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Episode 5: What’s New In Law Firm Thought Leadership? with Alistair Bone, Vice President for Passle

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 5 of Legal News Reach! National Law Review Web Content Specialist Shelby Garrett sits down with Alistair Bone, Vice President with Passle, to catch up on the latest in law firm thought leadership trends. What are four strategies for content marketing success? How can current events play a role in brand development? And why is thought leadership more important—and competitive—than ever?

We’ve included a transcript of the conversation below, transcribed by artificial intelligence. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Shelby Garrett

Thank you for tuning in to the Legal News Reach podcast. My name is Shelby Garrett, Web Publication Specialist with the National Law Review, and in this episode I’ll be speaking to Alistair Bone, Vice President for Passle. Would you mind sharing a bit about your background in legal and what you do at Passle?

Alistair Bone

Thank you very much for having me on, firstly, it’s nice to be kind of the interviewee as opposed to the interviewer. Typically, as you might have come across, there’s the CMO Series podcast at Passle and I’ve been heavily involved with that, which is always enjoyable, so nice to be here. A little bit of background for me is that I was previously a professional sportsman playing rugby, I was very fortunate to have done that. But sadly, that all came to an end about three years ago. I then went into headhunting in the world of law, which kind of sparked the initial interest in law firms and professional services. And I learned a huge amount there. But then my sort of interest was really sparked in technology and how that can kind of really enable law firms to further what they’re doing. And that’s where Passle came along. For me, I love relationships, I love meeting people, I am very much a people person, and this kind of seemed to bring all those different worlds together for me. So yeah, that’s kind of how I ended up Passle, and I’m absolutely loving what I’m doing here.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, I’m really excited to speak with you today. Passle sounds like an amazing tool for professionals, content creation can be an extremely overwhelming process and I think that Passle really removes those roadblocks and kind of simplifies the whole process so that professionals can easily share their expertise

Alistair Bone

Bang on, I mean Passle is a software that has been used by professional services. As you mentioned, we work with Magic Circle firms, Am Law 100, the Big Four accountancies, and fundamentally it’s a platform that makes that critical challenge of demonstrating the firm’s expertise, getting it out to the market nice and quickly and effectively and fundamentally enjoyably.

Shelby Garrett

Amazing, let’s get into a little bit of discussion about thought leadership. Could you give us a nice little definition and why it’s currently a priority for law firms?

Alistair Bone

Yeah, of course, it’s a really nice place to start and hopefully I can give a little bit of an overview. When you come to sort of thought leadership, you know, in professional services, being able to demonstrate your firm’s knowledge and value to the market is really key. Thought leadership definitely sits at the heart of all successful professional service marketing. Really, when you start thinking about it, nearly every growth initiative, business development target, or marketing activity centers around how well that firm can demonstrate the knowledge of its experts. Fundamentally, they want to put out that knowledge to the market. Now, when you start to consider that in terms of what’s happening, we’re really seeing that shift of firms becoming far more global, and certainly more digital. So therefore they’re really starting to prioritize that expertise online and really invest into the thought leadership infrastructure. That said, it’s not happening with everybody. But of the general sort of trends, what we’re really seeing is that the places that have really proved progressive, CMOs are doing very well with it, but also firms are trying to really sort of position themselves in a space or a city and sort of elevate what they’re doing. So hopefully, that’s a nice little bit of an overview of sort of thought leadership and what we’re seeing in the world right now.

Shelby Garrett

When firms start to look into thought leadership, what are ways for them to measure their success, in really cultivating that?

Alistair Bone

So when it comes to how they’re able to sort of really prioritize their thought leadership and what they’re doing, there’s definitely a few reasons sort of behind that in terms of how they can kind of start to prioritize it, and why they might be prioritizing it. For some firms, it’s sort of central to their ethos in their output of what they’re trying to achieve. So if you take, for instance, Reed Smith, they are a global player, they see themselves as a global player in the market, and they want to be first to the market in terms of commenting on what’s happening now, what are those new initiatives, what’s changing in the marketplace. So that’s one way that people are doing it. Again mentioned sort of beforehand, but it can be just that people are wanting to sort of position themselves in a space where they see a really big opportunity. As all law firms know, their clients are really hungry to understand what’s happening in their various markets. And something that at the moment, we’re really seeing that sort of trend of why people are prioritizing it is areas such as your ESG, or your E-Sports are really nice places that people can focus their thought leadership and elevate the sort of teams around that.

A different example is actually, you know, we’ve just launched with Goulston & Storrs, who are a Boston based firm, they’re very established there, but they really want to be recognized in the New York market. And so again, for them thought leadership’s going to be key there to kind of really elevate themselves. So hopefully that’s kind of a nice little bit of a wrap up. I think the other thing that we really noticed with people prioritizing their thought leadership is, we on an annual basis do something called the Digital Performance Index. Now we take a look at a whole host of online activity from law firms, you know, right through from their website, how they’re performing on LinkedIn, etc. And naturally being a thought leadership expert, so to speak, we focus in on that and what we see there is that a lot of firms really sit in sort of amongst their competitors in an area that we would really say is fierce competition. The average attorney in the US and the UK creates one piece of thought leadership a year. So again, firms who want to get themselves out of that fierce competition to be seen as a category leader as kind of mentioned previously, they’re the ones that that are sort of starting to prioritize thought leadership.

Shelby Garrett

Sounds like the measure of success might vary depending on what the goals of the firm are. But is there anything that you’ve noticed that separates successful thought leadership programs from ones that are struggling?

Alistair Bone

Yeah, certainly, I think when you start to measure in what actually makes a successful thought leadership program, as said before, like, those are the reasons that maybe are what made people want to do it. But what’s going to make it successful? I think, before maybe answering that, it’s worth talking about what is a thought leadership program, because it might differ for people. But fundamentally, you know, it’s that sort of concerted effort by firms to demonstrate their expertise to the market. So we’re really fortunate that we get to work on a global scale with the likes of Freshfields, Deloitte, and they’re all having really huge success. On the flip side, we also see what doesn’t work. But fundamentally, success comes down to what we call the four pillars. Within those four pillars, there is the author, there is governance, there’s something that we call “Create Once and Publish Everywhere,” and then your feedback. So that’s a little bit of maybe an introduction in sort of that thought leadership and what makes it successful.

When it comes to considering the author, if we take the first pillar, you really want to ensure that your thought leadership is author-centric when you’re making that publication. So how can you empower them and motivate your authors, your lawyers, your consultants to create that content in a really easy sort of well understood way? The second pillar would be governance. And so it’s really important to be able to make sure that there’s no friction in the process of actually creating the content. So you know, how do you get those nice, quick, efficient approval processes for the content you’re putting out there, you know, making it a matter of hours, as opposed to days? Because you want to be timely, you want to be putting it out there in a really nice format that’s responding to what’s happening in the market. When we come on to “Create Once and Publish Everywhere,” there’s a really nice term we like to refer to, “Cope.” So it’s about actually, you know, how are you guaranteeing the reach of that content, you know, you’ve created this great piece of thought leadership, where’s it going from there? So of course, you know, the lawyers have really strong networks on LinkedIn, it’s a really nice place to push that out. But equally there’s all the sort of online publications. There’s obviously yourself, the National Law Review, great place, you know, want that content on there. But also, if I hope you don’t mind me mentioning, there’s obviously JD Supra, Mondaq, Lexology—again, nice places that you want your content on. So again, how can you really push that out to the market? And then finally, there’s feedback. And in some ways, once you’ve done all of the above, this is actually the most critical part because there’s no point in creating thought leadership and that content and pushing it out there if people don’t know the benefit of what they’ve done. And actually, it’s got to be in a nice layered way. Because when you think about it, there’s multiple stakeholders who want to understand the feedback. So if we take the authors, you know, that’s very personal, they want their clients, they want their prospects, they want to know who’s been engaging with it. If you take it from the firm’s perspective, the management know, they’re probably looking at that bottom line, you know, who’s bringing in the money for them? So are they getting engagement from those key people? And the third and final sort of layer is actually the marketing business development. So again, when you have a look at all of that feedback put together, that starts to demonstrate the success of all of that time that you’re investing into it. So yeah, hopefully, that’s a nice way to understand it. But fundamentally, success comes with aligning themselves to those four pillars and making sure you’re doing each in the best way possible. And that’s what gets, you know, a real virtuous circle of content creation going.

