In this episode, Grace and Liel challenge the notion that to increase your leads you need to increase your advertising budget, and give you insider ideas as to how to get your practice off the ground and grow it without spending money, by applying free law firm marketing strategies that actually work.
They walk you through how you can use Hubspot to convert visitors to leads, and highlight the importance of networking and community outreach initiatives. They encourage you to go online and have one-on-one conversations with your prospective clients and recommend follow-up nurturing strategies through newsletters and social media.
After listening to this episode, you will get a ton of ideas that do not require an advertising budget to generate clients for your practice, and you will know how to put in effect a legal content marketing strategy that is both feasible and effective for your busy schedule.
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Transcript
Liel: [00:00:00] What budget do you need to start a marketing strategy for your law firm? On today’s episode, we explore marketing strategies that cost zero dollars and actually work. I’m Liel Levy, co-founder of Nanato Media, and this is in the camera. Where nothing about legal marketing is a secret.
Liel: [00:00:50] Welcome to in camera private legal marketing conversations. I’m here joined by Grace Montealegre. How are you today?
Grace: [00:00:56] Good. How are you, Liel?
Liel: [00:00:58] Doing great. Thank you very much. And very excited about the conversation we’re going to be having today. And why don’t you introduce it for us?
Grace: [00:01:07] So today’s conversation is going to be on free legal marketing. Well,
Liel: [00:01:11] I like it.
Grace: [00:01:12] I know, right. And that’s the biggest thing is when we say free guys, we really mean free. We’re talking about things that you can actually use day to day, things that we actually use day to day and that you can put into effect immediately. You don’t have to wait.
Liel: [00:01:27] That sounds good Grace. So let’s explain our listeners. Basically, how are we going to go up out sharing these ideas? So neither Grace nor I know what each other is going to be sharing with you. So each one of us is going to put up an idea and we’re gonna talk it over. And by the end of this episode, we should have some good takeaways for you to implement for your own practice. So, Grace, how you start it?
Grace: [00:01:51] Yeah, let’s get started. I think we’re gonna try to do three a piece. So the first one that I have and that I use on a daily basis is actually HubSpot. So HubSpot is not a free system. However, they do have a free lead tool. It’s called HubSpot Marketing Free and HubSpot marketing free. What it is, it’s they have a lead form that. And also a plug in that you can add to your WordPress Website on the back end. And as soon as you add it and you sign up for the free account, it will track all the pages that your leads or prospects as they land on your Website, where they land, how long they kind of stay there. And then it all gets saved in essentially a CRM that’s also free for up to a certain amount of users, I believe. But the form and everything is free and helps you track where they go with active sessions on your Website, the pages they land on. You haven’t heard about it?
Liel: [00:02:49] Yes, of course. HubSpot is a very, very big and permanent marketing software in the industry, primarily known for its CRM capabilities, as you very well pointed out, Grace. And so it is it is fantastic. And the good news is that it’s actually free as a CRM for most of its capabilities. So you can have as many contact contacts created in the platform. You don’t necessarily have to bait to sort out the data there. However, as you very well pointed out, for some of the additional features, if you’d like to enable enhanced marketing features or sales features or ticket handling features, you do have to pay a fee. And they have all kinds of plans from the very, very basic to the very advanced for enterprises. So, Grace, let me understand. Let me let me try to see if I can. If I understood correctly. What is it recommending our listeners to use HubSpot for? What you’re saying is that HubSpot can help them track activity in their Website, visitors and Web forums received from the Website. Is that correct?
Grace: [00:03:58] Correct. And I think the best term, I guess, or phrase to use for HubSpot, it’s free inbound marketing software.
Liel: [00:04:05] Yes. Yes. They they do claim to be all about inbound marketing. And so you’re bringing it up. Grace, let’s just take a moment here and explain what inbound marketing is for those who it’s the first time that I hear this term.
Grace: [00:04:21] Very good point. So inbound marketing is having to do with prospects coming onto your your actual site, literally inbound as opposed to you, let’s say, cold calling or going after prospects or leads. These are people kind of coming to you, right? Going to your Website. They’re landing on your pages. They’re even filling out a form in a lot of cases. So this is the best. These are people that are what we call in the marketing world, a warm lead, or at least definitely more nurtured along the sales cycle. So let me back it up just a little bit. Right. Because there there’s a whole cycle to people when they buy. And I like to tell people, think about yourself, think about you. When you try and you look something up, you figure it out. You want to go do some research. And the first thing you do is you go to somebody’s Website. So you want to see what pages they’re on. You want to know as the person that they’re landing on your Website, on your business, where are they landing? Why are they reading it? And how can you best or more effectively target those people? This is just one of the easiest tools and a free tool to use to capture that information without having to essentially dig any further than just the very first layer because they’re telling you they landed on this page.
Grace: [00:05:38] They spend this much time on there and then they filled out a form about that information. So. Inbound marketing and in free tools like this, inbound marketing, they’re really interested. They filled out the form. You want to make sure that you capture their attention and that you optimize as much as possible. So I know I went a little bit… Liel was really good at organizing my thoughts for me. So thank you Liel. I know. So I know I went a little bit of between inbound marketing and the whole cycle, but it’s super important to understand that you’re trying to capture these people at a point where they’re really interested. And so you need to make sure you have tools in place like a form or something that’s tracking what they landed on.
Liel: [00:06:22] So Grace, to even further narrow this down for listeners who are primarily legal professionals. What would be inbound marketing considered for a law firm? What is considered outbound marketing for a law firm? Because a lot of law firms are not cold calling clients anyhow. So what what kind of activities in marketing are considered to be outbound-dish and what is considered to be inbound?
