Blawg In A Box

It’s out of my hands, and in the hands of the proofers, who tell me they’re working as furiously as possible to get it out. In the meantime, I thought you might find some usefulness in this excerpt from the Introduction, which discusses who the book’s for — and, more specifically, who it’s not for — and thus might help the undecided, well, decide.

Why I Wrote This E-Book, And Who I Wrote It For

Let’s first start with who this book is NOT written for. It wasn’t written for people who like to throw money at a problem and hope for the best. Nor was it designed to meet the needs of those who believe the most expensive solution is always the best. And if you’re the kind of person who is impressed by flashy cars, designer clothes, expensive furniture — or if you’re the kind of person who truly believes that’s what your clients expect from you — then this e-book probably isn’t for you, either.

It most definitely was not written for self-important lawyers who feel any measure of disdain for their clients. And it wasn’t written for anyone who isn’t willing to get their hands dirty digging in the garden, in a manner of speaking.

While large law firms can and should investigate blogging as a means of marketing their practices and keeping in touch with their clientele, this e-book isn’t written for them. Marketing a larger firm, through a blog or otherwise, requires a very different approach than for solos and small firms of 2 to 10 lawyers. For the Big Law folks (or, as my consumer bankruptcy colleagues affectionately call them, “the tall building lawyers”), the selling point must be the breadth and depth of resources, which is inapposite to the approach that’s best for solos and small firm practitioners — the “cult of personality” or the “sell yourself” approach, as it’s sometimes called. Parts of this e-book will be helpful to those tall building lawyers on their firm’s marketing committees, but the overall approach it advocates must be revised to something more appropriate for the larger entity and its unique assets (and liabilities).

Finally, while I’m a big fan of delegating certain tasks — even blogging tasks — to others, I have to say this: if you’re expecting to hand this book to your paralegal and let him or her do all the heavy lifting, then it’s not for you, either. In other words, if you have no intention and no interest in doing the work required — the daily blogging, the participation in other sites, the cultivation of “blog buddies” and the creation of your blawg community — then do yourself a favor: hire a web designer and a copywriter, and skip the blogging. It’s just not your cup of tea.

And that’s OK. It really is. Not everyone needs to blog in order to have a profitable, fulfilling practice. I have found utility in it for a number of reasons, which I share in chapter 1, but I’ve never once deluded myself into thinking that I could only have a successful practice if I blog. Nor would I ever suggest, state, or imply that anyone who chooses not to blog is a moron, a fool, blind, not as smart as those of us who do blog, or in any other way deficiently constituted as a person, a lawyer, or a business owner.

See, I’ve found one way to market my practice that makes sense. A lot of other lawyers feel the same way, and report similar experiences to mine. I happen to think it’s a particularly genius way to go about it, especially for solos and small firm lawyers — especially those strapped for cash. It’s effective. It reaches the right people with the right message. And it works. More importantly, the return on investment is literally incalculable. Sure you can (and should) track the folks who find you by your blog and to that extent, your ROI is capable of being articulated. But the real value of a blog, to my way of thinking, can’t be measured accurately, as it’s rooted in a market-wide (indeed, global) view of you, the blogger, as the expert in your practice area. What’s that worth to you? Only you can answer that question.

But if you’re the kind of person who would rather leave the marketing to someone else and who thinks the web is just a passing fancy — well, friend, this probably is not the e-book for you.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, who is this book written for? Well, it’s obviously aimed mainly at solo and small firm lawyers, particularly those who have limited marketing budgets and, as the saying goes, “more time than money.” It’s especially good for those who are comfortable expressing themselves in writing; for those who are better one-on-one than one-to-thousands in social settings; for those who are legitimately interested in their practice areas and didn’t just fall into them by default; for those who care about their clients and truly want to do more than just “earn the retainer” but also want to help make their clients’ lives a bit easier; for those who are interested in creating and managing their own images both as lawyers and as business owners; for those who just want more clients, or those who want more of the right kind of clients; for those who believe the right solution isn’t always the most expensive one; and for those who have no interest in spending more of any currency — time, effort, energy, or cold hard cash — than is absolutely necessary.