Shelby Garrett

Amazing, that was really great context and a really full theory of success. For firms that might be looking to really transform their thought leadership programs, is there a good place to start? We talked about the four pillars. Is there one first step that they can really use to jumpstart this?

Alistair Bone

I think there’s a few different places that they can start with, but in some ways, it’s actually quite simple. I’ve mentioned those four pillars there, and actually it’s about assessing those four pillars. Are you engaging your authors? You know, is it very easy for them, if you remove those barriers to entry to make sure that they can create their content? Again, when it comes to governance, you know, have you addressed those workflows? Is it again, a simple process for them to be able to actually create that content? And then get that out there? Once it’s done, where are you putting it out? And finally that feedback, are you actually providing feedback to people? I think by taking that step back and taking a look at the sort of overall process of your thought leadership program, and looking at those four pillars, that really allows you to then hone in on actually, “Okay, we’re not enabling and empowering our authors to create content. That’s why it’s not actually happening. So therefore, we need to do that and then we can start to go from there.” It may be that you’re doing all of this, but there’s no feedback. You know, maybe you give something small once a year. I know that if I was doing something I’m putting time and effort into and I got no feedback and didn’t really know the value that I was adding to people, then I probably wouldn’t want to continue doing it. So again, it’s just a nice way to kind of really address it. So I think that’s a really nice place for people to start when it wants to come to, you know, transforming their thought leadership program, or even beginning it.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, that’s a really great point. I feel like there’s a lot of excitement when starting something new, but you have to take that kind of honest and realistic assessment of what you currently have going on to develop that full game plan. Thank you. That was amazing.

We talked about measurements of success, but are there additional tools and resources that are available for firms that are looking forward to making these changes?

Alistair Bone

I mean, if you look at it from our perspective, on the Passle website, I mentioned it at the top, but the CMO Series podcast is a really nice place for anybody at any level in smart marketing and business development to listen to what’s happening in the market be it from, you know, what it’s like to be a new CMO, be it data, developing your team. So that’s a really nice resource hub. If you think about thought leadership, we have various resources in terms of one-pagers that you can come on, and you can learn a little bit more around what’s happening. Similarly, feel free to reach out, you know, we’re always here to have conversations and discuss what we’re doing here at Passle and how we’re helping a number of different firms with their thought leadership programs and forming that infrastructure for them as they move forward.

Shelby Garrett

Absolutely. Yeah, your website is a great resource, I listened to a couple of those podcasts and you guys have quite the range of guests as well, that are very happy to share their expertise, which is great.

Alistair Bone

Yeah, we’re really fortunate from that perspective. And it’s been a really nice thing to do. I say, normally, I’m sat interviewing people, but it allows myself and my colleagues to ultimately make some great friends throughout the legal world. So it’s been a real success.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, with those connections you’ve definitely built a lot of knowledge that’s accessible for people in that podcast as well, which is wonderful.

Moving away from the firm focus, but kind of looking at more of a macro lens, what are some of the current trends that are happening in law firm thought leadership programs?

Alistair Bone

I think, you know, if we take it back to the start, the biggest trends that we’re noticing is just people, one focusing on key areas. So, you know, be it new practice areas, such as their ESG, or their E-sports, that’s where people are certainly starting to focus in on. I think the other place is that people are looking at it as career development, which is a really nice place to, you know, help elevate what attorneys and lawyers are doing, as they kind of come through that natural path where you become associate, senior associate, you’re not necessarily doing a lot of business development until you get to partner. So again, it’s a nice chance for you to start to be seen in the network and be seen as those experts. The other place that I think people are starting to focus in on is realizing that there’s always a place for your big white papers. They’re fantastic. There’s so much time, effort, money goes into them. They provide a huge amount of knowledge, but what the market wants on the whole, and certainly what us as individuals out there want in this world now is that nice, short, digestible, timely content. So actually, you don’t want to be writing much more than maybe sort of 200, 500 words. So again, that’s a nice shift that we’re starting to see that people understand that value from that perspective.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, absolutely. I have a background in public libraries and having this information available online with these different topics is just so valuable for everybody sharing that information, and your expertise.

Alistair Bone

It’s that chance to kind of dip into different areas of people’s expertise. You know, something’s changed and, you know, the interest rates have moved here in the UK, how’s that affecting your mortgage rate? And what’s the law behind that? Or, you know, unfortunately, there was the big storm, you know, Hurricane Ian down in Florida recently, you know, maybe an employment lawyer might want to put out some recent content or something around, “What are your employment rights around working from home?” or whatever it might be. So it’s a really nice way to kind of start engaging with people, you know, don’t have to look at it in the lens of simply being the law and client alerts and that sort of thing. So as you said, you can dip into these different things and learn something.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, absolutely. The new iOS update for Apple with the ability to delete text messages and e-Discovery that’s, like, so intriguing to me. And yeah, just as like a public person. I think that’s like, extremely interesting.

When we’re looking at all of these big changes, like you’ve mentioned the hurricane, have you seen law firms kind of shift their content marketing approaches, in light of that?

Alistair Bone

I think on the whole, we are seeing people just start to engage in maybe a slightly different way. I mean, I’ve been fortunate enough on some of those podcasts to have great conversations with people in the industry for a long time and they kind of talked about what they’ve seen the marketing functions of law firms do and the real shift. But I think now people are starting to realize that ultimately it really is about elevating your attorneys and what you’re doing and therefore how can you push out, ultimately their knowledge? I think the other thing to consider in the world we’re all now living in is that a lot more people will be working from home, you know people, or law firm should I say spend a huge amount of money on the infrastructure of offices, office spaces, people aren’t necessarily coming into it, you’re not necessarily having your clients come into it so that online presence is becoming ever more important. So again, what you’re putting out there on the website, what your attorneys are able to do, what your consultants are able to do becomes that bit more important. So yeah, there’s definitely I think that more of a shift online to being able to elevate what people are doing.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, that kind of ties into with the smaller or the shorter pieces that are being created, you could kind of shift your topics more quickly. Looks like we are nearly coming to a close. But I do want to pull this all together and talk about where Passle exactly fits in and helping these law firms create and share their thought leadership. I know you kind of walked us through the tool that you guys have and your Chrome plugin previously. But if you could explain that a little bit more for our listeners?

Alistair Bone

Sure, well, I’ll give a very brief overview of how Passle works for people who don’t know. Passle is a piece of software that quite simply goes onto the laptop. And as they removed all the barriers of entry for the attorneys, the consultants, your experts to create the content. So it can be used in a host of different ways. Not only you can write content but you can do your podcasts, you can do your videos, you can host PDFs, you can embed different content, there’s so much that you’re able to do with it. And once you’ve got over the fundamental hurdle of people being able to create the content, you can then do a host of different things then in terms of starting to form that infrastructure on the website. So be that plugging into the attorneys’ profiles or consultants’ profiles, plugging it into the practice areas. Yeah, kind of the world’s your oyster, once you get up and running with it, which is, which is really cool. If you want to launch with Passle, the way that we always do it, because we know this is tried, tested, and works incredibly well is we do a Proof of Value that we run over the course of two months. It’s all about that behavioral change, you know, taking a group of 20, 25, attorneys, consultants, experts within your firm, and getting that shift of going from, “I don’t understand thought leadership, I don’t know how to create content, I don’t necessarily want to, I haven’t done it before,” to overnight, shifting them into actually understanding the benefits that come from thought leadership and what they can do with it. So that’s kind of the launch process. I don’t want to bore people too much with it. But hopefully, that’s a bit of an overview of Passle and where it kind of plugs in. But it’s a very exciting time for us. And we’re very fortunate to be working with some of the world’s global firms and some real leading players there.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, absolutely. I, when you were talking about the four pillars, I certainly could immediately connect it to what you were showing us earlier through your demonstration.