Grace: [00:06:51] So I’d say in the marketing is essentially about delivering opportunities and solutions that have a positive impact on people in your business. That comes right from HubSpot. OK. So this inbound marketing strategy can essentially include a different number of channels and types of content. So that’s the idea is you’re creating content to attract prospects and customers to your Website blogs.
Liel: [00:07:18] Yeah. No. So I’m actually following you very well. So basically what you’re saying is that when we’re looking at a legal digital marketing strategy as a whole, what we’re doing in terms of creating content that would fall under our inbound part of the strategy.
Liel: [00:07:37] But when we are actually actively advertising and it doesn’t matter where it could be through paid digital platform or it could be in traditional media, as we spoke last week, it’s actually considered outbound marketing, right. Because we are outreaching we are kind of like interrupting people in order to put our products and services right in front of them. Right. And so, of course, in the digital world, there is a lot of platforms that allow us to kind of do kind of like meet the the decline to prospect the user halfway through. Not 100 percent outbound, not 100 percent inbound. These two to just kind of like complement each other. But I think it’s very well to it’s very important to understand that these are two approaches and that they are not you should not adopt one exclusively. You should actually have both things going on for you so you can interact with users in many different ways. So be able to be there in the way that they want to interact with your with your brand.
Liel: [00:08:44] So basically you’re saying let’s add CRM code to our Website so we can actually track visitors and particularly people that are actually registered clients in your CRM, whether they’re are just the lead or their assigned client. That’s particularly when HubSpot is going to be able to monitor their or their activity on your Web site.
Liel: [00:09:08] So how many times they’ve been what they just have, they’ve seen and it’s kind of like a simplified way of using analytics. You can get similar information from an analytics, not necessarily to the point of being able to associate that to existing clients of yours. But it’s still it’s insights to your Website traffic. And as you’re very right, rightly said, the capabilities that HubSpot have are to be able to give you the opportunity to interact with forms in your Web site so you can capture leads by taking their contacts and their contact information, but only that it also gives you the opportunity to add popups whenever it perceives that there is an exit intent.
Liel: [00:09:52] So that way you can also give one last opportunity to the user before they leave your Web site to reconsider or at least sign up for your newsletter or some other promotional content that you may have in your Website So, Grace, I love that you started with something so useful as a CRM.
Liel: [00:10:15] My first suggestion is my favorite one and probably the biggest one to cover. And it’s creating interact content and actively promoted. My suggestion to everyone out there is you have to definitely choose something that you enjoy doing, whether that’s writing whether that’s recording your voice or whether it’s doing videos, writing an e-book, whatever it is that you gravitate towards do and that you feel that you can commit to doing so for at least a year. You should go for it. So there’s many reasons why you want to do this. And this exactly ties back to what you were saying about inbound marketing. It’s about giving the opportunity to people to get to know you and to interact with you and to understand what is it that you do before they’re actually buying from you. So telling a story, guys. Yeah. So you’re basically letting them explore your services, your ideas, your thoughts, your approach, your story. As you very well said, Grace, before, they’re actually needed to take the step of buying from you. And this is a great way not just to build your brand, but at the same time to convert people who may already know about you, but you haven’t yet decided that they’re ready to hire you. And so by nurturing them with this information, you’re actually by the point they gather the courage to give you a call, stop by your office or send to a web forum, as you very well say, that there are now very, very warm and high intent because they’ve they’ve convinced themselves, your your practice your content, talked to them in a way that it resonated well. And so they are ready to convert.
Liel: [00:12:16] Here are some of some some examples that I think listeners can consider. Right. For instance, if you are a criminal lawyer, you can write any book, Life after DUI, How to Bounce Back. And so these are the kind of things. And such as that, that people who have been in this situation recently may be researching. And so the fact that they can find a piece of content from you on these that’s really helping them navigate through these very challenging time may do a great job in helping earn their trust. And so that’s an example. Another one, do a poll, do a poll like literally invest in doing some research and share the results with your market.
Liel: [00:13:04] And so this could be very, very interesting. And this particular one, Grace, is not one that I hear a lot of people doing. Like most of people go and go down doing that. The most common and familiar is that, you know, the blog and writing down posts on social media and whatnot, but actually doing a proper poll I think can be a very interesting way to promote yourself. And I’m going to actually talk about the way that a poll can actually help you get people to promote you.
Liel: [00:13:39] For instance, if you are a divorce lawyer and you want to create a poll as to what are the main worst causes in your city or state. Right. And so this could be something that people could be interested in reading and knowing about. Here’s another idea. Record a podcast. Right. Does that sound familiar, Grace?
Grace: [00:14:04] That sounds familiar.
Liel: [00:14:06] Record a podcast. Whether you want to do this on your own or you want to find somebody that could co-host it with you, record a podcast. It’s a great way to share your ideas. To share. To talk about your experience and engage with an audience. And another one that’s very popular is video guides on on on YouTube. And you can also use them in social media. And so, again, how to protect your estate guides in these kinds of videos could be very interesting to people who are researching and educating themselves about that. When I say to promote your content. Grace, I really mean actively promoted. There’s no point in just creating a piece of content, uploading to your blog section on your Website or uploading to a social media channel and let it kind of just sit there and hope for it to be discovered and then go viral.
Grace: [00:15:06] I call that sprain correct.
