What Is User Intent?

User intent is the reason why a person makes an online search. Most searches for business services happen online today, so an effective SEO strategy involves understanding what people want and providing content that answers their questions quickly, clearly, and persuasively.

Google knows this — and its algorithms are custom-built to detect the most credible sources and rank them highly. If you want to top the list, your content should provide practical guidance that keeps users reading, not bouncing (bouncing refers to a user visiting your website and leaving without taking any further action).

How to Figure Out What Your Audience Wants

For content that delivers, you must know your business goals. Let’s say you want your medical malpractice caseload to flourish. You need to learn what people are searching for. Here’s how to find out:

• Identify popular keywords – Conventional wisdom might lead you to believe users are Googling “medical malpractice attorney.” Some certainly are. But tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs could return a very different result. You may find more people are querying “how to win a medical malpractice case” instead. You can leverage that knowledge by tailoring your content to make Google happy.
• Know your client demographic – Are your clients typically high net-worth individuals or do you draw from a more diverse client base? The tone and substance of your content should align with the target audience to generate valuable leads.
•  Ask your clients – Inquire about how existing clients found you. If they say “online,” that’s evidence that your content is doing a good job at matching user intent. If clients are primarily coming to you another way, it’s a fair sign that your website needs work.

Making Your Content Easy to Read

Even Google gets it wrong sometimes. Ever visited a highly ranked website, started reading, and clicked off before finishing the first paragraph or two?

Bouncing away is your brain’s way of saying the content did not match your user intent — and most likely, it’s because it wasn’t readable. Here are tips for making your content easy to read.

• Omit the legalese – Too much technical language can be overwhelming. More than half of Americans read at the sixth-grade level, so the information on your website should stay within the middle-school range. You’re more marketable when you’re readable.
• Clear headlines and subtopics – Your headers should reflect exactly what your content covers so readers get the answers they want right away.
• Bullet points – Large chunks of text are difficult to process. Bullets and lists are visually pleasing and help users skim, not skip.
• Add visuals – Images, videos, and infographics can be appealing ways to keep a reader engaged.

Consultwebs Can Help with All Your Content Needs!

Getting your content to match user intent isn’t just about improving your SEO — but it certainly helps with that. Strong content creates a valuable experience for your visitors and gains trust.

By focusing on what your audience is searching for and presenting it in a practical, user-friendly format, you’re setting your law firm up for success.

For more information about how you can create content that cares and converts, reach out to us for a call with an experienced marketing advisor.

The post Does Your Law Firm’s Content Match User Intent? appeared first on Consultwebs.

Are you investing time and money in marketing efforts? Then you’ll want to know the secret behind creating consistent content without wasting time, effort, and money. Stay with us, and we’ll show you how.

Studies show around 60% of marketers update their content 2-5 times, but only 29% have a strategy for repurposing content.

As marketers, we can 100% confirm: repurposing content is one of the most important aspects of investing in digital marketing – especially those investing in social media. 

One of the main reasons why firms should invest in platforms where they may or may not see a 1-1 attribution to the bottom line is to….stay visible! Not every user will have the urgency to hire an attorney right then and there, but if and when the time comes, you want them to think of you. This is possible when you constantly put yourself out there and repeat your message(s).

Repurposing content is a way to fully capitalize your content by repeating your messaging in the most creative ways and consistently posting without putting in a lot of unnecessary effort.

Let’s dive into what this means, its benefits, and, most importantly, how to start recycling content.

What’s Content Recycling and Why Should Firms Care?

Content repurposing, also known as content recycling, is re-using content and presenting it in a new format and/or with new information. Think back to: upgrading, adding extra value, and changing formats.

 So, what are the benefits of content recycling besides saving time? 

• Anything can be repurposed – There are no limitations to what you can re-create.
• Greater content accessibility – You can repackage content and cater to your different audiences across different channels.
• More content diversification – Publishing in different formats increases your visibility and reach.
• Improved SEO rankings – More content means more credibility and links redirecting back to you, thus improving your rankings.

We could go on and on, but now let’s see how you can recycle content with a strategy.

The 7 Clever Ways Firms Can Recycle Content

1. Use your existing data

You can add extra value to your existing content without needing to do external research by going through your existing data.

One of the greatest assets you’ll get from investing in digital marketing, e.g., socials or email, is that everything is trackable. Since there are hundreds of trackable metrics, it’s best to focus on a few metrics. Do you want to know which ones?

Once you have a better idea of what metrics to look into, you can begin to interpret the data in several ways:

• Building case studies based on a previous case
• Creating ebooks 
• Turning relevant statistics and figures into images to repurpose on other platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc.
• Combining the data with existing testimonials and sprinkling them around your site, especially on relevant pages like the testimonials page
• Finding out what your top pieces of content were and repurposing them in other ways (e.g., revamping your top 3 blog posts into a series of educational videos)

2. Focus on evergreen content

There are 2 types of content: 

• Timely content, e.g., a trends report for the year 2022 or a Google update.
• Evergreen content, which stays ‘fresh’ for longer periods, e.g., guidelines, how-tos, checklists, and case studies.

For now, we’ll say: focus on recycling your evergreen content because of its relevance.

3. Maximize your blog posts

Are you investing in content creation? Excellent, now it’s time to maximize it; this is where a newsletter comes in. You can link your blog to a weekly/monthly newsletter promoting snippets, tips, and tricks found in your blog.

Learn How to Segment Your Email List(s) Here

Besides linking a newsletter, you can also: 

• Add mini infographics in the blogs that have loads of numbers and figures
• Create social media carousels with takeaways
• Create a Twitter thread or LinkedIn post
• Guest post your revamped blog with other relevant businesses outside your website
• Highlight relevant quotes 
• Use a VoiceOver service, add text-to-audio, and give users the option to listen to your blog! Fiverr offers this kind of service.