Alistair Bone

I think that’s the thing with Passle is that once you have the opportunity to see it, everything clicks, and you understand the value that it’s going to bring and how easy it is because it’s not just on the attorney side. If you take the marketing, the BD, the communications team, we obviously elevate everything that they’re doing and make it very easy for them. But also because it’s all focused in on one sort of screen. You know, when you have that Passle posts, that completes the content you’ve created approved, the marketing, the BD teams get a notification, it’s all in one place, they can top and tail it, do what they want to before it’s going live on to the website. So you remove that arduous process of back and forth again, which is a really nice place to be. So it’s not just about the attorneys. It’s actually about the marketing, the BD, comms teams and elevating everything they’re doing as well.

Shelby Garrett

It certainly is daunting for lawyers to create their own content. And it’s a large task and Passle makes it a bit of a smoother process I think, at least from what I’ve seen.

Alistair Bone

Everybody has the impostor syndrome, whatever you do. Once you get over that hurdle, you know, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, absolutely. How has Passle’s technology been able to help firms succeed over the years? I know we’ve covered it throughout. But if you could really like, bring that all together in a nice little package for us?

Alistair Bone

Yeah, sure. I think what might be the best thing to do, and I thought it might be able to answer it earlier but didn’t have the chance to was, you know, what actually makes a successful thought leadership program? So maybe if I can demonstrate some of the successes people have had, that kind of demonstrates what’s happened over the years. I think success can be defined in multiple ways for different people in terms of what your ultimate outcome is from a thought leadership program. But what we’ve seen is it really differs over time. So in the initial instance, you know it’s that overnight change the behavior change in in the attorneys, you know, you go from individuals never having created content to writing and understanding value. We launched with a law firm here in London called Forsters. One of my fantastic stories I absolutely love from it was one of their senior partners who didn’t like technology, had never used it, didn’t want to engage with it was part of our launch, the Proof of Value. Not only did he write four pieces of content, which again was a huge change, he started using LinkedIn. And even then he got himself an Instagram account, because he understood the value of technology all of a sudden, obviously slightly different to your work stuff. But again, a really nice story of kind of people seeing that change. You then kind of start to look at what’s happening over the next couple of months. And as you get deeper into that sort of thought leadership program, and more success starts to come in terms of the impact on people’s diaries. You know, they’re starting to have conversations with clients, they’re starting to meet prospects, you know, they get engaged with all of the right people. Additionally, and I sort of want to touch on it, as well is there’s that career development I mentioned earlier when you were sort of saying some of the trends, but there’s a real understanding for sort of the associates, senior associates of how they can help develop their career. So again, a really nice example there was there’s a lawyer, a senior associate called JJ Shaw at a firm called Lewis Silkin in the sports team there and he was sharing with us that actually, you know, from creating content, putting it out there to his network, he started to have people come back to him asking him to post panels to sit on different talks, which is amazing, because all of a sudden, he’s being seen as that go-to expert, and people are actually engaging with what he’s doing. So again, a really nice development tool. And then I just think longer term, it’s fundamentally about winning business. And once you start winning the business, everything you’re doing with that big thought leadership program makes sense. So again, we’ve got a lot of anecdotal examples. One that I know I can share with the public was from Alvarez & Marsal, one of the big US consultancies, and we were fortunate enough to sit down with Linda Orton, who’s the former CMO there. And she shared with us that Mike Carter, who was again, a former Senior Director there had done this post around anti-money laundering, he put it onto LinkedIn, she’d actually invested a little bit of spending into that to sort of elevate what was happening, you know, something like 50 quid, not a huge amount of money. That then led to a conversation, which then led to business and over the past couple of years, that’s actually generated 12 million in revenue. So all of a sudden, admittedly, there’s a whole host of work that went into that. But it’s that understanding that by being seen as those go-to experts elevating what you’re doing, you know, the business starts to come. So hopefully, you know, I know, I’ve broken it down there, but that gives an idea of how actually, we’ve helped firms over the years, and particularly now, just really forming that thought leadership infrastructure for people.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, amazing. I can certainly see the building the confidence aspect of the technology that you have making it simplified, but also seeing those results really would build your confidence in creation.

Alistair Bone

And it spans throughout firms, because someone else sees that and they want to get involved and do something around it. So it’s really nice.

Shelby Garrett

Yeah, it’s wonderful. Before we wrap up today, are there any final thoughts that you would like to share with us?

Alistair Bone

There’s probably one or two, I just want to keep it really succinct. I think just the main thing is that thought leadership really is for everybody, and is something that everyone should be considering at the moment, I think, whether it’s that you’re really wanting to stand out in a specific field or elevate some of the great work that you’re already doing, you know, whether that is the marketing or BD teams or for the attorneys, there’s so much that you can invest into it. And you know, that online presence has never been more important. So I think those two things are probably the key takeaways for me that hopefully it resonates with people as they listen to this. And you know, if there’s anything that you want to do in terms of understanding more than please feel free to obviously reach out to me via email or on LinkedIn or equally you can visit home.passle.net. There are plenty of places that you can get some information, but hopefully this has been some worthwhile information for people to listen to.

Shelby Garrett

We can’t thank you enough for joining us today and sharing your thoughts. Thank you to our listeners as well for tuning in. We will see you all next time.

Conclusion

Thank you for listening to the National Law Review’s Legal News Reach podcast. Be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for more episodes. For the latest legal news, or if you’re interested in publishing and advertising with us, visit www.natlawreview.com. We’ll be back soon with our next episode.

For more Legal Marketing News, click here to visit the National Law Review.

How to Write Better Client Alerts and Blog Posts

One of the most effective marketing strategies for lawyers is writing client alerts and blog posts on a regular basis. Publishing content like this establishes you as a thought leader and helps to keep you top of mind with your clients, referrals, prospects and the media and bolsters your SEO results too.

So, what makes a good client alert or blog post? It’s not about writing the longest alert or publishing it before your competitors or including every detail about the court decision.

I see many law firms publish client alerts with good intentions – the whole idea is to get helpful information to your clients and prospects as quickly as possible with interesting insights.

A lot of law firms sometimes miss the mark because their client alerts are either just regurgitating facts, don’t have a lot of insight in them, are too long, are written in legalese and they’re not client-centric meaning they don’t put the client first and aren’t written for them and their needs, which completely defeats the point.

I also see alerts that are too cute or clever – with headlines based on movies, TV shows or music lyrics . What you really want to do is deliver a clear promise in the headline and provide value while engaging your reader.

A strong headline is often the determining factor on whether someone actually opens the content or not. You also must actually deliver on what you say you’re going to provide in the alert.

So if the alert says it is going to be on X topic and the first few sentences lead you to believe that, but then it goes down another path, that’s clickbait and frustrates the reader.

Almost as important as what you write is how you structure the alert. Dense, long paragraphs are not going to capture your reader’s attention today. Try using shorter paragraphs with subheadings. Make it easy for someone to follow along and find points of engagement. Bulleted or numbered lists also work well to engage your reader.

In addition, make sure your alert has a vantage point. Just regurgitating information that somebody can find on a public website about a major decision or case or update in the law is not very poignant, memorable, relevant or helpful.

What is helpful and useful is explaining what the decision or update means for your client’s business. And of course, the hidden underlying message is “we can help you with this, we care about you and our insights can help solve your thorniest legal and business needs.” Just make sure that your content supports that too.

Writing client alerts and blog posts is one of the best ways to get back in touch with your clients, referrals and prospects in a way that showcases your subject-matter authority. Plus you’re not even thinking about all of the silent viewers and readers of your content and how that can actually lead to new business, greater visibility and brand recognition.

If writing a client alert or blog post seems too overwhelming to do alone, buddy up with a colleague or even better – a client. The summer is a great time to focus on drafting and publishing a piece of content like this, so what are you waiting for?