This is a highly targeted, effective, efficient method of marketing, but it requires effort and energy. You must permit yourself to become wholly invested and involved in this process, or it will not work. If you’re not willing to become this engaged in your blog, then you’d do well to adjust your expectations downwards.

Despite my level best efforts, Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging is not quite ready for prime time. I could let it out tomorrow, but I just can’t bring myself to do that without it being up to my standards. It needs to be proofed, and my proofreaders tell me that will happen no later than this Friday. Add on three days for a safety net, and we’re looking at Monday.

I do believe you’ll be pleased, and I hope you’ll think it’s worth the wait.

Friendly reminder: the special advance reservation price of $49 that I opened up to everyone because I was a doofus and didn’t have a redundant back-up system, thus delaying the release a week, for Cheap & Brilliant Blawggingis going to end tonight at midnight. At that point, the price goes up to $89. Details for the purchase at $49 are in the sidebar, including the PayPal link.

For current coaching and Blawg In A Box clients who have not already purchased it at the lower price (or for whom it wasn’t included in their package — if you’re uncertain if that’s you, let me know via our contact form and I’ll check for you), I will offer a 10% discount, the instructions for which will be emailed to you directly.

To all those who’ve responded to the survey, I can only say a hearty and sincere “Thank you!” Your input has been invaluable, and has already had a significant impact on the finished product. I can promise that there will be much more emphasis on productivity issues than I’d originally planned, as well as on content. (In fact, I’ve created an additional appendix of over 101 time- and battle-tested writing tips which will be included in the text.)

Posting at The Inspired Solo will be light next week (though if you want to contribute a guest post, I’d be delighted to let you use my blog); but here, we’re having a blawg party! Look for blog posts about the book, featuring excerpts and (please, fingers crossed) maybe even some video.

Following up from the last post (”Eight Reasons Search Engines Adore Blogs“), here’s part 2 of the “whys and wherefores” explanation I promised Robert and the rest of you who are still wondering:

What Clients Are Looking For

Your potential clients are out there. They’re hitting the web in droves, typing in keywords like “divorce lawyer los angeles” and “texas discrimination lawyer” at Google, at MSN, at Yahoo, at Dogpile …

They’re looking for someone like you. Not you. Someone who does what you do. They don’t care who it is, as long as they get the sense that:

1. The lawyer knows what she’s talking about. She’s good.
2. She cares about the client more than about padding her bottom line.
3. She treats the client with respect.

Please don’t underestimate the powers of these last two criteria. For far too long, some of us in the legal profession have been giving the public the mistaken impression that we don’t care about them. If you need proof, consult any volume of “lawyer jokes” in your local bookstore.

A lawyer who can convince his potential clients that he’s “not like that”? Is winning the game.

How do we do that? How do we fight decades of ingrained stereotypes and mean-spirited jokes about our profession to show our clients we do care, we are different, we’re in this for the right reasons, and we are the only ones who can solve their specific problem the way they want it solved?

We answer their questions. We give away that super-secret special sauce we hold so dear: our legal knowledge. We help them understand — yes, for free — what this strange new playground they’re in is really like and what its rules are.

This doesn’t mean we do their work for free. That’s a pathetic business model, and anyway, they don’t expect that. Rather, it means we reassure them. We give them some information up front that helps calm them down, take some immediate steps to protect their interests … and convinces them that we’re the only ones who can do what they need done.

How You Give Them What They’re Looking For

This is why the web is such an incredibly powerful marketing forum — because it is, essentially, a ready-made library that’s accessible at all hours, at the whim of the searcher. Now, what you put in that library, how easily those “book” can be found by those who are looking for that information … these are the tricky parts, yes.