4. Extract quotes from industry leaders

Outside law, not many people know the intricacies of the legal profession, so take advantage of this. Since law firms are thought leaders, feel free to gather quotes, statistics, numbers, and anything else you think is relevant and worth highlighting.

Those heavy-hitting quotes can be repurposed across: 

• PDFs
• Ebooks
• Digital advertisements
• Future blog posts
• Testimonials
• Social media posts

5. Capitalize your podcast

Do you host a podcast? Congratulations! Podcasts are incredible because they complement the rest of your marketing efforts.

These are some ways you can recycle your podcast episodes: 

• Extract quotes from other thought leaders
• Extract snippets and create shorter videos from them
• Publish the audiograms
• Create your own infographics (when data/figures are spoken)
• Repurpose the content for blogs

6. Recycle your social posts

The limit doesn’t exist here! If you’re investing in any social channel, you can also:

• Turn tweets and industry thought-leader quotes into LinkedIn and Instagram posts
• Create memes! Yes, memes. They’re fun, and overall, people engage with them, so why not try them?
• Create a series of images with testimonials and reviews.
• Collaborate with other legal professionals and create a series of partnership posts on a topic that interests your clients and other legal professionals, e.g., partnering with a legal billing business.

7. Get the most out of your slideshows, webinars and presentations

Did you present something that might give your client some extra value? Your clients don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to the law, but you do. If you can disclose any valuable information to them – do it. For example: 

• How pricing works at your firm
• Changes in law
• Specific regulations
• How ___ works

With this type of information, you can: 

• Use the Q&A section of a webinar you hosted in creative ways. Lots of value can be mined from the Q&A time. Depending on the topic, you might be able to use the Q&As for your FAQs page, or find other creative uses for it
• Create videos, especially those related to FAQs your firm gets, e.g., how pricing works
• Post the recording (if possible)
• Create infographics with any relevant figures
• Transcribe and post it

Content is King

Compelling content is vital when trying to capitalize your channels fully. However, it still takes time and effort, especially when trying to create consistent content across different channels.

If you’d like the support doing this, or simply want to discuss your firm’s current status –

Feel free to schedule a 1-1 with our sales consultant Sam Polesak.

The post Repurpose Content appeared first on Consultwebs.

On one hand, most prospects seeking legal services are relatively uninformed regarding legal matters, including decisions about hiring an attorney. Moreover, their client journey typically involves jumping online and ‘Googling.’ If by X or Y reason they end up on your website, they’ll likely want to put a face behind the firm, and thus, they’ll start looking into your firm’s staff, including the attorney biographies.

Remember that your attorney bio is a prospect’s first impression of you; again, it’s one of the most visited pages of your website. Besides being informative, your bio should help visitors keep their eyes on you rather than competitors. Eventually, it should serve as a bridge that connects you directly to those in need of legal services.

We’ve said it time and time again – your attorney bio matters. It’s one of the most important pages on your law firm website. In terms of visits, your attorney bio page often ranks just behind the home page.

Our good friend and law firm marketing expert Larry Bodine reinforces that message in a blog post. The headline says it all: “56 Percent of Law Firm Website Visits Go to Attorney Bios.”

Given how vital lawyer bios are, Larry asks the burning question: “Why are they neglected?”

That’s a good question, indeed. At Consultwebs, we recognize how important those bios are. We work with clients to develop narratives that blend lawyers’ professional and personal highlights and appeal to the law firm website’s visitors.

A Golden Opportunity to Tell Your Story and Sell Your Strengths

When we review visitor analytics for our clients’ law firm websites, we’re consistently struck by one unmistakable fact: Attorney bios tend to be among the most-visited pages on lawyer websites, second only to the home page. The attorney bios typically outrank a law firm’s practice area pages.

What does that mean for you and your law firm’s online marketing efforts? It means your attorney bio page may be your very best opportunity to convert a site visitor into a client. Do not miss this golden opportunity!

Many people are already intimidated by lawyers. The typical attorney bio does little to make the visitor more comfortable. It usually contains a few dry facts — a bare listing of law school graduation dates, memberships in Bars or legal groups, the odd award or two, and a listing of practice areas.

Yes, that’s all good information, and it should be included. But never forget that a visit to your bio page provides the perfect moment to paint a richer portrait of yourself. People prefer to do business with individuals they like and trust. Some prefer to work with someone who is their age, sex and ethnic group and has a similar background. The bottom line is that they want assurance on an emotional level that you care about them and will be personally invested in their case.

At Consultwebs, we conduct interviews with our lawyer clients and encourage them to tell their story. We ask for the details that reveal who they are as legal practitioners as well as people. We want to know why they were drawn to the practice of law. We ask about the defining moments of their careers – the case they won against all odds for a deserving client – that shows they care about their cases and their clients. Our goal is to blend the professional details that demonstrate a lawyer’s experience with the personality traits that serve as strengths in the legal efforts on a client’s behalf.

What should your bio narrative include to capture the person and the professional?

Here are a few points to consider:

• Your approach to the practice of law
• Your areas of expertise
• How you relate to clients
• What attracted you to the practice of law
• Why you selected your practice area
• The personal and legal skills that make you good at your job
• Your community and civic interests
• Hobbies and other non-work activities

You should consider getting to know your clients on another level through social networking. If you have a professional Facebook account (separate from your personal account), you could provide a link to it from your bio page. You may be surprised to find that potential clients are more comfortable contacting you there for legal advice, and you can get the ball rolling on a case with them. Sometimes they might just ask you a question and not really have a case, but you never know when that person might recommend a friend or family member to you, simply because you took the time to show your willingness to communicate with a potential client.

