In my interview with Cliff he shares his entrepreneurial story – how he found the courage to leave a well paying job to establish himself as the go-to person in the podcasting world.  Cliff also shares business principles that have resulted in success for him and how they can be implemented in your law practice.

Finally, I couldn’t have the Podcast Answerman on the show without getting a couple of tips for any of you who are thinking of taking the plunge and starting a legal podcast.

Tool of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is Long Tail Pro.  This is a tool that I recently came upon that can help you with keyword research as well as monitoring how your (and your competitor’s) websites are performing.  Great tool for finding those keywords that are relevant but not quite so difficult to rank for.

One of my favorite features about this tool is it also allows you to see where Google is ranking your website for various keywords.  This is a great help in tracking your progress and the effectiveness of your blogging and marketing plan.

Finally, I have changed up the format of the podcast slightly and will now be doing the Tools of the Trade segment after the main portion of the show.  Let me know what you think and what your thoughts are in general of the Tools segment.

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In the interview we discuss why now is a great time to get started with a legal themed podcast, how it can benefit your law practice, what formats work well and why, and what it takes to not only get a podcast started but to keep it going for the long run.

Here are a few of the links to resources that Chelsea mentions in the show:

Podcast Launch – A Step by Step Podcasting Guide Including 15 Video Tutorials

Tools of the Trade

In this week’s Tool of the Trade segment I discuss how you can re-purpose your older blog articles to drive more traffic to your site.  Too often we draft great stuff for our blogs but after a day or two it gets buried never to be heard from again.  Through tools like Buffer and Hootsuite you can take your oldies but goodies and distribute them throughout the week on the various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  The result is more traffic to your site and less pressure on your to create new content every day.

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So you know you need a website, or that the old one you have isn’t serving you well. Sometimes, if you’re an established business with a certain type of momentum, the thought can be paralyzing.

We’re in the same boat here in the Rowboat (shoemaker’s children), and we’ve started and stopped on our OWN design several times.

While it’s easy to tell a designer, “make pretty new website,” what’s harder is answering the key questions that any designer worth her salt will ask you:

• Who is your target market? What are they REALLY looking for? (Hint: bankruptcy clients aren’t looking for bankruptcy – they’re looking for peace of mind.)
• Do you know the demographic breakdown, in terms of age, ethnicity, occupation, education, state of mind?
• Does your ideal client have a persona? Describe them – what they’re wearing, what kind of car they drive, what they think about more than anything else from day to day.
• What do you WANT to be selling with your website? Now is the time to get clear on where you make most of your money, and if you want it to stay that way or take this opportunity to shove things in a different direction.
• What is the persona of your business? How do you wish it to come across to others? What makes YOUR offering different from the guy down the street?
• Who do you NOT want to serve? With content and design choices, you can actually do some pre-screening.

This is SO HARD. Most of us are so busy working IN our businesses that stepping back to do the necessary analysis feels like trying to change the fan belt on your car while hurtling down the Interstate.

The buck cannot be passed.

Unfortunately, a designer can’t answer these questions FOR you, and if you want to help them create something that really works for your business, they need to be answered.

A consultant can’t answer them either. All they can do is give you worksheets to fill out with annoying, probing questions like the ones above and then charge you a chunk of change to read your answers, and collate them into pretty infographics. Or pie charts.

A good consultant asks the right questions and then gives you an interpretation based on your answers. Kind of like a therapist.

Don’t spend your hard-earned money on ANY kind of advertising – including a website – until you’ve answered these questions for yourself.

And – since we all know that we can’t get by without tooting our horns, isn’t it time to get cracking?

If you’ll excuse me, it’s past time for me to go annoy MYSELF with some silly questionnaire…

To do this you must find your voice – the thing that makes you different from the rest.  Too often legal websites all peddle the same drivel over and over.  But if you follow the attorneys who are doing it right you will see their personality come through in their writing, podcasting, video, or whatever platform they use to get their message out – and some of them even have opinions (gasp!).

In this episode of the JDBlogger Podcast I discuss the three things you must do to bring out the best ‘you’ for your online marketing efforts.

Some of my favorite bloggers and podcasters who I think do a great job in letting their voice and personality come through are:

Sam Glover at the Lawyerist

The writers of Lawyerology

Chris Brogan at The Human Business Way podcast

Michael Stelzner at the Social Media Marketing Podcast

Cliff Ravenscraft at Podcast Answerman Podcast

New Podcasting A to Z Course with The Podcast Answerman!

The next Podcasting A to Z course starts on May 20, 2013.  You can click HERE to register and if you use the discount code “Skiba” in the shopping cart when you order you will receive an immediate $100 off the price of the course.  As an attorney, you are a professional.  You need to sound like a professional.  Check out the course.  You won’t regret it!

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is connected with a product that I have spoken about before.  Scribe, the wordpress plugin that helps with your SEO on your blog posts has launched a new program called Authority.  This is an online program that provides you access to several webinars and online video courses related to marketing.  I have had a chance to go through them and found them extremely informative.

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Recently Skiba Auto Repair celebrated it’s 15th anniversary in business.  As part of getting the word out about this milestone they put up a pretty simple post on Facebook.  What resulted taught me a lot about social media and how it is supposed to be done and what makes it effective.

As soon as the post went up they started getting ‘likes’ and genuinely great comments about the business.  Below are the elements that I think made this such a great Facebook post and why I believe that implementing the same principles into your law firm marketing will get you similar results.

Below is the text of the status update that accompanied the above photo:

Good Marketing Can’t Take the Place of a Good Product or Service

As I saw all of the ‘likes’ and comments come in I asked myself what was it about this post that prompted all of these customers to take the time to write a comment congratulating them on their years of business and sharing positive experiences they had with the business.  Then I realized, it wasn’t the social media post that triggered all of the positive responses, it was years of dedicated service that started back in the 1960′s with my grandfather and continues through to this very day.

Here are just a few of the comments that have been left on this status update:

Often in business we are looking for the next big marketing tactic or strategy that will result in a flood of new business.  When in reality, the best marketing tactic of all is taking care of your current customers.  No campaign or  marketing strategy can overcome a bad product or bad service.

Share Your Story

The Facebook post was written by my brother Todd.  Not counting the time he shared a link on how to get a free download of a Gary Allan song, I think he may have written a total of two posts on Facebook.  Ever.  So what made this one so effective?

He shared his story.  He could have very easily just said “thanks for the business” and offered some call to action to try and get people to come back again.  But it wouldn’t have been anywhere close as effective.

People want to learn about people.  They want to know who you are and trust you (or at least feel comfortable with you) before they will ever do business with you.  Each of us has a story to share.  Tell your readers why you do what you.  Tell them who you are and what you are about.

Be Genuine

Often we put way too much thought into the whole marketing thing.  Sometimes it is just simply too calculated.  I know I am guilty of this.  We get caught up in the SEO, back links, meta tags, keyword research, word count, etc.

Those things are valuable tools, but being genuine, sharing your opinion – or even having an opinion, and truly caring about what you do and the people you serve, will come through in all your marketing efforts.  And then even when you aren’t ‘marketing’ you will still be building the relationships that will benefit your business for years to come.

So, congratulations to Skiba Auto Repair on 15 successful years of business.  And thanks Dad and Todd for a lifetime of free auto repair for your mechanically-challenged brother.

On today’s podcast I speak with Marc Luber.   Marc is the author of 99 Things You Can Do With A Law Degree and the founder of a video website exploring what to do with a law degree and sharing advice for professional development called JD Careers Out There.   Marc is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and has used his law degree to work in the music industry and as a legal recruiter in Los Angeles.  Today you will get tips on how to make changes within the practice of law or to even venture out to a different career path – and just maybe find happiness along the way.

Tool of the Trade 

This week’s Tool of the Trade is Libsyn.  I use Libsyn to host my podcasts and to track the stats on how many downloads I get for each episode and where people are listening to the podcast from. It is a good idea to have a separate host for the audio files associated with your podcast.  Libsyn’s rates are very reasonable and I have had zero problems with them.  If you are thinking of starting a podcast head on over to Libsyn’s site and check them out.

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In today’s JDBlogger Podcast episode I will go over 5 marketing mistakes I have made that will hopefully help you avoid falling into the same money pits that I have.  I would be interested to hear from the audience as to what marketing avenues you have been involved in that you wish you wouldn’t have.

Tool of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is Social Oomph!  Social Oomph is a tool that can help you manage your social media accounts and more specifically help you handle all of your social media  platforms more efficiently.  In the past I have discussed using batch processing as a way of getting the most content created you can in the shortest amount of time.  Social Oomph goes hand in hand with batch processing and will allow you schedule out your social media links so you can focus on your law practice during the day without sacrificing your social media presence.

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For the past few years, I’ve been hearing about the ABA Techshow. This year, I was finally able to attend.

My purpose? Besides hanging out with some clients, I was interested to find out what sort of technology is being marketed to them for all aspects of practice, and how.

While dozens of summaries and opinions of this year’s show have already been posted, I thought that as a non-lawyer AND a non-exhibitor, my perspective might be a bit unique.

The Sessions

I did sit in on a few of the sessions, and as marketing is our thing, I was picking through the schedule looking for something – anything – that related directly to the marketing of a law practice. I found precious little. The sessions I did attend, on social media, were so bullet-point-beginner that I felt they left the attendees with questions rather than answers. Later, when speaking to a couple of the organizers, I was told that any session that wants to issue CLE credit cannot use the word “marketing” in the title as some states don’t allow it. Interesting how ethics rules and CLE requirements continue to make it difficult for lawyers to find out what they need to know in order to stay in business.

I DID enjoy a session on iOS tips, and it was packed out – apparently they even ran out of evaluation forms. I took some useful notes myself in that one – on my iPad, of course.

The Expo

WOW. While it wasn’t the largest trade show I’ve attended by a long shot, I was nonetheless impressed and overwhelmed by the size of the Expo. I talked to a lot of vendors, some of which provided niche services in the realm of “I wish I had thought of that!” However, the sheer number of practice management packages out there was impossible to take in. At one point, I found myself talking to a vendor and thinking, “your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying.” I would hate to actually be trying to make an important business choice between them just from shopping around at the Expo. That’s where the networking comes in – but more on that later.

There was some really cool swag, including a tablet stylus that was shaped like a quill from the folks at Clio. I swiped very little of it, for two reasons – small suitcase, and I felt guilty taking too many slurpy freebies since I wasn’t the vendors’ target market. It was REALLY hard to pass on that cuddly stuffed kangaroo from nQueue Billback, however. Regrets…

On Thursday night, there was a welcome reception to which we were all issued two drink tickets – the reception was at the Expo itself, and I heard it remarked by an ABA staffer’s spouse that it was just SO much more comfortable to be chatting with vendors when both parties were holding a beer. I have to heartily concur.

