There are always tons of different things you could be doing at any moment to make sure your practice is moving forward. This leaves little time for most attorneys to focus on their marketing & advertising efforts.
So what can you do if you don’t have much time to market?
Here are some quick-hitters for you to focus on inside of various aspects of the digital space. Use WordPress to host your site, or pay someone to help you with that. It helps your SEO, Google results and everything else Check your story on your website. Do you even have a story? Use an automation/scheduling tool for posting social media posts. Tools like HootSuite or PostOPlan are great for this purpose. Post a story to your Facebook feed at least twice/week. It doesn’t have to be long (1-2 minute video is enough, or 3-4 pictures) Post any and all videos you have to YouTube. YouTube is the 2nd-largest search engine in the world, and it’s owned by Google, so every video on YouTube essentially equates to free traffic and exposure inside of Google. If you’re going to do a blog or newsletter, be consistent with it regardless of how often you do it.
We get it – marketing in the online world can feel overwhelming, intimidating and confusing, but at the end of the day doing something is better than doing nothing.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Elder Law Growth Podcast! We are on a mission to help elder law and estate planning firms grow their practices through digital marketing so they can help create a lasting legacy for families everywhere. No one should pass away without a solid plan in place and everyone should be able to age with dignity.
My name is Dan Hafner and I will be your host for this podcast. I want to thank you all for joining whether this is your first time with us or you have tuned into an episode previously, welcome to the show!
Today’s topics is “Limited Time? Start here” So we are going to dive into what to do if you are limited on time or stretched for time inside of your practice. This is fairly common, there’s always a million things to do whether that is consultations with clients, paperwork, managing your team, growing your online presence even. You have to cut through the noise and figure out a simple way to get started.
There are a million things you could post on facebook or different videos you can make. But if you want to repurpose your content or you’ve delegated someone to take over your social media what are some of the things that you can get started on right away.
The first thing we are going to talk about is your website. We will talk about facebook and blogs as well but we want to start with your website because this is the online face of your firm. Maybe you already have an upgraded website or maybe you dont. Obviously if your website looks like it was made in the 90s it’s safe to assume it’s time to upgrade it but lets assume your website has already been upgraded.
Whether you had it professionally built or you have it with another host our first recommendation if you are thinking about changing providers is to set your website up through wordpress. We’ve seen it time and time again, websites that aren’t hosted with or built with wordpress don’t perform as well.
There are plenty of providers out there but we have found that wordpress has the best speed, features and if you want to bring in someone to help or perform updates it’s very simple and intuitive.
Next, we want to check out your site layout. It should make sense to people who visit it, whether they have seen you in the community or never seen you before it should tell your story like we talked about in our last episode. Make sure it’s not clunky on a mobile browser, that’s also important. And one of the most important things is mapping out your call to actions. That may be a big “Learn More” button or a “Call Now” button. It needs to be prominent on the page. So, check out your own website and find a few things you can upgrade or change right away to make a big impact.
Let’s talk about Facebook. A lot of people ask us about Facebook and where they should start. Start with simply posting. The common theme with new firms and people we haven’t worked with is they don’t post. Many people may choose to look you up on Facebook and if they don’t see any posts even a silly holiday post they might assume you are out of business.
While there is a whole strategy that goes into what to post and when to post it, if you are not posting anything that is a good place to start. If you are already posting regularly make sure your information like phone number and addresses are updated. And then it comes down to being consistent, there are a variety of tools like hootsuite that you can use to schedule posts if you are a solo attorney. Or if you don’t have time outsource it. Ultimately, there is plenty of things you can post and you just have to get started.
Now let’s dive into video. What are some quick things you can do to get into video? The quickest way to do this is actually Facebook stories. They are really simple and the platforms, facebook and instagram, reward people who use stories. Your content will get more views and start to generate buzz. The video can be a quick five to ten seconds, it’s an easy way to get more organic reach.
If you want to do something like YouTube videos, which are like a gift to business owners. You can record a video, post it on YouTube and now it lives there forever. While this can be a bad things for some in the business world it is a gift because people searching for topics can find your video.
Since Google is connected to YouTube the video also helps your SEO and help you rank in your area without you even knowing. Many people think they need to be perfect dressed up in a suit with a green screen and that’s fine but they don’t have to be perfect. People relate more to selfie videos when you are walking around your neighborhood or you just got out of your car.
Those types of videos can have a better view rate and more of a connection with your potential clients than a professional looking video. The great thing is these videos can be repurposed. You can share them on YouTube, Facebook, even LinkedIn. Videos are very rewarding so YouTube is a great way to get started. You can set up a channel for free and we can actually help you with that if you want help.
The last thing we are going to talk about is blogging and newsletters. So maybe you want to start a blog and get some SEO going, what are some quick things you can do? There’s a lot of information out there but simply committing to writing a post once a month can be helpful. Just 12 times a year seems doable.
You may not be the most creative writer or know exactly what to put in your article but there are a lot of resources and you can hire someone to do it for you. I encourage you and or clients as well to pull up Google and brainstorm ideas. Search “Elder Law Attorneys” or “How do I set up an Estate Plan” and see what comes up. You can see what other firms are posting and improve upon that.
Writing can be very time consuming so I encourage you to hire someone or at least have someone give you feedback. Just committing to once a month blog posts can pay big dividends and you can tie them to your YouTube videos and repurpose content.
Finally, we are going to talk about newsletters. If you don’t have a newsletter you can take this with a grain of salt. Some people prefer a weekly or a monthly newsletter and we’ve had a client prefer quarterly, whatever you choose to do make sure you are consistent with it. If you publish it every Tuesday at 11am, publish it every week without fail. The more consistent you are people are going to expect it from you.
Make sure you always include a call to action, whether you are including your website link, phone number or linking to a blog post. Consistently giving people something to do after they have consumed your content key. If you use one of the newsletter softwares like constant contact or mailchimp you can have stats on how many people open your email or clicked the links. This can give you insight into your hottest customers who might be a potential client.
To recap, the top 5 things we talked about were websites, facebook, videos, blogs, and newsletters. These are some of the quick things you can do to level up in the digital space. Whether you are doing some of them or aren’t doing any of them, you can stack them on top of one another to have the biggest impact. It can be time consuming and stressful so if at any point you need help we can point you in the right direction.
You can head to our website and we can help you figure out how to hire someone or decide if it is going to benefit you. You only want to do the things that are going to help move your business forward. Whatever you do make sure you are doing it consistently.
That’s all for this episode, as always I appreciate you joining. You can always check out bambiz.net or elderlawgrowthpodcast.com for more information and show notes. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. We appreciate any reviews or shares to anyone you know who might benefit from our content. Join us next week for another episode. It’s been a pleasure, Dan Hafner signing off. Talk to you next time.
