Blogging Archives - The Attorney Marketing Center

Writing is easier and more effective if you do this

May 18, 2020 by David M. Ward

Everyone says we should write to and for our reader. We should have in mind an avatar of what they’re like and what they want and address ourselves to that person.

To be more relatable, we should use examples and references that conform to their life experience and world view. To get a higher response to our ideas and offers, we should talk about the benefits we know they need and want.

Yes, everyone says we should do this in our blog posts, articles, newsletter, and social media posts.

Including me.

But while this is generally good advice, it makes writing more difficult and less effective because when we appeal to one person or one ideal reader, we tend to exclude everyone else.

Sounds like a conundrum.

But there’s a solution.

Instead of writing for your ideal reader, write for yourself.

In your first draft, write what you want to write and say it the way you want to say it. Because if what you write resonates with you, it will resonate with others.

If you free your writing this way, you’ll attract your target audience organically. And it will be an audience that relates to you and likes you and tends to trust you.

Because you’re like them.

Then, write your second draft for your readers.

Tailor your message and offers to them. Add relevant examples and stories and use terminology they will recognize and understand.

The first draft is for you. The second draft is for your reader.

In case you’re wondering, the third draft is for your editor. Or someone else who’s got your back.

How to write a newsletter that brings in more business

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Writing

10 ideas for blog posts that get read (and shared)

April 27, 2020 by David M. Ward

Is your blog post idea machine running out of gas?

No problem. Here are 10 ideas to fill your tank:

“Best of”: Best articles/posts/videos/sites you read of saw this month or this year.
Interviews: A great way to build relationships with influential people and get more traffic to your blog as they promote the interview.
Client success stories: feature a client’s legal victory, business, charitable work, or life’s story.
Surveys: survey your clients or colleagues or bloggers and post the results.
Statistics: Everyone loves facts and numbers. Could be related to your practice area or your client’s industry or your local market.
How-tos: Teach your readers about the law or about general consumer or business matters.
Book reviews: your comments about a book you read related to your field, your client’s niche or of general interest.
Awards: Choose a client or fellow professional who’s doing good things and feature them in a post.
Summaries: Do a “round-up” post that summarizes and links to some of your previously published posts.
Predictions: Who will win, what will change, when it will happen.

There you go.

And yes, you can (and should) share your posts with your newsletter subscribers. Which is what I’m doing as soon as this is posted.

For more ideas for your blog (or newsletter), get this:

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters

An easy way to get targeted traffic to your blog

April 17, 2020 by David M. Ward

An easy way to get targeted traffic to your blog sounds good, doesn’t it?

How about if you didn’t have to do any of the writing? Even better.

No, I’m not talking about hiring writers to create your content for you. I’m talking about leveraging other people’s writing by aggregating “clips” or blurbs from other blogs in your target market.

Blogs written by people in your client’s industry or market. Or by vendors, consultants, and other professionals who sell to or advise that market.

Find blog posts and articles in the niche, copy the headline, the lead paragraph or two, and the link to their post. Cobble together five or ten of these into your post.

Add your own title and call it a day.

You’re doing your readers a favor by providing them with links to content they want to consume.

You’re doing the other bloggers or professionals a favor by promoting their content and bringing them additional traffic and readers.

And you’re doing yourself a favor by building traffic to your site from search engines and from readers who share your posts with others.

Do you need permission? Fair use, isn’t it? Besides, who wouldn’t want you to promote their content?

You might want to let them know after the fact, however, because that could lead to more good things.

They might reciprocate and share some of your original content with their readers. They might see what you do and ask to interview you or invite you to write a guest post. They may refer you some business.

Since you already read deeply in your target market, (you do, don’t you), you have access to a lot of content to share. So, this shouldn’t take you much extra time.

If you do have extra time, you could add a few comments to your posts–mentioning what you liked about the original post, offering your own stories or observations, or mentioning the writer’s other articles you recommend.

Give this a try. Write one post and see how it goes. You can then make it a regular feature or start another blog that exclusively features the best content in your niche.

For more blog content ideas, get this

Filed Under: Blogging, Web traffic

Blog vs. Newsletter

April 14, 2020 by David M. Ward

I read an article this morning entitled, “How to Write a Blog Post: A 12-Step Guide.”