The People

The excitement, the warmth, the conversation, the connecting – THAT is why I’ll go back to Techshow. The organizers set up dozens of “Taste of Techshow” dinners at local restaurants that were hosted by a variety of speakers and others – some of them were even sponsored by vendors. While each dinner had a “topic,” the conversation flowed anywhere and everywhere, enhanced by great wine and awesome food.

The ABA staffed a concierge booth at the entrance to the Expo with folks who were there to answer everyone’s questions, and they were super-friendly and helpful. Thursday’s lunch was a plated awards luncheon, and at my table I discovered someone with the North Carolina Bar that I’d been trying to connect with for two years – we laughed about the irony of having to travel out of state to make in-state contacts.

The Hotel

While I’ve stayed in a lot of convention hotels, most of which had the Hilton name over the door, the Chicago Hilton is a gem all its own. Taking up an entire city block and with a storied history going back to 1927, it was an amazing mix of early 20th century opulence and top-shelf modern hospitality. My room with the panoramic view of Lake Michigan was such an awesome place to be that sometimes I had to make myself get out the door and back down to the show.

Takeaways

What was super-clear by the end of Day 1 was that there is no avoiding the cloud for today’s practice managers. It isn’t just the tech of tomorrow – it’s the tech of TODAY. Top topics of conversation were the cloud and security – and one presenter put it into perspective by asking why we felt the postal service or a messenger was any more secure than an encrypted data connection. While someone joked that they were “contractually obligated to mention Dropbox in every session,” blogger Carolyn Elefant was not distracted from the bigger picture.

Also, it seemed that any software vendor that did NOT offer a fully-featured mobile app was running behind – iPads are becoming more at home in depositions and courtrooms, to the point of being considered indispensable by many practicing attorneys in attendance.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one who felt that the sessions were overly basic – a North Carolina lawyer running a nearly paperless office said she wouldn’t be back because there was absolutely nothing going on for her to learn – and I agree. It’s tough trying to put together a program for 1400 attorneys from everywhere and at every possible point in integrating technology into their practices – not a job I’d like to take on!

Several of us felt that “round tables” where lawyers using certain tech can gather and look over each other’s shoulders at how each person is making use of it would be far more helpful that hearing about it all in the abstract. I’d love to see how that could fit in with the existing paradigm. Just from talking to people, it seemed that Clio was a favorite in terms of practice management – one person said, “it just works.” That type of buzz is way more valuable than comparing vendorspeak and trying to make sense of it all.

Overall, l recommend Techshow, despite the considerable expense of attendance – you can cherry-pick a few sessions for yourself, walk the Expo hall and keep up with what’s going on, and MOST importantly – hang out with your peers and get to the nitty gritty of what really matters – avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome and keeping your eye on the ball when it comes to succeeding in practice.

See you there next year!

Recently Jeff partnered with the American Bar Association and published his latest book on legal marketing entitled “Internet Branding for Lawyers: Building the Client-Centered Website“.  In this interview we will go into debt with Jeff on how lawyers can effectively brand their law firms, build a client base through their websites, use social media, and how you can stand out from the crowded legal market.

Tool of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is Last Pass.  We have all experienced the frustration of trying to navigate online and remember all of the numerous passwords to the various sites.  Last Pass is a great tool that stores all of your passwords for you and will auto-fill them when you log on to a specific website.  It also can help you increase security by generating passwords for your various sites that are next to impossible for anyone to guess.

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Finally, I will discus ways you can monitor what people are saying about you and your law firm online.  And, if you happen to end up with a negative review I go over a few different strategies on how to deal with that soit doesn’t harm your future online marketing efforts.

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is AWeber.  This is a great tool for those of you that collect email addresses on your website through an email opt-in form.  AWeber allows you to send out information, blog posts, etc. to those people who sign up through you website to receive updates.  It also has great analytic tools that allow you to see what articles are getting the most traction, who is opening your emails, and who is actually clicking through to get to your website.

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There’s one thing that’s harder…getting attorneys to understand the importance of professional photography of themselves, to slot into a new design.

Nonverbal cues matter

If you’re getting ready to list your house with an agent, and they drive up in a car with the bumper held on with duct tape, how likely are you to give them your listing?

That’s exactly the same message that a bad personal photograph sends on your law firm website.

When asked why Y Combinator success story Airbnb.com invests in professional photography, Creative Lead Venetia Pristavec replied, “Quality breeds trust. When you’re introduced to a new place, you look for signs that the information comes from a reliable source. Our listings with professional photographs earn more than twice as much money as those without them.” [Source: Fast Company, April 2013, emphasis mine.]

What NOT to do

In many years in the design business, I’ve seen a lot. My retinas have been seared by scary photographs over and over (although, thankfully, none as scary as the one at the top of this blog post!)

THIS photograph, however, is a treasure trove of don’ts. If you want to test yourself, make a list of all the things wrong with it before scrolling down (I count 5):

1. The mess in the windowsills. This is the equivalent of the duct tape on the bumper. If I see this, how likely am I to think that this attorney is prone to losing files and missing deadlines?

2. The diploma growing out of his head.  A professional photographer is trained to pay attention not just to the subject, but to what’s going on in the background.

3. The harsh light. See the hard shadow behind his ear? Flattering to no one.

4. The wopped up suit jacket. Note how the back of his jacket is trying to climb up his neck. That’s because he’s sitting in a regular office chair. Professional photographers seat their subjects on stools for a myriad of reasons – one of which is that it lets jackets hang straight off the back.

5. The subject’s tie is seriously askew. Great if he’s doing shots, not so great if he’s IN a shot.

This photograph is irredeemable. No amount of artful cropping, sepia toning, or background removal can fix ALL of its issues. Plus, not every website designer is a former professional photographer, like ours. Making websites is a different skill set than working magic with crappy photography.

Photography done right

Good photography doesn’t have to be uber-formal, done in a suit and tie, or even shot in a studio with studio lighting. It can be relaxed, informal, in an outdoor setting – but it needs to be shot with a correct lens, by an individual who knows how to read light, minimize background distractions, pose a subject and compose an image. After that, a good eye for processing that image is every bit as important as skill in the traditional darkroom used to be.

Here are two examples from another client, in both formal and informal versions:

When something is done right, it often takes a pro to point out just how right it is. Note how well-done the lighting is in both shots. He looks healthy, not sick like he’s dying from terminal fluorescent lighting. His jacket and tie are smooth, and his pose is relaxed and confident in both photos. He doesn’t look “JCPenney headshot” stiff.

See how he almost appears to be floating in the shot on the right? That’s a high-key lighting setup on a white background – not easy to do well, especially if the subject is also wearing white.

Yet the photographer managed to make the background disappear, while still keeping him distinctly separate (his head doesn’t look like it’s floating, as it would if the white shirt were as overexposed as the background). This is the type of photo you want to get if you wish your designer to integrate you into the design itself, rather than as a separate portrait.

How much should this cost?

Markets vary from coast to coast, and photographers charge by skill and reputation much like lawyers do. However, in most markets, $200-$300 should get you a handful of high-quality professional shots and the rights to use them on your website. In more expensive markets, like New York and San Francisco – maybe up to $500-$600, depending upon the photographer.

It’s always hard to quantify ROI on creating trust via nonverbal cues like design and photography – but wouldn’t you hate to think you lost just ONE client, one case, one referral, due to a lack of follow-through with something so simple?

Cynthia LaLuna is the Creative Director for Rowboat Media.

Top photo: AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com

Good examples: Thanks to Harry Shulman

As many lawyers are learning Facebook is also a very powerful marketing tool.  In today’s JDBlogger Podcast I discuss a recent ABA study and Pew Research Center poll that provides very interesting data on attorneys and the way we use (or don’t use) social media.  The information provided is extremely valuable in helping you determine where you should focus your marketing efforts – and the answers are somewhat surprising.

Tools of The Trade

This week’s tool of the trade is Vook.  Vook is an online self-help publishing service that can help you take your dream of becoming an author and turn it into a reality.  I am currently finishing up an ebook with Vook that I will use as part of my overall law practice marketing strategy.  If you have wanted to write a book but weren’t sure of how to get it done head on over to Vook’s website and they can walk you through the process.

Call for Lawyer Podcasters!

I would like to put together a legal directory here at the JDBlogger website of those attorneys who are using podcasts to market their practice.  If you would like to be included please shoot me an email at john@skibalaw.com.

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Deadlines.  Clients.  Judges.  Opposing attorneys.  All of this adds up to a whole bunch of pressure that keeps many attorneys up at night.  While I don’t believe this stress can be eliminated completely, I think a big part of the problem is lawyers practicing in areas or with people they simply don’t like.

In this episode of the JDBlogger Podcast I explore three ways you can build a law practice through content marketing and social media that you won’t despise.

Tools of the Trade

In this week’s episode of the podcast I unveil a new audio branding package that was created by Music Radio Creative.  I have completely revamped the intro and the outro to the podcast.  Mike and Izabela Russel are based in the United Kingdom and offer all kinds of audio products.   They do some of the best work out there and I have been completely thrilled with the audio they created for the JDBlogger Podcast.

If you are a podcaster or are thinking of starting your own show I would recommend giving the folks at Music Radio Creative a call and see what they can do to help you take your practice to the next level.

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Chris is a big proponent of the use of storytelling telling as a way to connect with clients in both the practice of law and in the marketing of your law practice.

In this week’s podcast episode Chris will share his ideas on the new paradigm shift in legal marketing and provide tips you can implement today to make your law firm marketing efforts more effective.

Chris also expounds on his recent article “Start a Law Firm in Law School.”  For all of you law students out there Chris will discuss things you should be considering now before you graduate and tackle the bar.

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is ScreenFlow.  ScreenFlow is video editing software that allows you to record your computer desktop.  I recently used this software to record the video “Installing & Using the Apple Podcast App.”

I also use this software to record instructional videos that can be used by my staff.  For example, in my bankruptcy law practice I use software to prepare the documents.  This software allows me to create an instructional video by recording my computer screen that can be used for employees to learn how to use the various software.

While ScreenFlow can only be used on Apple Computers, there is software that does the same thing for Windows called Camtasia.

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Without question the Anonymous Lawyer blog and book are the funniest things I have ever read about the practice of law and got me through those tough first few years of being an associate attorney.

I was thrilled when Jeremy agreed to answer a few questions for my blog on how lawyers can write articles that people actually want to read – something Mr. Blachman has clearly mastered.

Q: Tell us the background story on how your Anonymous Lawyer blog came to be?

A: The Anonymous Lawyer blog started without much of a plan behind it.  I went to law school for the reasons people say you shouldn’t — I had done some writing in college and afterwards, but didn’t have much of an idea how to make that into a career, and was too risk-averse to go out to Hollywood, get a job as someone’s assistant, and hope things worked out.  I didn’t know if I wanted to be a lawyer, but I liked the idea that I’d have a useful degree at the end of three years, and figured it would give me some time (albeit at a very expensive cost) to figure out how to be a writer.

