AttorneySync Blog

There was a great post by Seth Godin I read recently called The Wordperfect Axiom. Seth tells us:

When the platform changes, the leaders change.

Wordperfect had a virtual monopoly on word processing in big firms that used DOS. Then Windows arrived and the folks at Wordperfect didn’t feel the need to hurry in porting themselves to the new platform. They had achieved lock-in after all, and why support Microsoft?

In less than a year, they were toast.

When the game machine platform of choice switches from Sony to xBox to Nintendo, etc., the list of bestelling games change and new companies become dominant.

When the platform for music shifted from record stores to iTunes, the power shifted too, and many labels were crushed.

Again and again the same rules apply. In fact, they always do. When the platform changes, the deck gets shuffled.

Law Firm Marketing Online

If you are reading this blog, there is a good chance you already recognize a change in marketing platforms for law firms is occurring. The days of taking out a full page, yellowbook ad and watching the clients pour in are long gone. In fact, with the staggering amount of new lawyers entering into the work force each year, reliance on referrals and local recommendations is a tough way to drive significant revenue for a firm.

I recently talked with an estate planning attorney that said he has no interest in investing in the internet because his clients are older people that don’t use it. While there may be some validity to the fact that an older generation isn’t using the internet today as much as other sources, do you really believe that it will remain this way? Do you think the baby boomers aren’t going to be researching estate planning online? If you need to be convinced you can attract estate planning clients online then you clearly aren’t ready to invest what it requires to have a successful online strategy. You are Wordperfect in my opinion.

The reality is that the internet is the new marketing platform. The law firms that understand this and invest accordingly will reap the benefits. They will be the new generation of law firms leading the way. The ones that fail to get on board will be playing catch up at best and won’t be around at worst.

Photo by Larry Page

Free Guide: Hiring A Law Firm SEO Consultant Are you looking to increase your visibility online but are feeling overwhelmed by the number of service professionals promising the world to you? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Hiring A Law Firm SEO Consultant.

Continue Reading

AttorneySync’s newest free guide, How To Build Links For Your Law Firm Website, is available for download.

In the world of search engines, links TO a web page equal votes for that page. But not all link-votes are created equal. A link from CNN.com is much stronger than a link from a site that you just set up today. In this sense, links are the “currency” of the web. Any successful search marketing campaign involves link building.

This Guide Will Give You A Proper Introduction To Building Links To Your Law Firm’s Website Including:

• Common Strategies For Building Links
• Why Having A Content Creation Strategy Is Important
• How NOT To Ask For Links
• Types Of Websites You Want Links From
• The Importance Of Having A Diverse Link Profile

Download your free guide: How To Get Get Links For Your Law Firm’s Website today!

Continue Reading

There is an interesting post at the Predictably Irrational blog that discusses the author’s troubles he had recently while playing squash. He tells us that he enjoys playing squash as it not only provides exercise, but is also a game of strategy. The strategy comes in as each player tries to build an advantage over the other by positioning the next shot just so. He goes on to tell us:

Anyway, I have not played for a while so yesterday when I played I was out of shape. But what was interesting was that I realized that my thinking ability was also diminished. Usually I try to plan my moves in advance, and think about where my opponent will move, what I will do next etc – but being out of shape made me think very myopically, and focus just on making the next shot. This of course was a very bad strategy and to my delight of my opponent I lost badly.

Perhaps the larger point is that being exhausted (and maybe also being under stress, physical exhaustion, sleep deprived, etc) makes people focus on the short-term and ignore the long-term – and this way become more susceptible to making mistakes….

How This Applies To Lawyer Internet Marketing

Marketing your law firm properly is a time intensive and strategic task. Just as in the squash example given above, there is the execution of your marketing strategy (actually hitting the shot and placing it where you wanted) and strategic planning (thinking about where the next shot should go). One of the problems that I see as an SEO consultant is that firms become so entrenched in their current marketing and getting short-term results, they forget to explore new ways of marketing. They lose focus of the long-term marketing strategy for the firm. Their strategy is focused on just connecting with the next shot, instead of thinking strategically where the next shot should be going.

A good example would be a firm where the entire marketing plan consists of spending money on advertising. The appeal is that by investing money into advertising, you get immediate results. The problem is that advertising costs will rise and if you want more leads, you have to pay more money. I’m not insisting that advertising is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t provide a sound, long-term strategy. You are simply “hitting the next shot”. You are not building equity in something you own that will continue to produce for you even if you stop paying money tomorrow. This is why it’s important to complement your advertising campaigns with other types of marketing avenues that position you for the future such as SEO, name recognition, social media strategy, networking, referrals, etc.

