“I know we said we would do an online marketing activity every week,” Lance said to sister Linda and new associate, Jason, sitting across from him at the highly polished mahogany conference table of L&L Law, LLC, “but, it seems impossible. We have to serve our clients, manage our administrative responsibilities, maintain our continuing education, and meet the billable hour requirements we set for ourselves.”
“I know,” Linda said, “but if we don’t market there will be no clients to serve and no reason to worry about billable hours. I’ve been doing research on time management and came up with some ideas.”
L&L Law is not starting from ground zero. Their website is up to date. A profile for Jason, who focuses on investment fraud, has been posted and a description of the new service has been added to the services area and their new video “About our Firm” is ready. They also updated their profile information in the SBM online member directory and added a photo and expanded biographical information for each member of the firm. They opted in to the “accepting clients” feature, and set up the new appointment scheduler.
The major problem for L&L Law is keeping up with their other Internet sites—the blog on their website and their Facebook and Twitter presence.
The Blog
Effective blogs that attract clients and potential clients offer quick and useful information, which is updated regularly. But, how often to post?
Establish a schedule you can keep. Once a month or once a week or once a day—the secret is consistency. Once you decide frequency, help yourself stick to your resolution by scheduling time to research and write. Topics are not a problem in law. Every week, the SBM e-Journal posts important case decisions and the SBM NewsLinks publishes legal news daily.
Linda and Jason decide to share the writing duties, each writing one blog post a month. They pull up their electronic calendars and set aside the time for writing and posting. Lance, who prefers social networking, will use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and an e-mail blast to announce the blog posts.
The Social Network
The social network is a more frequent task. Set aside a time on your calendar for daily or twice weekly postings, whichever fits your busy schedule. Since you could be posting on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, it could mean a daily task. Remember, it is consistency that counts.
Lance decides he will post to Twitter and Facebook twice a week and weekly to LinkedIn. He adds the times to his calendar.
L&L Law will also want to know the effectiveness of the new marketing, they agree to keep track of:
- The number of people reading their blog
- The number of new followers and shared tweets on Twitter
- Whether people are contacting them mentioning something they published
Linda, Lance, and Jason, like you, are busy lawyers. They realize, however, the importance of setting aside time to market their business. Putting it in their calendars like all their other important dates will help.
Feedback will determine if their plan is working. They will change course as necessary or, perhaps, reaching fewer people is not as important as reaching people really interested in what they offer.
Roberta Gubbins has served as the editor of the Ingham County Legal News. Since leaving the paper, she provides services as a ghostwriter editing articles, blogs, and e-blasts for lawyers and law firms. She is the editor of Briefs, the Ingham County Bar Association e-newsletter, and The Mentor, SBM Master Lawyers Section newsletter.
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