In today's world of search engines and social networks, the drive to "be number one" and "get more followers" has clouded our judgment. For a little higher visibility, we cut corners. For increased exposure, we sacrifice a little in terms of our reputations. We forget that there are people performing those searches and reading those tweets.
We get calls all the time from legal professionals who want to "get clients" from the Internet. They want to know how fast and how much it will cost to be ranked number 1 for "blah blah lawyer". They ask about automated blogs, article spinning, automated tweets, and the like. They want to know how many followers they need to get before Twitter starts delivering clients. They have forgotten that there are people reading their content.
Some legal professionals have already gotten a "number 1 ranking" and "tens of thousands of followers". They are eager to show us their name in the "Internet lights". They want to know why their law firm Internet marketing isn't working. They too have forgotten that there are people behind the web.
In the offline world, lawyers work hard to build their professional reputations. They work long hours serving their clients. They participate in community organizations and events. They sponsor charities. They volunteer. They speak. They listen. Unfortunately, when it comes to online professional reputation building, they expect quick and effortless results. They don't want to participate. They spam online groups. They buy links. They shout and make noise. They hardly ever listen.
The truth is that successfully building your legal reputation online is very similar to building it offline. It takes work. Most importantly, it takes conversations, communication, and people. Don't forget that there are people behind the web. And tell your marketing consultant not to forget too.
Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