I’d been blogging under my own name since the beginning of law school (the archives are at http://jeremyblachman.blogspot.com), mostly just to give myself a reason to write regularly.  I’d built a small audience, enough to motivate me to keep posting but nothing tremendous.  When I started interviewing for summer associate jobs, I was wary of posting real thoughts under my real name, but, on a whim, had an idea to start posting fictionally as someone who’d be interviewing students like me, students who didn’t necessarily have a passion to practice law, but were trying to get the job anyway.

What surprised me about the summer associate hiring process — and keep in mind this was 2004, so it was before the recession hit — was that I was being sold far more than I was having to sell myself.  And all of the firms seemed to be selling basically the same thing — they all claimed to be unique in all of the same ways.  I thought it could be fun to try and write from the perspective of one of these hiring partners I was meeting — I didn’t know if it would build an audience, or if I’d even have enough to say for more than a few posts.

Very quickly, an audience found the blog, and the numbers I was getting were significantly higher than on my personal blog.  And so I kept writing.  And the more I pushed the satire — the more evil I made this guy and his firm — the more readers I got, and the more e-mails I started to get from lawyers actually working at these kinds of places, telling me some of this wasn’t as farfetched as I might have thought.  I think writing the blog, and starting to get people’s reactions to it, made me more wary of big law firm life than I was when I first had the idea for the blog, for sure.

Q:  Did you ever expect it to get as big as it did?

A:  I of course never expected it to become what it became, to get written about in the New York Times and ultimately lead to a book deal and a television pilot.  But as the readership very quickly grew, and I started to get dozens of comments on each post, I did feel like I was tapping into something that young lawyers and law students could relate to, and I hoped I would be able to turn it into something, even if I didn’t know what that was.  My law school roommate at the time would tell me I was silly for spending as much time as I was writing this anonymous blog, with no real plan — but I did have a sense that I had something there, and that it could turn into something bigger.

Q:  What do you believe are the factors that go into writing a good blog?

A: Posting frequently.  That’s my best piece of advice, and the cost of entry for building an audience.  Over the past few years, I’ve been sent so many blog links by people looking for advice, and way too often they send me a blog with 4 posts, written over the course of six months.  I can’t even give someone advice at that point — you need to be posting at least three or four times a week, especially before you have a real audience, and you need to demonstrate in each post that your blog is worth the click.

I’ll admit the blog world is different now than when I started Anonymous Lawyer in 2004.  There is so much more competing for someone’s online attention — there are an endless number of newspaper and magazine blogs, the Huffington Post, etc, that weren’t out there. The expectation on so many sites is 10, 15, 20 new posts a day.  The number of individuals writing about their lives or their own small businesses seems smaller to me, and is certainly far smaller as a fraction of what’s being written.

It would be harder for Anonymous Lawyer to find an audience today — I don’t doubt that at all.  I’ve tried — and continue to try — other blog-based projects, and the field is so much more crowded.  But I do believe that interesting, compelling voices can get heard.  If you have something unique to say — and especially if it’s something that can either make someone laugh or earn someone money — you can find an audience.  But you do have to be absolutely dedicated to posting regularly.  Once you stop — even for a week — you start to lose your readers — they forget about you, and find something else to read (and there’s certainly tons of choices out there) — and once you lose your readers, it’s so hard to get them back.

Q:  What tips can you give lawyers on how to make a legal blog interesting/engaging?

A:  Have something unique to say, and say it with a unique voice. Everything is Google-able.  If someone can find what you’re saying by doing a search and reading it elsewhere, why are you bothering? You need to have content no one else is able to write, about something you know that no one else does, or said in a way that no one else is saying it.

And, sure, you can link to things, and be part of larger conversations on the Internet, with other bloggers, or with your commenters, but, really, it’s about carving out a space that you can fill better than anyone else out there, and making sure that your readers have a reason to come back day after day, and a reason to share your blog with their friends.  I don’t think it’s easy to fake it.  There are terrible sites with lots of readers, and I guess they prove me wrong, but, in the long run, I do think it’s good content that keeps an audience, not tricks.

Q:  What projects are you working on now and where is the best place to find you online?

A:  The best place to find me online is at http://jeremyblachman.com, or on Twitter @jeremyblachman.  I’m working on a range of projects, learning the lesson that it’s very hard to recreate what happened with Anonymous Lawyer, but that my best chance is to keep trying to produce quality material and hope some of it finds an audience.

I’m working on an Anonymous Lawyer movie project with a production company and a lead actor attached — but getting something to the screen is a long process.  I have some television and film projects that I’m developing, a new novel in the works, a comedic play that recently had a reading at a small theater here in New York, and a whole bunch of short humor pieces that I regularly write for sites like The Barnes & Noble Review, McSweeney’s, and others (the links are on my website).

I also may or may not have another anonymous blog or two lurking out there on the Internet, waiting to find their audiences.  I consult and edit on a freelance basis, and have also done some ghostwriting work.  You can reach out if you’re interested in talking via email at jeremy.blachman@gmail.com .

You can pick up a copy of Anonymous Lawyer through Amazon.

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of this book and found the message inspiring and something that is badly needed in the legal arena.  If you are looking to venture out and start your own law practice, or even if you are looking to leave the law all together, The Power of Starting Something Stupid will give you the motivation you need to take that last step.

Get a Free Copy of The Power of Starting Something Stupid!

At the end of the podcast listen for the offer to get your own copy of The Power of Starting Something Stupid absolutely free.  This offer will only last through Friday, March 8th!

Tools of the Trade

This week’s tool of the trade is SEOkeywordranking.com .  We all strive to be #1 in the Google search engine rankings, but how do we know if we are on the right track or if we are going nowhere fast?  SEO Keyword Ranking is a great service that will give you weekly updates on the ranking of up to 50 different keywords and phrases.  You can use the information to tweak your blog posts as you head on up the search engine results.

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With over four years of blogging and nearly 1,000 blog posts under his belt, Jeff comes on the podcast to share tips on engaging with your blog audience, creating an effective work flow, and maintaining enthusiasm for your blog even after you have been writing for years.  Jeff also shares with us his Top 5 iPad Apps for lawyers.

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is the website Music Bakery.  A common mistake made by new podcasters is to use music or sound effects without permission from the creator and/or without paying royalties to the sound creator.

Music Bakery solves this problem by selling royalty-free music clips and sound effects that you can purchase to use in your podcast.  They are immediately down-loadable and come in clips as short as 6 seconds.

If you are needing sound for your podcast Music Bakery is an excellent resource.

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Initially, you can create a Facebook page for your law firm.  Next, you can use this Facebook page as an outpost where you can interact with ‘fans’ of your firm and drive people back to your law firm website.

The more people that ‘like’ your Facebook page, the more people will see the status updates you post on it.  Think of people who like your law firm Facebook page like you think of friends on your personal Facebook page.

So, once you get your fan page up and running, the next step is to get people to like you.  I started the JDBlogger Facebook page at the beginning of this year.  The first step I took was to let my personal Facebook friends know about my new page.

Getting People to Like You

In the Admin section of your law firm page there is a button labeled “Build Audience” with a drop down menu.  The drop down menu has a few options including inviting your current Facebook friends and email contacts.  This is a good place to start.  Your personal Facebook friends will receive an invitation to ‘like’ your page.  By taking this first step I got an immediate 100 ‘likes’.

Because more ‘likes’ means a larger audience for your content, you want as many people to like your page as you can.  You can get more likes and more exposure to your office by creating an ad.

This can be done in the same “build audience” drop down menu.  Under the “Create an Ad” option you can easily put together an ad to promote your law practice page.  This ad will show up in both the news stream as well as the ads listed on the right hand side of the screen on Facebook.

Open Up Your Pocketbook

Running these ads is not free.  You can set a daily budget of a minimum of $5 per day on up.  The more you are willing to pay the more you likes you will get.

For the JDBlogger Facebook page I set a daily budget of $15 per day for two ads ($30 total).  I ran these ads for about a month and was able to swell my likes from about 100 to over 1000.  The cost was a little over $800.

I know that seems like a lot of money to spend on Facebook, but you need to think of what it actually gives you.  The more ‘likes’ you have the more people you can get your the content from your blog in front of.  The more people that see and read your content, the more likely you will make a connection that will result in a new client.

Promoting Your Facebook Posts

While I won’t go into a lot of detail on promoting your posts it is important to mention that just because I have over 1000 likes on my JDBlogger Facebook page doesn’t necessarily mean that my status updates are going to be seen by all 1000 fans.

In order to get my content in front of as many of the page fans as possible it is necessary to promote your post.  This also comes with a fee, generally $5-$20 per post.

This all may seem like a lot, but compared to the thousands many firms spend on self-declared SEO experts each month this is peanuts.

How have you used Facebook to market your law practice?

In this week’s episode of the JDBlogger Podcast I will discuss the 3 keys to creating truly engaging content that will help establish you as the authority in your area of the law, engage your readers, and build the necessary relationships of trust that will result in more clients.

Tools of the Trade

This weeks Tool of the Trade is Phrase Express.  This text-expander tool allows you to write entire letters or emails by typing a few letters.  I use this tool to write form emails that my office uses on a regular basis.  It is a huge time saver.

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Like many sales websites Dell has a 24/7 chat option to get help with your purchase.  Here is how it played out when I sought to get a little help (Dell was kind enough to email the entire conversation):

	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Hello John, good evening ”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Welcome to Dell Parts and Accessories Chat! My name is Sanjeev Nag (            1800 289 3355       at extn. 4162708) and my e mail id is sanjeev_nag_p_j@dell.com. I am pleased to be your Dell.com Sales Chat Expert!. How can I assist you today?”
	John: “Hello”
	John: “I have a Dell Inspiron N5010 laptop and need a replacement power adapter but am not sure which is the correct one to buy?”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Its my pleasure to have you on my chat line today. I’d be happy to assist you.”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “I will help you with the adapter John”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Please help me with the service tag”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Service Tag is a 7 digit alpha numeric code which ends with “1″ bottom of the laptop.”
	John: “XXXXXXX”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Thank you”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Checking with the Tag”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “This laptop was bought in 2011″
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “John, may I have your full name, billing address and home telephone number inorder to complete customer verification please.”
	John: “John Skiba, xxxxx, xxxxxx
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Thank you”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “I have checked with the adapter that is needed”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “The adapter is there with me for $56 only and if you are looking to order it, we can help you with Dell preferred account”
	Agent (Sanjeev J): “Dell Preferred Account is an revolving line of credit offered by Dell, with No annual fee, or prepayment penalty charges. It will help you make payments in easy installments and leave all your other credit sources open for other use. If you are interested, I can quickly check if you qualify for the same..Is that Okay
	John: “I do not want you to do that, I wanted to know what adapter to use. Never mind”

As you can read above, things started out okay, and the Dell representative appeared as if he was going to be helpful, but at the end of our brief conversation I still had no idea what power cord I needed.  I knew how much it was going to cost- $56.  And I knew that Dell wanted me to sign up for a Dell credit card to pay for this $56 dollar item. But didn’t know what I was supposed to buy.  So while it appeared that Sanjeev was there to help me out, he was really only their to sell me.  This was not only frustrating but left me feeling that Dell really wasn’t interested in helping me at all.

