Ever since 1985 when I bought my first Hewlett Packard laser printer I have only purchased and used laser printers in my law practice. I am biased towards Hewlett Packard laser printers because in my experience they are fast, produce high quality text and never need maintenance and produce high quality text output. I’ve probably owned about 20 of them over the years and can only remember calling a repair person one time to fix an ailing HP Laserjet.
The first HP Laserjet printer hit the market in 1984. It was a 300-dpi, 8 ppm printer that originally sold for $3,495, but the price was reduced to $2,995 in September 1985. I bought the original HP Laserjet printer in 1985 for $3,000. Can you imagine paying that kind of money today for an 8 ppm printer? The printer replaced an impact printer that I was using to print documents and letters sent to clients. Laser printers produce the best quality text. I would never print documents on an inkjet printer and send them to clients or anybody else. HP has sold over 100 million Laserjet printers.
In 2001 I bought two HP Laserjet 3300 printers. These were great four in one printers that included a fax machine, scanner and copier. The machine had a 50 page sheet feeder. It also had a top that could be lifted to copy over-sized paper or open books. I still have one of them that we use in the office solely as a copy machine.
HP 2055DN Laserjet
Now I give everybody in my firm a personal HP 2055dn Laserjet printer. The printer is relatively small and fits easily on a desk or small table. It only prints in black, but at the high rate of 35 ppm. The HP 2055dn Laserjet also does automatic duplex (both sides of the paper) printing. As of the date of this post Amazon is selling the printer for $349. If you don’t want duplexing then get the HP P2055D Laserjet for $249. Amazon sells the HP 05A black toner cartridge for these two printers for $72 today. The average cartridge yields 2,300 standard pages.
Xerox Phaser 6360 Color Laser Printer
My firm also has one high speed laser that we use when we have big print jobs. I form 40 – 50 Arizona limited liability companies every month. We prepare about 350 pages of text for each one. For big print jobs we use the Xerox Phaser 6360 color laser printer because it is very fast – 42 ppm including duplex printing. We print our longer documents on both sides of the paper to save paper and reduce the size / number of pages we put in the LLC portfolio. I do love this printer, but it has two issues you need to know about:
Black toner cartridges are reasonably priced, but the three color cartridges are pricey. We do print a lot of documents with a little color (not very much actually) to give the page a better look so the cartridges do last a long time.
You must purchase an annual maintenance plan (approximately $400/year) after the original manufacturer’s warranty expires. I’ve had two of these machines the last five years. The first one broke and we didn’t have a maintenance contract so it was cheaper to buy a new one. Our current Phaser 6360 has needed the maintenance guy three times in two years. If you don’t have a maintenance plan it will probably be cheaper to buy a new machine that fix the broken one. Xerox techs are very expensive when you pay them by the hour.
One of my favorite websites for learning about how to get more traffic to my websites is Copyblogger. Content Marketing 101 starts with:
“Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.
The primary goal is to obtain opt-in permission to deliver content via email or other medium over time. Repeated and regular exposure builds a relevant relationship that provides multiple opportunities for conversion, rather than a “one-shot” all-or-nothing sales approach. . . .
There are many ways to profit with content: blogging, video tutorials, email newsletters, white papers, free reports . . . and yet many people are confused about the entire concept. . . . this quick 5-part tutorial that lays out the basics in plain language.
There are many ways to skin a cat just as there are many ways to get more people to visit your website or blog. Mashable has an interesting story about how Atlantic magazine used the web to make money.
“The Atlantic, a monthly magazine on politics, foreign affairs, economics and culture, made $1.8 million in 2010, its first profitable year in decades. In October, digital ad revenues topped print for the first time, up 86% year-over-year, but not at the sacrifice of print. In fact, The Atlantic sold more print ads in October than it had in any other month since David Bradley acquired the title in 1999. Traffic to its three web properties – TheAtlantic.com, TheAtlanticWire.com and TheAtlanticCities.com – recently surpassed 11 million unique visitors per month, up a staggering 2500% since The Atlantic brought down its paywall in early 2008.
“The web is a news medium, and you can’t compete ambitiously on the web if you’re not in the news flow,”
Kissmetrics posted an excellent article that examines what websites need to do to convert more visitors into paying customers (aka clients for us lawyers). This is a topic that I need to spend more time understanding. My Arizona Limited Liability Company website has 9,627 visitors during April of 2012, but I only formed 41 new Arizona LLCs. That’s an awful conversion rate of .004. I would have loved to convert 1%, which would have been 96 new LLCs.
Understanding the best ways to convert traffic to paying clients is important for all attorneys who have websites and who want more revenue. Remember this important fact: Your goal is not merely to have a blog or a website – it is to make more money. To accomplish that goal you must do more than have a static site/blog. Take some time and learn from Kissmetrics’ article that begins:
“In this post we’re going to go over what the highest converting websites do differently. But before we get into the details, we want to highlight a few points to get you thinking first:
You have 0-8 seconds to make a compelling headline and landing page. After 8 seconds, the majority of visitors leave.
Approximately 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy.
Note the statistic that 96% of the visitors who come to your website are not ready to purchase your services. This fact is why it is so important that you have a system like Infusionsoft to collect visitors’ names and email addresses from your blog or website and do automatic email followup marketing. Your site must offer visitors a free report that they get only in exchange for giving you their name and email address. Once you have the prospect’s name and email address you want your system to automatically send the prospect one or more email messages with content designed to:
Give the prospect some useful information about the topic in which the prospect expressed an interest.
Keep your name in the mind of the prospect.
Marketing experts say that you need an average of 7 – 9 touches (contacts) with a prospect before the prospect becomes a customer/client. If you don’t keep your name and contact information in the mind of a prospect that prospect is not likely to remember your name or how to contact you weeks or months after the prospect visited your site/blog when the prospect is ready to buy.
Real Lawyers Have Blogs: ”On the heels on Tom Watson’s article on the perils of social media for lawyers (blogged aboutyesterday) I was reminded of Attorney Josh King’s presentation last week on legal ethics and social media at Avvocating 2012. King, General Counsel for Avvo, explained to lawyers from around the country that social media was not as fraught with the ethical pitfalls as some may believe. . . . Watson, a Senior Vice President at Wisconsin Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company and has taken a strong positon in his article and in comments following my post on his article that lawyers need to be warned of the pitfalls of using social media. His point, as I understand it, is that lawyers ought not act unethically or engage in activities online that woud give rise to unintended liability, ie, create an attorney client relationship or give specific legal advice.”
Did you ever want to send somebody a link to a web page, but the URL for the page was very very long? There is a simple way to convert a long URL into a tiny URL. Just copy the URL, go to http://tinyurl.com, paste the long URL into the box, click the make tiny url icon and copy the URL generated by Tiny URL.
I could copy and paste the below URL into a Word document or an email, but why not convert it into a tiny url.
I got an email today from a lawyer who said check out my article at : http://blog.firmname.com/index.php/estate-planning-2/7-major-errors-in-estate-planning/#more-147. Have you ever gotten an message with a link that is mostly numbers such as www.firmname.com/blog/12/5/030455020110304440500060.phx? I am sure you get lots of email messages that have URLS with a long string of text or numbers and/or text that doesn’t make much sense. I call these URLs “gross URLS” or for WordPress users “gross permalinks.”
Do yourself and your readers a favor and do not create pages or posts on your website that have gross URLS for four reasons:
They look bad.
They often get broken by email programs and don’t work when clicked.
They are hard for people to type into a browser.
They probably do not help your search engine optimization.
