Thanks for Kissmetrics and Dan Zarella of Hubspot for this infographic. This infographic is presented in Eastern Time. Most people read blogs in the morning -- particularly Monday before lunch. However the best time to pick up comments on your blog is Saturday morning.
And as we all know, the more often you post blog entries, the more page views and inbound links your blog will enjoy.
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The latest issue of Best Practices in Lawyer Blogs newsletter is out. Be sure to get your own free subscription and send a copy to your colleagues..jpg){kind=small}
Business Blogging: Are You Overthinking It?
Lawyers are known for being deliberate and cautious. While this trait serves us well in many situations, it may hinder our marketing efforts. Rachel Strella has some advice: Just do it. Learn more ...
4 Blogger Tools for Breaking Your Writing Block
From time to time, every writer—even the very best ones—suffers from writer’s block. You stare at the computer screen but inspiration never arrives. Jim Lodico offers 4 creative brainstorming tips to help jump-start your writing process. Learn more ...
Getting the Gist of SEO
You need more than good content to drive readers to your new blog. You also need to attract the attention of search engines through a technique known as Search Engine Optimization. This handy guide walks you through the basics of SEO. Learn more ...
Business Development with LinkedIn® and Blogs for Lawyers
Studies show that lawyers are finally beginning to embrace social media. Whether it’s a new component of your marketing strategy or something you’ve done for years, you’re sure to pick up some new tips and techniques in a recently released book about social media marketing for attorneys. Learn more ...
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To market yourself effectively, you need to have a unique selling proposition or "USP." This will differentiate you from other lawyers and raise your profile with potential clients. But actually originating new business happens during your follow-up steps, when you use your UFT or Unique Follow-Up Technique.
As a guest on the webinar "Follow-Up Strategies That Turn Meetings into Matters" presented by business development specialist David Ackert, I stressed that you need to have a follow-up schedule after the initial meeting with a potential client. It should include a carefully-timed series of record-keeping, thank-you and connecting activities. Key among those is your UFT.
Your UFT will be tailored to the situation. An effective Unique Follow-Up Technique is based on questions that you asked during the initial meeting about the other person's activities, interests and anniversaries. The information enables you, for example:
It has to be a value-added follow-up, so that you are giving something of value to the prospective client. If there is no value then the other person may view your follow-up as pestering. In the webinar, we covered a dozen UFTs but here are my favorite three:
What are some other examples of UFTs that you've tried?
I started a discussion on LinkedIn asking, Tell Me How Your Law Firm Will Use Pinterest? U.K lawyer Annette Freeman summed it up for me when she wrote, "Potential clients are unlikely to go to Pinterest to look for an attorney."
But wait. Pinterest could become something more than an online refrigerator magnet collection.
Corporate lawyer Sam Miller said, "Pinterest in my view has great potential. I believe it can be used responsibly, including obtaining permission from websites to pin their content (which we do request where needed). It is a great way to market legal services in our view (again!), and allows lawyers to show a more personable side to a profession which has largely been miscast for way too long. www.VirtualLawDirect.com is about transparency and engagement, and our Pinterest presence compliments that."
Marketing coach Allison Shields said, "I don't necessarily think that's the only standard by which to judge whether it makes business sense to use Pinterest. If those who use Pinterest on a regular basis are in your target market, it might be a good place to be.
"Attorneys engage in plenty of activities and strive to become part of plenty of communities where potential clients don't 'go to look for an attorney.' But isn't it even better if someone you know from one of these communities doesn't need to look for an attorney, because when the need arises, they already know one?" she added. "Pinterest may be an opportunity for some lawyers to come up with creative ideas that get them in front of the very people who hire them. Lawyers who represent photographers and fashion designers (or other visual and creative types, like interior designers, artists, etc.) may do well on Pinterest."
Patrick Nicks, a Law Firm Marketing Specialist at LexisNexis, added, "I am accustomed to focusing on marketing that is directional, in that the lawyer is visible at the critical moment in time when the client is looking to hire. Allison gives us a good reminder that although directional media has a much higher conversion rate, the advantage of being visible in front of your target audience has good value too. TOMA (top of mind awareness) is an important aspect of any marketing effort."