We often do the same thing with the content we put up on our blogs.  We write a great article on some aspect of the law where people are looking for Answers and then at the end we put what is essentially an advertisement about how great we are and why they should call us to set up a consultation.

This turns what was otherwise a no-strings attached helpful article into something similar to my conversation with Dell.  I needed help.  Dell appeared as though they were ready and willing to help, when all they were ready to do was try and sell me on their credit card.

If I had been given the information on the power cord for my laptop I would have taken that information and completed the sale.  Instead, in my frustration I went to Amazon and bought the power cord there (for $38 no less!).

The content you put on your blog should be helpful.  End of story.  Don’t try and sell them on hiring you.  People who read your blog know your are an attorney and if your content is truly valuable when they need to hire a lawyer, you won’t have to do any selling at all.  To them, you will be the authority in the law in this area and there will be no question that you are who they will seek out and hire.

Heil PR40 Podcast Microphone

Podcasting for lawyers.  If you are like most business owners you may wonder why in the world you would want to start a podcast and even if you are one of those brave souls who does want to jump in you may not be sure what you need to get started.

In this episode of the JDBlogger Podcast I go over the two big questions of podcasting: Why and How?  Here are a few links to resources and equipment that are mentioned in the show:

Podcasting  Microphones:

Blue Microphones Snowball USB Microphone

I used the Snowball microphone with my Consumer Warrior Podcast for the first 6 or 7 episodes.  You can check it out here and listen to the sound and decide for yourself.  Great little microphone but doesn’t give quite the sound quality of the Heil PR40.

Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone

The Heil PR-40 is a great microphone for podcasting.  I started using this microphone exclusively when I launched the JDBlogger Podcast.  Delivers great sounds and makes you sound better on your podcast than you do in real life!  Definitely worth the investment.

Podcasting Recording Software/Hardware

I use Audacity to edit my podcasts however I used to record directly into my laptop using the Audacity software.  This is an open source produce and costs you nothing to download.
Roland R-05 Studio WAVE/MP3 Recorder

I now record my podcasts into my Roland R-05 recorder.  This is a great option for when you want to record outside of your office or studio and also helps you to avoid lost podcast episodes in the event that your hard drive crashes.

Podcast Hosting

The leader in the industry is Liberated Syndication (Libysn).  They are very reasonably priced and provide you with great analytics to monitor how you are doing.

Podcast Training

The King of Podcasting is Cliff Ravenscraft at the Podcast Answerman Podcast.  Cliff has two podcasting courses: the first one is free and will teach you the basics of getting your first episode up and on the airwaves.

Learn How to Podcast

Great free course to bring you up to speed on the fundamentals of podcasting.

Podcasting A to Z 

If you ready to take your podcast to the next level the A to Z Course is going to get you there.  This is a paid course but worth every penny.  If you put my last name “Skiba” in the check out box you will get $100 off the price of the course!

Tool of the Trade

This weeks Tool of the Trade is Buffer.  Buffer allows you to schedule out your posts and communications on your various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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* Some of the links to the above products are affiliate links – meaning I will receive a commission if you purchase those items.  This does not increase the cost to you.  But please know that I have used all of the above products and would recommend them regardless!

As someone who practices in the area of bankruptcy law I understand this difficulty well.  I know that I typically have a very small window to make an impression on a potential client and if I miss it, I have likely missed my opportunity for new business with that client.

Traditional forms of lawyer advertising such as yellow pages, print advertising, radio, and TV all do a really poor job of showcasing your expertise and who you really are as a person.  These forms of marketing all have built-in restrictions – space and cost.  With any type of print advertising you are restricted by the size of the page and the cost (usually outrageous cost) of re-producing the ad.

With radio and TV you have 15-30 seconds to get your message across.  Not adequate time to build the relationship of trust you need for a potential client to feel comfortable to hire you.

With these limitations you are left to slogans and large fonts to try and grasp for people’s attention.

There is a better way.

Here are three ways you can use content marketing so that your clients are ready to hire you before they even step foot in your office!

Become the Authority

When we buy things most will go for the highest quality item that we can afford.  This is also true when it comes to legal services. Often when hiring a lawyer something has gone seriously wrong in a person’s life and they need relief.  They want to feel comfortable that the lawyer they have hired is very good at what they do- they want the best!

You can become the authority in your practice area by sharing what you know online.  Your blog is your platform to tell potential clients why they should hire you in and demonstrate that you know your stuff.

The key here is that you have to actually know your stuff.  There is no better Continuing Legal Education course than a blog.  Writing a blog on bankruptcy law has forced me to research and learn some of the more far-reaching areas of my chosen field simply so I have something to write about week in and week out.  The more you blog, the more you will research, the more you will know and can help people.

And when clients see what you have to offer,  see how generous you have been with your knowledge, you will become the authority on this subject to them.  That way, when they walk in your office, the decision has already been made that they are going to hire you.  Why would they want anyone else?

And all of this occurred before you uttered a single word to them.

Get in their Head

Podcasting.  This is still a new medium for legal marketing but it is a very powerful one.  A podcast is a very intimate form of communication – it is just you and them.  Your voice in their ear buds, sharing information that is vitally important to them at that point in their life.

Through a podcast people can get to know you through the way you express ideas, the way you share information, and even get insight into your personality and if you are someone they would want to work with.

Creating a podcast takes some effort for sure, but I have found that the return on that effort is ongoing.  Once an episode has been put online you will have people continually returning to it and sharing it with family and friends who may be facing a similar situation.

I used to wonder who in the world would actually listen to a legal podcast.  But after launching my Consumer Warrior Podcast I was surprised at the number of people that not only listened but reached out to me to hire me and tell me how much they appreciated legal information in that format.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Video.  Admittedly this is a new area that I am just starting to dive into.  A while back I interviewed New  York attorney Gerry Oginski on the JDBlogger Podcast about his Herculean effort in marketing his law practice through video (he has 700+ videos online and counting…).  His interview got me thinking more and more about using video to market my practice.

These don’t need to be feature length films.  Simple 2 minute videos of you addressing common questions you get from potential clients.  Video is more accessible than ever before.  Your clients can access video from their phones, tablets, computers, TVs, etc.

Like a podcast, video gives you an opportunity to engage your client before they ever meet with you.  They can get to know you and understand what you know from the comfort of their home – free from the intimidating experience many people feel during an initial consultation at a law office.

Whether your platform is a blog, a podcast, videos, or all of the above, content marketing is going to allow you into the lives of your potential clients long before you ever actually meet them.  The better you are at delivering consistent valuable content the more trust you will build and the greater the authority you will have.

Then, when the client makes the decision to actually call a lawyer the hiring decision has already been made.  They feel that they already know a lawyer who can help them with their legal problem.  They want you.

Jay Fleischman

In this week’s podcast episode I had the opportunity to interview attorney Jay Fleischman.  I consider Jay a mentor when it comes to marketing a law practice.  I first learned of his Legal Practice Pro website back in 2009.  It was there that I was introduced to content marketing and ways that I could build my law practice without breaking the bank.

We  also discuss Jay’s recent experiment with Google+.  For 30 days Jay abandoned his blog and posted all of his content directly on Google+.  Jay will tell you the results of this experiment and how it can impact you law firm marketing.

Finally, Jay tells you what it means to be an ‘untethered’ lawyer – how he practices law from his home and keeps everything in the cloud.  If you are getting ready to launch your own practice this episode of the JDBlogger Podcast is a must listen.

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is the recently released book by Amy Jo Martin, Renegades Write the Rules: How the Digital Royalty Use Social Media to Innovate.  Amy is the CEO of Digital Royalty, a company that helps companies and celebrities with their use of social media and online branding.  This book will help alter the way you look social media and how it can help you build your law practice.

You can get Amy’s book by clicking here :

Renegades Write the Rules: How the Digital Royalty Use Social Media to Innovate

Thanks again for all of you that have gone over to iTunes and left a 5 Star Rating for the Podcast.  You can head over to iTunes and leave us some feedback by clicking below:

Leave a Review of the JDBlogger Podcast by Clicking Here!

Blogging for Lawyers

No time.  This is the number one reason that lawyers either don’t keep up on their blogging or are unwilling to start.  I won’t call this an excuse because I also live with the pressures of law practice and know that finding extra time is tough – especially if we view the task as ‘non-essential’ to getting through our day.

Experienced attorneys are usually masters of squeezing every valuable minute out of a work day.  After all, we sell our time in six-minute increments.  If we want to make more money (or make more money for those we work for) we have to bill more hours.

I remember shortly after beginning my first job as a lawyer I began to realize how much time I wasted every day on things like going to the bathroom, eating lunch, and checking personal email.  I mean if I could cut lunch down to a half hour and stay off the Internet – BAM! – there is an additional  .8 per day!  Cut out that third bathroom run in the afternoon equals another .2!

When it comes to writing for your blog – better yet, writing for the growth of your law practice – we need to harness those amazing time keeping abilities you have honed over the years and get them to work for you in marketing and growing your business.

Here are 5 ways you can find more time to dedicate to your blogging:

1.     Monitor Your Progress

For most bloggers the information found in Google Analytics is like crack.  Sure you only checked your stats 30 minutes ago, but the numbers may have gone up!  I have found that I am more motivated to blog, and thus find more time to write, when I am seeing real results from my writing.  The two best ways to do this are through monitoring the number of people who are visiting your site with Google Analytics, and asking the potential clients that come to your office how they found you.

Google Analytics if full of information on your site, but simply monitoring how many people are coming to your site can be very motivating.  Further, now you can monitor how many people are on your site at that very second by clicking on Real-Time under the Standard Reports.  You can see how many people are on your site and what they are reading.

I always ask clients how they found out about my practice.  People will often share what they learned on my blog.  These types of interactions and monitoring help me to see that my blogging is not just some additional task but is a true platform to spread my message and plays an integral part of building my law practice.

2.     Get Up Early

Most lawyers have the ongoing experience of waking up in the middle of the night in a panic that some deadline may have been missed or wrestling with a client’s problem that you aren’t sure you can solve.  I have a home office and sometimes when I have these night terrors I will just decide to head on downstairs and start my work day – even if it is 3:00 a.m.

While I don’t particularly enjoy starting my work day in the middle of the night I have noticed that those hours between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. I am super productive.  No phone calls, no emails, no staff, no nothing.  Just me and the work.  I often get more done in those three hours than I do all the rest of the day once the phones are turned on.