Essential Features of the Perfect Attorney Bio

Law firms offer a service, not a product, and buyers look at the people behind the services. A complete bio can make all the difference and yield the best attorney-client relationship.

1. Attorney Name and Title

Obviously, your name and title should be front and center. Take a look at one of our client’s bio introductions:

This bio also immediately makes good use of space by adding contact information (phone and email) and a call to action to entice the user right off the bat.

Here’s an example of the opening bio for another attorney:

Pro-tip to implement in your name and title: 

• Feel free to think outside the box! As you can see, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all or cookie-cutter template you need to follow. To help you get started, these are the two ways you can organize your bio:

1. Prose: If you’re narratively inclined and have a story to tell, use this format.
2. Lists: If you want to keep it short, sweet, and simple without much “fluff,” then adding lists and bullet points is best.

Your bio should give your readers an immediate idea of who you are, what your values are, and how you work. The key here is to infuse your bio with the proper adjectives and descriptors. Here is a quick exercise to help you come up with the best description of who you are.

• Assume you walked into a room full of people, and a colleague sees you without you seeing them. What do you think they will say about you? Write down what you think in terms of adjectives such as “curious” or “intuitive.”
• Come up with sentences that describe how you fit those adjectives. For the two above, you could come up with something like, “John can identify problems and solve them without the client ever finding out there was an issue.”

2. Headshot

People process images faster than text. Images are processed 60,000 times faster than text. And your prospects are no different. They want to put a face to the name. So once your bio loads, the first impression of you is given by the photo on your bio.

If they get the wrong impression, they won’t hesitate to close the page and continue searching. This is why images are such an essential piece of the puzzle. Your photo should exude professionalism, warmth, and confidence. Here are some rules of thumb you should use to take your picture.

• It should be a headshot.
• It should reflect your personality and character. These are communicated through your pose, facial expression, angle, lighting, and background.

Whether you opt for a DIY or professionally taken photo, a quality headshot can boost your first impression. The most important tip when it comes to headshots is making sure the background is not overly distracting, which is why a neutral backdrop works best. Take a look at our client’s headshots:

Are you opting for a DIY photo session for you and your team? We’ve got you.

Download the FREE DIY Headshot Tips & Tricks for All Legal Professionals.

3. Expertise and Experience

This is the “meat” behind your bio. Although a lot could be included here, try to be succinct by keeping this section between 1-3 paragraphs. It should include:

• Who the attorney is
• What they do
• Why do they do it
• How long they have been doing it

Pro-tip to implement in your attorney expertise and experience section: 

Should you use a first-person or third-person tone of voice? It’s generally recommended that bios are written in the third person as it lends authority and makes it easier to describe accomplishments without sounding boastful.

What kind of law do you practice?

Although it goes without saying, you will be surprised at how many attorney profiles fail to deliver this point. Some omit it entirely, and others don’t quite manage to get the message across.

Your bio should include a section that breaks down what kind of law you practice in layman’s terms. Technical language and legal jargon may sound condescending to the readers, or it may just confuse them – both instances will typically cause them to turn away from you.

Once you write your bio, you can run it by some non-attorney staff to see if they fully understand it as well.

What makes you different?

Why should they hire you instead of the tens of attorney websites open in their background tabs? What sets you apart from them?

Although this should be spread out throughout the bio, to supercharge your attorney bio, you should close your bio with why they should choose you. You can complete an accomplishment, award, or recognition for your services with a case you handled.

4. Accolades, Publications and Cases

By adding accolades, publications, and verdicts, you’re not just telling; you’re showing! This section is critical because it’s where you get to sell yourself.

While this section should be around 1-2 paragraphs, don’t be afraid to add lists and videos, or pull quotes, and reviews from online directories like Avvo and leverage a unique design to showcase these. Our client and attorney, Brian Zeiger, made excellent use of this in his bio:

Pro-tip to implement in your bio’s accolades, publications and cases: 

This is where prospects are looking to see what you have to offer and what you have accomplished, so if there’s something you feel is worth bringing up, now’s the time.

5. Education Breakdown and Notable Accomplishments

Lastly, adding your education and notable accomplishments helps establish further authority and allows prospects to dig in deeper and find a connection with the attorney, e.g., attending the same university.

If you Zoom in on the bio above, it’s clear that he keeps his educational background to the point:

Pro-tip to implement in your education background:

Try to use approximately 10 bullet points for this section. If you need to add a sentence, make sure it’s no longer than 1 sentence per bullet point.

6. Leaving “Breadcrumbs” In The Attorney Bio

Those are the must-haves in a legal bio, but if you’d like to go the extra mile, you can leave “breadcrumbs” to encourage users to eventually book a call or schedule a meeting so you can nurture them into cases.

This is where you can use your attorney bio to link to other lead converting pages like the Contact Us page. For example, attorney Harvey B. Morris adds 3 strong calls to action that help capture leads and obtain their information:

7. Is Your Attorney Bio Set to Convert?

As one of the most visited pages of a law firm’s website, the attorney bio should be set to convert. So, we’d like to end with our last pro-tip: don’t forget to update your biography!

Your web profile isn’t static, especially when firms are growing. Ideally, you should tweak this page at least once a year. This could be as simple as changing the call to action, updating the headshot, or adding a new article/video.

While it may seem overwhelming to check all the boxes mentioned above, crafting an impactful biography can be the differentiating factor between gaining and losing a quality lead.

It should be easy for a potential client to contact you using more traditional methods as well. Thus, we try to include contact information – for instance, phone numbers and email addresses – as part of attorney bios. A potential client just read about you and liked your story. Include a quick contact form on your page. Make it easy for them to get in touch.