Annette Freeman continued, "Pinterest is said to be generating more traffic to websites than YouTube, Reddit, Google+, and LinkedIn combined. So merely for driving traffic to your website, Pinterest could be worth investigating."
"Lawyers and other service providers, especially in IP, might want to keep their own Pinterest account just to check on the activities of clients using the site. What are they doing with their brands? What reactions are they getting? For solo practitioners, it could also be a tool for networking with other lawyers, and with clients, since its main focus is sharing interesting information. Think office products, travel destinations, new restaurants...get creative. Everyone else is."
But Project Coordinator Gabrielle DeCrescenzo and lawyer Ruth Carter were skeptics, with Carter saying, "For now, I'm staying off Pinterest because it looks like a major time suck and copyright infringement city: http://bit.ly/zPybk1 ."
DATE: Today, March 22, 2012
♦ 10 am Pacific ♦ 11 am Mountain ♦ Noon Central ♦ 1 pm Eastern
LOCATION: on the web, on your computer
WEBSITE: www.pbdi.org
Learn which steps are most effective for post-meeting follow-up with prospective clients and new referral sources. Business development specialist David Ackert and I will show you how to introduce a powerful follow-up system into your business development routine so that you can fully capitalize on new opportunities.
Click here to sign up for Follow-Up Strategies That Turn Meetings into Matters
Do you wonder?
Learn exactly which follow-up communications work best so you can expertly and comfortably turn your prospects, existing contacts, and new referral sources into productive assets for your practice.
Topics Include:
Who Should Attend:
For further details please visit www.PBDI.org.
Join us Monday, March 19, on a complimentary Webinar, sponsored by the American Bar Association Center for CLE: Ethics Essentials for Successful Online Legal Marketing. The session will feature a panelist from a small law firm, a large law firm and a legal industry consultant to discuss a topic of growing interest for firms that are active in online marketing.
I'll moderate the ABA Premier Speaker Series, which will focus on compliance with Rules of Professional Conduct in the following areas:
This session is for ABA Members only and requested CLE Credit is 1.50 for many states. Attend this webinar on March 19th to help make ethics compliance an asset – and ensure your online marketing is in harmony with the latest best practices. And if you’d like to tap into LexisNexis' online legal marketing expertise to help your firm build a professional presence online, please contact us.
The panel includes:
CLE Program Credit
Ethics Credit Requested.
The ABA will seek 1.5 hours of ethics CLE credit in 60-minute-hour states and 1.8 hours of ethics CLE in 50-minute-hour states.
ABA live webinars and teleconference ordinarily receive CLE credit in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, GU, HI, IA, ID, IL, KY, LA, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OK, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, UR, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV and WY.
The ABA does not seek direct accreditation of live webinars and teleconferences in IN, KS, NE, NJ, OH and PA.
According to a new study of 8 million marketing emails sent by 25 law firms over a two-year period, the average "open rate" for a marketing email is 20%. Two factors are pushing down the open rate: information overload and image blocking, according to The State of Law Firm Email Marketing published by eLawMarketing of New York.
eLawMarketing is a leading provider of online marketing services to the legal profession. Since 2002, the company has worked with more 100 law firms and individual attorneys to carry out online marketing strategies. eLawMarketing’s existing law firm clients distribute more than 4.8 million emails a year to clients, referral sources, and other business contacts.
"The open rate is driven by whether subscribers recognize the name of the individual or company in the “From” line, and find your subject line compelling and interesting," said Joshua E. Fruchter, Esq., author of the report.
Other highlights:
The conversion rate can be increased by providing a web version of the email, putting calls-to-action in text (instead of graphics), avoid using a large banner graphic that gets in the way of text and designing your email no wider than 650 pixels. Learn more about email design best practices at http://bit.ly/cjutRZ.
"The bounce rate is typically a good proxy for list hygiene, that is, how “clean” your list is. If your bounce rates are significantly higher than the legal industry norms, then your lists may be stale. To avoid harming the reputation of your domain, reconsider how you are assembling your distribution lists to make sure you are using only recently updated lists of clients and other contacts," Fruchter said.