Try getting up an hour early to do your writing.  Your mind is fresh and ideas will flow more easily.  If you don’t have time, you may have to make some time earlier in the day.

3.     Batch Processing

I recently dedicated an entire article this, but batch processing can save you a lot of time, and by doing so make blogging seem much less like a chore.  Find a time during the week when you can dedicate enough time to hammer out two or three articles.  After you have them in final form use a tool like the Editorial Calendar for WordPress and schedule out when you want the article released to your blog.

I have really tried to incorporate this, especially since I am writing on two blogs now, and have found it to take a lot of the stress out of writing.  I try to write all of my articles for the week on Saturday and then schedule them to be released through the week.

4.     Keep a List of Topics

Part of what stresses bloggers out is finding interesting topics to write about on a consistent basis.  You can reduce the total time it takes to write on your blog if you know what you are going to write about before you open up the dashboard in WordPress and start punching on the keys.

I keep a list of topics that I think of or that come to me throughout the week and then when I sit down to write it is just a matter of choosing a couple of those ideas and writing.  As you meet with clients in consultations keep a list of common questions you get asked.  Writing becomes a much more efficient process if you are not having to brain-storm ideas on what to write about and can just simply write the article.

5.     Cut Out TV

This one is painful for me to write.  But I guess… if you are really desperate to find additional time to blog you could always turn the TV off at night.  I know, I know.  This is an extreme measure – and one I have a hard time doing.  I have my staple of shows (The O’Reilly Factor, Modern Family, The Office, Idiot Abroad) that I just don’t miss.

They are part of my weekly routine.  But if I cut out even one or two of those shows there is another .8 to 1.3 (40 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes for your lay folk) that you could use to build your law practice through blogging.

I know the last thing most lawyers want is something else to add to their already full plate.  But there has been a fundamental shift in the way people find what they need – including the way they find their lawyers.  Find the time to write now – or in the not so distant future you may find yourself with way too much time on your hands for such activities!

My guest is Cynthia LaLuna, the Creative Director at Rowboat Media, a website design company that has a strong focus on building legal websites.

We specifically discuss what factors you should consider when building a new website, what elements should be included in every legal website, and why you should strongly consider a mobile responsive website.

Your law firm website is your platform from which you can spread your message and inform clients and potential clients alike.  Not only that, but your website is likely the first thing potential clients will see when they look into hiring you.

Often, this is where the first impression is made – and you aren’t even there.  Having a good website is a must in today’s world.

In this episode of the JDBlogger Podcast Cynthia walks us through the steps you can take to make sure your website portrays the image and message you want and converts visitors into clients!

Tools of the Trade

Today’s Tool of the Trade is Pretty Link.  Pretty Link is a link cloaking and redirection service.  It allows you to take any link and turn it into a clickable custom link.  This is a great tool for podcasters and those who want to include links on written marketing materials to particular pages on their website .

Pretty Link is a WordPress plugin and there is a free version.  You an also upgrade to their pro version for $37.

A big thanks to all those who have ‘liked” my Facebook Fan Page and those have left a big 5 star rating through iTunes!

Click Here to Subscribe to the JDBlogger Podcast and Leave a 5 Star Review!

Sometimes…when I am really honest with myself…I REALLY get sick of writing articles on bankruptcy.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like a good bankruptcy article as much as the next guy, but sometimes the well starts to run a little dry.

This leads to two obvious questions: why do I continue to write articles on bankruptcy, and how is it possible to continue to come up with new ideas on what to write about?  Good questions.  Glad you asked.

Only 27 More Years to Go!

The first question is easy.  I blog because I need clients to come into to my office and hire me.  That is how my six children eat.  That being said, blogging isn’t the only way to market a law practice.  I think it is one of the best ways, but I could do other things if I didn’t enjoy it.  But even if you enjoy blogging, those days are going to come when you are tired of a subject or simply tired of maintaining a schedule that is required if you want to be a successful blogger/attorney (remember, consistency is the key!).

I am 38 years old.  If I practice until I am 65, I have 27 more years of practice (ugh).  At my current rate, I am staring at 3,110 more articles I need to write on bankruptcy!

So how do you keep the motivation up?  First, don’t run the numbers like I just did above.  Second, embrace the challenge and recognize all the good that comes from blogging.

Blogging has resulted in me being able to build a successful law practice while spending relatively little to do it.

Blogging has provided an opportunity for me to become an authority in my practice area.  Notice I didn’t say the authority, but by putting my thoughts out there week after week to some I do become an authority on my particular practice area.

Finally, I like seeing my numbers go up on my Google Analytics page.  Admit it.  You get a thrill each time you log into your Google Analytics page and the number of visitors has gone up!  Set goals.  The more you blog the more readers you will get.

How to Come Up With Ideas on What to Write About

When you first start blogging thinking up topics to write about isn’t too difficult.  After all, you havent’ written much of anything at that point.  But after a while you start to think “how much more do I have to say about bankruptcy?’.

I wish I could give you some three step plan that would guarantee that you would always have interesting things to write about, but it isn’t that simple.  In order to be successful at blogging you need to embrace the fact that you are a blogger.  That you are a writer.  And with that acknowledgement you must be ever looking for things to write about.  Here are a few places I find inspiration when it comes to writing my blog:

1.     Clients – Your current caseload and the potential clients that you visit with are the best place to come up with blog topics.  First, they are your audience – there in the flesh.  And they are asking you questions about what concerns them.  Write about these things.

You have heard the same questions over and over – write about them. Most people who are dealing with a particular legal issue have similar questions.  Not only that, but they often will Google those questions, and when they do, they will find you because you were smart enough to write about it.

2.    Twitter – If you are on Twitter it is a great place to see what other attorneys in your practice area are talking about.  I haven’t found social media to be the best place to find out what potential clients are thinking – after all, who wants to talk about their debt problems on Twitter?

But seeing what other attorneys in your practice area are writing about or what types of stories are in the news can spur ideas as to what could/should be writing about.

3.     News Outlets – Look to other websites or news papers to see if there are articles about your specific practice area or something that is relatable to your practice area.  However, one word of advice, it is fine to report about something that may be interesting in the news, but always relate your post back to the concerns or worries of your clients.

Most of the time your clients could give a rip what is professional interesting to you.  They are concerned with how you are going to solve their problem.  Use news stories as a vehicle to tell people how it is you can help them.

The more you blog, the more you will start to see stories you can write about in all areas of your life.  Be creative.  Strive to write in a tone and on topics that you would be interested in reading.

There is no magic formula to writing a successful blog.  It is going to take effort, but the results – and the journey – will be worth the price.

How do you come up with topics for your blog?

If you haven’t listened to the Podcast Answer Man before you really need to make it one of the regular podcasts you listen to.  Even if you aren’t currently producing your own podcast you will take a lot of away from each of the episodes.  There are many business tips in additional to great content on podcasting.  Cliff has been podcasting for years and has recorded over 3,000 episodes of his various podcasts!

Cliff also had kind words for the layout of the JDBlogger website.  I have to give it to my webdesign team at Rowboat Media – Cynthia that the gang did a great job!

It was an honor to be featured on his show. Thanks Cliff!

Specifically I address what content marketing is – and maybe more importantly what it is not.

Next we will discuss why you should build your law firm brand on line, what your motivations need to be to be successful, and some tips on what it takes to build relationships of trust with potential clients.

Finally, I will go over some of the “how” when it comes to building your brand.  What platforms are ideal for blogging, podcasting, and video, and what the most effective methods are for spreading the word about your great legal content!

Tools of the Trade

This week’s Tool of the Trade is Istockphoto.com.  A key component of any blog and website is the visual.  A quality picture can draw people in to read your article when they otherwise might pass right on by.  In the podcast I discuss why I stopped using Flickr for my photos even though they are free and Istockphoto is not.

Attorney/blogger Morris Singer recently wrote an interesting article on how lawyer website providers are taking advantage of the lack of tech knowledge by most attorneys.  There is no question that lawyer ignorance when it comes to technology is costing us big time.

Recently I spoke with an attorney who had hired one of the large lawyer website providers.  This attorney is a member of a small firm of 4 attorneys.  They hired a nationally known company to build them a website and hopefully move them up in the search rankings.

The cost?  $2,200 per month!

After four years these attorneys began to become very frustrated with the service that was being provided.  I took a look at their website and found that it was a simple run-of-the-mill website that did not have an active blog.

There were a few pages with the same content that was put up four years ago when the website was created.

Over the last four years this firm has paid over $105,000 for this website!  A static website without a blog that was no where near the top of the search results.

One Hundred and Five Thousand Dollars!!!  Man.

What in the world are they paying for?  And here is the thing…these are smart guys.  They are great lawyers…but being a great lawyer takes a lot of time and effort.  So, they put their trust in a national, respected brand to create the firm’s online presence.  It turn’s out, that trust was misplaced.

What Should a Website Cost?

So what should it cost to create a strong online presence for your firm?  In his article Mr. Singer says that it should cost you no more than $635 PER YEAR to build and run a website.  Essentially he broke it down into four categories: (1) domain, (2) email, (3) hosting, and (4) website design/production.

I agree with one exception.  I believe more resources should be devoted to website design.  Mr. Singer estimates that a website will cost about $1,500 to construct.  That is true if you buy a non-custom site with few features.

However, in today’s world of smart phones and tablets it is vital that you have a mobile responsive site.  A mobile responsive site is a website that that will adjust to the size of screen that it is being viewed on.  For instance, this website you are looking at here at JDBlogger is a mobile responsive design.  Take a look at the site on your smart phone and compare that to what you see on your desk top computer.  The site will adapt to both screens and make it easy to read no matter how large or small the screen is.

Currently the majority of internet users surf the web on a mobile device.  If you want to be found it is more important than ever that your website be catered to those users.

So what does a good mobile responsive design site cost?  Probably about $4,000-$5,000.  I know that is a chunk of change.  But now more than ever you need to understand that your website is how your firm is being judged.  This is your firm real estate.  This is how the world sees you and what you do.  Without question this is an investment.

After that the domain, email, and hosting are under $20 per month.

I currently spend $0 on my website.  Nada. Zero.  As of today I am getting approximately 11,000 visitors per month.

What does $2,200 a month buy you in the form of visitors to your site?  Apparently about 1,500 (or less) visitors per month based upon what I was told by the attorneys of this Hundred Grand website!

Get a great website.  Become a blogger.  Connect and distribute with social media.  Get off the sidelines.  You are not being left behind – You have been left behind.  You need to catch up.

Stop wasting thousands of dollars each month and take control of your law firm marketing.

If you decide to start a blog you need to commit to writing it yourself.  This is something that shouldn’t be outsourced.  Here are my main two reasons why:

#1 – Your Blog Will Humanize Your Law Firm

People hire lawyers, not law firms.  When someone comes into your office and decides to hire you as their attorney it is because they have made some type of connection with you as a person and feel comfortable in trusting you to do the job.