After reading it, I feel like I need a 12-Step program. It’s too much to do for those of us who can’t (or don’t want to) spend hours and hours writing blog posts.

Which is why, years ago, I switched from being blog-centric to email centric.

I used to write a blog post first (with images, if you can believe that) and then send it to my newsletter subscribers (in html, if you can believe that).

Now I write an email first, then post it to my blog.

Seems like the same thing, but it’s not.

My emails are plain text. And brief.

And they take takes mere minutes to write, send and post.

Yay me.

I’ve got nothing against blog posts. But they require a lot of time and effort I would rather invest doing other things.

What kind of effort? Here are the 12-steps in the article I mentioned:

Understand your goals
Understand your audience
Brainstorm a list of ideas

Sure, we need to do this for every kind of marketing we do.

Do keyword research

Yes, research keywords for your blog. I don’t do that for my newsletter.

Organize your content into an outline

I don’t think of my emails as content and I don’t write an outline. I may write down a few notes about what I want to say but usually, I just let it fly.

(Check Google and) read the top 10 posts for that keyword

Good idea for a blog post you write once a week or once in a while. Not going to happen for a short, daily email.

Write the body of your blog post
Write a killer intro
Write an excellent headline

I don’t spend more than 30 minutes to do this.

Proofread and format your post

I don’t format anything.

Optimize your post

I don’t optimize anything.

Publish your post

Finally! I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted just reading this list.

Bottom line: a blog and a newsletter are both valuable resources for building a professional practice and should be a part of most lawyers’ marketing mix. But I’m sure you don’t want to spend hours and hours of your precious time crafting fine art.

You don’t have to do that, if you use my system.

Which you can learn more about here.

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Time Management

How often should you blog?

March 27, 2020 by David M. Ward

How often should you publish a new blog post? Often.

According to this infographic, “82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly”.

A few reasons:

The more you post, the more opportunities you have to get found by search engines or shared by visitors.
Uncle Google tends to see frequent publishers as authorities. Prospective clients who visit your blog are likely to do the same.
More content gives you more chances to keep visitors reading your content. The more time they spend on your blog, the more likely they are to take the next step.
More content and a more frequent publishing schedule helps others bloggers and influential sites see you as an authority, making them more likely to link to you
Once published, your content lives forever. Something you wrote two years ago can continue to create leads and produce clients for you.
Inbound marketing is more personalized in the sense that you can tailor your content to the interests and needs of your target market.

The infographic also shows that leads produced via inbound marketing have higher conversion rates. One reason is that prospective clients are more likely to trust you (because they found you).

Inbound marketing also has a lower cost-per-lead.

You don’t have to publish daily to realize most of these benefits. Just more often than once a month or once in a while.

Start with once a week. As you find yourself getting more leads and more new clients, you may suddenly find the time to publish more often.

How to use a blog to make the phone ring

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing

How To Come Up With a Year’s Worth of Content in One Day. Sort of.

March 19, 2020 by David M. Ward

If you have some downtime right now, a great use of that time might be to create a backlog of content for your blog or newsletter.

If you write a weekly post, you could knock out enough content for at least the next few weeks.

If that’s too much, the next best thing is to use the time to find ideas.

Look at your competition’s content. Look at blogs written by or for your target market. Look at general consumer or business publications for ideas that might be useful or interesting to your target market.

In a few hours, you could come up with hundreds of ideas.

All you need to do is write down a sentence or two, a quote or interesting fact, a few points you want to cover, and a link to the article or post that inspired you.

But don’t stop there. Once you have one idea, think about how you could expand it into ideas for additional content.

Let’s say you come across an article about legislative changes in your field and you want to write about those changes–what they are, what they mean, what you think about them, or what the reader needs to do to comply with or take advantage of them.

You could do a second article sharing feedback about the changes from some of your clients. Or comments about the changes from a fellow lawyer or allied expert.

Another article might be about additional changes you’d like to see that weren’t addressed in the legislation.

If you like this idea but don’t have enough time right now, spend an hour making a list of possible sources you can peruse later. Explore a legal blog directory, for example, and capture links to some that look promising.

