<b><i>Marketing Tech:</i></b> Glamorizing Your Law Firm with Modern Technology

If you didn't jump on the “selfie” band-wagon, you can count yourself sane; and now with the rush to ban “selfie-sticks” by major public places around the nation (including Disney, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, New York's Museum of Modern Art, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, and California's Getty Center,to name a few), certain law firms might start to consider how to prepare to handle law suits arising from the trend.

But just because the narcissists of the world are driving the rest of us crazy with their self-infatuation does not mean that glamorizing your law firm using modern technology should repel you. If there was ever a time in history that a law firm should “go Hollywood,” this is it. Jumping on the promotional tech bandwagon may mean the difference in your law firm rising to the top of your industry to beat out the competition, or fading into non-existence. If this concept seems too progressive for your conservative clientele, consider that even the most conservative American enjoys going to the movies. Hollywood is America, and there is no separating the two. Modern technology has given us all the opportunity to easily become “entertainers.” Even if your law firm commonly shies away from the more entertainment-inspired versions of normally repetitive activities, glaming up your brand online with marketing technology and adding “zing” might just be the most beneficial thing you've done for your business since taking it online. (Remember when you swore you would never have a website?)

There have been some big changes in marketing that many traditional businesses have not so eagerly embraced. However, business predictions claim that if businesses don't pick up on modernizing their branding with the most current technologies, they will fade into the forgotten world of dinosaur legacy companies. These days, “boring” is death to a brand's image and will sink it into the abyss of endless information. In other words, the marketing and advertising of all brands must move into the pseudo-entertainment space, and soon. Some call it the “Disney-effect,” and with it came a pull for brands to emphasize what they do through more grandiose expressions. Marketing today requires that brands reach higher and not only seek to offer impressive solutions to potential clients but engage and entertain them as well.

Following are some progressive marketing technologies that law firms can consider if they want to start pushing their brand beyond the competition and into the emerging age of successful brand engagement.

Develop an App

Develop an app for your firm. If you haven't already created one, consider having it done now. You may wonder how this will ultimately benefit your firm ' 51% of people's time is spent using mobile digital media (as opposed to those 42% still on desktops); and 86% of the mobile digital media users time is spent using apps. With a majority of the world spending a majority of its time on a mobile device, it's easy to see why a mobile app becomes the best way to connect with potential and current clients. Even more importantly, apps are an invaluable way to gather statistics, conduct surveys, keep clients happy, and stay in the minds of those clients whom your firm has already obtained. Happy clients are your best marketing tools and can become your most powerful influencers. Apps make life easier for your firm influencers to spread the word and tighten your legal “neighborhood” while extending your brand's reputation.

Apps have also been shown to increase productivity among employees by 20%. Easy access to your law firm's culture through an app allows employees to be well-informed, smarter, more dedicated and thus more profitable.

Broadcast

Start broadcasting your culture. Society has always had a love affair with seeing how lawyers work, which is why TV shows like Law & Order never seem to go out of style. However, few law firms have used this to their advantage. Yet these days broadcasting has never been easier ' using apps like Periscope or Meerkat just require one click on your phone or tablet to go live. Consider setting up a specific date and time to broadcast an engaging and informative show and watch your viewers (and potential clients) grow by leaps and bounds! (I recently broadcast a show called “Walk and Chat in Atlanta” to Periscope, and within 45 minutes I grew my viewer base from five to 400+ followers.) These platforms are also an excellent way to engage your mobile audience, since they are run on mobile apps.

Broadcasting platforms are successfully being used to solve one of the most difficult problems to overcome online ' gaining people's trust. Prior to the Internet, people relied on face-to-face interactions to see how business worked, thus building trust. Now with the rise of the online world, potential clients often don't have the opportunity to meet business people before making a decision on whether to go forward with using their services. This inability to “see and judge” who they are engaging with has caused a lack of transparency and trust; yet at the same time, transparency and authenticity have become one of the most important things people are looking for when considering choosing a business to work with. Real-time broadcasting platforms are solving that problem by giving businesses the ability to let potential clients peer into their world and build trust in their systems prior to committing. If yours is the business giving them this opportunity, you are going to win out over the competition that isn't providing the same.

