A year ago last week I had just passed the bar. Today: some 90 clients later with some excellent results for those clients, and some excellent results for me not only in building a law practice, but in learning what I need to represent my clients effectively.
I started last year with a WordPress, a domain, and a dream. My wife was freaking out: you need to go “network”, by which she meant go to mixer-type bar events to meet other lawyers. I’m not the “networking” type.
I spent later September and all of October and much of November building out my website, and figuring out how to get it to the top of Google. I took to heart some of the concepts here – you should get people to your website, and get them to stick on your website by writing decent content.
That website, as I’ve written elsewhere, has produced more than 90 percent of my businesses. In a way, that worries me to be so heavily dependent on the web. In another way, it doesn’t given that the web isn’t going anywhere and other lawyers aren’t really cognizant of how important it is from a retail law perspective.
So atop (or close to atop) Google I sit, dominating keywords like criminal lawyer raleigh and raleigh criminal lawyer and on and on.
I’ve done it by brute force. Creating content and creating links to that content. I’m limited in what I can do in terms of soliciting – meaning, I’m not allowed to “solicit” – but I’m not limited in what I can do to try to build up my reputation online.
But now I want to make it better. I want the right people – people in need of a lawyer – to be compelled to call me. I also want the website to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, so that people who have questions, but don’t want to hire a lawyer, can find their answers without picking up the phone.
I need new ideas on what to try.
Keith says:
How about a forum?
September 4, 2010 — 9:27 pm
Brian Wilson says:
Check this out: http://frascona.com/practice/realesta.htm#resources.
These guys are the top Real Estate attorneys in Colorado by writing answers to common questions they get and just giving the answers away. When I had a legal question, I would go to their site first. If I couldn’t find the answer, I would give them a call and hire them for the work. Good luck.
September 5, 2010 — 7:24 am
Greg Swann says:
That was my suggestion, too, either a FAQ or a bunch of FAQ-like articles. Put ’em in their own category and you can echo them in the sidebar for easy access. I wrote more than 200 short columns for the Arizona Republic. I put them in my sidebar, and, not only do they answer a lot of common questions, they glue visitors onto us like nothing else we’re doing.
September 5, 2010 — 7:45 am