But here, again: blawgs win this game, too. How? Consider:

• The old wisdom is the same as the new wisdom: it takes on average 7 contacts to convince an otherwise-primed lead to purchase — to close the deal, as it were, and hire you as a lawyer (or buy a car, or select an accountant, or whatever).
• Each post in your blawg is another one of those contacts.
• Not only is it another opportunity to speak to your targeted readers and potential clients, it’s an opportunity that’s entirely under your control. You design and script the client’s experience, from start to finish. In what other marketing context can you say that?
• Your blawg, being a conversationally-toned set of entries together with high-value resources (freely available) and the ability for the consumer/client to participate in the conversation via comments, reaches the people you’re targeting in a way they find much more amiable and “user-friendly.”
• The bottom line: NO ONE wants to be “sold to.” They find it unpleasant, disrespectful, inauthentic, disingenuous, and untrustworthy. Blawgs, if done right, are the very antithesis of this “selling-to” approach.

Blawgs, in short, are the true client-centered marketing medium.

Robert, I hope that answers your question, at least somewhat. I hope you’ll continue the conversation here, in our comments section below. Ask a question! Rant! Tell me what your biggest concern is. And if you haven’t yet, please take our short 3-question survey. There’s a reward offered for completion (completely optional, of course).

Reader Robert Schrage posted a fantastic comment recently on this blog, regarding the upcoming release of Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging.

Robert’s Challenge: Show Me

I love the “show-me” types! Basically, Robert is telling me, “Hey, not so fast. Back up to the beginning and prove it to me that this endeavor is worth my while.”

To which I respond: “With pleasure.”

The Power of the Words That Work

Now, I was really hoping I could do this in some tricked-out video for you. But alas, such was not to be. Between A. Weber (and my completely idiotic mess-up therewith) and — you know, that whole “practicing law” thing — I just couldn’t get it to go. So, you’re stuck with plain old text.

But that’s probably appropriate for this post, because what I want to demonstrate for you is the power of the written word.

Not just any written word, of course: written words in particular format, published on a particular schedule, with specific kinds of formatting, and all in the larger context of a fairly complex (yet still completely organic, authentic, and effective) marketing program.

Why Blogs Work

Essentially, there are two reasons why blogs are, in my view, the lynchpin of a dynamic and effective marketing program for solos and small firm lawyers. Unfortunately, to understand them adequately enough for a real conversation, we have to take a trip down Technical Lane. (Don’t worry. I’ll make it as simple as I can without crossing over onto Inaccurate Boulevard or So Simplified You Might As Well Be Lying Street.) So this post will cover reason #1 — Because Google Loves Blogs. Reason #2 — that’s for tomorrow’s post.

Why You Must Be On The Web

I hope we can all start from the premise that small firm and solo lawyers today must have some sort of web presence to be viable in all but the most isolated of markets. (If you want to argue with me on that point, all I can do is direct you to any law practice management publication since — oh, say, the late ’90’s. Go ahead, we’ll be here when you get back.)

The simple, cold truth is that your clients are looking for you on the web, in droves. This doesn’t mean you should put all your marketing eggs in the website basket, but it does mean that she who has no web presence is operating at a serious disadvantage, right out of the gate.

But having a website is not enough. You must have a web presence that can be found. And even that’s not enough: it must be capable of being found by the right people at the right time. And that happens via any number of ways, but predominantly for those who are looking for legal assistance, it starts with a search engine.

In short: we live and die by the Google.

What Search Engines Do

Search engines work in one of two ways (actually three, but the third is a hybrid of the first two). Either they’re bot-driven or human-powered (or a combination of the two).

Envision if you will thousands of little tiny mechanical spiders roaming along a Matrix-like connection of wires and nodes. These spiders are looking for information. Specifically, they’re looking for new information — sites that have been updated since the last time they took this stroll along the information superhighway (how long has it been since you’ve heard that term?).

These spiders take a digital snapshot, if you will, of the new stuff and then scurry back home to the Google base camp, where they dump their snapshots into the Google databases (just using Google as an example, if the most obvious one).