The last point may be the most important because you want your URL to contain key words that may help increase the page or post’s search engine ranking. Think about the most important key words in your post and use them in the URL / permalink. If you are writing an article about Arizona widget law which of the following URLS is better:
Must Have Productivity Software by Insight Software Solutions
Macro Expressis the premier Windows macro utility. It can automate all of your common computer tasks. I love Macro Express because it saves me a tremendous amount of time and makes my computer life easier. Macro Express satisfies my biggest requirements for law office software, i.e., it makes me more efficient and productive. Everybody in my small law firm uses Macro Express constantly throughout the work day and they love it.
Do you type the same text into Word, email messages or other programs over and over? We all do. Every attorney and law office staff person is constantly typing the names, phone numbers and email addresses of themselves and firm personnel into email messages and letters. Imagine how much time you and other people in your office would save if the contact information could be zapped instantly into a Word document or an email message. Using macros to insert repetitive text has the added benefits of always inserting the desired text (no omitted text) without any spelling errors.
Macro Express is a program that allows you to create a macro (memorized computer keystrokes) to automate virtually anything you do repeatedly on your computer. I use it primarily to insert text into Word documents or email messages. If you use the same text or phrases over and over, why waste time typing the text from scratch each time you need the text when you can type a short abbreviation that inserts the text instantly at the point of your cursor? Not only does Macro Express save time it eliminates typos and insures that the exact desired text is generated every time just the way you want it.
For example, when somebody calls and asks me about forming a limited liability company, I ask them for their email address so I can send them a marketing email message that has links to pages on my website about LLCs. The message is several paragraphs of text. With Macro Express, I simply type “.llclink” [the name I gave this particular macro] and Macro Express zaps my canned message into the body of my email message at the point where my cursor is located.
I have several email signatures that I can insert as closings to email messages depending on whether I am sending a message to a person related to estate planning, entity formation or some other area of law that I practice. If I am sending an email message to an estate planning prospect I want my signature block to read:
Richard Keyt
Wills, Trusts & Estate Planning
Phone: 602-906-4953, ext. 1
Fax: 602-297-6890
Arizona Estate Planning: www.keytlaw.com/arizonawills
BM (before Macro Express) I either had to type this closing from scratch or have it saved somewhere that I could access, copy the text then paste it into the message. AM (after Macro Express) all I need to do is type the text that invokes the macro and a second later the text is inserted perfectly into my email message.
Macro Express makes it simple for me to have a different email signature block that is area of law specific for the intended recipient of the message. If you are trying to get somebody to hire you for widget law don’t send the person a message with a signature closing that says you do thing-a-ma-jig law.
Macro Express is an incredibly powerful macro recorder and playback utility. Automate all of your common tasks by simply turning on the recorder, performing the actions one time, then playing back the macro when needed. Or use over two dozen Quick Wizards to guide you through a series of questions and build the macro for you. To create more powerful macros, utilize the Scripting Editor.
Macro Express can also automate procedures. You could create marcos to configure Word to print to your color printer, your black and white printer or to Adode pdf. Think of Macro Express as a recorder that records your key strokes. You start the recorder, hit whatever keys and/or mouse clicks you want to record then stop the recorder. Give the macro a name and the short keys you want to use to invoke the macro and you are done. Now when you type the keystrokes that invoke the macro the program will replay the recorded keystrokes. Macro Express has a wizard that makes creating macros extremely easy.
Your increased productivity will quickly pay the small cost for Macro Express. Use it to automate boring, repetitive computer tasks. Perform tasks quicker, more reliably and with less stress. Reduce wear and tear on wrists and hands. Macro Express provides all the tools necessary to create macros that will simplify your computing life. You do not need to know any programming language or have any programming skills. Everything is created in simple steps. Use Macro Express for quick insertion of boilerplate text, international characters or symbols. Speedily populate a database with information from a file. Manipulate text strings, open web pages, prompt users for input, back up files and much more.
The program contains hundreds of commands to automate practically any function on the computer. These include keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks, launch programs, send email, move and resize windows, variables, logic, input boxes, questions, menus, ASCII delimited and text file processing, network connections, file manipulation, math calculations, waits, pauses, repeat loops and much more.
For more powerful and complex macros, it’s easy to create if/then/else logic that examines variables and makes decisions based upon what it finds.
Macros may be launched via hot keys, shortkeys, mouse clicks, window controls, a window title, a pop-up or floating menu, or via the macro scheduler. Assign macros to play back in all Windows programs, in only one specific window or program, or in every program except the one defined.
Your time is valuable so give yourself a productivity present and buy Macro Express. It’s only $39.95 for a single user license. Click here to buy Macro Express.
Do you have your own law blog? Does your law firm have a blog? Do you want to get more clients? Do you want to make more money? Does a bear . . . oh never mind. I am a big advocate of the attorney law blog. It works for me. It can work for you.
The term “blog” is short for web log. In the early days of blogging a blog was a series of posts displayed on a website in reverse chronological order. People typically created a blog with content about a specific topic because they wanted to provide a source of information about their topic of interest. You can find many blogs on any topic you can imagine. The quality of each blog depends on the creative talent, knowledge and writing ability of the blog’s creator. Nobody know how many blogs exist, but there are millions of them.
Here is my list of some of the reasons a lawyer should have a blog:
Blogging is a learning experience. Writing good articles (called “posts” in blogese) helps you to know your topic better and increases your legal knowledge. When you write something that can be viewed by the entire world it has a tendency to cause most people to invest time in making sure the don’t say something that is not true or that is misleading. It is very common for me to spend time researching a statute or reading one or more cases to make sure that what I say in my post is correct. Writing about a topic also helps me understand that topic better.
Blogging brings traffic to your website/blog. An important goal in having a website/blog is to attract a lot of visitors to your site. The best way to get visitors is to have large quantities of good content on your site. One of the best and easiest ways to create content is the blog. With good blog software like WordPress is it extremely easy to write an article and post it on your site. No need to send the article to your web designer and wait a week for the article to be up on your site. With WordPress adding an article to your site is as simple as writing the article, giving it a title, adding it to one or more categories and clicking the upload icon. Read “Why I Love WordPress for My Law Firm.”
Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your area of law practice. Over time as you add more and more content about your specific area of law (widget law for example) your blog becomes clear evidence to visitors that you are an expert in widget law. When deciding on who to hire a prospective client is more likely to hire the lawyer that has tangible (ok technically it is intangible) proof of expertise than the lawyer who has no blog or website about widget law. Consider for example my blog called “U.S. Real Estate Law.” This blog is about a single topic, i.e., nonU.S. citizens investing in U.S. real estate. I form a lot of new Arizona LLCs for people all over the world who want to purchase U.S. real estate.
Blogging helps you convince propects to hire you. Several times a day I talk to prospects on the phone who are interviewing me for the purpose of deciding whether or not to hire me. Prospects frequently ask about a subject that is an article or post on one of my websites. When that happens I tell the prospect I have an article on the subject and if he/she will give me his or her email address I will send a link to the article. I then use Macro Express to zap canned text with the link to the article into an email message and send it to the prospect. For example, people frequently ask me about dissolving their Arizona LLC. When I get a call on that topic I send the prospect the following message:
Thanks for contacting me about terminating your Arizona limited liability company. To hire us to prepare the documents to terminate an LLC, complete our service agreement found here:
Blogging is fun. Yes it is. I enjoy the writing and creative aspects of blogging. I also get personal satisfaction in knowing that people are reading my posts and learning from the results of my investment in time.