Other elements to consider for inclusion on your bio page:

• Custom photography
• Impressive verdicts and settlements (assuming your State Bar allows these)
• Video
• Testimonials (if allowed by your jurisdiction’s ethics rules)

8. Optimize for SEO

As mentioned above, 80% of legal website traffic goes to biographies, and more than 50% of people click the first three results on the Google results page. As such, you should put effort into ensuring that you rank higher than other attorneys offering similar services. You can do this by optimizing your bio for search engines.

Because you know who you are targeting, you can research what words they mostly search for and include them in your bio. These are known as keywords. You should include them sparingly to avoid being penalized by search engines by lowering your rank.

Also, you should include geographical information on where you practice. For example, instead of saying “John is the best lawyer,” say, “John is the best lawyer for auto accidents in Kissimmee, Florida. His specialization includes road traffic accidents.” This will ensure that all local searches lead to your page. Additionally, it caters to your ideal niche market.

If you’d like to ensure your legal bio showcases the best of what your firm has to offer, we’re here to help.

The post Attorney Biography Webpage appeared first on Consultwebs.

What is A.I.?

A.I. is a type of computer software that can learn and make decisions on its own, without human input. It has the ability to analyze data and recognize patterns, which allows it to perform tasks such as translating text, identifying images, or answering questions.

How can A.I. be used in content marketing and SEO strategies?

A.I. can help to create the best possible online experience for your visitors by providing them with relevant articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos based on their interests or needs at the time of viewing these materials (based on an analysis of previous visits). For example: if someone has visited several pages on your website that are related to divorce, A.I. may suggest an article on the topic of divorce law when they visit the site again.

A.I. can also be used to improve your website’s SEO ranking by helping you to identify and target the right keywords for your content. It can also help you to track the performance of the content that you’ve created so far.

Benefits of using A.I.-generated content:

• It’s easy to use and requires little technical knowledge or training, which means you can focus on the creative side rather than the technical aspects of producing quality material for your website visitors. For example: if someone has visited several pages on your website that are related to divorce, the A.I. may suggest an article on the topic of divorce law when they visit the site again (based on an analysis of previous visits).
• It allows businesses to reach larger audiences by providing them with relevant content based on their interests or needs at the time of viewing these materials (based on the A.I.’s analysis of previous visits).
• It can help you identify the most popular topics for your audience and create content around those themes, which is likely to be shared more often than other types of content (e.g., blog posts that are not related to any specific topic).

Limitations of A.I.-generated content:

• The quality of the content may not be as good as manually-created content. It can be expensive to implement the technology and take time before it starts generating results for you or your business; however, if done correctly from the beginning (i.e., by carefully selecting keywords that are relevant to your audience) the benefits can be long-lasting.
• There is the potential for the A.I.-generated content to go out of date quickly if it’s not regularly updated, so you’ll need to factor in the time and cost of doing this into your overall budget.
• If you’re not careful about the keywords that you choose, the A.I. may generate content that is irrelevant to your target audience or even offensive (e.g., if you’re a lawyer and the A.I.-generated content uses legal jargon that’s not appropriate for your clientele).

How to ensure your website’s safety when using A.I.-generated content:

• Always vet the keywords that the A.I will use before you start generating content so that you can be sure they are relevant to your target audience and won’t cause any offense.
• Regularly check the accuracy of the A.I.-generated content against other sources (e.g., other websites, published books) to ensure its accuracy.
• Use a plagiarism checker to make sure the A.I.-generated content doesn’t contain any copied text from other sources; the last thing you want to do is get sued for copyright infringement!
• Regularly check the accuracy of the A.I.-generated content against other sources (e.g., other websites, published books) to ensure its accuracy; if it’s not accurate enough then don’t publish the post on your website as this could damage the reputation of your business.

Conclusion

We hope this blog post helped you understand the basics of A.I., how it can be used in content marketing and SEO strategies, its benefits, limitations, potential risks associated with using A.I.-generated content along with some helpful tips on ensuring your website’s safety when using A.I.-generated content to create online content for lawyers. Sign up for our Consultwebs newsletter below if you want more information about any of these topics or would like us to work with you on your next project!

Here’s the biggest plot twist you didn’t see coming:

This whole blog post except for this last paragraph was actually written by A.I!

We have to say though, it has been edited a bit since it tends to repeat itself here and there. It’s also worth noting that when we checked it with the Hemingway App, an app which uses A.I. to “make your writing bold and clear” – this content received the worst score we’ve seen thus far! Usually we try to keep the score under 9 and this post ranked as high as 13!  It’s noticeable that A.I. is still a work in progress.

While the human touch is indispensable it’s still a good idea to work better, smarter and faster with innovative technology like this. If you’re looking to move ahead far and fast today, it’s possible! We’re here to help.

The post AI Content Marketing for Law Firms appeared first on Consultwebs.

‘Significant Objects’ was an experiment devised by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn. The purpose of it was to demonstrate the power of stories. In short, they went on their computer, purchased 200 objects with the criteria of each being $1.25 on average, and spent a total of $129. Then 200 contributing writers wrote short stories for the items, and do you want to know what the experimenters did?

They sold the items for around $8,000. That’s a 6,395% increase, and that is the power of storytelling!

So, what’s so great about stories? We’ll tell you in 4 simple words: people relate to them. Whether you’re watching a movie, an ad, reading a book, listening to a podcast, or even standing in front of the juror: stories are central players.

Since the beginning of time, we’ve been telling stories, and even if we don’t realize it, we also tend to think, remember, and talk in stories. In business, law firms included, building a strong narrative can be the differentiator between you and the rest. As humans, we are wired to respond to narratives. It is the best way to capture attention, retain information, build relationships, and more.

Does that mean that only professional writers are storytellers? Not at all! As a matter of fact, lawyers are superb storytellers. They have to thread a storyline for the entire courtroom. What’s more, lawyers depend on stories told by their clients! In a way, you could say we’re all storytellers.