People unsubscribe from emails because they may already get emails on the same topic from a different source. "Or perhaps their inbox is overloaded and they are pruning the number of emails they receive. In a worst case scenario, a subscriber may unsubscribe because they don’t recognize who you are, and are annoyed to have received email from you in the first place," he said.
Jared Correia, the host of The Legal ToolKit and Law Practice Management Advisor with Massachusetts LOMAP, interviewed me in the podcast "Tips and Tactics for Law Firm Websites."
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:22 — 18.1MB)
We cover a lot of ground in this podcast. Here's a quick synopsis of what you'll hear:
1. Why should a law firm have a website? You need your home page on the web, so that visitors can find your practice areas, your bio and your partners. The web takes advantage of the way people look for lawyers, which is to research their legal issue first.
2. How complex should the website be? Don't create a billboard in a cornfield. There are five elements that are required on a law firm website: FAQs, case histories, representative clients, testimonials and video.
3. Make the most of YouTube. Videos are a very effective marketing tactic. You can get a videographer come to your office for $750, and then upload the video to a free YouTube account.
4. What kind of images are effective? Take advantage of images that your brain is hardwired to see: faces. Don't yield to the temptation to use trite images like a court house, blind justice or columns. Instead put images of your clients online.
5. What is the best use of text? The new Google algorithm looks at freshness of content and the frequency that a website is updated. Use keywords, drawing on words your clients use when they talk to you.
6. Make use of social media. Take the Twitter, Facebook and Google+ icons and display them on your firm's home page and your bio, so that a visitor can click on them and see your profile on those social media.
7. Promote your website. Use the magic multiplication marketing method: First write a FAQ, then turn it into a video on YouTube, upload it to JDSupra.com, condense it into a blog post, condense it further into a Twitter message, and update your status on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. The idea is to take one piece of content and publish it in several different places.
This is just what we covered before the break in the podcast. Take a listen to find out even more about having an effective website.
I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar about Social Media in the Legal Industry on March 7. In the webinar, James Alexander, Vizibility founder and CEO, and I discussed how social media has transformed the way people communicate.
In case you missed it, or if you wanted the slides, you can view the webinar video and get the slides by clicking the image below. Thanks to everyone who attended!
James Alexander is Vizibility’s founder and CEO. He’s the guy with two first names. If you ‘Googled’ his name in 2009, you would never have found him. Now, he ranks within the first few results of a Google search. Find James in Google at vizibility.com/james.
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Get your poster of the infographic "Social Media in the Legal Sector" created by Vizibility. Copies of the wall-sized poster will be available free at our super session. The poster visually summarizes the LexisNexis-Vizibility survey of law firm use of social media marketing. |
Join us at the LMA national conference in Grapevine, Texas (near Dallas) where I'll moderate a panel on how lawyers are using social media. It's a concurrent breakout session on at 1:30 PM on Thursday, March 15 -- right after lunch.
Our panel is a super session entitled, "Today’s Lawyers and Social Media – How Are They or Should They Be Using It?" I'll open the discussion with survey results about lawyer use of blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Today’s business environment demands that legal marketers have and maintain a familiarity with online marketing tools and, increasingly, a vibrant online marketing presence. Law firms face unique risks and limitations, due to the nature of our business, but studies have still shown that social media usage in law firms – for marketing purposes – is up considerably just in the past year.
Our discussion will focus on three distinct issues facing legal marketers when it comes to social media:
See you there!
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LexisNexis announced an agreement with JD Supra to syndicate blog content from LexisNexis website customers to JD Supra’s distribution channels on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Thousands of prospective clients, referral sources and media members subscribe to dozens of JD Supra's subject feeds.
The JD Supra service is available to small law firms that use the LexisNexis Social Media Visibility service. JD Supra hosts a rapidly growing platform for law firms to market their expertise online. By distributing this content to a broader audience, LexisNexis customers are able to expand their online footprint, help improve website performance on search engines, and engage prospective clients via popular interactive communities.