Watch this video for more tips on writing a better client alert or blog post.

Article By Stefanie M. Marrone of Stefanie Marrone Consulting

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Debunking Five Business Development Myths to Help You Achieve Success

Business development, marketing and public relations initiatives can be intimidating to even the most-seasoned legal veteran. The idea of creating a successful plan seems daunting, much less the prospect of executing, maintaining and measuring the plan’s performance metrics. The steps to effective business development are rooted in creating visibility and thought leadership that successfully position both you and your firm within the marketplace and that translate into new clients and business referrals.

Here are five business development myths that make creating and executing a successful business development plan seem impossible. It is important to remember that most attorneys did not go to law school or begin their legal practices with the aspiration of becoming a seasoned marketer. However, it is possible to become successful at business development by reevaluating how you measure success and how you focus your efforts — and debunking these myths.

Myth #1- There Is a “One Size Fits All” Marketing & Business Development Plan

Each individual’s marketing and business development plan should be customized to highlight not only their unique strengths but also to incorporate their priorities, experience, capabilities and commitment level. For example, if you’re more extroverted, your plan could include large networking events or speaking engagements. If the idea of speaking to a group of strangers is intimidating, then perhaps your plan includes writing articles or providing your expertise in small roundtable discussions. Additionally, before creating a business development plan, each individual needs to evaluate factors like where they are in their career, what their short-term and long-term goals are, and what they need to get out of their business development initiatives to be considered effective.

Myth #2- Being Successful at Business Development Means You Are a “Rainmaker”

There is often a stigma that the successful business developer is defined as a rainmaker. Business development success should be measured on an individual level and not compared to the firm as a whole or measured against any other attorney’s business development contribution. There are too many factors for each person and their experiences and circumstances to label only the rainmaker as successful. Just like a law firm requires many layers of expertise to run smoothly, there are different levels of contributors to business development, and each level should be valued and encouraged if individuals are participating to the best of their ability and expanding their business development experience.

Myth #3- New Clients Are the Only Measure of Business Development Success

While the obvious end goal of all business development initiatives is more business which equals more billing and revenue, signing new clients is not the only measure of successful business development. Expanding your network to broaden the exposure of your expertise is a fundamental part of a successful business development plan. Often, attorneys get too focused on cultivating the relationship with a potential client and miss opportunities to connect with valuable referral sources, thus limiting their network.

There are also other business development initiatives that can be measured as successful beyond singing a new client- including getting a bylined article published, being honored with a significant award or ranking, or being quoted in the press. Each of these things help to create an integrated and effective business development plan that sets up the foundation for long-term success.

Myth #4- Executing Your Plan Needs to Be Done Alone

Simply because your business development plan “belongs to you” doesn’t mean you have to execute it on your own. Working with someone to hold you accountable is crucial to the process. This is not to say you need to immediately run out and find a business development coach to be successful, but you do need someone to discuss which initiatives are working in your plan and identify any challenges you’re facing. This should include regular check-in meetings to make sure your plan is progressing the way you’d like and to ensure your goals are being achieved. It also includes evaluating the success, or lack thereof, of initiatives and adjusting or revising goals to be more effective.

Having a mentor or aspirational influence is also a helpful tool for both planning and execution. While you don’t have to model your plan to mirror someone else’s, there is value in knowing where you’d like to be and seeing someone else achieving that level of success. A mentor will serve in a more interactional role, but if that model doesn’t fit with your personality or your business, identifying with a person or people whose success you would like to emulate is helpful when crafting a strategy and long-term goals in your business development plan.

Myth #5- Business Development Is a Fancy Term for Networking

Many people declare they don’t need a business development plan because they are “active” within their industry and regularly attend events. Event attendance is a piece of a larger initiative that creates a successful and measurable business development plan. Often, attorneys put all their marketing eggs in one basket. They become frustrated when those efforts are unsuccessful and give up. An integrated approach is key to being successful in business development. This includes not only networking but also incorporating other things like writing, ranking and honors, digital strategy, and public relations.

It’s easy to focus on client work and push business development initiatives to the side or add them to a to-do list. The idea behind breaking down these common myths is to empower everyone to feel they can create a manageable business development plan, use the tools and resources they need to execute these plans successfully, and to execute these plans with short-term and long-term goals that are easily achieved. Business development does not need to be intimidating, overwhelming or time-consuming if your plan is personalized to highlight your strengths, comfort level and readiness. The goal of business development is not just to meet people and hope they’ll hire you, but to create lasting impressions through initiatives and actions that enhance your visibility and position you as a thought leader.

ARTICLE BY Evyan O’Keefe at Jaffe PR.

For more on law firm business, see the National Law Review Law Office Management section.

Gamification in Thought Leadership; not Just a Game: Education, Good Habits and Competition

For the past few weeks, Pokémon Go has been a conversation starter. The game has made headlines for getting kids out of the house bike riding and taking walks, and everyone seems caught up in the craze. If you’ve been to a museum, or a park, or a shopping mall lately, you’ve most likely seen people bent over their phones wandering around talking about Pikachus and Rattatas. If the game has taught us anything, besides the location of the nearest PokéStop, it’s the motivational power of games.

It’s no secret that it can be a challenge to get attorneys to commit to a thought leadership strategy. It takes time away from billable hours and it can take awhile to see results. One intriguing strategy is gamification—game mechanics applied to non-game situations to encourage users to behave in a certain, desired way—to get marketing initiatives off the ground. Heather McCullough¹ of Society 54 is an expert on gamification platforms, so NLR reached out to her to get our questions about gamification and thought leadership answered.

An important ingredient in any gamification initiative is buy-in. Heather says, “It is important to have an internal champion who will help to lead the effort and encourage participation. I have seen time and again efforts fail because they are being led by the Marketing or Business Development department with little to no visible support from management or other attorney(s).” It is key that firm leadership indicate their support for the efforts, and nothing communicates that better than consistent, active participation in the efforts. This visible approval and leadership can help encourage buy-in. Having an enthusiastic participant in a leadership role can encourage participation firm-wide. This helps get the ball rolling before the fun of the game –and the spirit of competition– takes over. Heather shares, “ We have a client whose managing partner is the champion for their gamified business development efforts and he communicates regularly with the attorneys about the competition – who is doing well, who needs to improve and then sharing some best practices which can help everyone improve their efforts. This firm not only seen tremendous buy in from the attorneys but also are realizing real monetary returns from their efforts.”

McCullough made it clear that any gamification strategy had to be clearly thought out—it is not just a game. It is important to understand your goals: what do you want the final product to be? McCullough says, “It is incredibly important to know what the firm is hoping to accomplish with the increased effort around writing thought leadership and design the gamification strategy with that at the center.”

For a thoughtful, effective, educational gamification strategy, it’s important to remember the unique challenges of thought leadership development, as well as the best practices for content. Folding good thought leadership principles into any game is an important tool to maximize the efforts. Heather says, “When we design gaming platforms for our clients, we always include thought leadership efforts into the activities available. . . this includes research, writing, publishing, repurposing and educating his/her peers on the issues discussed.” Breaking down a large task—like writing for a blog—into smaller pieces—and rewarding those pieces can make it easier to get started. If it’s easier to get started, more content is created. Additionally, breaking the process down allows attorneys to see opportunities to create content on their own, again increasing the amount of content produced. As McCullough points out, “The effort of writing is most important because there are many avenues to distribute content, even simply adding it to the individual attorney’s bio. With more content for a firm to choose from for distribution, the success will come.”