There, the info sits until the next time someone enters a keyword or set of keywords that matches, in some way, the info the spider collected. Google pulls that info (along with the info from all the other hundreds of pages that fit the relevant criteria), crunch some numbers according to a complex proprietary algorithm designed to calculate relevance, and then spits it all back in the now-familiar 10-item-per-page list format we all know and love.

Stale SEO Gets You Nowhere Slowly

By now you can probably get an idea of why those little spiders are the keepers of the keys to your kingdom, at least in one sense. That’s the sense that if you’re not on page one, you can probably hang it up because your clients aren’t likely to click on pages 2 through 8,467 of their Google results, and thus aren’t likely to find you at all.

But that’s not the end of the story. There is, unfortunately for us all, a lot more. Now, it’d be great if it were different. We could all just run some numbers, figure out the ideal percentage and location of the right keywords, and be done with it. Of course, that approach to SEO (Search Engine Optimization — the process of making a site more search-engine-friendly and readable by those spiders) is, frankly, a stale and limited interpretation of SEO’s concepts. (Also, it doesn’t work.)

The truth is no one knows exactly how to get your site to number one with a bullet except for Google’s engineers and with few exceptions, they ain’t talking.

But what we can do is suss out some general principles judging from what works and what doesn’t. And that leaves us with this:

8 Bits of Generally Accepted SEO Wisdom

• Relevant content beats irrelevant content.
• Many incoming links beats fewer incoming links.
• Incoming links from popular sites beats incoming links from unpopular sites.
• Incoming links from relevant and trusted sites beats incoming links from sites commonly referred to as “link farms” (spammy sites that don’t offer any unique contribution but merely offer page after page of links).
• Frequently updated beats stagnant and stale.
• Relevant keywords in meta tags, in page titles, and in headings on the page beats no meta tags, no page titles and no headings as well as tags, titles and headings without relevant keywords.
• Text that’s friendly to search engines beats “the unfriendlies” — text contained in Flash, image, or Java files on the page, or that’s accessible only via a form or other required action on the part of the viewer.
• Structure that requires no more than 2 clicks to get from any page to any other page beats byzantine site architecture and the “can’t get there from here” approach.

Remind you of anything? Frequently updated … relevant content … many incoming links … from trusted and relevant sites (when even appellate judges are linking to blogs in their opinions, you know blogs have arrived) … keyword-rich (because you’re writing about the same stuff in different ways) … archives and categories make for easy navigation in the preferred 2-click model …

This is a blog, in a nutshell. And they are natural SEO winners.

Not the End of the Story — Just a Very Good Beginning

I don’t want anyone out there like Robert to get the wrong idea. Blogs are not the end of your SEO story. You can’t just put the blawg on the web and say “OK, come and get me!” Not by a long shot.

There’s a lot of work to be done with that blawg — and that, really, is what this book’s all about.

In a bit I’m going to edit this post with an upload of the Table of Contents — just for David G. who asked very nicely, but also for all those who might be interested in taking a look at what’s “under the cover” so you can make an informed choice about whether Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging might be right for you.

Ask me your questions in the comments below, just like Robert did, and just as I did with this post, I’ll do my best to answer them all! (And don’t worry, Robert - this isn’t the end of the answer. Part 2 - and Reason #2 that blogs rule where lawyer marketing is concerned — is coming tomorrow.)

Update: Here it is, the Table of Contents for Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging in PDF format. (Ignore the page numbers — that happened because this draft was taken from the outline version. The actual book is now at 200+ pages.)

It’s huge — over 200 pages and counting (more being added every day).

It’s helpful — solving a real problem faced by every solo and small firm lawyer out there.

It’s proven — real world, demonstrable results.

And it’s blessedly free of hype.

Unfortunately, you can’t get it — not just yet. But you can do something now to help me make it even better — as well as be the first to get it, together with some equally powerful bonuses worth over $350, at almost half the cost that everyone else will pay when it goes live.

