online social networking — Legal Practice Pro

6 Non-Sleazy Ways To Promote Your Law Firm Blog

November 5, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

You can create a law firm blog with real value, but if you don’t let people know it exists then it’s all wasted. How can you promote you blog posts without being sleazy?

We’re uncomfortable with sales and promotion; that goes for the attorney marketing a law firm just as much as any other profession, but I think lawyers are hit particularly hard in this respect. We’ve been trained to behave conservatively, and in our minds the notion of promotion (hey look, I made a rhyme!) is distinctly NOT conservative. Add in years of being compared to hucksters and you’ve got most lawyers believing that promotion of any sort is unseemly.

Done the wrong way, promotion can make you feel dirty. If you look at most of the marketing online you’ll see scads of yellow highlighter and exclamation points that tell you to BUY! BUY! BUY!!! Is it any wonder why some fairly prominent legal bloggers think that marketing is a word to be expunged from the next edition of Black’s Law Dictionary?

But there’s another side to this coin, and that’s the realization that marketing need not make you want to take a bath in lye and burn your clothing. If you’re marketing a law firm you want to be not only ethical, but mindful of your professional standing in the community.

Your law firm blog is a marketing tool, no matter how you slice it. A law firm blog showcases your capabilities, exposes people to your message, and enhances your standing. It informs, inspires to act, and serves as your online face. You need to promote the content in order to gain an audience, and you want to do so without being sleazy.

Send Links to Select People Who May be Interested. If you read an article about the foreclosure crisis and are doing a post about TILA, RESPA or any of the real estate-related “alphabet soup” of statutes, send an email to the author of the other article to let him or her know what you’ve done. Be polite and offer up an invitation to visit the link. Three lines should do the trick, and it will help to gain one more viewer. That viewer may send the link along to others if it’s a good enough post. One thing you need to know, though – do not spam your email address book. I’m talking about sending the article out to 1-3 people who you know will be interested in it. If you spam, you suck.

Post the Article to Facebook. 500 million people are registered on Facebook as of this writing; when you post a link it shows up on the stream of all of your friends. If something interests you enough to write about then it’s probably interesting to the people you know and connect with on Facebook.

Tweet a Link. Twitter is a hive of activity, with people sharing links to content that interests them. Though you may choose to post your links automatically (I do this), the secret sauce is to create a compelling question rather than sending out the title of the post (which should be compelling anyway, but I know sometimes you just can’t make it sexy enough. For example, I recently sent out a tweet to someone else’s blog post. Her title was, “Is Bankruptcy Right for Me?” My tweet was, “Is bankruptcy a good idea or best left to others? Ask yourself these 22 questions.” Which one looks more interesting?

Hit The LinkedIn Group. If you’re a member of a LinkedIn group associated with your field of law then you’re already associated with a bunch of people who are interested in the topics you’re blogging about. When you’ve got a particularly interesting post (not one of those, “who is the Chapter 7 trustee in my area,” ones) head over to the LinkedIn group and post a link with a description. Your colleagues may find the content interesting enough to pass along to others.

Comment On Related Blogs. Blog commenting is an excellent traffic generating tactic for your law firm blog because it gives you exposure to the other blog’s audience. But let’s say you’ve got a meaty post on your site that you’re itching to share. Chances are pretty good that there is another blog out there talking about the same issue. In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that your article may be yin to another blog’s yang. Go to the other blog and comment appropriately (again, no spamming please); in the area where you enter your URL, paste the URL of your article rather than the main law firm blog URL; in this way, when people click to learn more about you they will be taken directly to your related post.

Ask Your Readers To Share Your Law Firm Blog Content. Using blog plugins such as Sociable, Tweetmeme and the FBLike you’ll make it easier for readers to share and pass along your law firm blog posts to other people. Good content has a way of traveling fast, so if you’re providing real value to readers you should expect the traffic bump.