Creating thought leadership can be a very solitary process–but that doesn’t mean that it can’t get competitive. Heather says, “Attorneys are amazingly competitive and while the actual act of writing is a solitary endeavor, game-like elements can be incorporated into the process and competition can happen among the individuals and points can be awarded for a variety of different components.” What those components are can be up to the individual goals of the firm–but it is a solid strategy to reward good habits so the game encourages good habits–and also educates attorneys about what those good habits are. For example, McCullough says,

There is a plethora of ways that writing can be rewarded and rewarding for the attorneys involved. For example, writing for a business audience vs. a legal audience (no legal-ease, please), keeping the article under a certain number of words, writing one article and then providing the specific content that can be used on various platforms (e.g. condensing the message to 140 characters for Twitter and also providing a solid synopsis to be included on LinkedIn), or co-writing with an attorney from another practice area.

Along with encouraging behavior, gamification is a great way to encourage attorneys to educate themselves about good practices. Heather says, “I believe that you could use gamification elements, such as badges and status symbols, to ‘reward’ attorneys for participating in educational sessions. Additional badges and status symbols could be provided to attorneys who chose to lead the educational sessions which encourages enhanced participation and preparation.” The educational sessions are great chances for top-content producers at the firm to share their secrets, and to share the firm’s overall strategy for content production.

As with any initiative, gamification is not something to set into motion and then walk away. It requires nurturing and re-evaluation to make sure your original goals are still being met by the game. Heather says, “Many companies who have used game elements to improve or increase desired behaviors have reported fantastic results. The gamification aspect served to not only motivate the individual(s) initially but also proved to help sustain the efforts longer term. That being said, there is a natural fatigue that happens with any new effort so steps should be taken to regularly shift the parameters of any of game, reset certain elements and also maintain consistent dialogue with participants to uncover areas of improvement.”

Understanding your goals and defining them can simplify the design process and bring your efforts to bear on the behaviors you want to encourage. The sky’s the limit–creativity is a tremendous asset in designing a gamification program, and generating something that helps meet your needs and brings fun, excitement and competition into the firm is completely within reach.

ARTICLE BY Eilene Spear of The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC

_{1 Heather McCullough is Certified in Gamification by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. She has spoken about Gamification within law firms, along with her business partner Jill Huse, from coast to coast. The National Law Review had the opportunity to hear Heather and Jill speak at the recent LMA Midwest Legal Marketing Technology Conference.}

12 Tips for Getting the Most Business Out of Speaking Events

Speaking provides credibility and visibility, both of which are very helpful in terms of acquiring new clients. Yet, despite the significant time and effort that it takes to prepare presentations, many attorneys find that speaking events are not producing as much business as they had hoped. The following tips are intended to help lawyers identify areas to fine-tune their approach, in order to produce better results going forward.

Find the Best Audience – Speaking to a wide range of groups just to get experience can be a very good idea. However, once an attorney becomes more comfortable and skilled at communicating to groups and managing the dynamics of a room, it is important to start actively seeking the ideal audience. This may take some trial and error. The best organizations for reaching a particular niche may not be as obvious as one might think. If you are not getting the business you want, this is the first place to look.
Choose a Critically Important Topic – Even if you are speaking to an ideal audience, you may not be addressing an issue that would inspire them to hire you. They may attend simply because they are curious about the subject and want to be prepared for the future, rather than because they view the issue as a serious concern on which they are willing to spend money. It may take some experimentation in order to identify topics that hit the sweet spot, both resonating with the audience, and showcasing your passion and expertise.
Choose an Enticing Title – A well-crafted title increases attendance and enthusiasm for the topic dramatically. On one hand, this could be seen as superficial; but on the other hand, if a speaker goes out of her way to choose an amusing or compelling title, it is reasonable to assume that she made similar effort with the entire presentation.
Make Sure the Description Accurately Represents the Content of the Presentation – There are two major ways this can go awry. First, sometimes an event organizer will write the program description for you. If you do not control the way the program is being advertised, it is very likely that the “wrong” people will attend or that they will come with expectations that are at odds with what you actually provide. This can lead to a confused or disappointed audience and a lot of frustration for the speaker. The second common way this happens is when the speaker writes a program description before designing the presentation. While content may evolve through the preparation process, it is important to keep the program in alignment with the description.
Come Across as Personable – While an attorney’s experience and expertise are important, clients are a lot more interested in doing business with those whom they like. Public speaking does not come naturally to everyone, and even people who are usually genuine and charming may not come across as their usual likeable selves, due to nervousness, a believe that they “should” act a certain way in front of a group, etc. Some of this comes with practice, but getting feedback and simply putting greater attention on connecting with the audience can be immensely helpful.
Put Aside the Perfectionism – There are a lot of variables at play when speaking to a group, and circumstance will not always go as planned. If you are at a conference, the previous breakout session can run late, cutting into your perfectly timed presentation. The audience may turn out to have a dramatically different level of knowledge about the subject than you expected. There could be an unusually difficult audience member who won’t shut up about his own agenda. You could fall suddenly ill and have intense nausea or a hoarse voice. The list of unexpected challenges is long. Flexibility is your friend.
Make Sure Your Biographical Descriptions are Consistent – If your biographical descriptions say different things about your expertise, you may be inadvertently undermining your credibility. Audience members frequently research speakers on the Internet and through social media to determine whether or not to attend a presentation, or to evaluate a speaker’s level of expertise. Thus, it is important that your law firm biography, speaker’s biography, and LinkedIn and other social media profiles all send a consistent message.
Tell Them the Types of Law You Practice – Based on your presentation topic, audiences often make inaccurate assumptions about the scope of work that you do. If you offer a presentation about regulation of the electric grid, they may not realize that you also work on other types of energy or regulatory issues. Simply telling them at some point in your presentation, or using a range or examples, helps people recognize opportunities for working with you.
Have a Structure for Gathering Contact Information – Asking for business cards from those who wish to receive client alerts, or offering to send out slides or other supplementary materials related to your topic is a great way to gather contact information from audience members. It is important to know the policies and procedures for the particular host organization, as some provide materials to participants electronically, others will offer the speaker a list of attendees, etc. Once you know the particulars, you can make a plan for how to request contact information from participants in way that is both inviting and appropriate.
Follow up – The people who attend your program are leads, and turning them into clients generally requires follow-up. While some people who attend your presentation may immediately express interest in hiring you, most will not be shopping for an attorney right away. However, that could easily change down the line, and you want to still be in contact when it does. Therefore, it is important to have a good system in place for following up and staying in touch.
Offer Insights as Well as Information – Lawyers are great at providing information on developments in the law and other technical details, but often do not offer the type of insights and generalizations that audiences find most valuable. Such comments may require caveats, but this is where your expertise becomes most evident. In a world where it’s not that hard to look up regulations, it is the context and broader implications for which clients are paying you.
Make Content as Engaging as Possible – It is not always obvious how to liven up a presentation on a dry legal topic. However, one of the best ways is to use stories. Every case has a story behind it, and although the exact details may not be relevant to your audience, simply fleshing out the situation, and explaining a little bit about the characters, groups or context helps people to process and later recall the information. Don’t be scared to err on the side of being a little too interesting. If the audience can’t stay awake, they are a lot less likely to remember, let alone hire you.

Even highly effective and experienced speakers will likely be able to identify areas for improvement. Becoming truly great at anything, from football to parenting to business development, requires constant practice, evaluation and adjustment. The key is to just choose one or two areas to focus on at time. Progress in any of these areas is likely to increase the number or quality of your prospects.

ARTICLE BY Anna H. Rappaport of Excelleration, LLC

3 Tips to Improve Law Firm Websites

The best law firm websites are complete destinations, not pit stops. Many law firms focus more on the design aspect of their websites, rather than looking at the big picture. Google gets several billion searches a day, and it’s hardly because of the design of their website. Users know they can get something from it.

In order to have a well-rounded law firm marketing strategy, it is important to look beyond the surface of your website, and into the psychology of why people buy, as well as the ways they are interacting with your website based on data.

These 3 game changing tips will help you make your law firm website the best it can be.

1. Thought leadership at the center of your legal marketing strategy

It is said that people hire attorneys as much as they hire law firms, and that they deeply value thought leadership. I interviewed Prof. David Wilkins of Harvard Law School and he had this to say about leading with content and ideas.

