superior content is rewarded with more “votes”, which means that more visitors will find and view your site.
News of a great blog post or web page travels fast on the internet. When you provide valuable content, people talk… and build interest for your site. Any marketer will tell you that the best advertising is free advertising.
Great content keeps readers coming back. Getting traffic is good… but keeping traffic is even better. Visitors who return again and again to partake of your knowledge are the ones who will be most likely to become your clients down the road.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blawg, content marketing

How to Use Content to Build Website Traffic

May 20, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

If you’ve been marketing your bankruptcy practice online for any time at all – in fact, if you’ve been marketing any type of law practice at all – you’ve probably hear the adage that “content is king”. It’s no secret that informative, timely, relevant content will help you build an attentive audience… but getting people to your website or blog in the first place … well, that’s another matter.

Ever wonder how Google and the other search engines know which websites to list when you conduct a search?

Here’s a secret – nobody knows the exact answer to that. If I knew, I’d own all of Manhattan and would summer in the south of France (which I’d also own). That’s how much money the information is worth (give or take a few bucks).

I do, however, know some of the important things that Google looks for. And one of those things is … Google looks for stuff that matches up with the search.

In other words, Google looks for specific phrases within website content – phrases that match your search – to find sites and pages that will likely give you what you’re looking for. These phrases are called “keywords”, and they’re the subject of much discussion, confusion, and frustration.

That’s because most people – even seasoned website owners – don’t know how to use them properly.

Out of every ten websites or blogs you visit, you can safely guess that maybe one will be run by somebody who understands how to use keywords to bring in traffic. The rest are just throwing words against the wall, hoping some of them will stick.

This is where you can leverage a bit of internet marketing knowledge to put yourself far ahead of 90% of the other bankruptcy lawyers out there who are trying to market their practices online. The funny thing is, after you’ve learned how to use keywords correctly, it’s pretty easy to rocket past your competition.

The most important thing you can do is stop thinking like a lawyer, and start thinking like a potential client. Put yourself in a consumer’s shoes for a minute… you’re sick of creditors calling you day and night; you’re tired of worrying that you’ll wake up to find that your car has disappeared from your driveway; you’re frightened that the bank is going to repossess your house if you can’t cough up your mortgage payment soon.

In short, you need a solution… and the quickest way to find anything these days is to search for it on Google (or a handful of other, arguably less important search engines).

So you pull up Google’s home page, and type in… what?

See, as a lawyer, you probably would have guessed “bankruptcy”. And that’s not a bad guess… according to Google, about 3 million people search for information using the word “bankruptcy” every month. The problem is, there are nearly 59 million other web pages out there that contain that keyword. That makes it pretty tough to make it to the top 20 results for “bankruptcy” – and as a veteran internet marketer, I can tell you that the top 20 results are the only ones that matter.

Now, let’s look at another keyword – “debt consolidation”. It gets about 1.9 million searches a month, and there are about 22 million pages using this keyword. The odds of getting into the coveted top 20 for “debt consolidation” aren’t great, but they’re better than for “bankruptcy”. Can you think of ways to write about “debt consolidation” that are relevant to your practice? How about comparing it to bankruptcy as a solution for crushing debt?

On to lower-hanging fruit – Google reports that “foreclosure stop”, for whatever reason, gets about 100,000 searches a month. The number of web pages using this keyword? Less than half a million. “Foreclosure stop” might be a little harder to work into a blog post, but you’ll stand a much better chance of grabbing some traffic with this phrase than you will with a high-competition keyword like “bankruptcy”.

Thinking like a consumer, and finding out how your potential clients are searching for information, gives you a valuable advantage over your online competition. Sprinkling your articles and blog posts with the right keywords will help you attract interested visitors to your site… and convert them into paying clients.

Of course, it helps to have the right tools if you expect to figure out what potential clients are looking for. Google’s Keyword Tool is an excellent (and FREE!) resource for finding low-competition keywords to use in your content, so you can start bringing traffic to your website.

Photo by c@rljones.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: content marketing, keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO

Content Marketing For Bankruptcy Lawyers

December 11, 2008 By Jay Fleischman

You want to market your bankruptcy practice. You need to market to stay alive, solvent, profitable, to pay your bills and sustain (or capture) market share.

You can do it the old way, by advertising in a million different places to “get your name out there.” But if you are selling a product or service that your prospects instinctively resist (such as filing for bankruptcy) then chances are good that you aren’t making the inroads you need.

Think about it – if someone believes that bankruptcy is the worst thing in the world, chances are pretty good that even a full-page ad in the New York Times telling them to file for bankruptcy just won’t cut it. To them, it’s like selling the plague.

How do you counter that? By educating your prospects on the truth – why bankruptcy is good for some people, how it works, what they need to know, and all that good stuff. Debunk the myths, press the truth and make a positive impact.

Challenge the thinking, as I’ve said before.

The term for this is “content marketing,” defined by Wikipedia as:

an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. In contrast to traditional marketing methods that aim to increase sales or awareness through interruption techniques, content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action.

Do you think it would make a difference to your prospects if you took the time to teach them about bankruptcy, and how it could help them? What the short-term and long-term impact on their life will be? What will happen if they don’t file for bankruptcy, and what creditors can and cannot do?

Sure it would. It would break down their opposition, give them ammunition against the naysayers in their life, and arm them with the information they need to make a rational decision.

How do you engage in content marketing? There are a number of options, such as:

content-rich websites
blogging
writing articles for newspapers and magazines
creating white papers and information sheets to give to prospects
speaking to community groups about what you do, and how you do it
using social networking to provide information
podcasts
webinars and teleseminars

Stop being tight-fisted with your information, and give it away. Open the doors and demystify the process. Give people a reason to trust you, and to realize that you know everything there is to know about this field.

Your efforts will be greatly rewarded.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: content marketing

Blogs As Online Legal Marketing Tools

October 25, 2007 By Jay Fleischman

Much has been made about this blogging thing as a sure-fire online legal marketing tool. A variety of my colleagues blog as part of their online legal marketing efforts. for my own part, I am a co-founder of the wildly popular Bankruptcy Law Network (as well as a variety of other blogs, including this one). Still, I am often asked why I do it and whether these efforts yield paying clients.

Here’s a clue: aside from my attorney referral network, I do no paid advertising at all for my law firm. My online legal marketing pays the bills and keep the office running.

And for my online legal marketing consulting services, I do ZERO paid advertising. All of my business comes as a result of my blogging.

I didn’t start out with this as an overt strategy, but it grew into one after I learned the benefits of what I was doing. Now I’m not only experimenting with content creation, I’m feeding myself with it. Proof is in the pudding, to continue the eating metaphor.

Over at Branding & Marketing, there was a terrific post about the use of blogs as not only a marketing tool but also as a means of networking (link removed because the blog apparently took down the article, which sucks). And though the article is no longer available, I can tell you that it spoke to the unique ability of content creation to enable people to connect.

This, of course, before the rise of such services as Twitter and Facebook. It shows how even then, using content creation as a means of connecting was a powerful thought in the minds of many.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of wonderful lawyers and technologists I never would have come to know in the absence of their blogs.

These relationships have resulted in a number of great ideas for my practices and business ventures, and the people I’ve come to know have helped me raise my game significantly. I can only hope that I have done the same in return.