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Websites don’t generate business for law firms

law firm websites
September 17, 2014

That’s the word from Lee Rosen (@leerosen), a North Carolina family law attorney and widely respected nationally in the areas of law firm management and marketing.

Despite website vendors telling lawyers that their website will work like a money machine, your website only makes you findable, per Rosen. “It doesn’t cause anyone to go looking for you.”

Lee’s point is that lawyers need to build awareness through advertising, education, or social activity. And just not awareness, but trust.

Ads are not the answer as they are expensive and you need to run them forever on and offline to make people aware of you. Plus many lawyers, rightfully so, find them unseemly.

Lee, though referencing blogging and social media, did not limit building awareness through education and social to the net, but I will be. I’m right with Lee though that what makes education and social activity work is that they establish knowledge of the law, credibility, and trustworthiness.

A well done and focused law blog may be the single best way to educate your target audience. Down to earth insight for consumers, business people, and in-house counsel on topics on which they are looking for info or should be made aware of will get you known and establish trust.

Education through a blog will get you invited to speak at conferences and seminars. Heck you can do webinars yourself based on your being known as a trusted and reliable authority.

Twitter also works well for education. You’re already following a niche in your RSS reader, or you should be. Share the helpful stories, posts, and info you see. You’ll become known as an “intelligence agent.”

Social activity today can be best done by networking online. I am not saying face to face social networking and meetings are unnecessary. The offline has been accelerated by online networking – we meet the right people faster and we connect/establish trust with these folks online before we ever meet them.

Use social – blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook – to get to know the right people in a deliberate and strategic fashion. Just as lawyers learned to socialize offline, learn these media through trial and error.

Don’t limit your ‘socializing’ to the topics of law and business. Get to know people and their interests intimately. How did they get to where are in business? Where are they from? What do they like? What are they passionate about? What do they do with their family?

Let people get to know you as a person. It’s the “getting to know you” which makes people trust you as a person – and a lawyer.

Education and social activity will get people to your website for more information on you, it’s not the other way around.

As Lee says, “You’ve got to show up in order to gain awareness. You’ve got to show up, get out there, and give to others expecting nothing in return.”

There’s no magic ATM machine.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Shawn Hoke