Blogging provides you a platform to show what kind of person you are before clients ever even step foot into your law firm.  Your articles should not only show your knowledge of the law but should shed some light on your personality.  People who visit your website or read your blog should leave feeling like that have some insight as to who you really are.

If you outsource your blogging you will end up with a bunch of articles that will contain all of the relevant terms for the search engines, and they may even help propel you to the top of the rankings in Google,  but once you get clients to your website you will struggle to get people to take action and make the call to your office.  On numerous occasions I have people come into my office and tell me they chose me as their lawyer because of the tone of my website.

Tone seems a strange reason to hire a lawyer, but people want to feel comfortable with who you are as a person before they pay you a bunch of money to be their lawyer.  There are a lot of lawyers out there that practice in your area of law and do it just as well or better than you do.  If you want to stand out from the crowd, show people who you are as a person in your blog posts.  Most lawyers don’t do this and it will immediately separate you from the pack.

#2- Become the Authority in Your Area of Law

The second reason you should write your own blog articles is blogging provides you the opportunity to become the authority in your area of law.  If you are outsourcing your blogging you may get articles that are legally correct (or may not), but if you are writing your own stuff you will be able to share your  legal knowledge and the nuances of the law that you have acquired from years of law practice.

Further, blogging on a consistent basis requires that you come up with new topics – and usually requires that you do some of your own research.  This regular research keeps you on top of the most current trends in your area of the law and truly helps you to become the go to authority in your area of law.  This is true even though there are undoubtedly attorneys that are more experienced than you may be.  You can be the authority – you just have to let people know about it.

It is tempting to hire a person or company to ghost-write your blog, pay them the money, flip the switch, and hope the clients pour in.  However, if you are serious about using a blog to market your practice, write it yourself.  The legal world doesn’t need another generic boring blog.  It needs to hear from you.

In this episode Gordon shares his tips and secrets to creating a good workflow in preparing for and producing a podcast.  You will also learn tips on how to attract advertisers to your legal podcast and other monetization tips.  Whether you are preparing to start a podcast or have been producing one for years Gordon provides several ideas that will help you be successful.

Tools of the Trade

The Tools of the Trade for this week are promoted posts in Facebook and Facebook Ads.  Many people are unaware that the status updates they enter on Facebook are typically only seen by about 16% of their Facebook friends.  For a business owner trying to get the word out on a product or service this simply isn’t a large enough number.  By ‘promoting’ your post you can get your post viewed by a significantly higher number of your friends or fans.  But it comes at a cost – $7 to be exact.

I have used promoted posts with a lot of success and when I need a lot of eyeballs on a particular post it is well worth the $7.

Another tool I use is Facebook Ads.  You can use them for various purposes, however I have used them to build my audience on my Facebook fan page for JDBlogger.  For many the problem isn’t that they aren’t producing great content; the problem is that it is not being exposed to enough people.  Through the use of Facebook ads you can build the number of ‘Likes’ on your fan page and increase the number of people who receive your content.

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You can subscribe to the JDBlogger Podcast and even leave a review of the podcast by clicking HERE.

It seems that the topic of podcasting is coming up a lot these days.  Many national figures and world-wide corporations have jumped on the band-wagon and have launched their own podcast.

Still, with podcasting becoming more and more prevalent, many people are still not sure exactly how you subscribe to a particular podcast and how you can listen to episodes on the go.

With that in mind I prepared a short video that shows all of you iPhone and iPad users how to install and use the Apple Podcast App.

This app is very easy to use and makes it possible for you to listen to your favorite podcasts wherever you go.

You can subscribe to the JDBlogger Podcast by clicking HERE.

There are a lot of reasons why we as lawyers blog.  From the get-go I started blogging for one purpose – to show potential clients why I should be their attorney.  But the longer I blog and podcast and use social media to market my law practice my motivations – at least partially- have evolved.

Recently I conducted an interview New York attorney Gerry Oginksi about the use of video in the marketing of his law practice.  After the interview we had a chance to talk about why we use tools like video, blogging, and podcasting and why we enjoy it.

I think Gerry hit it on the head when he said he really enjoyed the creative process of producing the videos.  I agree.  Writing a blog article, thinking up topics, titles, and all that goes with blogging.  Same goes with podcasting.

The process of creating a product that you hope will have an impact on others is a big reason that I choose to market my law practice through new media.  The fact that it just happens to be the most effective and least expensive way to drive business to my office is one of the many benefits.

Often the practice of law is not great for creation.  Law, by its very nature, is full of contention.  Fighting between you and opposing counsel.  Client v. Client.  Lawyer v. Client.  Sometimes it is simply nice to do something a little less tense and use different parts of our brain.

I recently started reading Seth Godin’s new book, The Icarus Deception.  While I am not all the way through the book, what I have read so far is great.  A main theme of this book is that the new “connected economy” we are now living in demands that we make art and will reward nothing else.

Here art is not used in the traditional sense, but more as the product of who we are as people.  In this context, as we create art in our blogs, podcasts, and videos the more we show of our human side the more successful we will be.

How does this apply to legal marketing?  The key to success in online marketing is that you must stand out from the crowd.  Don’t write another synopsis of the latest court of appeals case.  No one cares.  No one is reading them (other than the attorney who is trying to get some quick legal research done by jumping on Google!).

If your goal is to reach out and make a connection with a person so that person will trust you enough to call you and even hire you to handle what is usually one of the most stressful events of their lives, then you need to be human.  You need to connect with that person.

And if you are able to do that, that might just be art…

I have been in your shoes – twice!  On two separate occasions I started my own solo law practice.  In this week’s podcast episode I go over some of the useful tips I have gained through often doing things the hard way.

Here are a couple of the resources I mention in the podcast:

Dropbox : is a file hosting service  that operates in the cloud.  It is great for storing files and viewing them on almost any device.

Rocket Matter:  is an online practice management software that is also stored in the cloud and allows you to have a top of the line software without having to pay the big up front price.

Call Ruby: is a virtual receptionist.  They will answer your calls, forward them to any phone you wish and will even email you the voice mails that are left by your clients.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 Deluxe Bundle Sheet-Fed Scanner : premium scanner that can do high volume without taking up a lot of space.

Elance: Great place for finding virtual assistants.

Rowboat Media:  They have designed several websites for me.  They do a great job.

JD Supra: I use them to distribute my blog articles.  This is a paid service but they do a great job.

Tools of the Trade

This weeks tool of the trade is WordPress Editorial Calendar.  It will help you in planning your blog posts and scheduling them out over time.  Must have tool if you draft your blog articles in batches.

Leo Laporte Keynote on Podcasting at New Media Expo 2013

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First up was Guy Kawaski.  If you don’t know who Guy is, he is the former Chief Evangelist of Apple and author of several books including “What the Plus!” on using Google+.  He was great.  One thing that really struck me was when he discussed his reason for using social media.  He uses things like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ as tools that provide him the opportunity to distribute his ideas and products.

In fact, he went so far as to say that “I have a wife and four kids, I don’t need anymore friends!”  I can relate.  As a husband and father of six kids sometimes the thought of constantly cultivating a bunch of new relationships can be very tiring.  It made me evaluate why I use social media and whether I use it as a method of building online relationships or simply a tool for distributing my ideas.

I think when it comes to using social media for lawyers it leans towards a tool for distribution.  Particularly if our writings or podcast is focused on potential clients.  It may be another story if our blog is geared towards other lawyers.

This is not to say that we can’t build relationships through the use of social media, it is just saying that there are more complex layers (such as not wanting to give legal advice online) when it comes to lawyers and the types of interactions they can have with potential clients online.

To end the day, NMX brought in Leo Laporte of TWiT (This Week in Technology).  Not only did Leo provide the Keynote address but he later MC’ed the 8th Annual Podcast Awards.  Leo’s keynote address was focused on new media with an emphasis on podcasting.

One of the things that really hit home with me is when Leo compared traditional media with the new media of today and implored all the new media content creators should not try and mimic the old media platforms.  For instance, a bloggers’ goal shouldn’t be to be exactly like a newspaper journalist; a podcaster doesn’t need to sound like a radio DJ to be beneficial to his listeners; and video producers shouldn’t be focused on becoming TV-lite.

I thought there are parallels with a law practice. Too many solo attorneys open shop with the goal in mind of creating a “mini-me” type law firm.  They want to create the same type of law firm as the one they just left – only on a smaller scale.

The solo law practice is a totally different creature from the medium-to-large sized  law firm.  It needs to be managed – and marketed – a different way.  The great thing about being a solo in this age is the wide range of mediums in which a single attorney can get his/her message out to a gigantic audience.

NMX has been great.  The podcast awards were awesome.  It was great to see categories that had world-wide corporations like ESPN competing with people who were literally creating a podcast in their basement.  I highly encourage all lawyer content creators to check it out next year.

Lately I have been reading a lot about the number of graduates law schools are pumping out each year, the lack of jobs, and the increase in competition.  More and more it is becoming difficult to stand out.

As I was driving through Las Vegas today I saw numerous (more than what I see in most cities) billboards advertising legal services.  Years back I looked into what it cost to put up a billboard and the cost was outrageous.  And worse, while the attorneys who are paying for these giant ads will likely think different and unique, all of the lawyer billboards I saw looked the same.

When I see a billboard I see a ton of money being thrown down the drain and a misguided marketing approach.

As more and more attorneys get into social media, websites, and blogging, it can be more and more difficult to find your unique voice that will draw clients to your practice.  However there is still one medium that when it comes to legal marketing is still pretty scarce – podcasting.

900 to 1

In one of the sessions at NMX today there was a representative from Libsyn.  Libsyn is a company that can host your podcast and assist with the distribution of the podcast.  I use them for both of my podcasts.  This representative said that bloggers outnumber podcasters 900 to 1!  That is an incredible number.

Further, go on over to iTunes and search the podcast directly for the keyword “lawyer” or “attorney”.  You will find that there are relatively few attorneys using audio to market their practice (and will also find that there are many attorneys who are good at starting a podcast but not so great and keeping the podcast going).

Right now you have the rare opportunity of getting in on what could still be considered the ground floor of something.  It is widely thought that podcasting is on the verge of going mainstream.  Almost everyone has a device, whether it be a smart phone, iPad, or whatever, that they can listen to your podcast on.  Now is the time.  Podcasting is the way to make your law practice stand out among the sea of billboards.

What is stopping you from starting a podcast?

Gerry has produced over 700 videos in marketing his law practice that have been viewed on YouTube nearly 500,000 times and recently released the book “Secrets of Lawyer Video Marketing in the Age of YouTube.”

In this interview Gerry discusses the powerful impact the use of video can  have on your legal marketing, the most effective techniques in creating and using video, and things you should definitely avoid.  If you have been thinking of implementing video into your overall marketing strategy this is a must listen to interview.