“So I think that thought leadership is very important and I think it’s increasingly important and this is something I think is true at all levels, wherever a lawyer is practicing. That’s because clients understand that the world is becoming increasingly complex and that they are looking for lawyers who can demonstrate an understanding of that complexity and also an ability to help them to navigate that complexity. So I do think things like writing or lecturing or speaking or blogging, all of these things can be very important in establishing a lawyer or a law firm for that matter as a thought leader.”

2. Add a blog and tie it to attorney business development

Adding a blog to your site is easy to do and will provide you with many benefits, as well as deepen the time people spend on your website. Back in 2012, Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog had this to say about lawyers who are not blogging.

“Clients and potential clients look to blogs for information that shapes hiring decisions, according to multiple industry surveys; clearly, firms with blogs are the norm, rather than the exception. Blogging is quickly becoming an expected part of any firm’s marketing arsenal. Those who do not use blogs are behind, it is that simple.”

The good news is that a blog will not only help your website by positioning you as a thought leader, but it will also help your search engine optimization, give you something to share on social media, lure people into linking to your site, and give you content to share with prospects.

In an interview I did with business development coach Stuart Hirsch, on Blogging In Business Development For Law Firms, he confirmed that he believes in this strategy.

“If there’s something that a lawyer has written that has value to another person, passing that on is really valuable and blogs are such an easy way to provide that value.”

The general consensus from our interviews on the subject is that sharing helpful content whether it be blogs, client alerts, newsletters or LinkedIn updates, can be a great way to build relationships.

3. Conversion rate optimization

If you get a hundred visitors to your website, and one of them requests a free consultation or takes an action, then you have a 1% conversion rate. Setting up conversion tracking with goal conversions is the first step that many law firms completely miss, even if they have Google analytics installed.

Improving your conversion rate is essential now that search engine optimization is more complicated than ever. Social media sites are pushing paid social to compete with Google’s revenues, and paid search clicks can cost as much as $600 per visit.

I won’t go into great detail in this short post, but it is important for law firms to be aware of the amazing technology that is available to improve website leads and sales. The following are a few website marketing tools to check out:

Google Analytics: For tracking and improving visitor activity

ClickTale: Customer experience analysis

HubSpot: Comprehensive Internet marketing tool with attribution tracking

Usertesting.com: Video reviews of your website for $49 each

Feedbackarmy.com: Ask half a dozen questions to 10 people for $40

Unbouce.com: Landing page software with built-in A/B testing

It’s hard to improve your website without these kinds of tools, and people who know how to use them.

A few important things to consider adding to your website, if you want to increase conversions:

A clear value proposition of why you are different/better than other law firms

A better design and user experience

An exceptional mobile version of your site or ideally, a fully responsive design

Customer testimonials

Awards and affiliations

A top of the funnel call to action such, as an e-book for people that are not ready to hire you yet

Live Chat

Photos and videos to highlight attorneys and their thought leader content

Legal marketer Jonathan Fitzgerald told me recently on a podcast, how he likes to increase the credibility of his site through video and other means as well. Here’s what he had to say:

“We at Greenberg have started to post 30 second videos of attorneys on their profile pages just so that those that are visiting the page can not only see the attorney’s credentials, and the various awards, and speaking opportunities, and articles that have been published by that attorney, but they can also then click on the video and get a sense for the attorneys chemistry. What are they going to be like to work with day in and day out? Is there an emotional connection between the prospective client and the attorney?

Cognitive science tells us that most decisions are made first emotionally, and then they’re backed up second by reason. Obviously all of the credentials, the non‑static credentials, on an attorney’s website profile can give that second element that credentialing element, but the first element either has to be done in person or through video. We have found that video has been very helpful in creating that first touch point with a prospective client.”

Making your website more personal with content, podcasting, and video, as well as the other trust factors that I mentioned, can turn a lifeless site into an exciting destination.

New and improved law firm marketing

If your law firm website design is even a couple of years old and/or doesn’t provide a good mobile experience, then you might want to consider a redesign, and use the strategies and tactics above to improve it.

If your website is relatively new but doesn’t use these strategies, then with some relatively quick fixes, you can be off and running to your firms best year ever.

ARTICLE BY

John McDougall

McDougall Interactive

Content Marketing for Law Firms with John McDougall

Listen as we speak this week with John McDougall, CEO of McDougall Interactive, on content marketing for law firms.

Nicole Minnis: Hi. This is Nicole Minnis again, with the National Law Review. I’m here today with John McDougall, president of McDougall Interactive and author of LegalMarketingReview.com.

We spoke last time about Authority Marketing and thought leadership for law firms, so be sure to check out a link to that podcast. But today, we’re going to be talking about content marketing for law firms. Welcome back, John.

John McDougall: How you doing?

Nicole: I am doing great. How are you?

John: Excellent.

Nicole: We had a great time last time. Tell me, why are eBooks and the top of the funnel calls to action important?

John: A lot of people with website marketing make the mistake of expecting customers to only call them on the phone or fill out a form. When you don’t have a top of the funnel call to action, like an eBook or a case study that’s downloadable, or a whitepaper, you miss a huge portion of the Internet that is casually surfing and could become a lead, but a more casual lead.

A ToFu offer, as we call it — not to be confused with soy products [laughs] — a ToFu offer, a top of the funnel offer, is, again, like an eBook, and it’s somewhere around 85 percent of the Web is looking at the top of the funnel. When you search the web, do you buy something from Amazon or hire a lawyer every time you search the web? You don’t.

You tend to, most of the time, you’re searching and looking for things. You’re in the early stage of the buyer’s journey. Eventually, you’re making bookmarks, and later you go back and hire someone or buy a product. It’s about 85 percent there.

Maybe another 10 percent, roughly, are at the middle of the funnel. In the middle of the funnel, you’re comparing one law firm to another, you’re in that comparison stage. At the bottom of the funnel, maybe only five percent of people using that free consultation form on the attorney’s site or calling the phone number, et cetera, going to the contact page.

That’s such a small percentage of Web visitors that you’re really missing, a huge amount, potentially as much as 95 percent of visitors, if you don’t offer some way for them to casually connect with you — signing up for your email newsletter or getting your eBook.

Nicole: Where are these ToFu calls, top of the funnel calls, most effective? Are we looking at a law firm home page or a blog page? Where will it have the most impact?

John: You want to put them consistently throughout your site, so definitely at the home page level, because that’s usually the most visited page. Not always, but often the most visited part of your site. You should have at least one top of the funnel, if not a top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel, like your phone number or consultation form, call to action, at the home page level.

Then, if you go into a practice area, like intellectual property law, you might want to have a little sidebar there with a call to action for an eBook or a whitepaper or something around that topic. Then, you go to the blog, and you’re reading the blog, either in the right sidebar you can put an irresistible offer to download maybe a collection of the blog posts into one PDF for printing.

Or, at the bottom of a blog post, that’s a very effective way, after someone reads something and they’ve been very engaged, to then put a nice little…maybe a banner or a nice graphic that sells them on the idea of filling out the form to get your eBook.

Nicole: Would you include these top of the funnel calls to action on a law firm publications page? To follow up, you wouldn’t limit it to just having a special page for all of their thought leadership?

John: Yeah. I think it’s good to have a resources section, definitely. After Google Hummingbird that looks even more deeply at Q&A content and natural language search for mobile — Google eats up that kind of content where you’re answering customers’ questions.

It’s great to have that on a blog. That’s one of the most typical places to put it. But sometimes you can have the resources, Q&A library also, and then you have the collection of eBook and podcasts and videos and links to lots of blog posts, and break up your thought leadership in an area like that.

I would say all of the above. There are different types of people that…some are going to like the blogs, some will like the resources area, some will like video, some will like podcasts, some will like the text posts. Break it up and put it throughout your content, and ideally make content top of the funnel calls to action to match the page they’re on.

If at some point you can get around to having 30 eBooks or an eBook for every practice area — it’s a pretty tall order, but, again, made easier through podcasting. One hour of podcasting can be turned into an eBook, and that’s pretty easy to do. You can get a nice cover design and go to each practice area and then have a top of the funnel call to action for each area. That’s the ideal.