Your law firm blog isn’t going to take off into the stratosphere overnight. It’s a slow build, but when you consistently use these promotional techniques you’ll have a greater chance of reaching more of the people who may find your content interesting.

Image credit: victoriafee (Flickr)

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog, blogging, facebook, law firm blog, lawyer blogs, legal blogging, linkedin, online social networking, promotion, social media, Twitter

5 Ways To Capture Ideas For Your Legal Marketing Efforts

June 6, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Ever have a great idea about something while doing some random chore or activity? Try as you might to remember it later, it eludes you. Frustrating, no?

We’ve talked about how important content creation is in your legal marketing efforts. We agree that inspiration can come from a variety of sources, and that you should always be on the lookout for legal marketing ideas. How you promote your law firm’s offerings can come from the subtle way that a waitress gets you to order a second piece of pie, or a headline in an ad that convinces you to buy that doo-dad.

My head is always running in a million directions. How to help my clients, an observation about how someone is doing business the right (or wrong) way, or a random thought. One minute it’s gone, the next … poof.

How A Real Lawyer Uses Social Media

June 4, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Can a real, live lawyer use social media for real, live business?

Social media for lawyers – specifically Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin – has been getting a ton of coverage in the past few days on the heels of this article in Mashable. And it seems to have ignited a bit of a debate on Twitter because there are a few attorneys who question whether the experts quoted are able to speak from experience.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a social media expert. I do believe that there are people who are well-qualified to discuss how to build trust, relationships and communities for business purposes. These are the experts, the ones who teach us how to be more human in the way we conduct business. When these people talk about using the platforms at our disposal, I listen and take notes.

Social media is an all-encompassing term that speaks to platforms, and how they are used to accomplish a particular goal. Those platforms currently include legal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, Gowalla, and the list goes on and on. But bear in mind that these are platforms only, and are subject to change without notice. A few years ago it was Friendster. A decade ago it was Usenet. And on and on.

To say that you’re an expert in Twitter means that you know how to set up an account and use the tool. It doesn’t mean you know how to connect with people or businesses who may have some use for your service. When Twitter goes away or, more likely, evolves in ways we can’t currently imagine, the “Twitter expert” will be as useful as a “mimeograph expert”.

The person who’s skilled in the broader skillset of creating and maintaining relationships will continue to thrive. Because that’s not just good marketing, it’s good for life.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I thought it would be useful to outline how I use the various social media platforms to achieve my goals. Those goals, by the way, are fluid. Sometimes I’m looking for help with something. Other times I’m promoting my expertise as a bankruptcy and consumer protection lawyer, or as a guy who knows a thing or two about marketing a law firm. Maybe I’m going to be a new place and need some recommendations for a good place to have dinner. In all cases, the song remains the same overall (hat tip to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page).

Content Distribution And Promotion

Every time I create content on this or any other platform, I promote it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Doing so exposes my work to people who find the subject matter compelling, and cements my standing as someone who knows about the fields in which I spend my time.

Information Sharing

I’m a newshound, and read hundreds of blogs each day. When I find something that catches my eye, I share it with people. More information is a good thing, no?

Connecting With Interesting People

Here’s where people say Twitter is a waste of time, right? I mean, why would I spend time typing out 140 character messages to strangers? Well, why would you spend an evening at a networking event filled with a diverse group of people? To meet them, get to know them better, and establish a relationship. Maybe that plumber I meet will never have need of my legal services, but I’m betting that he knows of someone who will eventually need me. The stronger my relationship with Mr. Plumber, the more likely I am to be the name and number (OK, email address) that he passes along to his friend who’s going into foreclosure and needs help.

What if Mr. Plumber is in Oklahoma, far from my state of admission (which is New York)? No worries – I can send the referral to one of my colleagues in Oklahoma. I’ve connected with some of them on Twitter, others on Facebook and some on “old school” listservs. Send a referral to a trusted colleague and I get good karma in return. It’s happened so often I’ve lost count, and it increases the chance that I get a referral in return. Karma’s like that, you know.