Liel: [00:15:08] It’s kind of… It’s not it’s not going to probably be the case for every single piece of content that you write. And so just actively promoted to the people who you’re interacting with every single day, whether these are your co-workers, friends, family, your existing clients, make sure that they know that you’re writing and creating this content and engage with them about it, ask them for their opinion and ask them for a review if they liked it. Of course, social media is a great way to promote your content. And whenever we actually dive. More specifically to how to build a strategy in social media, how to interact in social media, we’re probably going to cover this in greater depth. But you don’t necessarily have to only do this through page posts or social media. Probably that’s going to be the most effective, but you can also use some relevant hashtags and share your content and then it can potentially be discovered by people who are interested in those hashtags or are following those hashtags. Now, going back to the polls, right. Whenever you’re conducting research like that, you can always and it’s not just applicable for polls, but you can always contact either through social media or by doing some research and finding out emails, journalists and local publications, charities. These are people that oftentimes are interested in partnering up with people who are subject experts in certain topics.
Liel: [00:16:43] And so they can potentially use your content or refer their audience to you for more information and guidance in practice areas that are of relevance to you. So Grace, I mean, I think one of the things that many times we don’t put a lot of attention in is like, oh, how I don’t know any. Like, it may sound a little bit difficult, right? How do I get myself in front of a journalist? How do I get myself in front of local news networks?
Liel: [00:17:19] In today’s world, it’s just so easy. Like just use Twitter. Just use Twitter and then send the right messages through to the people that you think are actually going to benefit from the content that you’re creating. So direct message. “Hi, my name is ta ta ta ta I’m a local attorney and my practice areas are these. I recently created great poll”
Grace: [00:17:44] Poll or blog.
Liel: [00:17:45] Yeah. Or article or this. Please let me know if this is something that you’d like to read. And so if the approve and they authorize and you’re interested and they respond back, then, you know, you’re potentially there made a good connection.
Grace: [00:18:03] I have one point to exactly what you’re saying. So we. Not long ago, I checked LinkedIn. Did you know something about motorcycle injury practice? And it’s actually on two points, but one was about motorcycle injury practice. And a very easy thing to do is to be maybe not a part of.
Grace: [00:18:22] But you can even give speeches and information on insurance about motorcycle insurance and different places that you might be at through ABATE. OK, so ABATE is the American bikers aim toward education and they have local chapters and all of these different places where they actually endorse motorcycles or where they give you motorcycle licenses. OK, so you can go to like a local Harley Davidson shop, a local Suzuki shop where they have these courses and you can actually go and do a presentation. They would be so happy to have you there because they are basically getting it right from the lawyer’s mouth about insurance and things that could happen. You know, if you are not properly insured or properly protected with helmet and gear and that kind of thing, so ABATE. Again, American bikers aim towards education and they are always happy to accept any speakers or thought leaders on any particular subject. Having to do with motorcycles. So that’s just a thought for content.
Liel: [00:19:27] It’s a great example. Thank you so much, Grace, for helping me land my high-level ideas here into things that are actionable and specific. But that’s exactly what it is. Right, it is make sure that you are building relations with the people that could actually benefit from the content and the material you’re putting out there so that they can help you get in front of people who actually need your help. Last but not least, things that are as basic as just adding a link on your email signature, whether it’s like a little banner that leads people directly to a page where you’re hosting your content in. And that’s super valuable because oftentimes we’ll just think about it like how many people a day get emails from you. And hopefully, hopefully I’d like you to do some some positive thinking here. Everyone would be receiving an email from you would have already heard about your content importance because either you verbally told them about it or because they found it in social media or other such a compelling body in case it happened. The fact that it’s there on your email signature, probably it’s going to come to, it’s going to come to their attention and potentially click and give it a try. I personally, Grace, I’m always very curious to see what people have on their email signatures. But I think most the jurors oftentimes are not are not really taken serious of an opportunity as they are.
Grace: [00:20:54] They are not fully optimized, one hundred percent, right?
Liel: [00:20:56] Yeah. So. So that’s my first thought. That’s my first advice. And I know it’s very you know, it’s very broad and covers a lot of many different things.
Liel: [00:21:05] But going back to what you were saying at the beginning, these costs use zero dollars. And the reality is that, yes, you can spend a ton of money in producing a video in a podcast, but you can also but you can also create quality stuff for zero dollars. And the important element here is the value that you’re sharing to the listener. Right. Don’t get distracted so much by the technical aspect of creating the content. Just just sit down and hit record and start creating content. Whether you want to do video, whether you want to do audio, whether you want to write, just just go for it and do it. And the other thing that it’s always very important to keep in mind, Grace, is that things are going to get better over time. So don’t get frustrated. You may not see the results that you want in the first or your second or third post, but eventually you’re going to start getting some feedback from the people who are reading this. And so you’re going to know how to tweak things around. So to improve and get better results from the posts you are putting out there, you will see what subjects, what topics are resonating better with your audience. So you will know that that’s what the interest people want to hear you more. Talk and dive into those bits and pieces of information. So give it time. Be consistent and don’t over complicate things. What do you think, Grace?
Grace: [00:22:31] No, I agree with you on every single point. Right. You’re you’re trying to essentially build out thought leadership on what? Your content because you’re trying to create value. Right. And the way to build out thought leadership and create values to do something you’re passionate about. Whether that is passion for a particular practice area for whatever reason or it’s a passion for a specific mode of communication. You know, if you’re passionate about talking to people on video because you feel like that actually comes across for you, then that’s what you do. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s it really is broad, but it is free. Right. You pick the mode of communication that you want to transfer over to the people, that you want to pay attention to you and you go with it and you have to stick to it, guys. You know, don’t do a million things somewhat. Well, do something very well. One thing. You know, it doesn’t have to be one thing. I’d prefer you to do at least three. But again, like Liel said, you’ve got to be consistent. And so if you can’t do more than one thing well and consistently don’t.