Nicole: That way, you can cover all your bases, so to speak, in terms of who’s looking at your website and what they’re looking for.

John: Absolutely.

Nicole: Tell me, how can attorneys use content for their business development?

John: I’m not a business development expert for law firms, per se. But this has been a very hot topic recently, because we’re doing so much blogging for law firms and content marketing for law firms. I’ve been interviewing people for one of my sites, both Legal Marketing Review and AuthorityMarketing.com, and talking about these issues.

I interviewed a couple of different people specifically on business development, and time and time again they’re saying that they do like to have their attorneys make use of their own posts, if possible. It’s great if the attorneys have their own content to share when they’re pitching people and following up with potential customers.

But even if there’s a blog on the law firm’s site, and then an individual attorney, even if they didn’t write the post, they can share that content. You can share your newsletters and alerts and all different things.

But the more thought leadership content you have, the better off you are at reaching out to, say, a general council, and not annoying them with, “Hey, can we get together? I’d really like to work for you guys.” [laughs] Because that’s really salesy. That’s more old school marketing.

New school, inbound marketing is more, “Hey, Mr. or Mrs. General Council, I thought you’d really appreciate this blog post that we wrote, because I know you’re going through this particular issue with your company. I saw something on the news, and we have a post that really addresses just that issue. Just thought you might like to see this and that you might find it helpful.”

I’ve heard that a lot at the LMA conferences. I spoke recently at the LMA New England conference, and I’ve heard a lot of people talking about that in both my interviews and at conferences — that it’s a healthy way to extend that strategy we’re talking about, about SEO and content marketing and doing it for Google reasons. But there’s this great, of course, offline reason that lets you extend the value of that further.

Nicole: This content marketing that’s being produced by attorneys, is it trackable in terms of improving these sales? I was going to say they’re selling themselves, but I don’t mean to make it sound so silly. But attorneys are marketing their services, so is the content marketing trackable?

John: Absolutely not. No, I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

John: Here’s when it’s not trackable — when you don’t track it. It sounds really simplistic, but you would be amazed, actually shocked, if I told you how many people come to us and they have no tracking mechanism to see if it’s working. First, some people don’t even have something like Google Analytics installed on their site, if you can believe it in this day and age.

Is it trackable? It’s trackable if, number one, you take the 10 minutes to take the snippet of code from Google Analytics and put it onto every page of your site and embed the code. That’s really easy to do, but it is still amazing to us that we see people not doing it.

Number two, and this is a really big point I’d like to make, is that, with the goal tracking on your website, for example, if someone fills out the form for a free consultation, it should be set up so that they hit the submit button and they go to a “Thank You” page.

Some programmers like to make it tricky so that it doesn’t even need to produce a “Thank You” page, and there are ways to track that. But we prefer to have a traditional “Thank You” page, so yourlawfirm.com/thankyou.html kind of thing.

Then, you need to set that up in Google Analytics to register as what is called a “goal conversion”. You can do that also with phone tracking, with the free consultation forms, you can do it with your eBook signups, you can do it with the email newsletter signups.

You can do it even if you want to set up a goal conversion to track in Google Analytics if someone just views your “about us” page or an attorney’s bio page. There are all different things you can set up. But, again, it really only works if you take the time to set those up.

It’s so beautiful, and it sounds so geeky of me, but it’s so beautiful to go into Google Analytics and see basically the numbers. You can actually see, OK, last year in November, say, we got 18 leads, but this year in November we got 37 leads or 87 leads, and they came from these channels, from SEO, from social media, from Google paid ads, from email marketing.

You can track all the different channels they came from, and then you can see which lead forms or eBooks were downloaded. You can get a really good picture of the amount of leads coming in. Then, it goes a step further if you start to do lead scoring and lead nurturing.

Very briefly, lead scoring is when you’ll let your agency know, now that you’re tracking these leads in great detail, you let your agency know that, “These leads are good and these leads are bad”, or even feed back into Google Analytics the data on what the value of those leads were.

You can plug in, “This lead generated a million dollars in a mesothelioma case for the firm, and a $400,000 profit”, or whatever it might be. You can even go that far, if you want, to tell the agency that, “These are good leads. These are bad leads. They’re worth this much.” You could feed that back into the system.

Then, you can make better determinations on what keywords and what channels are driving the best quality leads, not just the most leads. Then, lead nurturing, or marketing automation is when you’re getting so many leads that you can’t even follow up manually with everyone.

Say you’re getting a thousand eBook downloads a month, or even 300. You would want to have a trigger mechanism to automatically say, “Hey, thanks for downloading the eBooks.” Send another email a few days later, “Hey, you might like this case study.” Another few days later, you might say, “Would you like a free consultation?”

You can set up a work flow in something like HubSpot or Eloqua, Pardot, to use marketing automation to send these automated emails so that people feel like, “Wow, I downloaded this eBook, next thing you know they’re giving me other ideas.”

But the salespeople don’t have to, every single eBook that gets downloaded, manually do it. That’s where you can take the tracking and Google Analytics, and then extend it with nurturing those people that are coming to your site.

Nicole: If we’re talking about a law firm or an attorney who’s starting from scratch, how much of this data do you think needs to be collected before they can really start to implement changes for their marketing strategy, or implement their marketing strategy at all?

John: I think it’s almost immediate. Once you start to get a few days or a few weeks of data, you can start to make assessments. But it does get a lot better when you have year-over-year data. If you’re looking at, again, November of 2014 versus November of 2013, or all of 2013 versus 2014, in terms of what channels drove traffic, the amount of leads per channel — it really gives you data to show where you’re headed and how things are improving or not.

We do something called conversion rate optimization, where we look at the data in Analytics, and we say, “You know what? Barely anybody is going to our about us page,” or, conversely, “Everybody goes to the about us page.” Usually, they’re the second most visited page on a website.

If there are pages that are hit very consistently, you want to go and fix up those pages and make them even better. Conversely, if there’s a page on your site that nobody ever goes to, but you think it’s really valuable, you can then go make more links to that page or make calls to action that highlight that content. You can definitely, very quickly get data from Google Analytics to go and make very practical changes to your site.

Nicole: These are all great ideas and strategies for attorneys and marketing professionals at law firms. Thank you so much, John, for sharing your thoughts on this topic today.

John: Absolutely. I appreciate you having me.

Nicole: No problem. We hope to have you back another time. Thanks so much for listening.

Authority Marketing and Thought Leadership for Law Firms with John McDougall of McDougall Interactive [PODCAST]

Listen as we speak with John McDougall, McDougall Interactive, on authority marketing and thought leadership for law firms.

Nicole Minnis: Hi everyone. I’m Nicole Minnis with the National Law Review. I’m here today with John McDougall, the President of McDougall Interactive and author of legalmarketingreview.com. Today, we’re going to be talking about authority marketing and thought leadership for law firms.

Welcome, John.

John McDougall: Welcome. Thanks for having me.

Nicole: Thank you. Do you want to go ahead and get started with a little bit of background about McDougall Interactive and what your team is doing?

John: McDougall Interactive is in Danvers, Massachusetts. I started in ’95 at my father’s ad agency doing Internet Marketing. I was actually a media planner before that in ’94 at the agency.

Ever since ’95, I’ve been doing all digital marketing, and now we work with a lot of law firms in different areas, both business to consumer and B2B.

Nicole: It sounds like you have a lot of wonderful expertise that you can draw from while we’re talking today, so I’m looking forward to getting a little bit of insight myself.

John, tell me, what is authority marketing and why is it important to law firms?

John: Authority marketing isn’t a really popular term yet and we’re trying to change that, because thought leadership is quite well known and people, in particular law firms, like to build up their reputation as leaders in certain practice areas by blogging on certain topics.