“This will provide a tremendous boost to LexisNexis customers who are looking to increase their online visibility, demonstrate thought leadership, and generate more leads,” said Phil Livingston, CEO of LexisNexis Marketing & Business Solutions. “JD Supra’s syndication network enables our customers’ blog posts to reach thousands of recipients who have opted in to receive legal updates on various subjects, and because these channels include high-quality links back to a law firm’s blog, they’re able to greatly enhance a firm’s SEO efforts.”
The LexisNexis Social Media Visibility Advanced service was launched earlier this year as part of a comprehensive portfolio of website solutions and social media engagement services offered by LexisNexis to small law firms. This family of services includes websites that combine:
For more information about LexisNexis Web Visibility Solutions, please click on the following link: http://www.lexisnexis.com/law-firm-marketing/products-and-services/websites-seo-social/.
Follow-Up Strategies that Turn Meetings into Matters
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WEBINAR BY: |
The Ackert Advisory and PBDI.org |
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SPEAKERS: |
David Ackert and Larry Bodine, Esq. |
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DATE: |
March 22, 2012; 10AM - 11PM PACIFIC |
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LOCATION: |
on the Web, on your computer |
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MORE INFO: |
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Click here to sign up for this event. |
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Do you wonder?
Learn exactly which follow-up communications work best so you can expertly and comfortably turn your prospects, existing contacts, and new referral sources into productive assets for your practice.
Save 10% if you register on or before March 16: fee $270
Who Should Attend:
Save 10% if you register on or before March 16: fee $270 Fee beginning March 17: $300 You can pay online with a credit card. Display the program in a conference room and invite as many attendees as you wish. |
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Prominent Blogs Influence Hiring of Law Firms
A recent survey reports that a law firm lawyer’s blog can influence in-house counsel when they hire and retain outside counsel. Your blog is just one of the ways you can use social media to build credibility with potential clients. Learn more ...
The 4 Keys to Writing Persuasive Copy Without Hype, BS or Other Icky Gimmicks
D. Bnonn Tennant shares four great tips for creating clear content for your blog. Among them: Write in a conversational style and organize your article in a way that makes it easy to skim. Learn more ...
8 Brands That Benefit From Guest Blogging
Research shows that blogs are the most effective, least expensive form of online marketing for lawyers. But not every attorney has success with blogging. Why not? Infrequent posts, content that’s not of interest to prospective clients and more. Larry Bodine discusses the top 10 ways to improve your law blog and attract new clients. Learn more ...
Blogging Trends for 2012: What You Need to Know
Shani Higgins, CEO of Technorati, shares her blogging predictions for the coming year. Among them: The line between blogging and other types of social media will become more blurred. And niche blogging will remain an important way to connect with your target audience. Learn more ...
Check out Vid4pro.com -- a new B2B website for professionals and businesses to upload professional videos for marketing, HR or client purposes.
"Marketers can choose to post their videos on Vid4Pro without the worry that it might reside next to cute babies and kittens on YouTube," quipped founder Linda Sedloff Orton of New York. As a result, marketers have a better chance of reached a more targeted audience for their videos and more quickly engaging them in a business relationship.
According to Forrester Research, posting online videos can increase a site's chance of achieving first page rankings with Google by more than 50 percent. According to a 2011 Forbes survey, 64 percent of executives watch work-related videos on business-related websites on a weekly basis. Vid4Pro is capitalizing on the widespread desire to receive information via videos and the gap in legal, accounting consulting, technology and finance professions to house them appropriately.
Womble Carlyle, a video pioneer and business law firm, has several videos on the site. “Womble Carlyle has produced a comprehensive library of videos and we wanted to expand our video marketing. Vid4Pro is a professional version of YouTube -- nothing like it exists for the legal, accounting and consulting world," said Aden Dauchess, Director of Digital Media. "The search capabilities are sophisticated and once in-house corporate counsel see how easy it is to use, we expect substantially increased traffic to our videos.”
“Corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating branded videos, but have limited choices on where they can post, house, and direct traffic. Since Vid4Pro.com is exclusively for the professional community, visitors aren’t bombarded with irrelevant ads or distracting content,” Orton said. “Also, users will be able to leverage social media and be guided through video tagging and video SEO tips to support marketing, sales, training or recruitment objectives.”
To upload videos, members will have the opportunity to sign up for a 30-day, free trial. After the trial period users can select from different plans ranging from $299 to $999 per month based. Pricing is online at www.vid4pro.com/join.
Thanks to marketer Heather Whaling for these tips from the SocialMediaToday blog.
Here are several alternatives to the traditional press release:
Heather Whaling is president of Geben Communications. She helps nonprofits and small businesses integrate digital and traditional communication strategies.
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Social media has transformed the way people communicate. The era of the Luddite Lawyer is over, as legal professionals have embraced social media. Register to attend our free webinar for legal marketers. We'll explore the results of a recent study by LexisNexis and Vizibility, identifying the social media tools attorneys and firms use, and assess the levels of adoption.
James Alexander, founder and CEO of Vizibility, and I will lead this lively discussion about the impact social media has had on legal marketing.
The survey found that a clear majority of participants consider social media an important part of their overall marketing strategy. Join us to learn where legal professionals are devoting their marketing efforts.
What: Webinar: Social Media in the Legal Industry
When: Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 1pm EST
Hat tip to David Gilroy of conscious.co.uk for this enlightening list.
Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen appointed its first chief marketing officer, Paris A. Gunther. She is a seasoned legal marketing professional based in New York with more than 20 years of experience leading strategic business development and marketing programs at law and other firms.
“The firm has experienced steady growth over the past several years and as we continue to expand, strategic marketing efforts will play a major role,” said Andy Chonoles, Kleinberg Kaplan’s managing partner. “Her strong law firm and business development experience will be a tremendous asset as we continue on this trajectory.”
Previously Gunther served as director of marketing for Wilson Elser and as a business development consultant at Shearman & Sterling in New York. She has also held marketing positions at United Press International and LexisNexis and for several years, she was a member of the full time faculty at the Carl H. Linder College of Business at the University of Cincinnati.
Kleinberg Kaplan is a 50-lawyer firm that represents private investment funds, financial institutions and privately held businesses. “With the firm having celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, I look forward to helping align business goals and marketing strategy to contribute to its ongoing success,” Gunther said.
Gunther currently serves on the Law Practice Management Committee for the New York State Bar Association and is a member of the Legal Marketing Association’s New York Chapter CMO Group. She holds a J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law.
All buzz online now is about the bookmarking site Pinterest. Most people who use it (80% are women) say they love it to pin up info about weddings, recipies and costumes. But I am struggling to see how it can be used in law firm marketing. Maybe the infographic below will offer some inspiration. Thanks to my colleague Jon Accarrino, Director of Social Media at Definition 6 in New York, who originally published the infographic on his blog MethodShop.
Tell me how your law firm will use Pinterest?
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LinkedIn and blogs are the top two online media for generating new business, according to Hubspot's The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing.
The report states that 57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from it.
"The use of social media and company blogs as marketing tools not only gets your company better brand exposure, but it also generates leads that result in real customer acquisition," the report states.
The more often you update your blog, the more likely you are to generate a new file from the blog. In fact, 92% of bloggers who posted multiple times a day said they acquired a customer from their blog. However this is an impossible level of activity for busy lawyers. The report states that most bloggers write a new entry once a week. 66% of bloggers who update weekly found that the blog generated new business -- which is still a majority.
Blogs remain the most important media channel. Respondents were also asked to rank the services that they use as “critical,” “important,” or “useful.” An impressive 25% of users rated their company blog as “critical” to their business. 81% of users rated company blogs as “useful” or better.
Twitter Updates
Learn which steps are most effective for post-meeting follow-up with prospective clients and new referral sources. Business development specialist David Ackert and guest speaker Larry Bodine, Esq. show you how to introduce a powerful follow-up system into your business development routine so that you can fully capitalize on new opportunities.
Webinar Topics Include: