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What is "Individual Attorney Internet Marketing?" It’s no secret that individual attorneys in larger law firms often abdicate their entire marketing responsibility to the marketing department. That is, rather than viewing marketing as a joint effort between themselves and the marketing department, they just leave the whole thing to marketing. Nowhere is this more apparent than in internet marketing. I would venture to say that many (if not most) attorneys view internet marketing as the most arcane of all marketing types, something akin to voodoo, and thus choose to forego it entirely. Well, I’m here to let you know that "individual attorney internet marketing" is not voodoo, and can be accomplished fairly easily, by any attorney, regardless of their technical ability. In no special order, here are five simple steps that any attorney can do to help them market their practice online. 1) Create and Update an Email Signature Email "signatures" are little paragraphs that are appended automatically to the end of every outgoing email. And they are useful because they are like "mini-advertisements" for a firm and/or for an attorney. Most email signatures contain the full name and title of the sender, the firm name, and all relevant contact information. In addition, many attorneys are providing direct links to online versions of articles that they have written, presentations, biographies, etc.. Here is an example of a good email signature: Sara Q. Smith: sara.smith@currylambrice.com Note how our imaginary attorney provides her email address, phone number, firm URL, and even a link to a recent article that she wrote. If she writes as much email as I do, this means that hundreds (or thousands) of people per month will have direct access to all of her vital contact (and marketing) information. Are you sold on the concept? I thought so! Luckily, actually creating email an email signature is quite simple. For example, in Microsoft Outlook, simply click on the "tools" menu at the top of the screen. Then click on "options," and choose the "mail format" tab. Now click on "signature picker" and you should be able to figure out the rest. 2) Publish (Online) or Perish! If you have been practicing for any length of time you probably have written dozens of articles for various publications. Unfortunately, most of these articles probably went into obscure newsletters or arcane journals. Nine times out of ten, there is absolutely no reason why this content should not also be up at your firm’s website. This isn’t legal advice, but I am told that unless you have actually signed away your copyright in a written copyright agreement, that you still have the right to republish your articles, etc. anywhere you choose. Of course, before you re-publish, it’s always nice to check with your editors to make sure it’s OK. 3) Submit, Submit, and Submit! Search engines are wonderful devices. They allow people to search the internet for just about anything. But if your information is not contained in the search engine’s database, it won’t be found. Since the internet is so huge, it’s virtually impossible for any given search engine to "know" about every document that exists. But you can help the search engines find your content by actively "submitting" it to them. This can be done by "hand" (i.e. visiting each search engine and submitting your information to them), or it can be done automatically. Doing this is very simple. Simply click over tohttp://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/ Make sure that you submit the URLs (internet addresses) of all of your articles, your bio, and the URLs of any documents at other sites that even mention you (your online West or Martindale-Hubbell listing, for example). 4) Join "The Syndicate" Your online "content" (articles, newsletters, etc.) is the key to promoting your individual practice online. But your content is only as good as its exposure. In other words, if nobody sees your content, it might as well not even exist. Often law firm websites are not very highly trafficked, and this means that your excellent articles, newsletters, etc. are really only seen by very few people. Well, there’s a way to get around this, and it’s free. I’m not going to tell you all the details of how we do this here at Seamless, because I don’t want give away all our secrets. But shoot me an email at kevin (at) seamless.com and I might give you a couple hints. 5) Tie-in some Tie-ins There’s a lot of marketing "punch" in a concept known as synergy. The idea is to leverage two forms of marketing off of each other. You often see this in the subtle relationship between television commercials and their radio counterparts. Often the commercials will be similar or even identical (plus or minus visuals, of course). The idea is to make you remember the TV commercial visuals when you hear the radio commercial and vice-versa. You can do something similar on the internet. For example, whenever you give an "offline" presentation, be sure to post any of your PowerPoint presentations "online" at your website. Then let all the presentation attendees know that they can also view this presentation online at your firm’s website. Then make sure that there is a link to your bio and/or email address and phone number in the online version of the presentation. By doing this, you are allowing people who saw your presentation "live" to go online and see it again at their own pace and in their own timeframe. This is a great convenience to them. It also allows them to see your marketing message a second (or third, or fourth) time. I could go on and on about "Individual Attorney Internet Marketing." But I won’t. However, I’ve at least introduced you to the concept, and given you a few hints on how to do it. Like I said above, this isn’t voodoo. It’s pretty basic and just take a little time. |
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