Below is an example of the videos Gerry produces for his law practice:

You can see more of Gerry’s videos by visiting his YouTube channel and his law firm website.

Tools of the Trade

If you have been thinking of starting a podcast for your law practice there is no better time to jump on board.  2013 is going to be the year of the podcast and there is no better way to reach out to potential clients and make that connection that will result in more and better clients.

A lot of lawyers hesitate when it comes to starting a podcast because they don’t know where to start and are intimidated by the thought of producing their own podcast.  You can overcome these fears by learning directly from the master of podcasting Cliff Ravenscraft. Cliff is the “Podcast Answer Man”.  Cliff offers a Podcasting A to Z course that will teach you everything you need from the ground up to start your very own podcast and sound like a pro.

The next Podcasting A to Z course starts on January 14th, 2013.  You can click HERE to register and if you use the discount code “Skiba” in the shopping cart when you order you will receive an immediate $100 off the price of the course.  As an attorney, you are a professional.  You need to sound like a professional.  Check out the course.  You won’t regret it!

When I fall behind in my blogging it is usually because my practice is super busy or something is going on in my personal life that is taking  the few precious hours a day when I don’t have some type of commitment.  When that happens, blogging takes a backseat and I lose both the SEO benefit of additional content on my website and the opportunity to connect with a potential client looking for an attorney.

A great way to avoid missing a single post is batch processing.  By setting aside time once a week and hammering out two or three blog posts you will find that you are not only more efficient and able to draft the articles more quickly, but may find that you produce better content for your site because you will be focused for a longer period of time.

If you are using WordPress as your blog  platform it does allow you to schedule when you publish each article.  In the upper right corner of you WordPress dashboard you should see something that looks like this:

You can select the date and time which the blog post will go live.  This allows you to take several articles and drip them out over time.  This especially great if you are going to be out of town or involved with something like a trial where you know your time will be limited.

I have also found a great WordPress plugin that takes this even a step further.  The plugin is called Editorial Calendar.  This plugin allows you to schedule out when your blog posts will be published and allows you to see the big picture as to what content you are putting out there and when your audience will be receiving it.  Here is a brief video on some of the highlights of the plugin:

Installing the plugin is very easy.  In your WordPress dashboard click on “Plugins” on the left hand column. Click on “Add New” and then search for “Editorial Calendar”.  Then install and activate.  You will be able to access the calendar under the “All Posts” section in the dashboard.

What helps you in being consistent in your blogging?

So, with all the competition how can you stand out?  Here are three ideas that can help you rise to the top:

#1 – Be Different

If you are just starting to market your practice online (or if you have been doing it for years) take a look at what other attorneys are doing.  There are some great attorney bloggers out there and the popular ones have a few things in common:  First, they are consistent.  You don’t see one article and then two months later stumble on another random post.  Week in and week out they are there.  If you want to be “top of mind” you need to be present.

Second, they are different – and by different I a mean they are simply interesting.  They express ideas and opinions that are engaging and presented in a way that is not your typical lawyer-speak.  Don’t be afraid.  Share your opinion.  Advocate for your soon-to-be new clients.  Let them know that they are dealing with someone who is going to be on their side.

#2 – Change the Way You Deliver Information

Blogging is a great way to communicate with people.  It is also natural for lawyers because writing is what we do.  But a sure way to stand out is to change the way you deliver your message. I have found podcasting to be a great way of connecting with people and a much more intimate way to build the relationships of trust that are necessary for a client to feel comfortable hiring you.  There is somewhat of a learning curve in starting a podcast, but once you get up and going it is a great way to differentiate yourself.

A quick look in iTunes podcast directory will show you that there are few legal podcasts out there and you will find that many of them haven’t had a new episode in months (if not years).  You can jump to the front of the line in this realm and with a little effort can become a rock star (or radio star)!

Another great medium is video.  These don’t need to be expensive fancy videos.  These can be five minute videos filmed with a flip-camera.  There is a good article in this month’s ABA Journal on marketing your law practice with video entitled “Gone Hollywood: Video’s the Ticket for New Legal Business.”

#3 – Don’t Be Afraid

Lawyers operate on fear.  We are afraid of everything.  And usually with good reason.  In our profession the consequences of failure can be devastating for both us and our clients.  So we worry, and fret, and have sleepless nights.  However when it comes to creating an online presence for our law practices we have to learn to be unafraid.

Don’t worry what other attorneys will think – they aren’t your audience anyway.  Tell the world what you know and don’t be afraid of getting it wrong every now and again.  You can always go back and update things.  If you can get over the fear of putting yourself and your law practice out there, there is no limit to what you can accomplish.  Don’t be afraid.

As we start a new year, take time to look around at what other attorneys are doing.  Often, the lawyer at the top of the pile isn’t always the best, the smartest, or even the most experienced.  Often it is the person that is willing to lay it all on the line and jump in with both feet.

What are you going to do differently this year in marketing your law practice?

You can learn more about Ruth and her practice by going to the Carter Law Firm and you can learn more about her book, “The Legal Side of Blogging: How Not to Get Sued, Fired, Arrested, or Killed” by clicking HERE.

Tools of the Trade

This weeks Tool of the Trade is JDSupra.  I have been using JDSupra for a few years now to assist in distributing my blog articles.  JDSupra is a paid service, but is reasonably priced and gives your blog the added punch it needs to get the maximum exposure possible.  Check them out at www.jdsupra.com .

Christmas cards are part of the end-of-year routine for most firms.  Some law offices are really crazy and send out Thanksgiving cards.  Don’t get me wrong, I like a good Christmas card as much as the next guy, I just don’ think clients care much if their lawyer sends them a Christmas card.  The thing is most firms send out bland, robo-signed cards that don’t mean a thing to the client.  With few exceptions my relationship with clients is exactly that, an attorney-client relationship.  It is a professional relationship were there isn’t much mingling going on in any other venue.  And because of that there are betters ways to solidify your relationship with past clients that can guarantee you that they will think of your firm first next time a legal issue pops up.

Valuable, Free Information

Typically the relationship with your client started because they needed something (legal advice) and you were able to provide that for them.  This is the gift you can give all the year through to your clients.  Valuable information that will help them in their business or their personal lives.  And the kicker is you need to give it to them for free.  Each week on your blog write an article with your clients in mind.  Write something that you know they will find beneficial.  Don’t try and sell them something.  Just be helpful.

These types of blog articles are easy to write.  Take out a pad of paper and write down the most often asked questions you get from potential clients in consultations.  Then, write a blog post for each of them.  Ask your clients if you can email these articles to them or put an opt-in box on your website that will allow your clients to sign up to receive updates from your office.  A good service provider that makes this very easy is AWeber.  Check them out.

Newsletters

I know the thought of putting together a newsletter is exhausting.  But it is easier to do now then ever before.  You can take the blog articles you write and put them into one email newsletter and send that out to your clients.  If you are focused on providing your clients with solid, real-world, practical information, your relationship with your client will remain strong and when a new legal issues arises, they will think of you and the how beneficial you have been to them without charging the a penny.

AWeber can help you put together a weekly or monthly newsletter.  It converts your blog posts into email newsletters without any additional work on your part.

The law firm Christmas card, like a yellow page ad, is a vestige of a by gone era.  If you really appreciate your clients, then give them what they really want from you and your firm – valuable information that will help them in their business or personal life.

What do you do for your clients for holiday season?

When it comes to social media and our law practices I see many attorneys that are reluctant to insert their professional persona’s into their private social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The thought being that you don’t want to intrude on your friends’ lives or appear to be selling something to their friends.  The concern is legitimate. You don’t want to be the “Amway guy” to your Facebook friends.

However, I don’t think attorneys should shy away from sharing the professional part of their lives with family and friends.  Being a lawyer is part of who I am – not the only part – but nonetheless part of what I do.

Social media is a great must-use tool for distributing the articles you write for your blog.  For instance, anytime I draft a new article for my blog or produce a new podcast episode I will always put a link to the article or podcast on my personal Facebook page as well as my personal Twitter page.  I know this makes some lawyers very uncomfortable and they are just positive that all their friends will hate them for doing it.

What I have found is that this only becomes awkward if the only posts you have on social media are related to your job and if the posts have a hard-sell tone to them.  If you are interacting on Facebook and Twitter about things other than your day-job then a weekly post about your job or a legal topic can be seen for what it is – you sharing part of who you are.

And in fact, when I look at the analytics of my website, Facebook is the source of a large percentage of my overall website traffic.  I read that to mean that a good portion of my Facebook friends are interested enough in what I write to actually click through.

Should You Have Clients as Friends/Followers?

Another issue that pops up is whether you should accept friend requests from clients.  This is a personal decision and I think it depends on (1) how close you are with the particular client, and (2) how much personal information you have on your social media platforms.

For instance, on my Facebook page I routinely post pictures of my family and some of the activities that we do.  With some of my clients I wouldn’t think twice about allowing them into this part of my world.  Other clients…not so much.

The one social media platform where I do actively seek out clients as contacts is on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is designed for business and allows me to maintain contact with past clients and help keep my services in mind in case they need some help down the road.

Social media platforms are a great way to distribute the information on your blog and podcast.  And if used correctly, when your friends do need a lawyer your name will come to mind because they are fully aware of what you do.

How have you used social media to market your law practice?

We pick this up very early in our careers.  Fear of missing a deadline.  Fear of advising a client incorrectly.  Fear that the other guy is smarter than us.  Fear of failure.  How often do you wake up in the middle of the night in a panic over something related to work?

This can be beneficial in that it can focus our minds as we help our clients with their legal problems.  But it can also hold us back – not to mention being a very stressful way to live!

The thing is, the way legal services are provided and packaged is changing.  The way we reach out to the public and interact with them is changing.  And if we don’t change, we will struggle.  And struggling sucks.

I have been part of more than one discussion –both online and in person – where it has been debated whether companies like Legalzoom are a threat to the way we practice law.  Many lawyers react with indignation – “I am not in competition with a website!  I am a lawyer!  I provide professional legal services!”

And while I agree that there is a big difference between a real live attorney and a web-based company like Legalzoom, to say that we are not in competition with these companies is just willful ignorance.

We can pretend that they are not competition, but that doesn’t make it so.  I am sure Blockbuster Video never thought that they would be in competition with a red DVD dispensing machine.  They likely held onto that thought all the way to the bankruptcy court.

Point being, we need to adapt.  That doesn’t mean that the level of service needs to change or decline, but the way we deliver those services and the way we interact with both clients and potential clients is evolving – or to be more accurate, has evolved, and we need to catch up.

Lawyers are Pros at Content Marketing (or at least they should be)

Content marketing is really nothing more than sharing information with people in order to attract them to your website, law practice, etc.  Attorneys have been content marketing for decades.  Even before lawyers could formally advertise, they were marketing their practices with content.

