Digital Marketing Mastery for Lawyers

I get it - we all like hiding behind the fairly comfortable set or writing skills we developed as lawyers, and kind of hate the sound of our voices in recordings, or the way we look in videos. It's time to get past it, because the success of your firm's marketing efforts might just depend upon it. Don't worry though - we're here to help.

You sit down at your computer, ready to "do some marketing". You blink a few times, and realise that an enormous amount of time has passed. Worse - you haven't achieved very much. What's gone wrong, and how do we fix it? Find out in this episode.

With so much data available to you now, what measurements actually matter? Are follower counts really just "vanity" metrics or is there something else to it?

Lawyers are great 'n' all, but that doesn't mean we're trying to get them as clients. So why is it that so many firms produce content on topics for lawyers, written in a style that only lawyers care about?

Spending an hour early on in your marketing efforts isn't the same as spending an hour 3 years later with a bunch of expertise under your belt.

Lawyers are spending more and more on Google Ads - but are you getting the best bang for your buck?

One of the easiest marketing strategies to implement is also one of the best - just be nicer to people. No - not bland, uninteresting and inoffensive - nicer. Let's talk about that.

You hear it a lot - post consistently or you'll fail! But is it true? Do you really need to post at the same time, the same day, regularly?

As an up and coming younger lawyer, at some point you will be encouraged to do more marketing. The only problem? That suggestion comes with precisely no relaxation of your billable targets or current workload.

I mean, it might not. In fact, it's the most simple idea in the world, but it's a good one. And you know how many people actually do it? Basically none...

All good things must come to an end - and your content is no different. Sometimes you just have to say goodbye, and delete a bunch of your old or terribly performing content.

While researching which microphone is "best" for 100 hours is a common activity, that doesn't make it a particularly sensible one. So seriously: is it the microphone problem that's actually stopping you from your marketing efforts? I doubt it...

Often our marketing ideas are bigger than our ability to execute - so what do we do when the grand plans fall into a grand heap?

If you've been ignoring the advice to start a podcast for a few years now, the question is going to come up at some point: is it too late? Answer... in this episode.

Video marketing might be all the rage, but if you're not assessing a few simple presentation methods along the way then you're missing an opportunity to improve.

Gets a bit annoying doesn't it - you have this cool thing to say but realise as you go to say that... somebody else said it first. So what should you do?

Do you ever wonder if you're going to "run out" of content? Fear not - it's actually OK to say the same thing more than once...

Many law firms are just letting SEO "professionals" have a crack at making their sites more search engine friendly... which would be fine if they didn't make all of your content utter garbage in the process.

I hear a lot of people concerned about connecting with their colleagues on linkedin. In this episode I explain why it's not a terrible idea, and how you can actually benefit from it.

Getting people to read your stuff is pretty hard. But this simple tip will help your law firm's blog at least be relevant and useful for the people you care about.

Lots of lawyers have blogs that they actively maintain. The articles cost a bomb to produce and are legally sound pieces of work. Yet - they're not seeing the promised results of blogging. Should they just denounce blogging as a waste of time? Or is there perhaps something they're missing...?

Analytics are great, but so often we get caught up in the nonsense numbers that don't actually tell us anything useful. Dig a bit deeper and you'll see the real benefits of improving your video marketing with analytics.

Sometimes stuff happens, and when it does do you have the necessary information to protect or salvage your information from your marketing agency? More and more I'm seeing marketing agencies who set things up for clients but don't give them the information they need to access it themselves. Then guess what? They get fired or go out of business, and all of a sudden you're left down a particular creek without a particular instrument. Don't let that be you - listen to this podcast and put it into practice today.

What if you run a law firm with larger corporate clients or a category where it's pretty unlikely that anybody's going to decide which lawyer to use based on a Google search. Is SEO still something you need to care about?

As lawyers we're pretty good at having opinions, planning and strategy, but much less good at actually getting stuff done. This episode is about how to get stuff done.

Sure it's tempting to use this as your main decision making tool, but you really shouldn't.