A great way to get ideas for blog posts is to listen to questions prospects and clients ask you in email messages and over the phone. I am sure you have the same experience I have with people who ask the same common questions about widget law (ok maybe questions about your area of practice, not widget law). These commonly asked questions make great blog posts. Turn these questions into a post you can email to prospects and clients to show your expertise. See for example a blog category on my Arizona Limited Liability Company Law website called “How Do I.” When I get a call or email message from somebody that asks me a question I’ve answered on my blog I send the person a link to the blog post.
An very important fact of blog life and the key to a successful client generating blog is that you must create good content. This means you need to invest the time to create posts. This leads me to Keyt’s Technology Rule #5, which is call the Website Content Equation. The equation is:
more posts = more content = higher search engine rankings = higher web traffic = more new clients = more revenue
Schedule times for content creation and set a goal for a minimum number of posts every week. Over time your content quantity will grow and the Website Content Equation will put more money in your pocket.
The law office tech gurus are constantly talking about blogging, social media and search engine optimization, but I do not recall ever seeing a single article on the subject of the law firm web store. My law firm has had a web store for five years. We call it KEYTLaw’s Store. Would you be surprised to learn it is a profit center for us?
Consider the facts of life of modern business marketing and internet technology:
Your law firm has a web site and/or blog. If it does not you need to get on the bus yesterday. It is very easy to create a WordPress blog or website yourself. I have created 11 sites (put your cursor on the menu item above entitled “My Other Websites.” Read my article called “Why I Love WordPress for My Law Firm.”
Visitors come to your website. Hopefully you are getting visitors. If not, you need to read articles on this site and other sites to learn how to get more web traffic to your site.
Your website collects leads from prospects who visit. If your site is not configured to collect name and email address from visitors you are losing a ton of potential business. You should offer one or more “free reports” with a catchy title that web visitors can read only if they first give you their name and email address. See one of my free reports called “10 Critical Facts Every LLC Owner Must Know.” If a prospect signs up to get your free report on widget law you can then begin sending followup marketing emails that are intended to: (i) keep your name in the mind of the prospect, and (ii) explain why the prospect should hire you for widget law.
OK I’m guessing your law firm does not have a web store. Why not? A web store is a 21st century way lawyers can sell themselves and their services on the internet.
BigCommerce
I created my law firm’s web store using the store software created and sold by BigCommerce (try it for free). Over 20,000 people have created web stores using BigCommerce’s easy to use software. BigCommerce is the third shopping card / web store system I have used in the last six years. Last fall I decided that the shopping cart I was using was not state of the art so I researched several of the most popular shopping cart programs. I signed up for free trials with three cart systems and tested them. I decided that the relatively young company called “BigCommerce” had the store software that is best for me and my firm. BigCommerce is a relatively new and fast growing web store software company. I believe BigCommerce is four years old as I write this article.
BigCommerce is very easy to set up and use. It offers many free store templates that create the look and feel of your store. It’s easy to select a template and have a very nice and well organized and designed store web site. Adding products and creating categories of products is also a piece of cake. Everything is a fill in the blanks template. No special knowledge is needed to create your web store. Nor do you need to spend any money on a consultant that will cost you big bucks.
BigCommerce is cheap. Prices start at $25/month. I pay $40 a month for everything my store needs. This price allows a store to have up to 500 products and includes 10 user licenses. Ecommerce is now a $10 billion per year industry. Don’t get left behind. Create your free online store with BigCommerce now!
You can host the software on your site, but it’s easier to let Big Commerce host your store on its site. Big Commerce has all the modern bells and whistles. For example, once you create a product or service you can have Big Commerce send it to your Facebook page where people can make a purchase just by clicking on it.
What do you think about web stores for law firms? Will it catch on or will only a few of us sell legal products and services online in a web store?
Copyblogger is a great website for learning about blogging and website building using WordPress. It’s tag line is “Content Marketing Solutions for WordPress that Work.” I bookmarked this site a few years ago and recommend it for those who want to learn more about using WordPress and getting more traffic to their website or blog. The site contains a ton of articles on creating good content. For example, here are some Copyblogger posts just on the subject of the importance of writing good eye-catching headlines:
I’ve had an iPhone and an iPad since each device was first offered for sale. I do love both of these incredible electronic computers/phones/do-it-alls. Today at lunch two of my long-time former law partners showed me their new first time-user iPhones and they asked me what apps to get. Which apps to get from iTunes is something that comes up a lot with me and my friends. Here is a list of my favorite iPhone & iPad apps for lawyers, attorneys, law firms and other iPhone and iPad users:
Productivity
Dragon Dictation – free. This is a must have app because it is a great tool for converting your voice to text which you can then send as a text message, email, make a copy, send to Facebook or Twitter. It’s conversion of your voice to text is very accurate. You can also edit the text to make corrections or additions. A great tool for sending your thoughts to yourself or secretary.
TurboScan – Use your iPhone to scan any type of document. Once scanned you can email it as text, a pdf or a jpeg. You can also open the document in pdf, print it or save it to your iPhone camera roll. I checked the app on iTunes today and it had 2,285 five star ratings.
HP 12C - $13, but it is two great calculators, a standard calculator when held vertical, but it changes to the HP financial calculator when the device is held horizontal. P.S. It uses reverse polish notation logic. Use the financial calculator to find loan payments based on the loan amount, interest rate and number of payments.
Google – free. Touch the microphone icon and speak your search words. This app then quickly does a Google search and displays the results. My lunch group buddies crack up every time they ask me to do a Google search such as who do the Arizona Cardinals play next week?
PDF Reader Pro – free. Allows you to open pdf documents.
Fake a Call – free? Maybe this should be in a different category, but you can use it to get out of a meeting. Set it to fake an incoming call during a meeting so you can excuse yourself.
Travel Track Pro – $. Great for trips. Enter all of your trip information into this app such as airline flight information, hotel and car rental info and reservation numbers. All information is then at your fingertips when needed. It will tell you if your flight is delayed and when it will arrive. Lots of great information for trips.
News Apps
Wall St. Journal - free, but I pay $9 a month to get all of the paper on my iPhone & iPad
Los Angeles Times - free
New York Times - free app, but $ to get access to all of the content
USA Today - free and no charge for a lot of well organized content
Social Media
Facebook – free
LinkedIn – free
YouTube – free
Videos – free. A great way to watch the music, TV show and movie videos you buy from iTunes
Games
Solitaire City – $. 21 different solitaire games. At one time everybody in my family was hooked on Alternations, a great solitaire game.
W.e.l.d.e.r. – $. A fun word spelling game.
Wurdle – $. Another fun word spelling game.
Tetris – $ Years ago in the days of playing games on the PC I wasted too much time playing this classic game.
Scrabble – $. The tech version of a board classic. Play the computer, a random live opponent, friends or join a local multiplayer game. Way better than the board game.
Monopoly - $. The Parker Brothers classic. I like to play against two computer opponents and have all the cards dealt at random to the players.
Miscellaneous Apps
iPhone Secrets – free. A great way to learn all the hidden secrets of the iPhone.
iBooks – free. A great place to get ebooks (low cost best sellers and many free books). I’d rather read a book on my iPad or iPhone than hold it in my hands the old fashioned way.
Instagram - free. It’s Twitter for pictures, no text. In five seconds you can take a picture and post it to your Instagram account and all of your followers can see your pictures on their Instagrams. Great for a family. Make your profile private then only allow your family members to follow you. Whenever anybody in your group posts a picture you can see it and so call all of their other followers. You can add captions to your pictures and people can like and comment on other people’s pictures.
Zinio - free. This is a magazine reader app. You purchase subscriptions to your favorite magazines and read them on your iPhone or iPad. Reading magazines on the iPad is awesome. Links on pages are hot and take you to another part of the magazine. My favorite magazine is PC Magazine, but a few years ago it stopped making prints and went entirely digital through Zinio. I love reading PC Magazine using my Zinio reader. Every issue is retained on Zinio unless I delete it.