Strengthening Bonds Established Elsewhere

Let’s say you meet someone offline – a networking event, a social event, whatever the case may be. You connect with them on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter or whatever platform you choose. Now you’re exposed to them on a regular basis, and they to you. Share information, keep up with one another, and allow your humanity to continue to unfold before one another. It takes a causal meeting with a total stranger and allows you to make something more of it.

Now you want me to prove that it works, right? Here are a few of the things I’ve accomplished by using the platforms available to me:

coverage in print and broadcast television (Twitter and LinkedIn);
paying clients (more than I can count from Facebook in particular, Twitter less so);
quotes and attendant backlinks from highly-regarded online sources, which has increased the ranking of my own site and resulted in more clients (primarily Twitter, but Facebook and LinkedIn to a certain extent); and
referrals from other lawyers as well as from non-lawyers who deal in consumer finance issues (Twitter).

Of course, none of this speaks to the business my firm has received over the years as a result of a never-ending commitment to content creation through our blog and elsewhere.

Is this list comprehensive? Does it take into account all of the nuances of how a real lawyer can use social media to help his or her practice? No, but it does give you the high notes and prove to you that this isn’t just another time suck.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: facebook, goals, lawyers, Legal Marketing, linkedin, marketing, online social networking, social media, Twitter, web 2.0, world wide web

4 Online Legal Marketing Trends Every Other Industry Knows About

May 25, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Don’t you wish you had a crystal ball to peer into the future? Some way to tell what the next few years would bring? What would you do with that information? Would you put money on the Super Bowl? World Series? Or would you take the opportunity to move ten giant steps ahead of the competition?

OK, it’s no and either-or sort of thing. You’d probably do all of those things and a lot more. But when it comes to marketing your law firm online there’s a certain amount of forecasting we can do without any help. All it takes is a quick glance around to see where the rest of the world is today.

That’s right, we can see the future of online legal marketing by looking around us right now. As a backwards-looking profession, we live in the past. It’s in our legal pleadings, our reliance on precedent, and our education. But the fun thing is that the rest of the world is living in the present.

The Technology Is Invisible

April 19, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

The technology we use to market and promote our products and services has gotten to the point where people don’t even realize it exists.

When marketing your law firm, you shy away from doing too much online. After all, your clients aren’t online. They tell you they found you in the Yellow Pages, the newspaper, or on television.

Right. And I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you on the cheap.

Technology has become so prevalent that people don’t know it’s there anymore.

Take, for example, my wife Melissa. She’s not a technophobe, but she doesn’t get her hands dirty with technology. She’s more comfortable with a paper magazine than a blog for the most part, and rolls her eyes when I get all geeky in her presence.

Still, she’s unwittingly become so entrenched in technology she doesn’t even realize it.

Ten years ago Melissa trained for the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon. She hated every minute of it, primarily because she did all of her training runs in Central Park. Loop after loop, it got boring. She swore she’d never run again, and made good on that promise for a decade.

Now she’s back in her running shoes, training for a half marathon. And she’s actually enjoying it.

Why? Because now she’s running in the streets, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and going up the West Side Highway on the running path.

Last night she told me the key is that she’s not bored this time, and that street running suits her far more than park running. When I asked her why she didn’t run the streets last time she told me she was too fixated on distance for her marathon training.

But this time she’s got tools that she didn’t have the first time around. Now she’s got a host of online tools to help her map out routes, as well as an iPhone app that tracks her distance. The only thing she could have used last time was a pedometer, and those were expensive a decade ago.

My darling fell to silence as the realization swept over her. If anyone had asked her why she enjoyed running this time she would have come up with a host of other reasons – none of them related to technology. Yet that technology was the real reason why her training was so much easier this time around.

Your clients are similarly enmeshed in technology to an extent that they don’t realize. It’s so engrained they don’t know it’s there.