Make sure you are focusing on both your short-term and long-term goals with your marketing plan. Think about where you want your next shot to go in addition to how you’re going to actually hit the shot.

Photo by flydime

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

Continue Reading

WP Greetbox is a plugin for Wordpress blogs that can help build readership to your law firm’s Wordpress blog. The creators of the plugin describe it as such:

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter.

The photo above is a snapshot of what WP Greetbox does when a visitor arrives on our blog from a Google search. A dropdown box appears below the title of the article inviting the user to take an action such as subscribing to your blog, retweeting the post, etc. It’s a great way to automate a call to action that appeals to the visitor. Since the call to action is customized based on how they arrived, it comes across as more personal than just a simple “subscribe to my blog” you place on the sidebar.

We have seen our subscriptions and readership increase since using this plugin. I highly recommend it.

Continue Reading

On Page Optimization In 52 Seconds

There are many factors that go into a successful search engine optimization campaign. As a start, it’s important that you include properly researched keywords into certain areas of your site. This video will show you several key areas or your site where you should include keyword phrases. You can learn more about implementing law firm SEO strategy by downloading our Short Guide To Getting Your Law Firm Found In Google below.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

Continue Reading

One of the areas that becomes difficult for lawyers, especially solos and smaller firms, is keeping in contact with potential clients that have not retained your services yet. For example, perhaps you are offering a free guide or e-book to download in exchange for a potential client’s information. Once they download the guide, some lawyers are so busy they don’t even have the time to send out an email or make a phone call. Others may email or call the prospect once. However, if there is not a response back, than that is the end of the communication. Others find that a prospect that downloaded a guide or e-book might be in a different stage of the “buying cycle”. Another words, they are not ready to sign a retainer just yet, but could be ready in the near future. These people need more nurturing before they are ready. This takes time, which is difficult to come by. Fortunately, there is a solution to help with many of these issues.

Lead Nurture Campaigns aka Autoresponders

A lead nurture campaign, or autoresponder, is an email marketing campaign that allows you to send out a sequence of automatically delivered emails. The emails are delivered at a time interval that you decide. You supply the content for the emails and then the software will automatically deliver the emails on your behalf.

A Few Of The Advantages

• The system is automated, you don’t have to personally write and send each email.
• The users receiving your emails have opted-in to receiving them, giving permission for you to contact them.
• You can “nurture” the potential client that is not ready to buy yet. By sending relevant, targeted, informational emails to them, you will build trust and help educate them about the benefits your firm can provide.
• The automation allows you to stay in touch with and handle a much larger set of inquiries than if you had to do it all manually
• It allows you to scale the “salesforce” within your firm without hiring additional assistants

Recommended Services

One of the better autoresponder and email marketing services is Aweber. They provide an excellent suite of email marketing tools at an affordable price.

You Will Need Leads To Make Use Of An Autoresponder System (Duh!?)

Of course, the use of autoreponders and lead nurture campaigns are only effective if you have a strategy in place that is generating leads for your firm. Download our free guide below to learn more about getting your law firm’s online marketing on the right track.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

Continue Reading

There are a host of applications on Facebook that allow you to integrate your blog with your Facebook pages. However, Networked Blogs is one worth using. It allows you to promote your blog to your friends and the entire Facebook community.

You can download the application for you Facebook account here.

Networked Blogs Features Include:

• Works on both: profiles and Facebook Pages
• Import your blog feed to your profile or public page
• A visual blogroll on your profile to promote your blog and blogs you like
• A directory of blogs organized by topic and geographical locations
• Read news and vote articles you love
• A community of like minded people to connect with

We have ours setup to automatically post new articles from our blog on our AttorneySync Facebook Page. It’s worth checking out.

Free Guide: Facebook For Lawyers Want to learn how to utilize Facebook to build relationships and bring more business for your firm? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide: Facebook For Lawyers.

Continue Reading

So you have a website, a blog, and attack social media with reckless abandon. You hired a law firm SEO to get more traffic and leads from your online properties. At this point you have a nice marketing flow going, leads are coming in the door. However, you think to yourself…these leads aren’t that great because I’m not getting as many new clients as I should be.

Do you have a system to help maximize the effectiveness of working those leads and contacts?

This is probably the single biggest problem I have seen when working with solo practitioners, small, and even medium sized firms. Many have figured out how to get leads in the door, but don’t handle them properly once they’ve got them. Learning how to properly work your leads and developing a sales system is crucial in translating those online marketing efforts into revenue for the firm.