Liel: [00:23:36] Excellent, Grace. So let’s go for your next point.
Grace: [00:23:38] So my next point is kind of a mish-mash, but I’m really I think I want to say this one section. OK. It’s called Google. My business marketing kit. I don’t think a lot of people know about this. And it’s free. Free stickers, posters, social posts and more from your business profile from Google. OK. And Google will mail you this stuff. They will email you this stuff. What is this stuff? OK. This stuff is essentially a way for you to create, like I said, little stickers that you can post on social media. Really cool posters that have reviews that are really important to you or reviews of note that you want people to see all kinds of really cool stuff. And it’s on marketing kit dot with Google dot com. And I’m actually going to kind of go through what it feels like to do it. Once you put in that marketing kit with Google.com, it asks you for your business name and then it starts customizing the materials for you. What does that mean? It starts with Windows stickers for your business. Windows stickers, guys. So you can download a request, a window sticker. They’ll mail it to you or you can download it and literally put it in your window. And it says, Follow on Google, book with us on Google reviews on Google.
Grace: [00:25:03] And that kind of stuff. And then once you’ve done that, it takes you to the next thing, which is personalized marketing kit in this full kit. It has different styles. So if you want to have like a cool review with holiday themes around it, they already put it on for you. It’s essentially looks like a most poster online. Really, really cool stuff. And then they have already ready to share social posts. Basically, these social posts are really cute cards, virtual cards of the reviews that have been made of your business. So as an example, I have one I’m looking at is very ethical. Caring lawyers. It’s beautiful. Back to the content and pushing it out, right? This is stuff that people have already said about you. So this is free. Download it. Use it. Push it out there. And of course, the most important thing is the free short link that Google gives you for your reviews. OK. That’s all part of the marketing can make it very, very easy for you to treat this link so that you can push it out to everybody and they can easily review as long as they’re logged into Google, easily review you on Google, which we all know how important that is.
Liel: [00:26:15] So, Grace, make sure that I understood correctly. Google is offering you actual physical stuff that you can put in your business. Correct. So that you can help your customers know that they can find you in Google and they can leave your reviews in Google. Is that it?
Grace: [00:26:38] That is 100 percent correct. I’m telling you, it’s an actual sticker or a poster or piece of paper that they will actually mail to you. You can also download it virtually so that you have it in virtual content or digitally.
Liel: [00:26:51] Grace. I think that’s such a wonderful point that you’re bringing up. Why do I think it’s so powerful? Well, because it helps build so much confidence, right. Whenever people see all of these little decals on the windows, find us on Google. People love us, loves us and Yelp. It’s just help people build an opinion on that business and say, hey, they’re so proudly talking about it and sharing this information with us. It’s probably because they’re doing good.
Liel: [00:27:21] And another good point there is that it will also help to send out the message to your prospect’s or existing clients that you do value their opinion and that you would love to hear back from them in one or both platforms. But it’s really wonderful to hear about the Google will help you in getting some useful marketing material. And we’ll send it to you for free. I’m assuming.
Liel: [00:27:54] That’s correct. It’s 100 percent free.
Liel: [00:27:56] Wow. Well, that’s that’s really cool. Grace, great tips. So where do people find this again? Grace is part of Google, my business.
Grace: [00:28:05] It’s part of Google My Business. And you can also just type in marketingkit.withgoogle.com That’s it.
Liel: [00:28:12] Great stuff. Great. So my next point, I think it’s very, very basic. Find people who need your help, like literally. And here is a way that you can do that just yet. And Apple are Websites where people, potential clients for you are are posting questions every day looking for legal guidance.
Liel: [00:28:38] So here is the thing. As an attorney, you should be a registered in this directory. And we already talked about that. Right. It’s great for your citations and it will help you for local search. But at the same time, by registering in these platforms, you’re going to be able to answer questions from people in your jurisdiction that could end up hiring you. And here’s the best part. Right. Because people say, well, what am I supposed to do? So should I be spending the entire day on job and just looking out for questions that I can answer? Are they relevant to my practice area? Not at all. You can actually set up alerts so that whenever somebody goes in and posts the question in your jurisdiction that is relevant to your practice area, you can get notified. And then when you receive the notification, you can go to the page and actually write a response to the to that person. And so by doing these Grace, you are achieving numerous things, number one. And the most obvious one is that you are actually initiating a conversation of someone who can who potentially needs your help. And could end up hiring you. So that’s one thing. But the second thing and another very valuable thing that you need to remember is whether this person is going to end up hiring or not is that you’re actually building a reputation within just you and I have now just an obviously. OK. So, you know, this is not an attorney. He’s actually taking the time to read what users in our platform are posting and writing. And so you kind of earn points, kind of like algorithmic points, which are actually gonna help you boost your positioning in these directories. And one thing that you and I know very well is that most of time these directories, particularly Apple, tend to do well on organic search results.
Liel: [00:30:30] So when people search, for instance, in your local area, best divorce attorneys around me, your Website may not be coming up organically, but potential job or just your. We’ll come up on the first page with a list of their directories, best attorneys and of course, all of these directories have half a page section on the top of promoted big section of the top where attorneys who are paying.
Grace: [00:30:58] Premium listings.