Marketing your law firm online may seem counterintuitive if you pay attention to what your clients are telling you. Ask them if they’re online and they might tell you they are not. But the truth is elusive.

They’re on Facebook catching up with their friends.

They’re on Twitter, following brands and local companies looking for discounts.

They’re reading the news and checking the local weather in the morning.

They’re getting directions and using Google as a new form of 411 (remember that?).

Take, for example, the town of Cedar Rapids, IA. Last November at the member’s-only workshop of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys someone raised their hand and steadfastly refused to believe that his clients were online. Why he was sitting in on my panel presentation about online legal marketing, I’ll never know – but that’s a different story.

This lawyer is in Cedar Rapids, IA. According to Wikipedia, The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city’s population at 128,056 in 2008. We’ll use that as a baseline for the moment.

Heading over to Facebook, I checked to see how many of their members over the age of 18 were within 25 miles of Cedar Rapids. The result is below:

So over half of my colleague’s potential client base is on Facebook. Many of them probably don’t think of themselves as being online, though – they’re just “on Facebook.”

How about Twitter? I did a simple Twitter Search and narrowed it down to the same radius around Cedar Rapids, IA. Results? You betcha:

Again – ask these people if they’re online and many will tell you they aren’t.

The ease of use and ubiquity of online tools and applications has gotten to the point where people don’t even consider the online/offline distinction anymore.

It’s more than email or web browsing. It’s the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare (yes, Foursquare covers places like Cedar Rapids), and on and on. It’s engrained in who we are and where we spend our time, like it or not.

Do you think your prospective clients aren’t online? Are you prepared to re-think that position? Because if you’re not, someone else in your area will – soon.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blog hosting services, facebook, law firm, marketing, marketing your law firm, online, online social networking, social information processing, social media, tell, Twitter, web 2.0, Yellow Pages

4 Tips For Marketing Your Bankruptcy Practice With Craigslist

March 30, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Marketing your bankruptcy practice is never easy, online or offline. No matter what the world thinks, our margins are small when it comes to operating our law firms. Every dollar out must have a positive impact on the bottom line or it’s wasted.

In the past I’ve talked about using Craigslist for legal marketing purposes, and it seems as if it’s a hot topic. Given the fact that there’s so much competition in the field right now, this is a good time to revisit the zero-cost marketing game that is Craigslist.

Here, then are my 4 Tips For Marketing Your Bankruptcy Practice With Craigslist:

1. Choose Your Headlines Wisely. In reviewing the ads showing up at the top of the section today, you can easily see that none of the headlines really grab you by the throat and force you to take notice:

In fact … well, there are no headlines. Huge mistake.

Remember, people who read ads scan them for what looks the most interesting. You need to ask a provocative question, tantalize the reader, or make a bold promise that will encourage them to click on the ad. If they don’t click, they don’t call. Period.

2. Format Your Ads For Greater Effect. Sure, you can use Craigslist as a purely text-based medium. In fact, it’s just like the old classified ads that lawyers used to buy in the newspapers and Pennysaver papers. But did you know you can easily use a graphic ad for your Craigslist posting? Check this one out:

The ad could be improved but the fact remains that this one is a heck of a lot more effective than a straight text ad, seen here:

Does this ad work? I’m not sure (I don’t know the lawyer who posted it) but I’m going to guess that it’s not nearly as effective as what the first firm did. Just think – for a few hundred dollars you could get yourself not one, but a number of professionally-designed graphic ads to really make your firm stand out.

3. Remember that it’s not about you. As with any type of legal marketing, the focus should always be on the prospective client. Most lawyers suffer from an overabundance of “I” and “we” – and that fails to answer the key question of, “What’s in it for me?” Phrase your ad in a way that answers this critical question for greater effectiveness.

4. Make A Non-Threatening Call To Action. Your prospective clients want nothing less than to come to your office to talk about bankruptcy. Going to a lawyer is scary, and making a bankruptcy consultation appointment isn’t going to happen until they actually make a decision to file. Craigslist visitors tend to be more in the information-gathering phase, so a call to action that involves a lead generation piece is going to be most effective.

Have you advertised on Craigslist for your bankruptcy practice? What’s worked for you? Sound off in the comments below!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: advertising, bankruptcy, bankruptcy laws, business, classified ads, classified advertising, communication, craigslist, headlines, hot topic, law firm, Legal Marketing, marketing, mass media, online social networking, success marketing, virtual communities

Legal Marketing At The End Of The Honeymoon

March 12, 2010 By Jay Fleischman

Your online legal marketing plans have taken shape, and you’re serious about generating new business for your law firm. You haven’t abandoned your offline marketing but you’re looking at those media like distasteful relatives you are required to invite to your home for holidays.

Your law firm blog is all shiny and new, the pictures beautiful and the designer paid. You’ve got your Facebook fan page, Twitter account, whatever you’ve decided to work with. Your legal marketing efforts are all ready to go.

Welcome the the online legal marketing honeymoon, when it’s all wine and roses, romantic sunset walks along the beach and passion.

You start off easy, with a blog post about the basics. You get so excited it takes you 900 words to describe the most mundane subject, but that’s OK – you want to be thorough, right?

Of course, it’s dry and boring to the outsider. But it really showcases your knowledge of the field, sets you apart from the rest of the competition. That’s what legal marketing is all about, right? Full steam ahead!

The next day you go onto Twitter and follow everyone and their mother, all in a mad rush to beat Ashton Kutcher and Oprah in numbers of followers. The more people you follow, the more will follow you back!

You have no idea who these people are, or why they would want to follow you. But they sure to use Twitter a lot! Your Twitter stream gets clogged up within seconds, but you send out a link to your brand new blog post and know – just KNOW – it will send your traffic skyrocketing.

Of course, next up is Facebook. Two bazillion users, and they are all pining for your wisdom. You set up your fan page, so you send out a suggestion to all of your Facebook friends that they become fans. You send out your blog posts there, too.

You are a legal marketing Goliath. Market domination is within reach. You can sense your competition trembling in their offices, fearful of your wrath and legal marketing prowess.

Now, check your website analytics. Re-check them. Keep checking. Where’s that rush of traffic?

The online legal marketing honeymoon is over. And as with all long-term relationships, the hard work begins.

Your spouse doesn’t bring you flowers anymore (cue the song, please). No more all-nighters filled with insights into one another. It’s time to start figuring out who’s going to load the dishwasher at night.

So, too, with your online legal marketing efforts. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you aren’t going to be an overnight success. Nobody is. It takes hard work, nose to the grindstone, day in and day out.

And even worse is the fact that it never ends.

You have a blog but need to feed the machine. Forever.

You are on Twitter, but if you don’t interact and reach out to new people then it’s nothing more than another broadcast mechanism.

Facebook is bigger than ever, but if you’re there and don’t work on your presence then you might as well go home.

Because the competition is waking up, and doing it faster than you realize. Lawyers are hitting Avvo hard, learning the Facebook ropes, and embracing blogging like never before.

Maybe you’ve never heard of them, maybe their legal marketing efforts aren’t on your radar yet because you’ve got your nose buried.

It doesn’t matter. They’re out there. And your competition isn’t just spending money on some company that claims they’ll get you on the first page of Google (not that it matters even if they could – if you’ve not nothing to add to the conversation then nobody’s going to stick around your site for long).

So stop asking how long you’ve got to keep at this marketing and content creation thing. Forget about when you can start going to sleep early and sleeping late again. It isn’t going to happen – not now, not ever.

You signed up for this, after all. You decided that you wanted to run your own law firm, to be the master (or mistress) of your own domain, to eat what you kill.

But ask anyone who’s been married for 50 years if the hard work has been worth it. Most will say it was some of the most rewarding work they’ve ever done.