Many of my cases come from other lawyers who I’ve met at bar association functions.  I spend a great deal of time with the Maryland Association for Justice (MAJ), some amount of time with the American Association for Justice (AAJ), and now increasing amounts of time with the Baltimore County Bar Association (BCBA).  Those contacts will allow me to keep and grow those and other “in-person” referral sources.

The majority of my marketing dollars, however, goes to technology.  Whether creating new blogs, experimenting with pay-per-click (PPC), or improving the website, my goal is for 50% of my cases to come to me referral-fee free through the internet.  This is not something that can be done haphazardly–it requires focus, commitment and a plan.  One great website for people trying to develop that plan, and trying to see what is out there, is LawMarketing.com.  Most marketing brilliance is free, whether from this site or from others.  If you are a solo or small firm, you can find nuggets of wisdom from many legal technology marketing gurus.  The best advice is to blog and write regularly–spending time creating and improving your websites will pay off.  For decent websites, a solid investment of one hour every day will pay off in four to six months.  Build your website–build it.      

For help writing your blog or website content, contact us at 443.850.4426 or send an online request for more information.  We have a personal injury lawyer practice, and we can write accurate content.  Our prices are competitive with the major website companies who offer law blogging services.  Even better, our content is written by actual lawyers.  We know the law, and we know marketing.  

PowerPoint slides (or Keynote, if you’re a Mac user) are the poor man’s video.  If you can’t afford a camera, tripod, microphone and the editing software to make it look good (or, if you have a face for radio, like yours truly), then you can still give your audience good visual information by providing PowerPoint slides and saving them on your website, blog, or YouTube.

How is this useful?  If you are a lawyer who handles medical malpractice cases, then put up 15 slides on how to choose a medical malpractice lawyer.  Product liability lawyers can create a 30-slide presentation on the latest medical device recall, like metal-on-metal hip implants, or transvaginal slings.  This will give your potential clients something to do other than read a stagnant website.

Here’s how:

• Step One:  Create your PowerPoint presentation.
• Don’t forget–you can create links from a slide to your blog, website or authoritative source.
• Step Two:  Upload the presentation to an online service like SlideShare, Scribd or Docstoc.
• Alternatively, you can use software like Camtasia Studio (a little pricey, but extremely useful for recording video right off the computer, including YouTube and other videos) to record the slides as you narrate them.
• Step Three:  Embed the content to your website or blog (most sites will give you an html for that purpose).  Decide whether you want the slides to be available on the host site, as well.
• Step Four:  Spread the word about the presentation on your other social media platforms–link from Facebook, Twitter, and your blogs.
• Step Five:  Check your stats–some hosts have analytics programs that measure the reach of your presentation (how many times someone clicked it).  You should be doing this already with your blogs and websites.

That’s all there is to it.  This is a terrific way to break up the monotony of a blog.  Here’s one I did way back when to help new lawyers adjust to the rigors of law firm life.