Constant Content : Legal Ghostwriting & Content : Janet Raasch : Copy for Lawyers & Attorneys, Law Firm Business Development

Recently, I posted my comments on lawyer biographies (profiles) and the emerging concept of lawyer microsites -- a concept I first read about on the Great Jakes blog.

In the July 2010 issue of Strategies:  The Journal of Legal Marketing, author Robert Algeri of Great Jakes Marketing Company elaborates on this intriguing concept.

Algeri states:

According to a 2009 survey of general counsel at major companies performed by the Wicker Park Group, law firm websites played a surprisingly large role in the process of selecting outside counsel.  The survey's revelations include:

-- One hundred pecent of respondents visited a law firm's website when evaluating and purchasing legal services.

-- Ninety percent of respondents said that the attorney bios section is the most important section of a law firm's website -- and the one they visit most.

Algeri continues:

My marketing firm recently ran the traffic data for several law firm websites that we manage.  We found the 56 percent of page views occur in the attorney bios section.  Some major law firms that we have spoken with report that over 70 percent of their traffic occurs in the attorney bios section.  All of which begs the question:  If attorney bios are the most important and most visited section of law firm websites, why do so many firms neglect them?

My regular readers know that I consider most attorney bios to be poorly written and a complete waste of valuable website real estate.  We know that clients and potential clients are going there.  How long will we continue to squander this resource?

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Do you use LinkedIn Groups for legal marketing purposes?  There's been a heated discussion of the pro's and con's of this tactic in Larry Bodine's listserv (membership required).  Here's what I added today:

Funny that this conversation should be top-of-list today.  Yesterday I joined about ten additional LinkedIn groups -- mostly for the "branding" value of having their logos on my profile.  (I already belonged to six of them.)  I think that these logos can provide some sense of the field in which you are playing and willing to make a contribution.  For the most part, I only joined groups that showed up high in a search for relelvant legal marketing and socia media terms -- that also featured a significant number of members.

How do I use LinkedIn groups?  Mostly like I use my aggregator -- to quickly skim for breaking news and concepts.  Yes, there are a lot of annoying and blatant sales folks there.  Ignore them.  I comment now and then when I think that I can add value to a good conversation (most recently on the repurposing of lawyer bios as profiles for online marketing).  I have received numerous inquiries and some new writing work from LinkedIn groups.  I noticed that LMA (I am assuming) is adding chapter groups to foster intra-chapter communications and linking.  As a result of my day playing around on LinkedIn groups, I became just the second member to join the Rocky Mountain Chapter group!  Come on gang, let's get cracking!

 

I really think that it is too soon to tell.  Better (especially for lawyers) to find a few narrowly focused groups (or create one) and participate by adding high-value content to the discussion.  I have joined more than that because I am using these groups primarily for industry research -- not for promoting my own practice as a writer and ghostwriter for lawyers and law firms.

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Martindale-Hubbell recently launched a social network that includes both public and private groups for marketing professionals.  This week, I am guest-hosting forum conversations on this site on the subject of the use of persuasive content marketing to position lawyers and law firms as experts on the Internet.  So far, I've started threads on ghostblogging and attorney biographies/profiles.  For those of you who are already members of MH Connected, check it out and join the conversation.  If you have not yet joined, give it a try.  You might have to wait a day or two to be approved.

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