Another benefit of broadcasting your law firm is its ability to connect you quickly with local, national and international journalists, and to become known as a “go-to” authority in your area of specialty. Broadcasting using modern technologies puts you in control, and puts your firm in the spotlight affordably and efficiently.

Hire a Writer

Hire a professional content writer. As with any other investment, with content writing, you get what you pay for. Realistically, you should expect to pay between $35-$95 per 500-1000 words for a quality article depending on research time and complexity. It is not an expensive investment, but if you so choose to go the “super cheap $5 per article route,” please make sure your writer's first language is English ' I think you get my drift. At the very least, you should have your writer create a 500-1000-word blog post for you at least once a month. The benefit here is multi-layered. It not only keeps your business looking alive and current, it also makes Google continue to take notice of it.

Add Fresh Content

Most people have the misconception that Google is crawling every website in the entire world everyday, but each site is different in Google's view. Most businesses want to know how they can get Google to crawl their sites more often. If you're constantly adding new content to your website, Google won't want to stay away; it won't want to miss anything new that you post for fear of not having your site fully indexed in its search engine. Therefore, adding fresh content to your site is the easiest way to entice Google to come back to your web and social sites, and come back often. If you want to see how often Google crawls your website, it can easily be found in your Google Webmaster Tools account. (Google Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google, so if you don't have it, go to google.com/webmaster/tools, where Google will walk you through how to set it up.) Once you've logged in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, navigate to the “Crawl” menu item on the left, followed by the “Crawl Stats” sub item after that. You'll notice Google Webmaster Tools only stores historical data for up to 90 days but this should give you all the information you need to discover Google's crawling habits as they relate to your website.

You may be wondering why you shouldn't do your own content writing? The answer is simple. You won't do it (or you would be doing it already), and you aren't good at it. Just as you don't want to have a marketing person go into court and be the lawyer that represents your firm, you should understand that people don't necessarily enjoy reading what lawyers have to write. Lawyers tend to write in a very legalistic complicated way and although that is appropriate for your industry, it isn't appropriate for gaining clients. Complicated, industry-laced lingo, or boring talk can drive a potential client away from your site as fast as they got there because they will feel your brand is “un-relatable.” So unless you are John Grisham, hire a writer that can translate what you are trying to relate to the public in an engaging and entertaining way. It is a simple premise, stick to what you do best and hire others to do the rest. A professional content writer will also know how to creatively add SEO keywords to your online articles making them all the more desirable to the Google crawl.

Gamify

Don't just glamify ' gamify. Content marketing is predicted to continue to be a key marketing strategy. Leading brands continue to look for new solutions to create fun and engaging content. Gamification gives marketers the power to appeal to the competitive nature of humans and successfully get them to engage with a brand. Gamification rewards “players” with points or badges, or by displaying top engagers on special leaderboards. This strategy offers powerful motivation for users, and gamified strategies are becoming a standard practice for driving brand engagement and fostering client loyalty. It may sound complicated or expensive but gamification can work for almost any product or service and is adaptable to every budget. Gamification can help create better awareness about the services your law firm provides while increasing your bottom line. Gamified strategies engage and direct visitors to other parts of your website (or app) to learn more about your specific area of service.

One of the most popular ways to gamify your brand is through surveys. You've probably already engaged in these games without even realizing it. Every time you jump to a survey from a friend's Facebook post, you are engaging in a gamified strategy. It works by having you click away from Facebook to arrive on the brand's website where they can collect stats on you and entice you to click on other pages and advertisements. Then they get you to continue the process by posting your analyzed answer to your Facebook page where your friends will click on it. The end result allows for brands to “vine” out through users contacts and collect a huge amount of data resulting in qualified leads.

Conclusion

Building your story is building your brand. With the evolution of Google tools, storytelling has again become a highly valued means of marketing. The more entertaining and engaging your brand's story is, the more valuable your brand will become. Your goal for marketing your brand should be to stand out from the crowd of millions of other lawyers and law firms expressing themselves online.

Don't be afraid to glam up your brand and take your law firm to the next level with modern technology. Make your law firm the one everyone is talking about ' online and off.

Karen Ellis is the Owner of Social Sweet Spot, digital strategizing, content writing and IoT for the modern age of marketing. Reach her on Twitter @socialsweet and Social SweetSpot on Linkedin, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram and more.