Liel: [00:30:59] To get free listings are going to be there. But there’s also room for organic listing. And so these are the kind of things that are going to help you thought. And obviously having some ratings from the platform, having a full profile and so forth and so on are going to be the other factors that are going to make up for that. Grace, this is this is sometimes an overlooked way of really getting involved in being discovery by people who are actually looking for help in areas that you could be the one to help them. The other platform. But I do want to point out and this one is not specific to legal is QUORA.
Grace: [00:31:37] QUORA.
Liel: [00:31:37] Right. And the great thing about copyright is that QUORA gets to run very well or organically on question and answers. And in showing snippets directly into the search results page. And the great thing about QUORA is that it will also allow you to share links directly to your Website. And so. So you may start a conversation in or. And then take them to your Website. Slid them, let them navigate, explore, see some of that amazing content that you’ve created so that they can get re-assured that you are the ride lawfirm from them and then make it easy for them to convert from that Website. Right.
Liel: [00:32:20] And so this is kind of like, again, complementing to what you were saying earlier in the conversation about having an inbound strategy. This is it. This is this is it.
Grace: [00:32:30] Right. That’s true.
Liel: [00:32:30] It’s being there when people need help with relevant information so that they can initially self help themselves and eventually gather up the bits and pieces and the information that they want from you so that they can decide whether, OK, I’m ready and I want to take this to the next step. What do you think?
Grace: [00:32:51] Yeah. So, I mean, the whole point, guys, about what Liel and I are saying to everything we’ve said is you’re building up to know like trust cycle, right? You have to know somebody first. Then you got to like them and then you trust them. Once you trust them, then you will buy whatever that buy means. Right. That means you become a client of their services, whatever. So what we’re trying to do here is make you understand that to build that know like trust, you need to create content that people want to read. Create content is important for them and that you’re passionate about. I mean, you became a lawyer for a reason. So you’re trying to help people, help people in the best way you can. That’s in whatever method of communication that is easy for you to communicate in whenever that might be. So that’s literally bringing everything that him and I are both saying together and know, like trust building by building proper content, putting into places in certain directories and answering questions that people have directly. It’s as simple as that. Right.
Liel: [00:33:56] Absolutely, Grace. I agree with you. And that’s exactly what inbound strategy is all about. Your next point,
Grace: [00:34:05] My turn. OK. So there are a bunch of different ways that we’ve talked about. You know, you have social media and you have Facebook. You have Pinterest. You have Twitter. You have YouTube, yada yada yada right. Well, so there’s a million different ways of adding the content. Right. You just log into Facebook. You put a post up. You log into YouTube. You put up a YouTube. Right. Well, what I’m going to talk about is a simple tool that allows you to post multiple locations. And it also allows you to do it for free for up to a certain number of accounts for most small firms or firms in general. It will work for the free version. And that is called Buffer. Have you heard of Buffer?
Liel: [00:34:51] I have heard of buffer, Grace.
Grace: [00:34:53] So buffer is very similar to what’s another one that people are used to. Liel?
Liel: [00:34:59] Hootsuite.
Grace: [00:34:53] Yes. Thank you. That’s the one I was trying to remember. So buffer is similar to HootSuite. All they are is a platform that is free, like I said, for up to a certain number of social accounts. And it allows you to schedule your posts and post to different social media accounts all at the same time. Why is that important? Well, time, right. Nobody has time anymore to be able to do these things and log into each and every single one of their social media accounts and post into the different ones and make sure that you’re posting at the right time and that you’re posting, you know, the right length of characters for that particular message that you’re posting it. This gives you a lot of tools. Again, free inside of buffer to allow you to post properly. It kind of gives you ideas as to when you should be posting based on the social media platform, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or even Pinterest in some cases. So, again, it’s very short, very small. I know it’s not a whole lot, but it’s a very valuable tool that will help you post across different social platforms. That’s really all it does. There’s not a whole lot else to it. I mean, the paid versions give you a lot more features, just like any other software out there. But for the very basic free version, I think it does plenty.
Liel: [00:36:22] Ok, Grace. So Buffer will basically help me with making sure that I’m staying on track with my social media posts. Why is that important? Why I need to make sure that I have a system in place that helps me be consistent with social media posts.
Grace: [00:36:40] Well, you got to make sure, again, like we said from the very beginning of this, that any content you’re putting out there is consistent and regularly posted.
Grace: [00:36:49] So it’s super important to have a system in place and a tool to assist you in putting that together right in the strategy. So you should always have a strategy of some sort before you start posting willy nilly for absolutely in random places. So you need a strategy. And we’re going to discuss that at a different podcast. Right. I think more in-depth about social media. But on this podcast, I think to let you guys know, it’s important to always be consistent because they need to know when they can expect your information. You’re… Expect when you’re going to be putting this info out in whatever method that you’ve decided at that time. Right.
Liel: [00:37:28] So, Grace, I agree with what you’re saying. I think the most important reason why you want to rely at times in tools like HootSuite or buffer is because not having a well-organized system to share and include your social media messages can lead to inconsistencies. And basically, that’s probably the most common issue that law firms and any business for that matter will run into is that they will start very organized with with a bunch of social media posts that they’ve come up with. But then, you know, other things will come across. And so they’ll, for whatever reasons, stop posting in a consistent way. Of course, that would kind of defeat the purpose of having started a social media strategy as a whole. We live in an era where we know that consistency matters and it’s very important to do it with the frequency that it’s going to be meaningful enough to really have an impact on your strategy. Would that be a good a good reason why to adopt one of these tools?