Authority marketing is taking that idea of building up your thought leadership in a systematic way, so that you can eventually turn your blog and your content into ebooks that become a printed book. Then as an author you get more media engagements, more speaking engagements. It all ties together in a way that also Google will appreciate.

That’s one of the real reasons, as an SEO company, again back from ’95, when we were saying “content is king.” Even in ’95, we used to say that.

We’ve been trying for all these years to get our customers really on board with building up content. It’s often quite hard to do that. What we realized is sometimes people are thought leaders and experts but they don’t have time to write.

Sometimes we do interviews to get their content out there, but the idea is that Google is going to pick up on that. The more you blog and have good content, your SEO rankings will go significantly up.

Authority marketing has good things about just your offline marketing and thought leadership, but it’s really good for Google Organic SEO.

Nicole: Do you recommend that lawyers use more news story content type things, or would they write on evergreen topics, like the estate planning of a $20 million estate? Do you think it’s more of a mix, or that they should focus on one or the other?

John: It’s probably a mix, but what we have seen when people do just news content is that it’s a little maybe boring or flat. Because if you’re just regurgitating news that other people are all talking about, there is only so much thought leadership in that.

Certainly, if there is a breaking issue, like for myself when Google Penguin happens, and different Google updates, I need to be leading the charge and blogging about those topics as they’re happening, to be a thought leader.

It’s not that news is a bad thing, but we have seen some people so overly focused on just news content that it falls short of answering the customer’s questions. So that evergreen content that you talk about and the struggles that people have with various issues — we can find those struggles by looking at the Google keyword tool, and looking at the monthly search volume of the way people are searching.

We can use social media listening tools to figure in your topically related communities what are people concerned with, what are they sharing on LinkedIn groups and Google+ communities. If you can take that content, and as you said, make more evergreen content that’s going to be heavily searched on, then it’s going to prove the test of time and keep ranking.

Google is going to rank that a little better in a long term trajectory, because the news isn’t just over with, this is content that Google will keep bringing back into the search engines, so that keeps a steady stream of visitors to your site year round, as opposed to just news content.

So a bit of a mix is good, but we’re a bit more fans of the evergreen and thought leader content.

Nicole: That makes sense, and just to try to get in front of the readers, with the news worthy things, but also searching for the useful content is what people are normally doing.

Is there a magic number for how often you compile blog posts to create an ebook? Is there a magic number, or a magic date or time? Do you do it four times a year? Or, is there not really a formula for what works for compiling everything?

John: In terms of content volume, once a week is sort of industry standard, that if you’re not blogging once a week, it’s a little bit weak. It really goes up from there to — it really depends on the organization. Mashable is doing maybe hundreds a day of blog posts, or certainly a hundred ish. [laughs] I don’t know the exact number, but I was just talking with one of my guys here who was quoting their editorial calendar and how much they’re producing.

The sites that have the most traffic on the Internet tend to be the sites that have the most content. There is not an exact correlation, because of content quality. If you pumped out 10,000 articles a year, and your quality was crap, then a site with 300 articles might outrank you, because Google is aware of the quality.

Again, I think a blog post a week is a good healthy start. Two, three a week is a little more serious. A blog a day, you’re going to start to get more significant SEO traffic.

Then you can turn that content — maybe at least a couple of times a year, if you have an ebook — that’s great. Hub Spot says that if you have 30 ebooks or more, you’ll have — I forget, I think it’s a 7x increase in leads.

It does depend on your industry, et cetera, but a couple of ebooks a year at least to have a top of the funnel call-to-action. A blog post a week at minimum. Maybe a video a month.

Then, certain times of day — that’s all going to be dependent on your audience. If you’re targeting kids that get home from school at two or three in the afternoon, then you might want to publish just before that, that type of thing, versus a different industry that’s targeting night owls. The time of day is probably depending on your actual audience.

Nicole: We’re doing this right now, but tell me, John, how can lawyers use podcasting to generate more leads and improve their SEO?

John: One of the keys to SEO as we’ve discussed is having more content, but a lot of people aren’t naturally writers. Maybe it’s somewhere between 10 percent of the population.

I was actually at the HubSpot Inbound conference this fall. They had the stats on that. I don’t remember exactly what they were, but basically not everyone is a writer. That’s why blogs often fail, because people hear someone like myself say, “Hey, you’ve got to blog every week.”

The people on the staff say, “Geez, we don’t really have any writers here.” But you think they would be able to publish content because they’re thought leaders. What we realized is there are a lot of experts at law firms that might not be comfortable writing, but they love to talk. Or certainly a fair amount of attorneys like to chat, and they’re really engaging and full of ideas and energy.

We like to bottle that up by interviewing them. Because you ask them to write, they’re busy, and they’re concerned potentially with the billable hour, of course. We all have to make money.

It’s so easy to get a great piece of content in even 15 minutes by asking three questions. Every three questions become about 1,500 to 1,800 words. So every question may be around 500 words if you answer fairly lengthily. So you’re able to, in a 15 minute conversation, get a very long blog post. The average blog post is maybe 500 to 700 words or so.

When people are thinking to write one, that’s what they shoot for. But you can get, again, 1,500 to 1,800 words in 15 minutes. That’s a lot of content. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to transcribe the text. After this podcast is over, we use CastingWords in New York and some other places. You pay $1 to $1.50 a minute.

You put that text up on the blog post under — we use sound cloud, but that’s just one player. You put the audio file that you can click and listen to the podcast in the blog post itself, then under it, you put the transcribed text. Because you’re picking keywords as the topics before you write the titles of the post and pick the interview questions, it’s a very search-engine-friendly strategy.

You just title the name of the post in WordPress, or whatever you’re using, and that becomes the URL, then you can put that search-engine-keyword-friendly title in the heading, in the title tag. Google is going to read all that nice rich text of Q&A content, and it’s going to pop up in the search engines.

Now, you wouldn’t want to only use podcasting for your blog necessarily. We do that with a lot of our customers. We also like them to either pay us to write or for them to write a little bit of regular prose as well, but it’s an awesome way to get regular, consistent content.

Again, say once a week, if you do an hour of podcasting a month in four 15 minute interviews with three questions each, you’re going to have an easily-generated one blog post a week.

Nicole: How about making the leap to video? How important is a video strategy for SEO?

John: YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. There was a guy from — it was Distilled, recently that said, “If you don’t have a video and YouTube strategy in 2014, you’re just simply not doing SEO.” [laughs] It’s that important.

Google, they own YouTube. Again, it’s the second largest search engine in the world above Bing, Yahoo, et cetera. Yet, you still have to pick keywords for your YouTube videos.

We do a similar routine with the podcasting where we ask our attorneys to answer basically one question. “What to do if you get pulled over for drunk driving”, for a DUI lawyer, or something along those lines.

When they answer that one question, and that question is something people actually search for, because we’re looking again at the keyword research and the forum social listening to see how people — what are the common questions.

Because we know that that’s an actively looked-for topic, then you’re going to pop up both in YouTube if you upload the video with the right keywords in the title, in the description, et cetera. You can also put in the transcript into the close caption area.

We do the same routine with the podcasting as with the video. We put the YouTube video up in the blog post using the embed code from YouTube. The video shows up, and you can play it right in the blog post, but under that, you put in the transcription of the conversation. Usually those are like one or two minutes long. Maybe three minutes.

You don’t want to kill people with “too long”. Those are going to be maybe 300 words or so. But again, you’re popping up now both in YouTube and your blog because you have the YouTube video in a blog post. You’re getting that extended benefit beyond YouTube of your blog’s ability to rank for the conversation that’s in the video.

Nicole: Those are all really great thoughts. I’m actually personally excited about implementing a podcasting and video strategy for our company.

Thank you so much, John, for joining us today, and talking to us about authority marketing and thought leadership for law firms.

John: Absolutely. Great talking to you.

Nicole: It’s great talking to you, too. I will see you on our next post when we talk about content marketing for law firms another time. Thank you so much.

John: Sounds good.

ARTICLE BY

Nicole Cudiamat Minnis

The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC

Tag: thought leadership

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