But why do we narrate events? 

• To provide a direction around the unknown.
• To bring people together. If your story resonates, educates, and informs – you’ll build deeper connections. And this will lead to higher customer loyalty.
• To inspire. We can all relate to the tales of the heroes, the underdogs, and heartbreaks.

Storytelling, specifically business storytelling, is the art of sharing the experiences behind your brand, employees, customers, and advocates. Mastering this art is paramount to connecting with your audience. This is especially true for firms because people hire them based on trust.

Stick around and learn how to master the art of legal storytelling.

Everything you do in business has a narrative

That’s a fact. Everything in business involves a narrative: your website, your values, your case, etc. When implemented correctly, you can expect to:

• Make your firm relatable and simultaneously memorable.
• Gain a better understanding of your audience(s). You’ll be able to answer questions like: what’s the client looking for? Are they looking for the most affordable or best solution? How familiar are they with the legal process?
• Highlight your “Why.” With a compelling story, you’ll be able to communicate your unique value proposition across all your channels.
• Drives emotional connection. This is big! Why? Because people make emotional decisions. We’ll explain more in the upcoming chapters.
• Foster brand loyalty.
• Position you as a thought-leader, the guide, and ultimately the hero!

Is this something you aspire towards? Then we’ve got the formula that’ll set you up for success. To build a strong connection, you can follow the 5 C’s in storytelling:

1. Circumstance: Set the scene. By doing this at the beginning, you’ll help users understand the narrative.
2. Curiosity: Spark the reader’s interest with a hook at the beginning or really just anywhere. You’ll want to create a thirst for more.
3. Characters: The human touch will always be key. By adding characters and faces, you’ll give the readers a person they’re able to root for. For example, in court, the ultimate hero is your client.
4. Conversations: Although some people will want to see more numbers and statistics, most people tend to respond to conversations better.
5. Conflict: Every hero goes through the hero’s journey where they face challenges that lead them to their ultimate transformation.

Besides following the 5 C’s, here’s a FREE checklist that can help you brainstorm epic stories around your firm’s vision and mission:

Values – what does your firm stand for? Why was it founded? Ultimately, how do its values reflect your values?

People – Who are the people behind your firm? What are their stories? What inspired them to join the legal profession? How do you connect with people in the language they understand best?

History – What is the narrative behind everything you do in the firm? How did your firm come to be? What problems do you feel are essential to solving?

Journey – What’s your firm’s current situation, and where do you see yourself in X amount of years?

Lessons in understanding human nature

In Harper Lee’s American literature classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, the fictional attorney Atticus Finch stands quite stern but fair – he represents morality.

He implements storytelling with empathy by stepping into his client’s shoes. He knows that’s he’s fighting an uphill battle with the court against him, but he valiantly tells the story using Aristotle’s 3 Pillars of Persuasion:

1. Logos – (Facts) The proof provided in the persuasive argument.
2. Ethos – (Character) Atticus’ poise as a fictional lawyer makes us believe he’s credible. Although some might argue this doesn’t matter, it’s quite the contrary. When the body language matches the story, it is even more powerful.
3. Pathos – (Emotions) Refers to the emotions conveyed. What emotions do you want to stir?

It is no wonder the actor who plays the attorney, Gregory Peck, won an Academy Award for his performance in this movie. He also shot this 9-minute closing argument in one take.

Great acting, camera work, and most of all, a great story

The film “Philadelphia” is based on the true story of an attorney who sued one of the world’s largest law firms for firing him because he had AIDS. This snippet starts with the attorney’s opening statement in the courtroom. Do you want to know what makes Denzel Washington’s character such a great storyteller in this scene? Here are a few things we can learn:

1. He starts by stating a fact from the get-go. In storytelling, beginning with a hook, a strong opinion, a shocking truth, or anything that catches attention is the key to a powerful intro.
2. He then walks the trial judges through the pointers he’s going to elaborate on. In storytelling, this means guiding the readers to the message.
3. At last, he eloquently plays into the jury’s emotions by showing them there’s a social lack of understanding of AIDS (in the 90s).

Take a look at Denzel Washington’s opening statement:

Emotional marketing sells

According to studies, we do not make decisions logically but rather emotionally. Do you know how we use our rational thought? Well, it turns out that we use it to argue the emotional position we took! In the end, emotions require less effort than logic. Mind-blowing, isn’t it?!

With just this fact alone, it’s clear to see that emotional marketing sells.

Often we think happiness is the ultimate destination or state of being. However, all emotions are valid and play a big role in storytelling. Joy, gratitude, interest, anger, love, altruism, fear, satisfaction, and relief are powerful emotions.

So, which emotions sell the most? The answer is, it depends. Like in storytelling and law, we take a position and then find arguments supporting that view. The trick is to identify the sentiment that best fits your message.

To find out which emotions work best, think back to this question: what do you want the reader to feel? According to Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson (as found in HBR), “a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience.” This is called neural coupling.

Neuroscientists are still looking more into these findings. But, ultimately, when we dive into a story rich in details, data, expression, images, etc. – we put ourselves in that situation.

Touching on your prospect’s deep unspoken emotional needs converts more than you might think.

Storytelling Best Practices

1. Define the core message. Whether your story is 10 seconds long or 10 pages long, the core message must be established before anything.
2. When using emotional marketing, begin with something relatable and something your audience can agree with.
3. Focus on building a hero-centric story structure. Today’s marketing is more client-centric than ever. Therefore, lawyers should position themselves as the guide who helps the client (the hero) find a solution to fix their problem.
4. Use client testimonials. No one can communicate how terrific your firm’s services are better than those who have already experienced them.
5. Build a strong connection by evoking your audience’s desires, dreams, and aspirations.
6. Show you care by demonstrating empathy.
7. Add case studies. There’s no better way to prove you can bring results than case studies. In them, you can:
   • Tell the client’s story using the hero’s journey: hook, introduction, rising action, climax, and the ultimate resolution.
8. Choose the story’s medium. This will depend on resources and budget.
9. Publish it! If it involves the client’s information, make sure you get their permission beforehand. Once that’s taken care of, share and promote it! Creating is only half the battle. Sharing is the other half.