When I first started practicing law the firm I worked for made all of the new associates join the local Rotary Club.  One of  the main goals in joining an organization like this would be in hopes of being able to speak to the Rotarians about an area of the law – to share content with them in hopes that they would then see us, and our firm, as the authority in that area and would in turn want to hire us.  And not only that, but while we were sharing content on our area of the law the audience would see who we were as a person.  They might even…like us?!

Whether it was at the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, or some other group, attorneys have been out there sharing content in the form of a speech, written articles in newspapers, journals, and magazines – all of which are content marketing.

Legal Marketing in Today’s World

Blogging, podcasting, and social media are simply new (and improved) ways to get our message and our content out to a much larger audience.  And the great thing is not only is the audience larger but these platforms allow us engage more intimately with potential clients.

We can build relationships of trust that will result in a higher retention rates of those people of walk into our offices and result in clients that are a bitter “fit” for the way you practice law and who you are as a person.

Think of that.  You will like your client and they will like you.

Face Your Fears

I have found that there are two reasons lawyers don’t get involved in actively marketing their law practice.  First, they don’t think they have time.  Second, they aren’t sure what to do or how to do it.

As to the first, it is true.  You don’t have time.  We work in a profession that keeps track of our days in six minute increments (seriously, how awful is that!).  I don’t doubt that when you look at your day you do not see any free time available to devote to marketing.

You are going to have to make time.  You are going to have to become more efficient with your day and schedule time to write, to record your podcast, and to participate in social medial.  You alternative is to pay people to do these things for you.

That is a bad idea for two reasons: (1) it is expensive, and (2) it is ineffective.  Marketing your law practice in the age of new media requires that you sell not only your services, but sell who you are.  If you are outsourcing this task your potential clients aren’t going to get a genuine picture of who you are, they won’t connect with you, and likely won’t hire you.

If you are going to do this, do it yourself.

Second, you likely don’t know exactly what you are supposed to do.  Or maybe you are worried that you will spend a ton of time and get no return on your investment of time.

You will find that there is a lot of information out there on the Internet about blogging, podcasting, and social media.  Very little of it approaches it from the view point of an attorney and even fewer attorneys are the ones dishing out advice.

That is where JDBlogger comes in.  Just like you I am a practicing attorney.  I know the stress associated with running a solo practice.  I know that most solos don’t have any real marketing budget.  So, you are faced with the dilemma of needing to market but not being able to afford it.

The good news is that by putting forth a little effort in learning the art of blogging and marketing your practice online, you can compete with anyone out there.  Seriously.  Anyone.  It will take some work on your part, but the return on your labors will be greater than you are likely imagining now.

That is my goal with the this site.  To be a forum where tips, tricks, ideas, and concepts in marketing the solo/small firm law practice can be kicked around.  I look forward to the journey!

If the new potential clients aren’t retaining you in high percentages there are really only two options: shut your doors or develop a strategy to get a higher volume of people in your office to improve the overall number of clients that are retaining you.  Neither of which are very attractive options.

The better route is to evaluate why it is people are not retaining you in higher numbers and then implement a strategy to make more of the people you meet with your clients.

When it comes to improving client retention rates I have found few techniques more valuable than blogging and podcasting.

Here’s why – the initial consultation is a terrible time to really get to know your client and for them to get to know and trust you.  While we do consultations all day long, in many cases your initial meeting is the first time your client has ever met with an attorney.  They are likely nervous about the meeting itself and stressed out by whatever legal problem they have.

Have you ever had your client ask questions later on that you know you covered in detail in the initial consult?  The initial consultation is vital to the retention of a new client, however the atmosphere in that meeting is not conducive to building those relationships of trust needed for a client to hire you.

Blogging and podcasting solve this problem by allowing your client to get to know you before they ever step foot in your office.  If you are doing it right, blogging and podcasting demonstrate not only your expertise and knowledge, but that you are a human being and are there to help them solve their legal problem.  Here are three things that are vital to establishing that relationship with people before they have even met you:

Tell Stories/Share Experiences

There are two types of stories that are helpful to tell in your writing and in your podcast.  First, share stories about yourself.  You don’t need to get too personal here, but inserting a quick experience or drawing on items from your personal life help to paint you as a real person and frankly make you more likeable.

Second, share experiences about similar type legal matters you have handled.  Of course you don’t go into the type of detail that could violate confidences, but tell your reader in general terms about cases you have handled for people just like them and how it all ended up.

Tell stories.  People like stories.

Have Empathy

Express empathy for your client in your writing.  In most areas of the law our clients are going through one of the most stressful, difficult times of their lives.  Divorce, bankruptcy, lawsuits.  All of these things are making life miserable.  Let your client know that you “feel their pain”.

I start off my bankruptcy site this way:  “Bankruptcy.  Many people I meet with have a hard time even uttering the word bankruptcy.  No one wants to file for bankruptcy.”

You know how I know this?  Because day in and day out clients tell me this.  When they come into my office and meet with me about filing for bankruptcy I can see that some literally have difficulty saying the word. They don’t want to be there – they have to be there because they have run out of options.  As a blogger and podcaster it is your job to take those observations that you get every day from working with people and use them to help you communicate that you know what they are going through and you are there to help.

Which leads to my next tip…be an advocate.

Be An Advocate

Before you ever meet with your client they should know at a minimum, one thing;  You are on their side.  It doesn’t matter what the problem is, what it might be, what they did or didn’t do, you are there to help and advocate for them.

I once wrote an article for a blog entitled “How to Be a Dirtbag – Debt Buyer Style”.  Clearly, this was not an article in favor of the debt buying industry.  Take a side.  Take your client’s side.  Let them know from day one that you are there to represent them and their interests.

This type of writing is different than what most lawyers are used to and it will take some time and practice to really start incorporating it into your blog.  But as you do, as you open up, you will find, as I have, that clients will openly tell you that the reason why they chose you from all the attorneys out there, was because of the connection you made through the words on your blog or your voice on your podcast.

What have you found effective in increasing client retention rates in your practice?

Back when I first started blogging to market my law practice I was put in touch with Dallin Harris of Skyhook Internet Marketing.  Dallin taught me the ropes early on when it came to content marketing and how putting a little effort in on my part could result in huge result for my law practice.  It was only natural that I brought him in for the first interview on the JDBlogger podcast.

Dallin is the founder of Skyhook Internet Marketing and was recently included in The Arizona Republic’s list of top “35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Under”  In this interview Dallin gives great advice on topics ranging from blogging, social media, and paid search and how they can benefit you and help you build a thriving law practice.

Tools of the Trade

Each week on the podcast I offer a ‘tool of the trade’ that can assist you in your legal marketing efforts.  This week my recommendation is Scribe.  Scribe is an awesome tool that helps you in tweaking your blog articles so that they are optimized for the search engines – helping you increase the visibility  of your practice online.  Scribe allows you to write your blog article the way you want, and then at the click of a button it will analyze your writing and give you some tips on how it can be made better without sounding spammy or as if it were written or the search engines.  You can check out Scribe by checking HERE!

See Scribe for WordPress In Action!

Blogging – serious blogging – takes dedication, effort, and skill. Now days I find most lawyers, especially solo lawyers or members of smaller firms, appreciate the benefits of social media and blogging and how they can improve their law practice. But it generally stops there, with an appreciation but no action.

Others will dabble with a blog, maybe put up a few articles, act surprised when it doesn’t result in a bevy of new clients, and then leave it alone. Some will even start strong, posting several times a week, but then fade out as the weeks go on.

I understand why people quit. Marketing your law practice through blogging rarely provides the instant results some seek. Further, in a profession where we keep track of our day in 6 minute increments, finding time to dedicate to marketing seems impossible.

I know your pain. But you can be a proficient blogger and you can grow your law practice through social media. Here are three steps that will lead you to success:

#1 – Be Consistent

Consistency is the key to success in marketing your practice online. In my experience you will need to write two to three articles per week to really get any traction – especially if you practice in a competitive area of the law like bankruptcy, criminal law, or divorce.

Writing two or three articles each week will not only keep fresh material for the search engines to find, it will help you build a large library of information that will increase traffic and keep potential clients on your site for longer periods of time – all pluses in building a successful blog.

#2 – Schedule Time to Write

For better or for worse the billable hour rules your life. It sucks. There is a huge amount of pressure to bill hours and get the work done. And if you are a solo or run a small firm you are not only billing hours but playing book keeper, HR, and custodian. If you are like most lawyers time is one resource that is seriously lacking.

You must commit to the marketing of your practice just like you commit to the actual practice of law. It must become part of what you do and who you are. You are no longer just a lawyer, you are also a blogger – congratulations! To help me adjust to this mindset I even added “blogger” to my list of jobs on Linkedin.

I typically schedule time in the morning to write my articles and get them posted online. I dedicate one hour to writing and publishing the article. That may sound like a lot, but if you are publishing three times a week you are only dedicating three hours a week to the growth of your practice.

It is going to feel like you are wasting time – or worse stealing time from your cases. I’ve been there and know how that feels. You have to get over that. A successful blog will take your entire practice to a new level, but you have to have faith in the process. Commit to setting aside a distraction-free hour (if such a thing exists) three days a week to get your content on your blog.

#3 – See the Big Picture

In a world of quick fixes and instant gratification it can be frustrating that there are no real short cuts to building a solid online presence. You need to view your blog as a five year deal not a 5 month commitment. And while online marketing is more of a marathon than a sprint, you will start to see results as sooner than you think.

I launched a new bankruptcy law website from scratch a while back. Within one year I was seeing traffic to my website of nearly 10,000 visitors per month and my bankruptcy articles had been read on various online platforms over 230,000 times! That is a ton of exposure for solo practitioner and the steady stream of clients into my office proves that blogging works. All of that happened within 12 months of starting a blog.

The more information/content you provide on your website the more your office will be viewed as an authority in your particular area of law. Even if you are a new lawyer you can establish yourself among much more experienced peers simply by putting yourself out there and providing potential clients with the information they are seeking.

Failing to have a solid online presence is no longer an option for your law practice. You will get left in the dust – check that – if you haven’t established an online presence you have already been left behind and need to catch up. You will see those that adopt online marketing into their business models succeed – even if you are a more competent or experienced attorney.

The good news is lawyers seem to be the last to adapt in many business arenas so there is still time to jump in and become a legal leader online. When do you start?

A big part of JDBlogger is the podcast that will be produced each week.  In this inaugural podcast episode I go over the format of the show and what you can expect to gain from listening week in and week out.  I also go over my background as a practicing attorney and how I have found content marketing, and particularly blogging and podcasting to be a great way to grow your business and attract clients that you enjoy working with.  I would appreciate your feed back by heading on over to iTunes and subscribing to the podcast and leaving me a review and any comments you may have on the podcast.

In next week’s podcast I will interview Dallin Harris of Skyhook Internet Marketing.