Grace: [00:38:39] One hundred percent. Very important. Most definitely. And just so you guys know, I just pulled it up to make sure it was still free. And the number one that they usually list is HootSuite. Besides Buffer, HootSuite is actually the one I used when I first started doing marketing. I mean, long time ago. I’m not going to age myself, guys. So for the HootSuite one. You can manage three social profiles in one place schedule up to 30 post in advance, and you can even do social contests on there talking about your polling from before.
Liel: [00:39:13] That’s really that’s that’s great. So, yeah, that’s something that people should check out. And again, it’s free.
Liel: [00:39:19] So it will help. Now, I think, though, it is important to mention when talking about tools like this one that help you posting that the band’s schedule when your posts go live is estimation of how, for instance, platforms like Facebook go about using these kind of tools for managing your posts.
Liel: [00:39:40] And the reality is that Facebook will always prefer for your post to be. Actually, I posted directly in their platform and they will they will favor posts that actually get posted directly in Facebook over posts that are getting posted through third parties. But here’s the thing. If you have an audience and Facebook can, they’re engaged and they’re actually commenting and liking, well, they’ll still see your post as long as you have an audience that is engaged. If you don’t have an engaged audience and you’re just posting in this front, but I mean, in reality, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s in Facebook directly or you’re doing it to buffer. Your posts are not going to be seen, period. Like as a business. Facebook is not favoring your posts over the posts of individuals and particularly individuals who are getting engagement from their community and their networks. So that’s another thing that you need to be aware of, because just posting on Facebook for this Facebook posting is not necessarily going to work or do any good to you. Unless, You actually have an engaged community in the platform, so you need to make sure that you’re building that first and really sharing and promoting content that is of interest and value for that particular group of individuals that you want to be relevant to. So they’re actually reacting to your posts. Otherwise, they’re not going to be seen and it’s just not going to serve a lot of purpose.
Liel: [00:41:32] But again, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go out there and try and try different things. All right. Grace. So with that being said, I’m going to move to my last one, which is just go to more industry events and meetups. Right by… Networking is probably the most effective marketing strategy for a lawyer, right?
Grace: [00:41:54] It sure is. I mean, mouth to mouth, right? We know this.
Liel: [00:41:58] Exactly. So I like the idea that legal representation is based heavily on trust. Is is a fact in most of clients would prefer getting referred to an attorney by a friend over having to research Google. And that’s that’s the bottom line.
Grace: [00:42:18] Liel, Repeat that one more time for everybody. I think that will get this very simple fact about everything we do in our lives. Right. Wouldn’t you much rather be referred by a friend to anything you pick?
Liel: [00:42:32] Absolutely. Absolutely. And so the reality is that net networking and word of mouth will always win. And so a great way to expand your reach is by attending to events, is by actually talking and meeting people that could potentially be a source of new clients to you. Right. Whether these are other attorneys of different little practices that could be getting cases that they can take for whatever reason. And so now they know you and then potentially they’ll be happy to send you some of these clients. Right. Particularly when you’re new and when you’re just coming off law school, you’re just leaving your first law firm. And, you know, there’s law firms out there that only take a certain level of cases. It doesn’t mean that they’re not getting other ones that they’re not interested in taking because they’re kind of like a distraction for their daily course of business. However, they do want to make sure that, you know, this person reached out to them for help. Well, I want to make sure that I can send them over to someone that I know is going to do a great job in looking after them. And so these kind of connections are very well are very good to kind of achieve that kind of collaboration. So where are places where you can find about local events that are relevant to you? Of course, the local bar association, Facebook and, you know, meetup.com literally like meetup.com
Grace: [00:44:03] It’s called meetup.com
Liel: [00:44:04] All right. So they’re all there’s always every single week. Right. Well, depending on where you are, but at least every Monday is going to be something that could be of interest to you and make yourself a commitment to at least at least every whatever is reasonable for you. If it’s once a week or once a month, do something that is helping you expand your network.
Liel: [00:44:32] Go for lunch with another attorney. Go for lunch with with a medical practitioner. Go to a networking event. Select and plan for conferences that you would like to attend in a year and make it happen. But attending events, it’s a great way to expand your network.
Liel: [00:44:57] Now here’s another one. Here’s another one. Locally or around you, there is not an event there or it’s not a group that meets up or a networking event that you think really kind of meets the expectations that you have will then go ahead and create it yourself. Right.
Grace: [00:45:15] Make your own mastermind group.
Liel: [00:45:16] Create your own must remain a group. If you can take it to the to the extent of a mastermind group. But if not, it just just started as a happy hour. Right. And don’t over complicated.
Liel: [00:45:26] Just select us a place. Call a restaurant that will allow you to have a quarter of the of the of the bar or their dining room for you and your group so that you guys can set a time of day and just meet there and have having conversations and an opportunity to get to know each other and find ways in which you can collaborate. And it is just as easy as that.
Liel: [00:45:50] So going back to meetup.com, you can just go to the Website, register yourself as a user and create an event, create an event and then Meetup will help you in promoting this event for subscribers to the platform that are around your area. And that could be interested in kind of event that you’re trying to put together and who is it suitable for. So there you go. What do you think about this one?