Emotional storytelling: the best way to build a connection

In our first part of Storytelling for Lawyers, we talked about how we as humans do not make decisions logically but rather emotionally. This proves that emotional marketing in storytelling fortifies deeper connections with others, and from a sales point of view, it sells.

Jebaily Law Firm knows how to connect with its audience using the power of emotions. Here’s how they implemented this:

• The managing partner, George Jebaily, starts by pointing out the pain points his customers face, e.g don’t know the system.
• Then, they build on trust by stating they’re there to help.
• Afterward, they provide the solutions to the pain points.
• In the end, the message is tied back to compassion by reinforcing the client isn’t alone and extending a helping hand.

Influence with stories backed up by social proof

Without a doubt, testimonials are influential for several reasons. If we’re speaking numbers, they help convert – they bump conversions on sales pages by 34%.

On the flip side, your clients also want to see social proof like this. They’re curious to know how others did and what they got out of it. More so, customers trust each other even if they don’t personally know each other. This is the secret behind successful testimonials:

• The foundation – In stories, there needs to be a conflict to overcome an obstacle. Why did the client seek out your firm? What problems were they facing?
• The journey – The character goes on a trip to solve the conflict. In this case, the client seeks the firm for solutions.
• The end – There are no rules except to have a clear objective in mind. Think back to the main goal of the video. Do you want to build awareness? Trust?

Jebaily Law Firm also has an excellent example of a client testimonial that follows this structure:

Share your story

Every tale told is designed with a purpose in mind. Whatever that purpose may be: convert, convince, persuade, and more – it’s paramount you share your stories.

Storytelling is an integral part of your entire legal strategy – from the courtroom to your ads. In a world where we’re constantly bombarded by information, a unique narrative can help you cut through the noise, stand out and most importantly, grab the attention of those that need you and vice versa, those you need.

If you’re looking to ensure your stories strike a chord with consumers time and time again, it’s possible. Our content experts are here to help.

The post Storytelling for Lawyers appeared first on Consultwebs.

Is your attorney bio really that important? Does it really help pull in clients? To answer these questions, let us look at some stats, shall we?:

• Bios account for about 80% of website traffic for law firms.
• Attorney bios are second to personal recommendations in influencing hiring selection.
• 78% of in-house counsels use bios to research and hire outside counsel.

With these, there are two things we can agree on. First, most people use biographies to validate their attorneys of choice, and second, the higher you rank on Google search results, the more people there will be that get to see what you offer. To further exemplify how important rankings are for law firms, here’s a quick scenario of the ‘domino effects’ visibility could have on your firm’s business. If people Google your firm and can’t find you, especially if they don’t know who you are (we know, that stings), they won’t have you top of mind and then wouldn’t have you in their go-to options when needing the firm’s services.

If you view your attorney bio from your prospects’ point of view, you will find that users today come from all different channels because they don’t have a linear customer journey. To paint the picture, let’s say there’s a prospect, David, interested in having the financial advisor services of your estate planning firm. He’s been reading an article on your website about all the technical steps. Then he deviates and clicks on one of the attorney’s linked profiles, e.g., their LinkedIn profile, and wants to read more about this lawyer’s specializations and such. Will David find all the information he was looking for? He better, because if he doesn’t and finds a competitor of yours that does answer all of his questions, then, well… we all know how that story will likely end.

That said, to increase the number of clients, you need to make sure that your bio’s visibility ranks higher on search engine results and fully delivers all the information that your prospects are looking for. To achieve this, here are three ways you can highlight your attorney profile to the max:

1. Focus On The Basics

How often have you exited a website because you couldn’t find what you were looking for fast enough?

A common mistake in most attorney profiles is providing too much information. Of course, a high word count is necessary if you have many accomplishments and that is also essential for SEO, but oftentimes the client wants to know one thing out of the hundreds you have in your bio!

You only have a few seconds to impress the reader. Research shows it takes three seconds for someone to determine if they like you and want to do business with you. To help the reader digest all of the information on your site, quickly scan your profile and find what they need, make sure to focus on the basics such as:

Who are you?

Your bio should give your readers an immediate idea of who you are, what your values are, and how you work. The key here is to infuse your bio with the proper adjectives and descriptors. Here is a quick exercise to help you come up with the best description of who you are.

• Assume you walked into a room full of people, and a colleague sees you without you seeing them. What do you think they will say about you? Write down what you think in terms of adjectives such as “curious” or “intuitive.”
• Come up with sentences that describe how you fit those adjectives. For the two above, you could come up with something like, “John can identify problems and solve them without the client ever finding out there was an issue.”

Don’t focus too much on your academic qualifications as you talk about yourself, even if they are impressive. After you have been in business for a while, academic qualifications don’t significantly impact the decision of your prospective client as much as your professional results and personal characteristics. So, mention them in passing.

What kind of law do you practice?

Although it goes without saying, you will be surprised at how many attorney profiles fail to deliver this point. Some omit it entirely, and others don’t quite manage to get the message across.

Your bio should include a section that breaks down what kind of law you practice in layman’s terms. Technical language and legal jargon may sound condescending to the readers, or it may just confuse them – both instances will typically cause them to turn away from you.

Once you write your bio, you can run it by some non-attorney staff to see if they fully understand it as well.

What makes you different?

