Legal Marketing -- by Larry Bodine

Using Nonelectronic Media to Promote Online Sites

It's fascinating to see the use of offline methods to promote online destinations.  Mark Merenda has perfected the approach to promote his SmartMarketing Website at www.smartmarketingnow.com and blog at http://smartblog.typepad.com.

• He's got notepads for people to sign up for his e-mail newsletter.
• The blog has a "Client's Guide to Mark Merenda's SmartBlog," with elements of the blog circled, and a line leading to an explanation (see photo at right).  So the picture of him in a Hawaiian shirt means his lives in the tropics and uses SPF 45 sunblock, drinks Diet Coke, is a Red Sox fan, is devoted to Mac computers, loves Shakespeare and wears a Cartier wristwatch.  Talk about distinguishing yourself from the competition! Note the contrast with the corporate picture of Mark (see photo at left).
• He offers a 4-page "Client's Guide to the Smart Marketing Website," which states the site is "much more than just a promotional vehicle.  It is also a resource center where you can find marketing education, techniques, and products that are available to you as a SmartMarketing client."
• Mark alerted me to his offline methods by writing a handwritten note, one of the most powerful direct-mail techniques known to marketing.

Kudos to Mark.  I'm a fan and published his article "The Top 11 Reasons Most Attorneys Don’t Do Marketing" on the LawMarketing Portal, which is also a resource center where you can find marketing education, techniques, and products that gets 60,000 unique visitors per month.

RSS Feeds on NJ Law Firm Site

This just in: The law firm of Stark & Stark in Princeton has made available 15 separate RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds specific to various firm practice areas through its New Jersey Law Blog (www.njlawblog.com). The addition of these customized feeds allows subscribers to get instant notification of new developments in area of law most important to them.

According to Richard C. DeLuca, Director of Business Development for the firm, Links to these newly available feeds can be located within the "Blogs" section of the 90-lawyer firm's Web site. The 15 practice area feeds now available are:

Banking & Financial Services
Bankruptcy & Creditor's Rights
Business & Corporate
Collections
Community Associations
Condemnation & Eminent Domain
Corporate Investigation & White Collar
Divorce
Employment
Environmental
Litigation
Podcasts
Real Estate, Zoning & Land Use
Securities Compliance & Arbitration
Trusts & Estates

The New Jersey Law Blog still offers a main RSS feed (http://www.njlawblog.com/index.xml) which distributes information added to any one of the blog's 18 sub-categories.  The firm also publishes the Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog at www.braininjurylawblog.com.

How do you follow up Andy Havens?

Criminy, how do I follow up a supernova blogger like Andy Havens?  I feel like the guy who has to go on stage after an act where a guy juggles chainsaws while riding a unicycle, and my act is to read a poem.

Andy is zesty, like a toasted sub sandwich.  Me, I'm a eccentric plodder with a taste for controversy and humor, like a Slurpee that you drink too fast -- watch out for the brain freeze.  But Andy will still be on this blog.  I will copy his beloved rants on the LawMarketing Listserv here for his fans to see.

We do share one thing in common: we calls 'em as we sees 'em.  I insist pointing out when the Emperor is wearning no clothes.  Andy likes to jam a pitchfork, all in good fun, at stuffed shirts.  Sometimes this makes us unpopular.  But we don't care; we are both big fans of the Truth.  As Mulder often said on the X-Files, the Truth is Out There.

We're both capitalists who preach the gospel of marketing to make money.  Andy has been good enough to keep all his excellent posts online.  This is stuff that earned him a top Yahoo rating when you type "legal marketing" into the search box.  I plan to build on this formidable foundation with items on how lawyers can succeed at business development.  Here's one now:

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RSS Feeds Appearing Now on Law Firm Web Sites

In a new phenomenon I've discovered, law firms are beginning to add RSS feeds to their Web sites. This is a universal feature of blogs, of course, but it works just as well for Web sites. I've had RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds on The LawMarketing Portal for several months. now. They're wonderful for attracting traffic because they allow visitors to subscribe to my content.

Wilmer Cutler offers RSS feeds to 19 sections of its Web site at http://www.wilmerhale.com/rss/. "RSS feeds allows Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to deliver the content that you select from our list below and display it for you in one convenient location. RSS feeds are a simple way to receive timely legal updates from the firm," the Web site explains.

Wilmer Cutler has more than 1,000 lawyers with offices in 14 cities in the United States, Europe and Asia. To view the firm’s RSS feeds, you must first have a news reader (or aggregator) installed on your computer. A news reader is the application used to view the headlines via RSS. To download a news reader select a reader for free download through a site such as download.com. The one I use is NewsGator, available free at www.NewsGator.com.

The RSS feeds for Wilmer Cutler include Antitrust and Competition, Aviation, Bankruptcy and Commercial, Communications and E-Commerce, Corporate, Defense, National Security and Government Contracts, Environmental, FDA, Financial Institutions, Intellectual Property, International Arbitration, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Private Client, Public Policy and Strategy, Real Estate, Securities, Tax, and Trade.

If the firm could get the risk-averse lawyers in Corporate and Securities to have an RSS feed, ANY firm should be able to convince ANY practice group head to do the same.

This morning I discovered that Canada's Clark Wilson, up in Vancouver, British Columbia is also offering RSS feeds on their Web site for the firm's publications. By using RSS feeds, visitors with interests in specific legal subject matters will receive immediate notification as soon as alerts and articles that match their interests are posted on their Web site.

Clark Wilson LLP, with 65 lawyers, is one of the first law firms in Canada to offer publication headlines via RSS. You can subscribe with Bloglines, My Yahoo, Newsgator or XML. Their feeds cover 14 different categories of legal topics, including technology and intellectual property, real estate, securities, energy, labor & employment, higher learning, and general business issues. Clark Wilson LLP feeds are located at: http://www.cwilson.com/feeds.

In a new phenomenon I've discovered, law firms are beginning to add RSS feeds to their Web sites. This is a universal feature of blogs, of course, but it works just as well for Web sites. I've had RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds on The LawMarketing Portal for several months. now. They're wonderful for attracting traffic because they allow visitors to subscribe to my content.

Wilmer Cutler offers RSS feeds to 19 sections of its Web site at http://www.wilmerhale.com/rss/. "RSS feeds allows Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to deliver the content that you select from our list below and display it for you in one convenient location. RSS feeds are a simple way to receive timely legal updates from the firm," the Web site explains.

Wilmer Cutler has more than 1,000 lawyers with offices in 14 cities in the United States, Europe and Asia. To view the firm’s RSS feeds, you must first have a news reader (or aggregator) installed on your computer. A news reader is the application used to view the headlines via RSS. To download a news reader select a reader for free download through a site such as download.com. The one I use is NewsGator, available free at www.NewsGator.com.

The RSS feeds for Wilmer Cutler include Antitrust and Competition, Aviation, Bankruptcy and Commercial, Communications and E-Commerce, Corporate, Defense, National Security and Government Contracts, Environmental, FDA, Financial Institutions, Intellectual Property, International Arbitration, Labor and Employment, Litigation, Private Client, Public Policy and Strategy, Real Estate, Securities, Tax, and Trade.

If the firm could get the risk-averse lawyers in Corporate and Securities to have an RSS feed, ANY firm should be able to convince ANY practice group head to do the same.

This morning I discovered that Canada's Clark Wilson, up in Vancouver, British Columbia is also offering RSS feeds on their Web site for the firm's publications. By using RSS feeds, visitors with interests in specific legal subject matters will receive immediate notification as soon as alerts and articles that match their interests are posted on their Web site.

Clark Wilson LLP, with 65 lawyers, is one of the first law firms in Canada to offer publication headlines via RSS. You can subscribe with Bloglines, My Yahoo, Newsgator or XML. Their feeds cover 14 different categories of legal topics, including technology and intellectual property, real estate, securities, energy, labor & employment, higher learning, and general business issues. Clark Wilson LLP feeds are located at: http://www.cwilson.com/feeds.

Handing over the rains

It is with mixed feelings (happiness, relief, sadness, murky-glum-ennui, a kind of itchy-bloated feeling that I think has more to do with what I had for lunch...) that I say "adieu!" to this dear, old legal marketing blog and toddle off to other blogging pastures.

For those of you who haven't heard -- the news was published on certain legal marketing listservs, various private email lists, al-Jazeera and MTV2 -- I have more-or-less left the legal marketing biz. Although I will do some consulting here and there (with "here and there" being limited to gigs that pay up front, pay a lot, and involve absolutely no event management), it doesn't really make sense for me to maintain an ongoing blog presence anymore.

So... what to do, what to do? I am inordinately proud of the fact that, on my hairy lonesome (but with the advice and wisdom of helpers like Kevin O'Keefe of www.LexBlog.com fame), I managed to get this durn blog pumped up to a first-page result on Google, Yahoo and AltaVista for the search term "legal marketing," where it remains to this day. That's pretty cool, and the thought of just flushing this puppy down the tubes after all that hard work made me very sad.

That, plus I honestly believe that some of the stuff I've posted here is pretty good. Not brilliant (OK, the one about profitability is brilliant), but good. And I hope it can be of some help to other legal marketing folk, and, what-the-heck. It's the web. Live long and prosper.

But, again... what to do? Just let it sit here and rot? The TypePad people still charge my credit card, even when I don't type anything. Their wallets get "padded" even with no "type." Ha-ha-ha. I am so funny.

Ahem.

Thankfully, my good friend and one of the absolute best and smartest cats in the legal marketing biz, Larry Bodine, offered to continue this blog under his own flag.

Now... you may ask yourself, "Why would Mr. B want to go and do that? He's already got a legal marketing site that scores wicked-high on the search engine ratings? He's already well known in the online legal marketing spheres? He's already got serious mojo out here in the blogosphere?

Why? Because he, too, felt that this blog deserved an extended lifespan. That's just the kind of guy he is. And I appreciate, deeply, that a marketer of Larry's caliber was willing to take on the task of maintaining this funky beast and feeding its hungry maw.

Perhaps from time to time, I will guest-blog in this space. Who knows? If you have grown addicted to my wit and wisdom (and sarcasm), please note that I will be continuing to blog, albeit on other, non-legal topics, at http://saneblogs.typepad.com. There ain't nothin' there yet. Which is exactly how this blog got started.  I hope one day that it, too, will have afforded me as much fun and serious, though-provoking research and writing energy as this space has.

I have enjoyed your emails and comments relative to this blog. If y'all want to shoot me an email on marketing, writing, movies, knowledge management, "The Aristocrats"... or just say "Howdy," please feel free. You can nail me down these days at: andy [at] sanestorm [dot] com

See you in the funny papers.