Grace: [00:46:19] So to your point, Liel, there’s an actual use case that I was part of a mastermind group about two years ago, and that’s essentially what he did. So the partner of the firm would encourage his associates and he himself did this as well, where he would go to local medical practitioners, whether it be a chiropractor or an MRI location, literally around the corner from them. And he would have lunch with a different doctor literally every week, and he’d pick a day during the week and usually Wednesday and he’d have lunch with them. It would be different practitioners. And then he also encouraged them to reach out to other attorneys around the same location. And you know what? Like you said, there are some cases that some attorneys might not want or just don’t. You know, that’s not something that they necessarily do or focus on. So they can call counsel or do referrals and, you know, things of that nature, such as build your network, Liel you’re a thousand percent right. Build your network. It’s about who you know. Right. And building a group of people around you that, you know, like and trust as well that you can you feel confident that will take care of your client as best as they can and as good as you. So you build this network of people and the only way to do that is going out and meeting people. And that includes, you know, having lunch or going to an association or building your own little meetup group or whatever that means to take that step and actually do it and go say hi. Go talk to people. Go meet people that you can learn from and they can learn from you and you can help and can also possibly help you.
Liel: [00:47:58] That’s it. Grace, it is the most effective and efficient way to really increase referrals by making sure that you have an active and growing network. Right start and of course, you know, taking good care of your existing clients so they can also become a referral referral but always growing your network. So, Grace, I think we’re reaching here the end of the episode. So let’s go over our takeaways. Right. So each one of our ideas should be a takeaway of its own. So let’s do a very quick and brief recap into each one of them. So let’s start with HubSpot.
Grace: [00:48:39] So HubSpot has a free inbound marketing tool that will allow you to essentially be where your content needs to be in front of your prospects and or clients. And it’s making and creating content in a way and allowing you to put that content out there and track how people land on this content using HubSpot. It’s also a free plug-in to allow you to track this inbound marketing.
Liel: [00:49:07] That’s correct, Grace. So basically HubSpot in in other words, what it will allow you to do is to create calls to action for your content. You whether these are blog posts or any other kind of content that is hosted on your Website, HubSpot will allow you to make sure that you can capture visitors to your site by using Web forums, pop up messages, and it will gather information and serve it back to you in a very organized and attractive dashboard that you can then follow up with these leads directly from there.
Liel: [00:49:46] I would strongly recommend as a takeaway for people to take some time to research HubSpot, not just are there a great inbound marketing platform, but they’re actually a terrific digital marketing academy in all of their courses are 100 percent free. And I highly recommend for if you are the marketing coordinator or at a law firm or reviewer or an attorney that really wants to get Hands-On on your digital marketing to go and take some of the courses that HubSpot has in their academy because they’re terrific. They’re fantastic and they’re going to really, really help, help you tweak implement strategies that deliver results. So that’s helpful. Grace, what was our next? Our next point, creating content.
Grace: [00:50:37] Yes, creating content of any kind and just putting making sure we put it out there, right?
Liel: [00:50:43] Yes. So let’s keep this one simple. Going over complicated. Create content. The one peep, I guess that could be very useful. Grace, create a calendar.
Liel: [00:50:53] Help yourself, put up some some some framework and a structure to your content. Otherwise, it’s going to be hard for you just going through the motions of having to think about what to write for. Every single time that you want to create something, take time, create a calendar. It can be a monthly calendar where you’re actually deciding I’m going to talk about this particular topic. And so I’m going to break it down into different chunks of content. And then, you know, you’ve allocated certain time in your week when you’re actually going to write down that content. And here’s the reality. Also, Grace, and this is like like it’s for everyone. Many times you’ll come to realize that, throught your working day, you cannot dedicate time to write your content. And so that’s why you have to be very committed to this idea, because potentially this will be a task that will require for you to stay an extra hour in the office or for you to spend one or two hours, extra hours awake at night writing your content. But don’t always think that you can actually fit these tasks into your working day and don’t make your content suffer the consequences of you being very busy throughout your working day. Right.
Grace: [00:52:10] Commit to your content schedule.
Liel: [00:52:13] For sure. And then just go ahead and create the content writing, doing your video. You don’t need to have the best recording equipment if you’re going to do a podcast, you don’t need to have the fanciest of cameras and you don’t need to understand everything about perfect lighting that will come over time. And so first, just get it organized with what is it that you wanted to talk about and then start creating it. Grace, I guess we can make this a point also. It’s the part of promoting the content, right? So what is it that you said? Don’t spray it, spray it and.
Grace: [00:52:53] No spraying, praying guys. No spraying pray.
Liel: [00:52:57] No spray and pray. I agree with you. You need to. You need to be an ambassador to your content. Bring it up. Sure. It promoted. Reach out and.
Grace: [00:53:08] Engage.
Liel: [00:53:08] Yes. Reach out to people who could potentially be interested in reading it and letting them know about it. You know what’s. You know what, Grace? This is another great thing to do. OK. Find out and read and research in Google about other law firms who have created content similar to what you’re thinking of doing. Right. And see how people in the comments section see how people have responded to their to that particular piece of content and so on Twitter or in social media.
Liel: [00:53:41] And so based on that, you can already kind of start getting an idea. Well, I can see this one had a great impact. This other one did not seem to have generated a lot of traffic or response from the audience. So that already is going to help you a little bit, formulate and find out what’s resonating with people. So in order to. Give you a better idea? OK. How can you go about it, but not just that. Also, who is reading these? OK.
Grace: [00:54:08] Right.
Liel: [00:54:08] Yeah. Looking at the comments on tweet posts and on Facebook posts and on blogpost is very, very valuable because these people who are commenting there are people who are interested and engaged in this kind of conversation. And so then you can direct message them and say them, hey, I’ve noticed that you read this post. I wrote one that it’s about that same topic and covers these in that also it’s likely to send it to you. And that’s a great way to promote your content and put him for people who can be of influence and you can then help you promote your brand.