RedLaser – free. This is a must have app. It scans bar codes on products and then gives you a list of websites that sell the same product and the price of the product. If you finder the product cheaper online you can quickly buy it using your iPhone or iPad. Barcode scans can be emailed, sent to Facebook or Twitter or turned into a text message or added to a favorites list. RedLaser will also scan QR codes and interpret them.
Amazon Mobile – free. This app also scans bar codes, but it only give prices for the products sold on Amazon. I love this app because Amazon has very low prices. If you have an Amazon account like me you will be able to instantly purchase a product after you scan and get the results. Slick. It has a camera feature that lets you take a picture of the cover of a book, CD, DVD or video game and get Amazon’s price for the item.
Yelp – free. Find local business such as restaurants and read reviews written by customers. Write your own reviews.
iPhoto – free. PC Magazine’s May 2012 issue gave this app its Editor’s Choice award for being an excellent iPhone/iPad photo editor.
Shazam – free. If you hear a song you like but don’t know its name let Shazam listen to the song. It will not only tell you the name, but if the sound quality is good it can distinguish between different artists singing the same song. You can also buy the song from iTunes.
Flixster – free. Great for checking the movies playing at your local theaters. Lots of information about each movie including start times.
Pandora – free. Create a “radio station” for your favorite recording artist. Pandora will then play songs by that artist mixed with other artists is selects that have a similar sound. It’s a great way to listen to your favorites and find other artists and music. If you don’t like a song press the thumbs down button and you will never hear that song again. Give your likes a thumb’s up. If you hear a song you like you can buy it from iTunes at the click of an icon.
Sex Offenders – free. Not an app I use much or that has much value, but it will amaze you when you ask it to search your surrounding area and list all the registered sex offenders. Here in central Phoenix where I live there are literally thousands of them. The app shows their locations on a map and via a list ordered by closest to farthest away. Click on a person on the list and it tells you that person’s address and conviction(s) including a picture.
The secret to getting a lot of traffic to your website is not really a secret. For those of you who do not know the single most important thing you must do to get lots of visitors to come to your website here it is:
Put lots of high quality content on your blog/website!
The reason my law firm website averaged 163,000 visitors/month during 2012 (see the 2011 year end traffic report generated by our web host company’s web tracker software) is because the site has thousands of pages of content. Yes thousands. My site is 11 years old and includes eleven separate websites all of which have content and bring visitors to keytlaw.com.
Keyt’s Technology Rule #4 is “If you build it they will not come.” Yes, your law firm should have a website or blog, but do not be discouraged if it has little traffic in the beginning. It takes time to create good content. Your goal should be to add original content on a regular basis – daily is best, but several times a week is better than once a week. Set a time every day to write content. I like to get up at 6:15 everyday and spend the first two hours of the day working on my websites. Over time a regular plan of creating content and adding it to your site will add up to a lot of content, higher search engine rankings, more traffic to your blog or website and more new clients.
This morning I saw an email message that contained one line of text and FORTY-NINE lines of signature block spam. Here’s the message (with redaction to protect the guilty) with the same line spacing, but with the 15 html links removed:
Would you be willing to share the language that you use?
XXX XXXXXXXX, Attorney at Law
Quick links:
Prospective Clients
Information and Living Trust Seminars
Existing Clients
Photo & 3 Law related Logos omitted
XXX X. XXXXXXXX, Attorney at Law
Certified Specialist, Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law
(State Bar of X Board of Legal Specialization)
address line 1
address line 2
(xxx) xxx-xxxx (office) / (xxx) xxx-xxxx (fax)
www.xxxxxx.com (main website)
www.xxxxxx.net (information website)
www.xxxxx.com (online living trust seminar website)
XX Insurance License #xxxxxxxxxx
FOR PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS:
Schedule Initial Consultation for Estate Planning
(may also be used to access and download Consultation Packet for consultation)
Schedule Trust Administration Consultation
(may also be used to access and download Trust Administration Consultation Worksheet)
INFORMATION BROCHURE AND LIVING TRUST SEMINAR INFORMATION
Download Consumer Guide to Wills, Living Trusts and Estate Planning
Register for Upcoming Living Trust Seminar
View or Download Online Living Trust Seminar
Request a Copy of My Living Trust Information CD
Request a Living Trust Seminar for Your Group
FOR EXISTING CLIENTS
Schedule Plan Design Meeting
(may also be used to access and download Plan Design Meeting paperwork if needed)
Schedule Signing Appointment
Member Attorney of the following legal service plans:
Plan 1
Plan 2
Plan 3
Plan 4
Plan 5
Plan 6
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Not only does all that signature block spam look ugly at the end of the message, but my guess is that most people will completely ignore it. What do you think?
I do like to put a substantive marketing blurb at the end of my email messages My hope is that somebody will click on one of the links and that it might lead to more business. Does it work? I don’t have a clue. I’ve never tested any of my email closings and nobody has ever told me that contacted me because of a marketing line in an email from me.
I believe that when people are given too many choices more often than not they ignore all of the choices and do nothing. What follows below is my current email signature block. Am I giving too much information? Note: The request that the recipient like my law firm on Facebook works. Many people will send me an email response that he or she liked us and a lot of people also respond that they do not use Facebook (these tend to be older people).
P.S. Could you do me a big favor and click on the Facebook icon below to go to the KEYTLaw Facebook page then click on the Like icon?
Richard Keyt
LLCs, Business Law & Estate Planning
Phone: (602) 906-4953 ext. 1
Fax: (602) 297-6890
Follow KEYTLaw & Click Like & Google +1 Icons with Links to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & RSS feeds omitted because I was too lazy to figure out how to put them in this post)
I have used WordPress to create 11 websites (put your cursor on the menu text above that says “My Other Websites” to access one of my other sites), ten of which I created to get more clients and revenue. The only WordPress site I created that is not for my law firm is one called “F-4 Phantom,” a site about my five years flying the F-4 Phantom supersonic fighter bomber in the United States Air Force.
If you want to know why I use WordPress to create my law office websites read my article called “Why I Love WordPress for My Law Firm.” In that article I say that the biggest reason I love WordPress for the law firm is because WordPress has over 19,000 free plugins that allow a WordPress administrator (you should be your site’s administrato) to add cool features to your WordPress blog or website. A WordPress plugin is software written to accomplish a specific task or add a feature to your WordPress site. My guess is that somebody has already created a free plugin that will do everything you could possibly want to do with your site.
Do you want to have message forums or a list serv on your site? Would you like your site to have a gallery of photos or videos that are displayed to viewers in the order you select for the number of seconds you select? Would you like to require a visitor to type a captcha before he or she could send you a message? There are numerous plugins that provide all of these features right out of the box. That’s cool and free, but the second neatest thing about WordPress plugins is that when you see one you want you click twice and the plugin is installed and working on your WordPress website. IT ONLY TAKES A FEW SECONDS LITERALLY TO INSTALL A PLUGIN.
The following is a list of plugins in alphabetical order that I always install on every WordPress website or blog I create:
Akisment – used to prevent comment spam. It automatically deletes spam comments of which there are many.
All in One SEO Pack – a great tool for adding title, description and key word meta tags to your posts and pages.
Bad Behavior – another spam preventor. I use Akismet and this one.
Broken Link Checker – A must have program. It alerts you to broken links and makes it easy to fix them
Contact Form 7 – Use to create web forms to collect contact information and message text so visitors can communicate with you or your firm’s personnel. See one of my contact forms.
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin makes a map of your website every night and sends it to Google and other search engines to help you get better search engine rankings.