If you didn't jump on the “selfie” band-wagon, you can count yourself sane; and now with the rush to ban “selfie-sticks” by major public places around the nation (including Disney, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, New York's Museum of Modern Art, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, and California's Getty Center,to name a few), certain law firms might start to consider how to prepare to handle law suits arising from the trend.

But just because the narcissists of the world are driving the rest of us crazy with their self-infatuation does not mean that glamorizing your law firm using modern technology should repel you. If there was ever a time in history that a law firm should “go Hollywood,” this is it. Jumping on the promotional tech bandwagon may mean the difference in your law firm rising to the top of your industry to beat out the competition, or fading into non-existence. If this concept seems too progressive for your conservative clientele, consider that even the most conservative American enjoys going to the movies. Hollywood is America, and there is no separating the two. Modern technology has given us all the opportunity to easily become “entertainers.” Even if your law firm commonly shies away from the more entertainment-inspired versions of normally repetitive activities, glaming up your brand online with marketing technology and adding “zing” might just be the most beneficial thing you've done for your business since taking it online. (Remember when you swore you would never have a website?)

There have been some big changes in marketing that many traditional businesses have not so eagerly embraced. However, business predictions claim that if businesses don't pick up on modernizing their branding with the most current technologies, they will fade into the forgotten world of dinosaur legacy companies. These days, “boring” is death to a brand's image and will sink it into the abyss of endless information. In other words, the marketing and advertising of all brands must move into the pseudo-entertainment space, and soon. Some call it the “Disney-effect,” and with it came a pull for brands to emphasize what they do through more grandiose expressions. Marketing today requires that brands reach higher and not only seek to offer impressive solutions to potential clients but engage and entertain them as well.

Following are some progressive marketing technologies that law firms can consider if they want to start pushing their brand beyond the competition and into the emerging age of successful brand engagement.

Develop an App

Develop an app for your firm. If you haven't already created one, consider having it done now. You may wonder how this will ultimately benefit your firm ' 51% of people's time is spent using mobile digital media (as opposed to those 42% still on desktops); and 86% of the mobile digital media users time is spent using apps. With a majority of the world spending a majority of its time on a mobile device, it's easy to see why a mobile app becomes the best way to connect with potential and current clients. Even more importantly, apps are an invaluable way to gather statistics, conduct surveys, keep clients happy, and stay in the minds of those clients whom your firm has already obtained. Happy clients are your best marketing tools and can become your most powerful influencers. Apps make life easier for your firm influencers to spread the word and tighten your legal “neighborhood” while extending your brand's reputation.

Apps have also been shown to increase productivity among employees by 20%. Easy access to your law firm's culture through an app allows employees to be well-informed, smarter, more dedicated and thus more profitable.

Broadcast

Start broadcasting your culture. Society has always had a love affair with seeing how lawyers work, which is why TV shows like Law & Order never seem to go out of style. However, few law firms have used this to their advantage. Yet these days broadcasting has never been easier ' using apps like Periscope or Meerkat just require one click on your phone or tablet to go live. Consider setting up a specific date and time to broadcast an engaging and informative show and watch your viewers (and potential clients) grow by leaps and bounds! (I recently broadcast a show called “Walk and Chat in Atlanta” to Periscope, and within 45 minutes I grew my viewer base from five to 400+ followers.) These platforms are also an excellent way to engage your mobile audience, since they are run on mobile apps.

Broadcasting platforms are successfully being used to solve one of the most difficult problems to overcome online ' gaining people's trust. Prior to the Internet, people relied on face-to-face interactions to see how business worked, thus building trust. Now with the rise of the online world, potential clients often don't have the opportunity to meet business people before making a decision on whether to go forward with using their services. This inability to “see and judge” who they are engaging with has caused a lack of transparency and trust; yet at the same time, transparency and authenticity have become one of the most important things people are looking for when considering choosing a business to work with. Real-time broadcasting platforms are solving that problem by giving businesses the ability to let potential clients peer into their world and build trust in their systems prior to committing. If yours is the business giving them this opportunity, you are going to win out over the competition that isn't providing the same.

Another benefit of broadcasting your law firm is its ability to connect you quickly with local, national and international journalists, and to become known as a “go-to” authority in your area of specialty. Broadcasting using modern technologies puts you in control, and puts your firm in the spotlight affordably and efficiently.

Hire a Writer

Hire a professional content writer. As with any other investment, with content writing, you get what you pay for. Realistically, you should expect to pay between $35-$95 per 500-1000 words for a quality article depending on research time and complexity. It is not an expensive investment, but if you so choose to go the “super cheap $5 per article route,” please make sure your writer's first language is English ' I think you get my drift. At the very least, you should have your writer create a 500-1000-word blog post for you at least once a month. The benefit here is multi-layered. It not only keeps your business looking alive and current, it also makes Google continue to take notice of it.

Add Fresh Content

Most people have the misconception that Google is crawling every website in the entire world everyday, but each site is different in Google's view. Most businesses want to know how they can get Google to crawl their sites more often. If you're constantly adding new content to your website, Google won't want to stay away; it won't want to miss anything new that you post for fear of not having your site fully indexed in its search engine. Therefore, adding fresh content to your site is the easiest way to entice Google to come back to your web and social sites, and come back often. If you want to see how often Google crawls your website, it can easily be found in your Google Webmaster Tools account. (Google Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google, so if you don't have it, go to google.com/webmaster/tools, where Google will walk you through how to set it up.) Once you've logged in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, navigate to the “Crawl” menu item on the left, followed by the “Crawl Stats” sub item after that. You'll notice Google Webmaster Tools only stores historical data for up to 90 days but this should give you all the information you need to discover Google's crawling habits as they relate to your website.

You may be wondering why you shouldn't do your own content writing? The answer is simple. You won't do it (or you would be doing it already), and you aren't good at it. Just as you don't want to have a marketing person go into court and be the lawyer that represents your firm, you should understand that people don't necessarily enjoy reading what lawyers have to write. Lawyers tend to write in a very legalistic complicated way and although that is appropriate for your industry, it isn't appropriate for gaining clients. Complicated, industry-laced lingo, or boring talk can drive a potential client away from your site as fast as they got there because they will feel your brand is “un-relatable.” So unless you are John Grisham, hire a writer that can translate what you are trying to relate to the public in an engaging and entertaining way. It is a simple premise, stick to what you do best and hire others to do the rest. A professional content writer will also know how to creatively add SEO keywords to your online articles making them all the more desirable to the Google crawl.

Gamify

Don't just glamify ' gamify. Content marketing is predicted to continue to be a key marketing strategy. Leading brands continue to look for new solutions to create fun and engaging content. Gamification gives marketers the power to appeal to the competitive nature of humans and successfully get them to engage with a brand. Gamification rewards “players” with points or badges, or by displaying top engagers on special leaderboards. This strategy offers powerful motivation for users, and gamified strategies are becoming a standard practice for driving brand engagement and fostering client loyalty. It may sound complicated or expensive but gamification can work for almost any product or service and is adaptable to every budget. Gamification can help create better awareness about the services your law firm provides while increasing your bottom line. Gamified strategies engage and direct visitors to other parts of your website (or app) to learn more about your specific area of service.

One of the most popular ways to gamify your brand is through surveys. You've probably already engaged in these games without even realizing it. Every time you jump to a survey from a friend's Facebook post, you are engaging in a gamified strategy. It works by having you click away from Facebook to arrive on the brand's website where they can collect stats on you and entice you to click on other pages and advertisements. Then they get you to continue the process by posting your analyzed answer to your Facebook page where your friends will click on it. The end result allows for brands to “vine” out through users contacts and collect a huge amount of data resulting in qualified leads.

Conclusion

Building your story is building your brand. With the evolution of Google tools, storytelling has again become a highly valued means of marketing. The more entertaining and engaging your brand's story is, the more valuable your brand will become. Your goal for marketing your brand should be to stand out from the crowd of millions of other lawyers and law firms expressing themselves online.

Don't be afraid to glam up your brand and take your law firm to the next level with modern technology. Make your law firm the one everyone is talking about ' online and off.

Karen Ellis is the Owner of Social Sweet Spot, digital strategizing, content writing and IoT for the modern age of marketing. Reach her on Twitter @socialsweet and Social SweetSpot on Linkedin, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram and more.