Grace: [00:54:45] So I know we’re wrapping it up here, but I hate it. I give you a little freebie guys. So there’s a spot on the back in Facebook analytics. OK. In the business section, if you have a business page at the very bottom that shows you competitors pages, competitors post with the most engagements.
Liel: [00:55:03] Yeah.
Grace: [00:55:03] Just so you know,
Liel: [00:55:04] This is there’s so much that can be used. And so maybe one so great. We’re going to talk particularly about tools and platforms that can help you measure and understand engagement. Now, moving on, answer questions. Right. Answer questions.
Liel: [00:55:24] There’s platforms where people who are looking for help are posting their questions. We’ve mentioned just yet. We mentioned Apple, we mentioned QUORA set yourselves notifications, register yourself in this platform. Set yourself notifications so when people in your jurisdiction are asking questions that you could be answering, go ahead and do so. You can only you can only win.
Grace: [00:55:51] And you’ll likely come up Google My Business.
Liel: [00:55:52] Google my business. OK, so what is this? Well, my business is offering us Grace.
Grace: [00:55:58] So they give you a personalized and free marketing kit and they will mail you out free window stickers with your address or whatever else you want on. It actually says book with us on Google, review us on Google or follow us on Google.
Grace: [00:56:13] And then you can also download print-ready posters and signs that you can have sent to actually have it printed with the Google review of your choosing and then ready to share social posts with a really cool background or edges in that kind of thing. And it tells you, you know, you can literally just click a button to share it and you can share it to Facebook, Twitter, wherever you’d like to share it to. So free marketing kit marketingkitwithgoogle.com
Liel: [00:56:43] Amazing Grace. Now a quick recap on your last point.
Grace: [00:56:48] So HootSuite and buffer, HootSuite and buffer are the same thing, right? They are social publishing platforms that allow you for the free version to do up to three social profiles. They help you schedule and help you put different pieces of content out there. And it’s more strategic and schedule fashion. However, to Liel’s point, Facebook in particular and other social media platforms generally give preference to publishing using their specific platforms to publish. Correct?
Liel: [00:57:20] Yes, correct. However, if time management is a challenge, then let’s use these platforms to make sure that we can and stay consistent in 2020 and not start putting posts every single week twice, twice or three times a week or daily, and then.
Grace: [00:57:42] Just stop.
Liel: [00:57:42] End up by December with not having put up a post. It’s me. OK. So that’s what that’s the value that these platforms give you is that they allow you to plan and schedule. And so you can take care of all of your posts once a week or once every two weeks, depending on how frequently you post and how fresh your content your social media posts need to be. OK. So last but not least, go to more industry events. Grow your network. Right.
Grace: [00:58:14] Grow your network meet more people, even if you have to schedule a day, a week that you have lunch with a chiropractor around the corner or another layer. Network, network, network. Know, like trust.
Liel: [00:58:25] Absolutely. And there is platforms like meetup.com that will allow you to create your own group of like-minded individuals. People who are looking to build the same kind of connections. You can just set up your own events. It doesn’t need to be that complicated. You don’t need to wait for the next big trade show that happens once a year to come to town so you can go in-network. What do you think, Grace?
Grace: [00:58:51] 100 percent. So hopefully with all the free tools and bringing it all together, I think that there’s a lot of things out there that everybody can use right now. We barely brushed on a couple of them, but network, network, network, meet people and put content out there and it will definitely bring you to the next level and make that a consistent thing for you so that 2020 is as successful as you want it to be.
Liel: [00:59:20] And Grace, before we leave, I just want to share one last bonus tip. Having gone through all of these takeaways for this particular episode, set up a call to action system on your Websites with people who are engaging with your content can respond to it through HubSpot, right. Creating content, creating social media engagement, attending events, answering questions across different platforms. They’re all come down to building relations. They all come down to creating a network. And obviously, we know that we need to keep engaged. All of these people who are engaging with our brand, people who are becoming connections and opportunities for our law firm.
Liel: [01:00:07] So a great way of doing so is once you’ve already started gathering these contacts, then start your newsletter. And I’m talking about an e-mail newsletter. Right. It’s a great way to to to keep it top of mind with these connections that you fought so hard to create and connect. And it’s a great opportunity where you can highlight things like new cases you won, new employees you hired, new initiatives you’re undertaking and you can do this on a monthly basis.
Liel: [01:00:41] Mailchimp will allow you to have up to two thousand subscribers and send newsletters completely free without having to pay anything. And so with that being said, Grace, I think newsletters is a great way to keep these connections and in relations nurtured for the long term.
Grace: [01:01:05] Agreed. People still care for email newsletters and they still care for even printing if you can manage it.
Liel: [01:01:11] Yes. And going back to analytics, being able to see and tell who is actually opening your newsletters and who is interacting with the content in your son in your newsletters is a great telltale as to who is very engaged with your law firm and could potentially benefit from a call from you to check up on how they’re doing. Ok.
Liel: [01:01:41] All right. Grace, so I think we’ve covered up a lot of things here, a lot of very useful tips. So with these not only we’re finishing up this episode, but we’re also finishing our first block on lead generation and marketing. And so that means that on our next episode, we will be covering up something new.
Grace: [01:01:59] Yay! Something different.
Liel: [01:02:01] Yes, something new. So thank you very much for joining us. And we’re looking forward to chatting up again with only a few in our next episode.
Grace: [01:02:11] Thanks for joining us.
Liel: [01:02:18] If you like our show, make sure you subscribe. Tell your co-workers. Leave us a review and send us your questions at: ask@incamerapodcast.com We’ll see you next week.
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