I know that every lawyer who uses their valuable time wants a degree of certainty about what's going to happen next - how many clients will call, how much money will I make, how many files will I open. But the maths is a bit more complicated than that. Bring on the Hargreaves theory of maybes.

If you're one of the many people who would like to know how long it's going to take for your digital marketing efforts to pay off, then this one is for you.

One of the best ways you can start to enrich your social media feeds and your content marketing efforts is by implementing a nice content mix into your system. In this episode I talk about why that is and how you can go about doing it.

Within the concept of "known, liked and trusted" is the important aspect of being likeable. Most lawyers I've met are, in fact, likeable in real life (although not all, but that's a story for another day). However their digital presence often gives off different vibes. Perhaps they seem aloof, disengaged, rude or even offensive. So let's talk about how simply focusing on being friendly can help your marketing efforts.

Somewhere along the way, a message has started creeping out that creating precious little content as part of your digital marketing campaign is a good idea. Now I accept that content should be high quality, and that blog posts by lawyers are notoriously terrible. But that doesn't mean I'm in favour of LESS content. In fact, I think you should be smart about producing as much content as humanly possible. Let's chat.

You've really only got these two things to work with: time and money. So where should you allocate each of them?

Why is a very important question to ask, and not just "meaning of life" type stuff.

The prevailing answer when I asked this recently on LinkedIn was... "heck no!". But is that right? Are the risks of having an opinion stated in public simply too high? I'm not 100% sure...

Of the many reasons that law firms start their own blogs, one of the most significant and common is that they are absolutely convinced that churning out oodles of content is going to help their search engine strategy. But is that true? If not… why not? Find out in this episode!

You'd think, since we offer digital marketing services for lawyers, that we'd be all in favour of digital forming the mainstay of all marketing efforts, right? Let's find out.

With momentum discussed, what about we chat about mass? Yes - your firm has a mass which requires a certain amount of force to get it moving. So how are we going to start that, and is your firm more like a big rock or an octopus?

Of the things most likely to help you continue moving when you don't feel like it, momentum is high on the list. Let's talk about some physics - yes it matters.

Somewhere, deep in our training, lies this unusual pathology that lawyers develop. Basically, it insists that the "lawyer" us and the "human" us need to be kept apart from each other. Kind of like trying not to cross the streams. But is that really an effective, or even plausible, approach to marketing?

Which should you be putting your time and effort into - feed posts or stories?

It's tempting to just go straight for the business account option when you're setting up your instagram account, but is that really the right decision or are there some things you should think about first? Well - it's probably right. But let's talk about why, just in case you were wondering what the difference was.

Good question! There are pros and cons to both, and it depends on the size of your firm and the nature of your practice. But ultimately, one option shines out over the other.

Let's start nice and easy with basic but effective instagram strategies. We're going to focus on engagement here, not publication. Although the temptation is to start the other way around, for lawyers the struggle is normally getting connected - so let's front load that part!

How to get going in the space when you're short on experience, expertise, time and money. Yes - it's still possible!

Somewhere between obsessing about how you look and not caring at all is the place to be when it comes to getting the right headshot for social media. So how do we do that?

Just because you don't have time to write a huge blog post every day doesn't mean that you can't still get useful content out there. Here's how to do it.

While I don't do a lot of live video myself, it certainly has some appeal on a number of levels. Here are a few reasons you might want to consider live video as part of your content mix, even if it's not the mainstay of your operation.

Yes I'm aware of the irony of this question, given that this entire podcast series is also a video series. But let's explore the issue properly and find out whether the current flavour of the marketing month is actually worth it.

A common problem for lawyers - just how much of our craft should we give away in the form of content, and what are the risks of doing so? As you'll see, if we ask a slightly different question most of the problems with this dilemma go away (but not quite all).

Most firms have brand pages across social media by now, and some have high hopes for developing a truck load of followers. But the question you need to ask is this: why should I, or anyone else for that matter, follow YOUR brand page? What exactly does it have to offer?

While one of the big appeals of digital marketing is the sheer scope of what you can achieve with huge numbers of people, for lawyers aiming for astronomic numbers isn't necessarily the best aim for the game.