Why should they hire you instead of the tens of attorney websites open in their background tabs? What sets you apart from them?

Although this should be spread out throughout the bio, to supercharge your attorney bio, you should close your bio with why they should choose you. You can complete an accomplishment, award, or recognition for your services with a case you handled.

2. Use A Great Photo

People process images faster than text. Images are processed 60,000 times faster than text. And your prospects are no different. They want to put a face to the name. So once your bio loads, the first impression of you is given by the photo on your bio.

If they get the wrong impression, they won’t hesitate to close the page and continue searching. This is why images are such an essential piece of the puzzle. Your photo should exude professionalism, warmth, and confidence. Here are some rules of thumb you should use to take your picture.

• It should be a headshot.
• It should reflect your personality and character. These are communicated through your pose, facial expression, angle, lighting, and background.

Here’s an example of one of our client’s attorney profile:

3. Optimize for SEO

As mentioned above, 80% of legal website traffic goes to biographies, and more than 50% of people click the first three results on the Google results page. As such, you should put effort into ensuring that you rank higher than other attorneys offering similar services. You can do this by optimizing your bio for search engines.

Because you know who you are targeting, you can research what words they mostly search for and include them in your bio. These are known as keywords. You should include them sparingly to avoid being penalized by search engines by lowering your rank.

Also, you should include geographical information on where you practice. For example, instead of saying “John is the best lawyer,” say, “John is the best lawyer for auto accidents in Kissimmee, Florida. His specialization includes road traffic accidents.” This will ensure that all local searches lead to your page. Additionally, it caters to your ideal niche market.

Shine, Connect and Build Your Attorney Bio. Supercharge Your Attorney Bio

Lawyers that are in-it-to-win-it know that it’s critical to create an excellent first impression. As a result, prospects connect with and trust them immediately and are willing to hire their services.

Undoubtedly, attorney bios are very effective in pulling in clients.

To take advantage of the enormous potential attorney profiles bring, you may want to partner up with a team with significant digital marketing experience and a track record to prove it. This is where Consultwebs comes into play.

We are a digital marketing agency that employs various strategies, tactics, and online tools to help law firms attain their marketing goals. For over two decades, our experts’ primary goal has been to help our esteemed law firm clients dominate search engines, score high-quality leads, sign new cases, and leverage long-term tactics to achieve online success.

Do you want a bio that ranks higher in Google search results? Do you want a compelling attorney bio? Talk to us today.

The post Attract More Prospects by Supercharging Your Attorney Bio appeared first on Consultwebs.

The idea of buyer personas emerged in the 1990s and ever since the social media boom, most (if not all) law firms that are going digital have their ideal buyer persona already figured out. Knowing who their ideal client helps law firms put “a face” to the ideal customer. You could say that your buyer persona is basically like the compass within your customer journey map that guides you in the right direction towards more qualified leads.

As your law firm evolves, so should the buyer persona. Businesses change. People change. But many businesses fail to realize this and never go back and update the buyer persona. Why? A lot of businesses get distracted with measurements and metrics and fail to look back at their most important asset, their clients.

According to the Search Engine Journal, “Many content marketers had changed their targeting/messaging strategy […] but fewer had revisited their customer/buyer personas.” In other words, a lot of businesses like law firms are missing out on opportunities to grow. You might be, too!

How to create the perfect Persona for for your Law firm Content

Make it Personal

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “it’s not personal, it’s strictly business,” from The Godfather, but we much prefer the tagline, “it’s business, therefore make it personal.”

Business objectives without having the clients’ wants and needs aligned simply won’t do. Nowadays, users have plenty of options to pick from and users want brands they can trust. And how do you build trust? You make it personal. Understand the buyer personas from all of the angles.

Yes, looking into demographics (age, gender, location, etc.) is important…but there are a few other aspects you’ll want to consider, too.

According to Business to Community, you need to know who you are speaking to. To do this, it’s important to go back and create different buyer personas according to their common goals and not common characteristics. (This very important factor is often overlooked).

Why is it important to dig deeper into the buyer persona?

To personalize content. According to Search Engine Journal, “Having a target audience of ‘everyone’ puts you in danger of appealing to no one.” Here’s an example for you to visualize: What perception would you have of a store that sells clothes, groceries, pharmaceuticals, small electronic appliances, and car parts? We asked ourselves the same question and concluded that by targeting so many different audiences with this massive portfolio of offerings, they risk for their potential customers thinking they might have sacrificed quality over quantity. The same applies to the process of content creation!

To survive in today’s competitive legal marketing industry, content has to be personalized to the client. And the more personalized you can get, the more spoken to the right prospect will feel.

Constructing content around a specific target audience can bring your firm a number of benefits such as:

• Developing a deeper understanding of your ideal persona’s wants and needs.
• Connecting with your audience on an emotional level.
• Giving your law firm reference points of its buyer persona.
• Improving your content strategy.
• Increasing campaign efficiency.
• Identifying who you should and shouldn’t target.

And perhaps the most critical benefit of customer personas is more leads.

Creating a buyer persona, or many personas, to better visualize who you want to reach out with your marketing efforts can help your law firm push the personalized aspect of your firm’s marketing. Personalization is important because it shows your firm would go the extra mile to give customers what they need and want. And customers appreciate this. Around 80% of users are more likely to use a service that provides a personalized experience.

Overall, personas are your firm’s North Star towards more calls and cases. If you’re wondering how buyer personas are the secret to your firm’s success, then read on. We’ll explain the buyer persona, how the buyer persona drives engagement, and how it pushes your SEO to exceed your expectations.

Is the Persona the same as the target audience?

Not quite. The buyer persona is a different concept than the target audience. It can be easy to interchange both terms, but your firm must note the differences.