Where do you start this process? On your hard drive. Find all of your old content and think about what you could do to reuse or re-purpose it.

You might have a paper or presentation you could republish in your newsletter. You might update an old blog post, expanding on something you wrote before, amending your opinion, or providing additional examples. If it’s been awhile since you first published it, you could even re-publish it as is.

Take some time to dig and find ideas. When things get back to normal, you’ll be glad you did.

For more ideas for content than you can shake a stick at, and advice on how to use them, my email marketing course has you covered.

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters

“Do Not Commit Crimes With Checks”

February 22, 2019 by David M. Ward

On the NBA on TNT Thursday night, Charles Barkley had some advice for Jussie Smollett, causing Shaq to convulse in laughter and spit out his coffee. The crew joined in, posting a mock-up of a fake check for $3,500 made out to “Muggers” with “Mugging Supplies” penned in the memo.

Everyone’s talking about the hoax and the future of the actor’s career.

Are you?

Are you using this story (the basic story or the Barkley version) in your speaking, writing, newsletter or blog?

You could. And should. Because when you talk about what everyone is talking about, people notice.

You can leverage the story without getting into politics or racism.

How?

You could review the legal issues for your readers, tell them what happened and what could happen next.

You could mention the story and then talk about one of your clients who did something stupid, got into trouble (civil or criminal) and hired you to help them.

You could quote Barkley and then talk about something else he once said (funny, pithy, strange, or otherwise) and use that other quote to segue into a story related to your practice.

Or you could do what I just did, tell your readers what Sir Charles said and then tell them what you think, e.g., it’s funny, not funny, premature, etc.

For the record: I laughed. Out loud. Especially when I saw the mock up of the check.

Good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee at the time.

How to use your website or blog to bring in more business

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Publicity, Writing

Clients won’t hire you until this happens

November 5, 2018 by David M. Ward

Last week, I talked about why you shouldn’t worry about repeating yourself in your newsletter or blog. I pointed out that new people continually join your list or visit your blog and haven’t seen what you wrote before. I said you might talk about the same subject but use different (and more compelling) arguments or examples.

An astute reader, (thanks, Michael), reminded me that I neglected to mention one of the most important reasons, that when a reader hears your message the first time, they may not be ready to hear it, or ready to take action.

Clients won’t hire you until they’re ready. And there are a lot of reasons why they might not be ready the first time you talk about a subject.

They may not understand what you said the first time they read it or realize that it applies to them.

They may not trust you yet or understand how you can help them solve their problem. They may be in denial about the risks they are facing and need to hear more information.

They may think they can’t afford to hire you and need the problem to worsen before they’re willing to take the next step. They may need time to “find” the money and hearing your message again might be just the impetus they need to do it.

There are many reasons why someone might not be ready, willing, or able to hire you when they read your message the first time or the 21st time.

That assumes they actually received and read your previous message(s), something that may or may not be true.

Stay in touch with your clients and prospects and don’t worry about repeating yourself. Repeating yourself may be exactly what you need to do because clients won’t hire you (again) until they’re ready and they aren’t ready until they’re ready.

How to bring in more business with a newsletter or blog

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you 100 times

November 1, 2018 by David M. Ward

I used to make an effort to avoid repeating myself in my newsletter and blog. In fact, I once set up a “reverse editorial calendar” to record topics and the dates of each post.

Not anymore.

Aside from the fact that it’s too much work for my sorry azz, it isn’t necessary. It’s okay to repeat yourself.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this very topic before. Maybe more than once. No doubt I’ll do it again.

Here’s why I don’t worry about repeating myself, and why you shouldn’t, either:

Every day, new people join your list and, to them, the topic is new
Most subscribers don’t remember seeing the topic before, or if they do, they don’t remember the details.
You might make the same point but cite different facts, arguments or examples.
You might update something you said before, providing new results, additional information or feedback from others
If you’re like me (and you are), you change your mind about things, so update away.
Some ideas are important enough that they bear repeating.
Some ideas are important enough that they bear repeating. See?

Anyway, if you ask me, you shouldn’t worry about what you did yesterday, last month, or last year. Write what’s on your mind today and you’ll be just fine.

Need more ideas for blog posts and emails? This will help

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters