Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal editor, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, marketing consultant, legal consultant, business development

Marketers know it's a struggle to get lawyers to becoming active on social media, even though it's for their own good. Now comes the Shatterbox blog which suggests that law firms should tie pay raises for lawyers to their activity on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and blogs.

"Having tried a voluntary approach to participation in the firm’s marketing and business development activities, one of my clients recently instituted some mandatory measures. In addition to weekly one-hour professional development meetings, firm management requires associates to log at least 72 hours of business development activities per year, which is tracked through a billing code in its ProLaw system. Research and writing time for blogs and articles count, as do networking coffees and lunches. Results will be discussed in annual reviews and factor into merit increases and bonuses," writes marketing and communications consultant Jay Pinkert of Austin, TX.

Money Motivates

• Spiffs - Practically everyone who’s held a sales job is familiar with “spiffs” — spot awards for selling particular items. If you’re having trouble getting people to submit blog posts or newsletter articles, try periodically offering $5 Starbucks or iTunes gift cards for the next submission. You’ll be surprised at how motivating a free spiced pumpkin latte or smartphone game download can be.
• Pay per submission – I worked with one firm that gave away $50 spot bonuses for every accepted staff blog post submission. Even the partners were eligible, and the managing partner took pride in his second income. So for only $7,800 per year — 3 posts a week, 52 weeks a year — the firm had a strong pipeline and frequency of posts.
• Executive face time – Lunch with the managing partner is a pearl of great price. See how many JD Supra submissions you can generate by offering associates that incentive (and they’ll have something to talk about during the meal).
• Time off – Offering extra personal days as an incentive for extraordinary contributions to your content marketing could be the most motivating compensation of all.

You can follow Jay on Twitter using the handle @FollowtheLawyer.

Many thanks to Ryan Nelson, Director of Operations at LegalWebExperts for this guest blog entry. He can be reached at (619) 569-1002 and ryan@legalwebexperts.com.

1. Generate traffic by any means necessary. The more people there are viewing your site, the more people you’ll have contacting you. The number of people who view your website – can be increased through a number of marketing tactics like pay-per-click advertising, banner ads or search engine optimization (SEO). Advertising puts out instant links with a marketing message, and SEO works over a period of several months to gradually move your law firm’s website up to the first page of results in Google. At our legal web design firm, we've found that a combination of the two can provide both instant and long-term results.

Blogging is also an excellent way to generate more traffic. Managing a blog either within the company website or externally (with links pointing back to the law firm’s website) can boost your SEO campaign as well as generate interest from your human audience. Blogging helps brand your legal practice, which keeps clients loyal and interested in you. For tips on how to blog effectively, see Robyn Raybould's post here.

2. Find out what people are looking at on your site. Take a few minutes to sign up for Google Analytics and install the tracking code on every page of your website (if you work with an internet marketing agency, they could do this for you). Using the “Traffic,” “Referring Sites” and “Visitors” tools can help you see which web pages and search engines are sending traffic to your site. You’ll also be able to see which pages are the most popular on the site, and you’ll be able to make changes accordingly.

3. Put links to the contact form on every page. Using banners and buttons around the site with a call-to-action message can be effective, but attorney website viewers may be more drawn by internal links. Be sure that no page is without an internal link back to the contact form. If your site contains informational pages, use Google Analytics to see which of them your viewers are looking at most often and add an in-text prompt to ensure that they can get in touch with you.

4. Be sure your contact form is effective. Your website’s “Contact Us” form is an absolute necessity to find out what on the site is converting. Within Google Analytics, you can set a goal with your contact form to see which pages are leading people to fill out the form. You’ll be able to improve the pages that aren’t converting as well as keep the pages that are converting in top shape. Keep the form itself short and simple – most people don’t like filling out long forms, so three to four fields is preferable.

5. Focus on what physical spaces on the web page viewers will be looking at. Studies show that people tend to first look across the top of a web page from left to right (where a banner would be), and then their eyes travel down the right side. Use this on-page real estate wisely. Choose images of people over buildings or corporate-looking pictures; you want a friendly site to make the user feel more comfortable and signal that you’re a trustworthy, professional law firm. A well-designed page will entice more visitors to contact you for your services. By taking extra care with your law firm's site, you’ll draw in more traffic and make visitors to your website more likely to turn into leads. How much should a website cost? Check out this post for some insight.