Sharedaddy – It creates icons and links to share your content with other sites like Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can see this plugin at work at the bottom of every one of my posts.
Smart Youtube Pro – This plugin lets me insert and position a Youtube video any where on my site just by copying the Youtube share URL and pasting it where I want it to go on my WordPress site. It also requires me to add “vh” just before the colon in the Youtube URL.
Sociable – I use this plugin to send a post to our Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn pages. Although you can configure it send every new post we have it set to send posts only if we want to send it and then it only goes to the other sites we select.
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – Use this plugin to allow people who leave comments to chose to receive copies of all future comments and replies made to their comment.
WP-DB Manager – This plugin does all your back ups of your data, including the site’s MySQL data. It also zips backup files and emails them to you. I also use it to optimize the WordPress site.
WP-Page Navi – This adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog or website.
WP-Post Views – It counts and displays the most popular posts and pages on your site.
WP-Print – Gives your visitors a better printed output than was is inherent with WordPress.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This one displays other posts on your site that are similar to the post a visitor is viewing.
To learn more about these plugins and the 19,000+ other free WordPress plugins go to the WordPress plugins page.
I love WordPress. WordPress for attorneys is a fantastic tool for generating clients and more revenue. I have been creating my websites using WordPress since 2009. As of today I have created 11 WordPress websites. You can access them from the menu link at the top of this page. Of these 11 sites, I am the only person who adds content to 7 of them, two sites contain content created only by two other KEYTLaw attorneys and two sites contain content created by me and other KEYTLaw attorneys.
If your website is not a WordPress site, you are making a mistake unless you have the money to pay a consultant or web development company a ton of money for a super-duper site. My experience is always been that I can invest the time to learn a software program so I can use the program and its powerful features without being dependent on a high paid consultant who probably isn’t really that knowledgeable. See Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 1.
I started the original www.keytlaw.com website in the winter of 2001. At that time I was a partner at one of the largest law firms in Arizona. The firm’s board of directors told me I could not have a website and that a firm website was worthless for generating new clients. I knew that virtually all lawyer websites did not generate new business because they were nothing more than electronic firm brochures. I was convinced that I could create a website with original content that informed the public about legal issues and that it would generate business.
I was right. Since leaving big law in 2001 I have obtained over 6,000 new clients most of whom hired me and my firm because of my websites. A good informational website is a great way for a lawyer to obtain new clients. During 2011 the total combined traffic on my websites averaged 163,000 visitors/month per the 2011 year end traffic report generated by our web host company’s web tracker software. Per Avvo and www.alexa.com the KEYTLaw website is one of the 25 most visited law related websites in the United States.
Microsoft FrontPage
When I took the plunge and created my first website in 2001 the two most popular HTML editors were Microsoft’s FrontPage and Adobe’s Dreamweaver. FrontPage was cheaper and sold to the public as more user friendly than Dreamweaver so I bought FrontPage.
For eight years I used FrontPage to create every page on the old www.keytlaw.com. Take a look at an old FrontPage created KEYLaw page. The old site look and feel worked well for me for many years despite it’s cludginess. I designed the look and feel of the site without any knowledge of what I was doing, which is why the site looks like it was made by somebody that didn’t know how to design a site. I knew I wanted a website and so I just loaded FrontPage and started creating web pages.
My original website and now the other ten WordPress sites generate a tremendous amount of web traffic because they contain content. See an old web log report for the month of December 2006 which shows www.keytlaw.com had 91,489 visitors that month, an average of 2,859/day. For the year 2006 my old site averaged 85,500 visitors a month and 2,850 visitors a day. Every year the number of visitors increases because we are constantly adding content to our sites. Web success is very very simple – the more good content you have on your site the more visitors it will have.
FrontPage was actually user friendly for its era, but the problem with HTML editors is that you start with a blank screen and you must build every page and every feature of your website from scratch. A simple website was easy to create in FrontPage, but to create any feature required a ton of time and html editing.
WordPress
In 2009 I decided to create a law blog so I did a little research and concluded that WordPress was the way to go. The difference between WordPress and FrontPage is as great as the difference between night and day. FrontPage was a low tech do everything yourself program. WordPress is a high tech do everything for you program. WordPress combined with WordPress plugins is a winning combination that allows a novice to do anything with a website/blog with very little effort or knowledge needed by the WordPress user.
WordPress comes in two flavors, i.e., wordpress.com and wordpress.org. The .com version is hosted on WordPress’ website. The .org version is free downloadable software that you must install on a server (shared or dedicated) and that is accessed by people who go to the URL of your domain.
WordPress.com
The .com version of WordPress is a website that as of today hosts 426,536 free WordPress blogs. To have a blog on wordpress.com all you need to do is sign up and two minutes later you are in business on the internet. Your site will be a subdomain of www.wordpress.com such as www.lawfirm.wordpress.com. WordPress hosts your site on its server. Although it is actually very easy to have a WordPress.org site on your own domain, the WordPress sites on wordpress.com are even easy to use. See a list of features offered for free by www.wordpress.com.
The downsides to the .com version are:
1. Your site is not on your domain.
2. You will not have access to the vast universe of plugins available when you have WordPress running on your domain.
3. You cannot have any ads.
4. Customization is limited.
5. Moving your site to a Wordpress.org site later is a big deal for the average WordPress user.
Reasons Why I love WordPress
1. WordPress is VeryEasy to Install: With a good webhost like Bluehost anybody can create a WordPress law firm website or blog simply and easily. I’ve hosted my websites at Bluehost since I created my first blog in 2009. Bluehost hosts millions of WordPress sites and is adding 20,000 new sites a month. I cannot say enough about Bluehost. It’s cheap ($5 – $7) month. It’s got great tech support 24/7, which I have used from time to time. What I love best about Bluehost is that is uses something called Cpanel and Simple Scripts. What these two programs mean to the WordPress user (prospective or actual) is that you can create a new WordPress website/blog in less than ONE MINUTE. Yes! In a future video I’ll demo how to do it and how quickly I can create a new site.
To learn more about everything Bluehost gives you for $5/month go to its hosting features page.
2. WordPress is Very Easy to Learn: It takes me about 15 minutes to show a person everything he/she needs t know to add content to WordPress. Only one person in your firm needs to be the administrator of your WordPress site and know how to do things like add, configure and update plugins and do the admin stuff. There is a higher learning curve to be the administrator, but there is virtually no learning curve to be a WordPress content creator. Everybody only needs to know how to create a blog post or a web page, both of which are extremely simple.
3. WordPress Themes: A WordPress theme is software add on to WordPress that gives the entire site a certain look and feel and built in features. In my bad old days of using FrontPage, I had to create the look and feel (theme) of my website. It is not an easy task for a novice, which is why my theme was not too spiffy for eight years. WordPress, however, for some reason I do not understand offers 1,549 free themes that you can download and install in a matter of seconds. Yes. That’s right SECONDS! See the free WordPress themes yourself. If you see one you like all you have to do is click on the “install” button then 5 seconds later click on the “activate” button and your WordPress site has a new look and feel. I use a very popular theme on all of my sites called “Atahualpa,” which had been downloaded 941,182 time as of the date of this article. There are also thousands of themes that you can purchase if you can’t find a free theme you like.
4. WordPress Has Plugins: The thing I like best about WordPress is that there are thousands of plugins (19,330 free ones as of the date of this article) that I can quickly download and install on my WordPress site. Most plugins are free, but some require that you purchase the plugin before downloading. A plugin is essentially software code that you can add to your WordPress site literally by making two clicks with your mouse. Unlike the FrontPage days when the website developer had to create all the code to do anything on a website, there are probably several free WordPress plugins that will do anything you could imagine doing with a website or a blog. See WordPress’ plugins page where you can find all the free plugins. Here are the four most downloaded plugins (I use all of them on all of my sites) with a description of what the plugin does:
Akismet - downloaded 9,949,581 times. This plugin detects comment spam and deletes it. Yes Comment spam is common whenever you have a website/blog that allows visitors to leave comments.
Contact Form 7 - downloaded 6,732,250 times. Allows the administrator to create a contact form to collect information when people want to contact the website creator or somebody in the company that owns the site. See one of my contact forms I created with this plugin.
All in One SEO Pack - downloaded 10,606,267 times. This plugin has fields into which I enter the title of a page or a post, the keywords therein and a description of the page or post that is not more than 160 characters in length. When a page or post is saved this information is included in the meta data for the page or post and used by the search engines. This information is important for good search engine optimazation.
Google XML Sitemaps - downloaded 7,368,379 times. Every night this plugin creates a sitemap of my WordPress site and sends it to Google and the major search engines to assist them when their bots crawl my site.
How to Learn How to Use WordPress
There are many ways you could learn how to use WordPress, but here are my recommendations:
1. Teacher-Student Method: If you know somebody who is a serious user of WordPress, ask him or her to give you a lesson and if you can call from time to time with questions.
2. Watch Lynda.com Training Videos: Whenever I want to learn how to use software I go to Lynda and watch one or more training videos. When I wanted to learn how to make Adobe Acrobat pdf fillable forms I watched a 20 hour training video on Lynda. Today Lynda has a 6.5 hour course on the self-hosted version of WordPress and a 5 hour course on the WordPress.org hosted version. Both of these courses are about version 3.3 of WordPress, the current version.
You can pay to watch individual videos, but for years I have paid Lynda $25/month for unlimited access to all of its training videos.
3. Watch My Demo Videos: You can’t watch them today, because I haven’t created them yet. In the very near future I will have demo videos that show lawyers interested in learning WordPress everything they need to know to install a WordPress site on Bluehost , configure it with a theme and plugins and how to add content. Check back in the near future or enter your email address in the field in the top of the left column of this page if you want to get an update when I add new content.
Your thoughts? Do you or your law firm use WordPress and have any gripes? Do you use something else that you like? Leave a comment.
More and more people are using QR codes. An example of a QR code is made in one minute is below. A QR code is a digital method of conveying information contained in the design of the QR code. It is a great way to quickly deliver key information to another person or his or her phone or electronic device.
Let’s say we just met at a conference and I want to give you the following contact information:
I could convey the above information using the old fashion method and slowly tell you my contact information while you type it into your mobile phone, but why not use a quicker and 100% accurate method, i.e., the QR code method? Instead of using the old way of conveying information I could just “give” you my QR code that contains my contact info. I would display the QR code shown below on my iPhone and you could scan the QR code using your QR code app on your mobile phone. My QR code application is RedLaser, a free iPhone app that scans bar codes and QR codes.
I made the QR code you see above in one minute for free at Kaywa QR Code.Kaywa allows you to quickly and easily create QR codes that are URLs, text, phone number or SMS text. You can also adjust the size of your finished code.
Although I recently read that the traditional business card is being used less and less I plan to get all of the attorneys in our firm to have a personalized QR code on the back of their business cards and also saved in their mobile phones.
I do have a LinkedIn page, but I question its value as a way to get my name out and a source for generating new law firm business. Many people tell me that saw my article on my website, but I don’t recall anybody ever saying they saw me on LinkedIn. Nevertheless I do believe it is one of the social media sites on which all lawyers should have a good page.
Do you know what Google + is? If you want to get more traffic to your website or blog and you do not know about and use Google + you need to learn about and implement it now. The below video will give you an introduction into this relatively new Google product.
Do you know what a Google “rich snippet” is? Should you? If you want more visitors to your blog or website you need to know what a rich snippet is and how to create them. There are three types of bloggers and webmasters:
those that are clueless about Google +,
those that have heard about Google + and who are vaguely aware it might be a good thing to understand and use, and
those who understand and use Google + and related Google features to get more traffic to their blogs/websites.
Until yesterday I was in category 2. Now, after reading the two excellent articles listed below I have the knowledge I need to create a Google business page for my law firm, KEYTLaw and implement the suggestions contained in the two articles. I’m now at stage 2.5. I just need to implement my new knowledge.
To date Google + does not have the reach of Facebook and Twitter, but we all know Google’s power and innovation track record so it is safe to bet that Google + could be as important blog/website referral source as Facebook. By the way I have heard many people, including a keynote speaker at the 2012 Infusionsoft convention, say that Facebook doesn’t send much (or any) traffic to their blog/website. The primary reasons for the lack of Facebook referrals are:
the business does not have a Facebook page (hint: a page is different from a Facebook account)
the business has a Facebook page, but little happens on it, i.e., not much content.
the person or people in the business responsible for its Facebook page don’t understand how to use the Facebook page to generate referrals to the firm’s website.
The second article listed states “according to one study on the impact of rich snippets on traffic, the number of clicks increased by 150% once the rich snippet was added. This is one of those opportunities to give yourself an almost unfair advantage in Google.”
“Last week, Google announced that Google+ (aka, “Google Plus” or “G+”) has reached 170 million users. By any measure, that is a truckload of users; but it is staggering when you consider that G+ is less than a year old. That makes the infant G+ roughly the size of Twitter (200mm registered users) and larger than LinkedIn (150mm registered users). And, while G+ is still only 20% of the size of Facebook, it has clearly arrived, requiring lawyers to strongly consider it as part of their online branding and business development strategies.”
If you have not subscribed to Search Engine Land’s RSS feed and if you want to learn how to get higher Google / search engine rankings you need to sign up yesterday. SEO means search engine optimization. It is the “science” of how search engines work and what to do on your website to get high search engine rankings and how to avoid being penalized for engaging in bad SEO practices. What you do not know about SEO can prevent your website from getting higher rankings and more visitors. To learn more see “What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?“
Search Engine Land has a great introductory course to SEO. Watch its video called “What is Search Engine Optimization” and then read its course on SEO.
“In recent months we’ve been especiallyfocused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results. The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites, so most of you reading have nothing to be concerned about. However, for the sites that may have been affected by Panda we wanted to provide additional guidance on how Google searches for high-quality sites.
Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals.”
The article mentions 23 things you can do to improve the quality of your website.
You have probably heard that if you want more business and traffic to your website you need a Youtube channel with a lot of videos. Once you have a channel and videos you must also configure the video in Youtube to maximize the information about your firm and/or practice area, but this requires that you know this fact and that you know what you have to do. The article “Create A YouTube Traffic Jam With These 4 Simple Optimization Tips” solves both of these problems.
I did create a Youtube channel for my law firm, KEYTLaw. As of the date of this post, April 23, 2012, our channel is 11 months old and has had 3,678 views of our 19 videos. Below is a sample video from our series called “Ask the KEYTLaw Girl.” It is typical of the videos, but longer than most because it explains the steps needed from A to Z to form an Arizona limited liability company.
All of the videos on my Youtube channel were made by a talented young man I hired.
Compare the above video (very professional in my humble opinion) to the amature video below I made in one hour of filming in a conference room with my Flip camera in 2009. It’s the KEYTLaw girl ad libbing text that I told her to say. We had many takes and I just edited the final and put it up on Youtube without realizing I should have created a KEYTLaw account and uploaded the video to that account. Nevertheless, this homemade video has had 13,210 views since it went up on October 7, 2009, and given me a lot of LLC formation business.
I do get a lot of people who hire me to form their Arizona LLC who make a comment about the KEYTLaw Girl. My favorite is “whoever hired the KEYTLaw Girl should get a raise.” I hired her and I’d like a raise. She is my daughter who has worked form me as my LLC legal assistant since she was a senior at Arizona State University in 2006.
Neil Patel wrote an excellent article that I recommend bloggers who want to get more visitors read. He describes in detail 12 mistakes bloggers make. They are:
Crafting cute, clever or confusing headlines (or really bad ones)
Never linking to old posts
Never linking to other bloggers
Forgetting to fill out your page title and description fields
In August of 2011 a good salesman for ExpertHub suckered me into purchasing a listing for estate planning lawyers on Nolo’s website at www.nolo.com. Here’s a link to my listing. The “referrals” I got from my listing on Nolo were of no use to me and did not result in a single dollar of income.
I paid ExperHub $750 eight months ago in return for which I would get a listing for estate planning probate and commercial real estate lawyers when people looked for that type of lawyer in Maricopa County, Arizona. If somebody left an online inquiry about that type of legal service ExpertHub charged me $25 and sent me an email message with the text entered by the prospective client.
Here is a sample of some of the “leads” ExpertHub emailed to me:
Father and grandfather passed away on the 2nd. We would like some assistance with the estate and paying final bills and distributing what remains of the estate.
Misty said she was underage when her father died and his ashes were given to another person. Now that she is older she wants to get her fathers ashes back. But this other person will not give them back to her.
Significant other has been diagnosed with life threatening illness. Need to know how to protect assets upon death. is marriage the only solution?
Do I need a living revocable trust if my son is listed on all my accounts as the beneficiary?
father died, assigned girlfriend personal rep., she wont answer our calls
Review purchase and sales contract to see if earnest money can be returned.
My Aunt died and has no will.
The next one is my favorite.
I have a judgement against me for $160,000. I am single and make $10 an hour and will not be able to pay this back in my lifetime but what would happen if I were to marry a man with substantial assets? Will he also become liable for my judgement?
Bottom Line
In my opinion the $750 I paid ExpertHub in August of 2011 was a complete waste of money. Now to add insult to injury I recently reviewed my March 2012 Amex account and saw that ExpertHub charged me another $750 last month. On April 20, 2012, I called ExpertHub and sent an email message asking to cancel my account immediately and refund my $750. Today I got this message from Maria Albano, ExpertHub’s Billing Analyst, Ad Services Manager:
“We received your request for cancellation that was sent to our Customer Service department on April 20, 2012.
Per our Terms and Conditions, our Advertising fees are non-refundable. Nolo/ExpertHub will terminate the automatic renewal of services and charges at any time, provided that Company delivers written notice to Nolo/ExpertHub by confirmed email, fax or letter at least two business days prior to the start of the next billing cycle date if paying on a flat rate or before the account balance reaches $0 if paying per lead.
Because your request came in 4 weeks after we replenished your account on 3/13/12, and after the requirement of notification before your account balance reached $0, I am unable to issue the requested refund. I did however set your profile to deactivate upon reaching $0 balance and you will not incur further charges.
You will be hearing from your Account Representative Dan Haight on our team for feedback and perhaps to offer suggestions for altering your Campaign to retain better results.
ExpertHub never sent me an email with an invoice that showed the charges and the balance remaining in the account. Why do you suppose it didn’t do that? ExpertHub never sent me a notice that my account would automatically renew and be charged $750 unless I cancelled before a certain date. Nor did it send me a message that it had charged my credit card and renewed my account. Why didn’t ExpertHub use the power of technology to keep me informed about the status of my account at least once a month. P U!
Nolo vs. Avvo
For over a year I paid Avvo over $200/month for a priority attorney listing on its website. I had the same result with Avvo, i.e., a complete waste of my money. I do not recommend that any attorney pay money to Nolo / Experthub or Avvo to get client prospects. My opinion is that the primary reason prospective clients use these types of services is because they are looking for free legal advice. If your experience is different, please comment.
In a one hour video LexBlog CEO Kevin O’Keefe provides some tough love and explains how he uses his blog and other platforms on the Internet — like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and even text messaging — to build relationships and bring in business. Blogging is an important piece of my internet marketing solution. Every lawyer should have a blog to which he or she contributes regularly. A good blog is a great way to get new business – if you do it right.
Blog Tip: All lawyers get people who email and call and ask routine questions about their areas of law practice. When you get one of these emails or phone calls, turn it into a blog post on your Frequently Asked Questions category/topic. For example, on my Arizona Limited Liability Company Law website I have a blog category called “How Do I” (another name for a FAQ) where I pose a common question and then give the answer. A great marketing benefit from answering common questions on your blog is that when you do get an email or phone call asking the same question you can send the questioner an email message with a link to your blog post that gives the answer. Prospects tend to be impressed when they read an answer to their legal question on your blog. Written content on your blog is a great way to establish that you are an expert on a topic.
The Atlantic: “How some of America’s top law firms devoured profits before the Great Recession, got too fat, and are now suffering the consequences. . . . During the early and mid aughts, firms built unsustainable business models that survived off the froth flying from Wall Street. Now, many have become too bloated to change course and adapt to a new era in business. . . . How did firms set themselves up for a fall? To put it bluntly, they got fat. . . . Firms were able to finance their growth and maintain their obscene profitability by pushing through through large yearly rate increases that met little resistance from clients. When the recession hit, these slow and flabby firms were broadsided. Business dried up. Clients balked at the annual rate hikes, and many started demanding discounts. Most firms maintained profits by laying off associates and staff.”
For more on this subject read an article in Bloomberg Businessweek called “Law Firms’ White-Shoe Blues,” which says:
” a dozen large and prominent partnerships have called it quits in the past decade. . . . There’s more at work here than the Great Recession. Inept management and the weakness of the partnership model have also played crucial, if lesser known, roles. And as unsettling as this shakeout will be for employees of many large law firms, it’s one that is overdue. . . . Part of the problem is that the partnership structure—in which the owners jointly make all the major decisions, including how to divide the profits—works better in smaller, more stable firms with simpler finances and more modest levels of acquisitiveness. Partnership does not nurture broad-minded managers skilled in running sizable operations. . . . the industry suffers from excess labor. The number of people with law licenses grew from 212,600 in 1950 to 1,225,000 in 2011—a sharp change from a ratio of one attorney for every 709 Americans to one for every 257. Forty-five thousand newly minted attorneys become available every year in a field with only 25,000 job openings”
A recent survey by Pingdom found that 48 of the most popular blogs are created with WordPress, up from 32 in 2009. In order the blog platforms by percent of sites using the software are:
48 WordPress
14 Custom
7 Movable type
6 Drupal
5 Gawker
4 Blogsmith
2 Typepad
2 Blogger
Where does your blog/web software fall in this list? The article says, “It’s also interesting to see that our findings are not far off compared to what Technorati found in its State of the Blogosphere 2011 report. In it, Technorati found that 51% of blogs in the world use WordPress.” The article contains a list of the top 100 blogs and the software platform used by each.
If you are not using WordPress for your blog or website you are probably making a mistake. If you are paying somebody big bucks to create a custom site for you then you are really wasting a ton of money.
I started using WordPress in the fall of 2009. It is an incredible program and it’s free. I now have 11 websites/blogs (counting this one) that I created using WordPress. I use WordPress to create pure blog sites and sites that are traditional websites that may or may not have a blog. Here are the reasons I love WordPress and recommend it:
It’s free. However there are some themes and plugins that you must buy to use, but the vast majority of themes and plugins are free.