What is it? (It’s it. What is it? — sorry. Had to get my Faith No More on for a minute. I’m done now.)

It’s no secret I have been endeavoring to create a subniche for my coaching business as “the blawg coach.” But, I admit, my attention’s been scattered away from that for awhile — between the law practice (the post-Christmas period for consumer bankruptcy lawyers is like tax season is for accountants), plus my new About.com gig, and then the Macs Practice Law event (which was terrific, and I am SO glad I did it, for so many reasons, but — it did take some time).

And I didn’t even mention my very first priorities, which are always my well-being and my daughter’s well-being. (’Fess up - how many of you are shocked I didn’t list my daughter first? This is a lesson I learned from my amazing mom, and reinforced by dozens of flight attendants thereafter: always put your own oxygen mask on first, then you can assist others.)

But something happened lately that woke me up in a big way to this one, single, inescapable fact:

My colleagues — by whom I mean all solo and small firm lawyers, everywhere — have a desperate need to know how to build their businesses in an organic, inexpensive, effective way that maximizes their return on as little effort as possible.

What happened? I’ll tell you about that later. Right now, what I want to do is get your help.

By the way, this post is being cross-posted on both The Inspired Solo and Blawg In A Box, but both link to the same ultimate destination: this survey.

Here’s the deal: I’ve completely reevaluated how we launched “Blawg In A Box” (the product and services) last year — not just the launch but the way it was packaged. Now, the response to this launch was, frankly, amazing and immediate. It exceeded every expectation I had allowed myself. That proved to me that there was a real need for some direct assistance with marketing the solo and small firm practice online.

But the delivery method we chose, frankly — well, it sucked. It just wasn’t feasible to farm this stuff out to others in the time frame we needed. And the clients deserved better. Would that I could clone myself! (Then again, that never really works out too well in the movies …)

So, I took a deep breath, and dove in to a brand new concept for the delivery of this valuable information: an e-book. It’s called Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging: How to Stop Wishing For Clients & Start Getting Them — The Inspired Way.

It’s almost finished. But I need some help to put the finishing touches on and make sure I’m delivering what you really want to know — and this is where you come in:

I need to know what you need to know!

The book’s mostly written, and I can guarantee that it will have everything you need to know to set up, launch, and drive massive amounts of the right kind of traffic to your very own website or blog. But I don’t want to stop there — I want to make sure I really answer your questions.

I figured — why not go to the source?

So I’ve set up a VERY short 3 question survey here, and I’d really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete it. Come April 1st (yep, you read that right!) Cheap & Brilliant Blawgging will be available for download, and it’ll be a better resource for your input.

Now, this survey is completely anonymous — you’re not required to give me your email address. I just want your input. However, you do have the option (completely within your discretion of course!) to request to receive more information about a very special pre-release offer of this ebook at almost half the cost the book will sell for come April 1.

That release price, by the way, is $89. The pre-release price will be $49. Only the people who ask to get that information will be eligible for the special pricing; the reason why is, frankly, that one of the bonuses requires a significant investment of time on my part, and I just cannot afford to give that away to lots of folks without at least recouping the full cost of the book. I’d love to, mind you — but I just can’t, between a full-time law practice and being a single parent! But for a few list members, it shouldn’t be a problem.

So, what do you say? Help me out?

There are in fact big doings afoot from inspired solo consulting, at both of our blogs — The Inspired Solo and Blawg In A Box.

For one thing, you might have noticed that things look a bit different around here. This design is also one of WordPress’s countless gorgeous, functional, and completely free themes. (Sorry, big blawg companies.)

And at The Inspired Solo, we got rid of all the ads — even the affiliate links! (We also removed the monthly archives, but that was pure aesthetics. I just didn’t like the way they looked.)

Yep — big doings. Huge news.

All I can say is this:

• There is a method to my madness.
• And there will be a MAJOR announcement here tomorrow.

Don’t miss it — watch this space!