A target audience gives you a general idea of a specific group of people and includes basic demographic information like age, gender, and education. On the other hand, buyer personas go more in-depth and touch on demographics and behavioral aspects. Some of the more in-depth information buyer personas include lifestyles, interests, specific needs, and psychographics. They even have names!

In addition to this, a buyer persona changes throughout the sales funnel. Potential customers looking for information have different wants and needs than a prospect that is ready to call and book your firm’s services. For this reason, law firms can have different personas. Here’s an example: Ready Ronald, who is prepared to take the big step and sign with your firm will not have the same needs as Cautious Carol, who is just starting to research what she might need from an attorney.

Having at least one standardized buyer persona helps shape your firm’s goals and expectations. It can help answer the question, “Does everyone in my firm have the same vision of our ideal customer?”

To help answer this, you can begin crafting your ideal customer with the following buyer persona type of questions:

• Job/Industry questions, i.e., What are the customer’s most significant challenges? How does their typical day look? What are some of their interests?
• Learning questions, i.e., Where does the customer get their information? Who influences their decision-making?
• Personal background questions, i.e., What are their personal and career goals? What are some of the customer’s pain points?
• Shopping preferences questions, i.e., What pushes personas to pick one product or service over another? What’s their preferred form of communication?

While there are plenty more psychographic questions you can ask, these are just a few examples that can help your firm create a marketing strategy that will cater to your audience across the different stages of the customer journey.

Ideal Client Persona: Your key to creating fresh content

Speak Your Client’s Language

According to Hootsuite, keyword search to monitor mentions and competitors is vital real-time information to know what is being said about a business.

According to Neil Patel, gathering all the information from the keyword search gives the business a better reflection of the persona’s search intent and the relationship between certain words.

And why is this important? Because it’s far more efficient to appeal to people that are actually interested in you than trying to please everyone online.

By speaking your customer’s language you can create content that will speak to them directly in channels they are found. This is the moment to make your client’s business your business.

According to Hootsuite, it’s important businesses get out of the feature mindset and start focusing more on the benefits.

Why? Because a feature just says what your business is but the benefits tap into the persona’s psychological wants and needs. For starters, you can think of this: “How would the persona’s life be better if they chose your services over your competitors?”, “Why are the attorneys at your law firm the best bet for a specific client?”

Buyer personas help in the creation of many elements within your firm’s content marketing, and the most crucial one is the customized content itself!

Personalized content helps your firm:

• Identify your prospects’ pain points, i.e., bad customer service or late responses.
• Understand customer habits – i.e., is the average persona impulsive, or do they take their time? How long does the persona usually take to make a decision?
• Understand customer expectations – i.e., what do they expect from your firm in terms of service and results?

To gather this information, your firm can use two different methods: either directly asking clients or using existing customer analytics. The latter works best.

Evaluating your firm through analytics insights gives you more information about your client’s behavior and makes it easier for marketing and sales campaigns. For example, the analysis will help your firm identify and develop a messaging strategy that speaks to your persona.

You can analyze the existing data of your emails, advertisements, PPC, calls-to-action, social media, and other campaigns.

The Power of Emotions

In today’s world, everyone is so focused on metrics, but the reality is that clients are emotional drivers.

Search intent is driven by emotions. According to Kantar’s NeedScope, a new framework tapping into emotional marketing, the “Why?” Is far more important than the “What?”

The truth is that demographics rarely tell (SEO professionals, content creators, writers, etc.) what they need to know about their consumers. It only emphasized the what. According to Google search terms and emotions, there are 6 “Canonical” consumer needs: (Each driven by a combination of “emotional, social, and functional needs”)

It is important businesses within the legal industry tap into the emotional side of the persona’s search intent to understand their goals and objectives more deeply.

Your firm can then implement updated content strategies in:

• Webinars: increases engagement and authority of your firm.
• Interactive content: also increases engagement and builds on trust.
• Emails: emphasizes your firm’s care and consistency.
• Podcasts: increases and retains users in the learning and awareness phases of the sales funnel.
• Videos: increases your firm’s traffic and gives users a push in their decision-making.
• Social media: emphasizes consistency and engagement.

Using the Persona to increase your firm’s rankings

Although many SEO factors make up your firm’s successful marketing, the buyer persona helps tailor the content, so your ideal clients can find you.

The buyer persona gives your firm a push in your SEO strategy by:

• Placing relevant keywords for your client’s research.
• Identifying the pages that get more traffic.
• Helping your SEO optimization, i.e., the SEO schema markup and SEO meta descriptions.
• Optimizing the user experience with design, i.e., preferred colors, calls to action, navigation route, and other design elements.

Besides this, the buyer persona can help your blog posts. By adding a blog section with legal industry-related content, you can get more traffic to your site. It might be challenging to start or remain consistent with this type of content. However, the buyer persona can help you pinpoint topics of interest.

Be there for your clients at the right place and at the right time

With the buyer persona, you can position your firm to be in the right place at the right time for your clients. Creating a persona and keeping it optimized requires constant updates if you want to meet your clients where they are, though.

Strategizing a buyer persona plan, implementing it, and gathering all the results are necessary actions your firm needs to do to guarantee quality content and rankings. But we understand your time is valuable, and these tasks add pressure.

Unlocking Growth

It is important to break out of traditional marketing metrics and tap into the psychological and emotional side of the consumer.

If businesses within the legal industry want to understand where they are heading, it is important to look back, and remember that the client DOES come first. Your client should be considered a personal business, and your client taps into their emotional side with their search intent and loyalty

Business does have to be personalized. It not only gives the entire company-specific directions but it could push your business to long-term success and loyalty with their clients.

Establishing success is also at your reach. If you’d like to know about a more personalized approach to your law firm’s marketing, reach out to us! We’d be happy to help.

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