I know that many lawyers don’t want to think of themselves as salesmen, but the truth is that we are all in sales. Every day you sell yourself, your service, your practice, your competence, etc. What is important is that you develop a system so that you can be effective with your sales efforts. I have spoken with many attorneys that are fantastic at the art of practicing law, but not so much when it comes to selling that ability to someone looking to hire them. While there is an art to sales, having an effective and efficient system in place is a huge piece of the puzzle. If you are properly following up with your leads and potential clients, you will reap the rewards. (Here is a blog post for a more in depth look at sales for law firms: 5 Things Lawyers Absolutely Need To Know About Sales)

Persistence And Follow Up Are Key

You will encounter leads from your online efforts that are at all different stages of the buying cycle. Some are looking for information, others are comparing different firms, and some are ready to hire you right now. The key is to create a sales system for your firm that allows you to follow up with all your leads promptly and regularly. Are you calling leads or just emailing them all? Do you try several times before declaring a lead is no good? It simply isn’t enough to send one email and then when you don’t receive an immediate response, throw away that inquiry. Creating a system to schedule following up with potential clients after the initial contact is made is important as well.

Where To Start: Get A CRM (Customer Resource Management)

CRM’s could be a blog post all unto themselves. A CRM is a software program that is designed to help you keep track of your contacts and schedule follow up calls, tasks, etc. They are called CRM’s or Customer Resource Management tools. There are many free or inexpensive programs available. We use a paid version of SalesForce at AttorneySync. However, there are free ones available as well including Zoho or FreeCRM. Highrise is a good program from 37Signals that is inexpensive to try.

Photo by Stitch

5 Lawyer Marketing Mistakes To Avoid Want to learn 5 of the most common mistakes when marketing your firm? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide: 5 Lawyer Marketing Mistakes To Avoid.

Continue Reading

Online videos are a terrific way to interact with your potential clients. They provide a level of engagement that is difficult to acheive with text alone. Plenty of lawyers I talk to have spent a pretty penny on professionally produced videos. The videos are up on their law firm site for all to see. However, they are not taking full advantage of the marketing power of these videos.

You should market your videos through more outlets than just your own website

Uploading the videos to YouTube and optimizing them to get found is a great first step. Even better is to distribute your videos to several of the top online video sharing sites. This helps your videos get discovered through Google search results and on the video sites themselves.

Tubemogul.com

Tubemogul is a free tool that enables you to easily load your law firm videos on several video sharing sites from one interface. Another words, you don’t have to manually go to each site and upload your video every time. This can save a lot of time and effort on your part. It also includes analytics so that you can track the performance of your videos. Here are a few of the benefits according to Tubemogul:

• Save Time – uploading videos to each site in your distribution is no longer necessary – upload to TubeMogul and let the Universal Upload tool do the rest. Then you can login to understand your viewership across online video sites in one place.
• Increased Reach – with your videos on more sites at no extra effort, your opportunity to gain viewers multiplies! Users of Universal Upload have witnessed up to 3x more views per video.
• Improved Understanding of Viewer Base – better understand your customer base to create more targeted and relevant content or products and services.

It’s a tool worth checking out.

Free Guide: How To Get Your Law Firm Videos Found In YouTube Want to learn how to get your law firm videos in front of more potential clients? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Videos Found On YouTube.

Continue Reading

“The discussion of any SEO Code of Ethics is like a discussion on politics or religion: there are more than two sides, all sides are strongly opinionated, and seldom do they choose the same path to the same end. Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practitioners understand these ethics, yet not all practitioners practice safe-SEO. Too many SEO practitioners claim a bias towards surfers, or the search engines, or their clients (all are appropriate in the correct balance), and it is common for the “whatever it takes” excuse to bend some of these ethics to fit their needs. This page does not pass judgment, it simply states the obvious.”

- Bruce Clay

Discussions of ethics always stir up passions, often polarize, and usually devolve into an “I’m ethical and you’re not” shouting match. That is why we usually talk SEO in terms of practicality, efficacy, and efficiency.

However, with all the “muck” that’s out there when it comes to law firm search engine optimization, it’s refreshing to come across some enlightened thinking. While I don’t believe that there are “bright-line” SEO rules, there are greatly varying philosophies when it comes to marketing your law firm online. No matter where you fall on the spectrum, it is absolutely critical to be on the same page as anyone working on your web presence. That is why transparency is so important.

Mr. Clay’s SEO Code of Ethics is an excellent articulation of some core principles upon which we should all be able to generally agree:

- Don’t intentionally harm a client.

- Don’t create conflicts of interest without notice.

Guidelines by which to operate.

Continue Reading