Post it notes and law firm blogs

At first glance, these two things may not seem connected.

However, when you remember that post it notes were only created by Dr Spencer Silver when he was trying to create a very strong adhesive but created a very weak one, allowing it to be attached to surfaces then removed, the history of blogging is not too dissimilar.

At first, a web log, shortened to blog, was a method for someone to communicate their views on a specific topic.

The first blogs were in the 1990s but it wasn’t really until the late 90’s and early 2000’s that blogging took off. Initially it was difficult to publish your thoughts on your specialist topic, but realising this growing Post it notes and law firm blogsphenomenon of blogging, platforms such as Typepad and WordPress came along, making it very easy to put down your thoughts on to your blog.

WordPress has since expanded to become most people’s preference for designing your entire website (mine too as it does not tie you to a content management system which you can never leave – do not do that if you are looking for a new website), but blogging remains a core part of a WordPress platform.

In the legal sector, specifically law firm blogs, blog topics can include law firm’s opinions on topical legal issues and articles about legal services. Articles are very much not the original intention of a blog (like the post it note glue), but, for my part, bearing in mind that my aim is to win solicitors new clients and for this to happen as easily as possible, it is the writing of articles that can have the most dramatic impact in terms of new enquiries for your services.

Therefore, when I talk about blogs for solicitors, I am talking about writing articles for your website that answer the questions your ideal prospects are asking at the precise moment in time that they are just about to choose a solicitor.

When you do this, and do it consistently, you create an incredibly powerful (and largely automated) marketing resource for your law firm.

I will cover how you can come up with these article ideas and how to write them over the course of the next few blog posts and articles.

However, before I can do that, I must explain something which causes a vast amount of confusion for solicitors.

What is the purpose of a blog for a law firm?

I need to explain this point to ensure that you do not make the mistakes that so many solicitors do make, which can render your blog virtually useless against its objective of winning you new clients.

When you completely understand this, as you will do next week, it will make your blog so very much more effective.

Come back next week and let’s make your blog much more successful.

 

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Case Study

From biggest fee earner to no fee earning whilst doubling turnover

I’d been looking for somebody to help me with marketing for a while, and I came across Nick on Google.

That was three years ago, and in that time it’s fair to say that he’s had a massive impact on my business, and my life as a result.

In the early days, my goal was simple and specific: increase the turnover of the business so that I could take more money out of the business.

I had an amount in mind, and I expected it to take years to get there, but when I achieved it in just six months, it began to dawn on me that this guy really knew what he was talking about.

As a result of that early success, and with Nick’s help, I realised that my expectations were too low, and what I could actually achieve, with the right thinking and guidance, was far beyond what I’d ever imagined.

What Nick saw – and what he made me see – was that my business had fantastic potential, but to realise that potential, things needed to change.

Even before Nick got involved, we were getting a decent volume of leads, but it was what was happening to the leads that was the problem.

We weren’t tracking them, there was no process in place and to top it all off, we didn’t have a clear pricing structure, which meant that we were nowhere near as profitable as we could be.

And that’s where Nick came into his own. He built us a bespoke lead generation and sales process, and the results were staggering.

We pretty much doubled our turnover, allowing me to build a four-person sales and marketing team that gets us more leads and more sales.

Of course, Nick’s Google Adwords expertise has been a key part of our growth, and today it’s a hugely profitable marketing pillar for us.

But regardless of the medias or mechanisms we’ve used to grow over the last three years, it’s been Nick’s rock solid marketing plan that underpins it all.

He’s stopped me trying this and that, and got me to focus on the things that’ll have the biggest impact on the business.

And I think there’s a lot more to come – we still haven’t implemented everything that Nick has given us to do, and when we do, I reckon we’ve got around another £250,000 of revenue per year to add to our figures.

And it’s not just the business that’s seen a transformation – it’s been a personal transformation too.

When Nick first got involved, I was the biggest fee earner, and consequently I was reluctant to stop getting involved in cases.

Nick eventually made me see that if I was serious about growing this business, that needed to change and as time has gone on I’ve taken on less and less work – now I don’t do any of it.

And I only wish I’d done it earlier, because the result has been me having more time to build the business, and spending time with the people that are important to me.

Not only that, but the business is stronger, because it’s much less dependent on me.

Nick was right about that one, as he has been about pretty much everything else – it pains me to say it, but it’s true!

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