It’s very easy to use. I can teach somebody in ten minutes how to add content (posts and pages) to a WordPress blog or site.
It’s very powerful. For some reason I do not understand people write add-in features and give them away for free to anybody who uses WordPress. The two most common types of freebies are: (1) themes, and (2) plugins. A theme is the look and feel of a blog or site. WordPress comes with a default theme, but you can select from thousands of free themes and download and active a them in a matter of seconds. When you active a theme, it instantly changes the look and feel of your site. I use a theme for all of my sites called “Atahualpa,” one of the most popular free themes. A plugin is a WordPress software add on that adds a new feature to your site. You do not have to spend time creating code to make your site do what you want. Instead, you search for a theme you want then click on the Install icon and the plugin then downloads and installs on your WordPress site. For example, if you want a feature that automatically makes a sitemap of your site and uploads it to Google or if you want to have a message list serve on your site, all you need to do is decide which plugin you want, install and configure it and your WordPress site has those new features in a matter of minutes.
Do yourself a favor and switch to WordPress or create a WordPress site if you do not have a blog or a website. The first step is go to www.lynda.com. Pay to watch one of its how to videos on using WordPress version 3, the latest version. If you learn WordPress and have a WordPress blog or website you can save tons of money and frustration by avoiding the need to pay a consultant.
“Nowadays, I get the same feeling of dread when I open an email to see a Microsoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone’s archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax of the early 21st century: cumbersome, inefficient, and a relic of obsolete assumptions about technology. It’s time to give up on Word. . . . it’s become an overbearing boss, one who specializes in make-work. Part of this is Microsoft’s more-is-more approach to adding capabilities, and leaving all of them in the “on” position. Around the first time Clippy launched himself, uninvited, between me and something I was trying to write, I found myself wishing Word had a simple, built-in button for ‘cut it out and never again do that thing you just did.’ It’s possible that the current version of Word does have one; I have no idea where among the layers of menus and toolbars it might be. All I really know how to do up there anymore is to go in and disable AutoCorrect, so that the program will type what I’ve typed, rather than what some software engineer thinks it should think I’m trying to type.”
Read the entire article.
I mention the “Death to Word” article because it illustrates a point I have made many times of the years. I call it Keyt’s Technology Rule Number 3: Few people ever invest the time needed to become expert users of their software or devices, but instead learn only how to do the most basic functions.
Tom Socca is a journalist. He writes for a living. The primary tool of his trade for years was his word processor software program, i.e. Word. Despite using Word for untold thousands of hours he never took the time to learn how to use the powerful features built into the software, many of which can make him a more proficient and efficient Word user. You would think that a person who used a software program a lot would want to become a true expert in the use of the software, but that rarely ever happens.
I disagree with Mr. Socca. Word is not going to die soon. In fact, Microsoft is moving with the times and taking Word to the cloud, which makes sense, especially for law firms and businesses. The only reason Mr. Socca has a problem with Word is he doesn’t now how to use the program other than for its most basic and simple functions.
Take the Word Beginner User Level Knowledge Test
Few people ever invest the time to learn the powerful features built into their software. People can use a program like Word (Time Matters, Outlook, Hot Docs, WealthDox etc. pick your software) 8 hours a day, day after day, month after month and year after year, but are really novices and ignorant about the power of the software.
Take this test to see if you are a novice user of Word or an advanced user of Word.
1. Do you understand and use styles?
2. Do you know how to use and actually use track changes?
3. Have you ever set up and configured autocorrect?
4. Do you know how to use and do you use automatic paragraph numbering?
5. Do you know what the format painter is and do you use it?
6. What is paste special and do you use it?
7. Can you create a document that has merge fields in it and create multiple documents that merge text into the merge fields?
8. Do you know how to create and use macros?
9. Do you know what “keep with next” means and do you use it?
10. Do you know that you can create your personal tool bar with the icons for the Word features you use most often and do you know how to create and modify that tool bar?
If you answered no to more than two of the questions you are a Word novice, but I suspect you are at least semi-happy with the program because you can get Word to do what you want it to do – usually. If you use Word regularly you should know how to use and actually use regularly each of these fundamental Word features.
Word is a relatively simple program. It does not have the complexity or the features of a good contact management system like Time Matters. The ignorant masses who don’t’ become experts in Word have little chance of learning how to use a powerful program like Time Matters much less be able to purchase the hardware and set up the hardware and software so that it works the way it should. You need a TM consultant/expert for that, but good luck in finding a true expert. Hint: Call Tom Caffery if you need a Time Matters consultant.
Keyt Technology Rule Number 3 Applies Even in Situations Where Lack of Knowledge About a Device Can Kill the User
This problem of users having minimal knowledge of software applies across the board to all forms of technology. I first learned about Rule Number 3 during the period I flew combat missions over North Vietnam in 1972. I observed that people will not invest the time needed to become an expert in their technology even when their lives depend on the knowledge or lack thereof. My airplane (the F-4 Phantom twin-engine fighter-bomber) had a black box called a “Radar Homing and Warning System” (RHAW). This device could detect whenever any radar energy struck the airplane. Based on the frequency of the radar energy the RHAW gear detected the type of radar (anti-aircraft artillery (radar guided guns), early warning radar, air to air radar (Mig-21 jet fighters), surface to air missile radar, including SAM acquisition radar, tracking radar and missile guidance radar energy). The RHAW system included a little TV that displayed coded information as to the type of threat and it generated an audio tone that could identify each type of threat.
This device could save a pilot’s life because the RHAW black box told him if he was being attacked by a Mig-21 fighter or if a 32 foot long supersonic flying telephone pole (a surface to air missile) was fired at him. You’d think it would be good idea to understand everything about the RHAW gear because the knowledge truly could mean the difference between life and death. It took a considerable amount of time to become a RHAW expert. When used over North Vietnam the RHAW gear generated considerable amounts of information. Here is a partial list of what we say and heard while over enemy territory:
The little TV screen displayed a coded strobe for every type of radar beam that struck the F-4. The TV was round and the F-4 was at the center of the screen. There were four concentric circles, each with a different radius around the center of the TV. The length of the strobe corresponded to the distance the radar was from the F-4. Each type of radar had a particular strobe such as the examples listed below. The list is not complete because my memory of that time has faded, but the point is that every pilot needed to know from looking at the little TV what type of radar was looking at his F-4.
1. A series of dots meant the radar was an anti-aircraft artillery gun – a radar guided gun.
2. A short straight line followed a dot that repeated meant an early warning radar
3. A short straight line followed by two dots that repeated meant a surface to air acquisition radar
4. An unbroken line meant a surface to air missile that was fired and guiding on the F-4
The clock position of each strobe showed the clock position of the particular radar. If the strobe went from the center of the TV out in the direction of 5 o’clock it meant the radar was at the airplane’s 5 o’clock position.
The RHAW gear included rectangular black box on the instrument panel called a “threat display unit” or TDU that contained two horizontal rows of lights that indicated which type of radar was hitting the F-4. If a radar guided gun was looking at the airplane the AAA light on the TDU would be illuminated.
The RHAW system also generated an audio tone in the pilot’s headset that had a different pitch for each type of radar that struck the airplane. Because the different types of radars were at different frequency the RHAW system was programmed to give an audio tone that was specific for the type of radar. The purpose of the different audio tones was so the pilots could tell from the tones they were hearing what types of radars where looking at them without the need to look in the cockpit at the TDU or the TV.
The TV had a red light in upper right corner of the device that had the letters A/S just to the left of it. A/S was short for azimuth / sector. This light would illuminate if a surface to air missile site was preparing to shot a SAM at the airplane and while the missile was in the air guiding on the F-4. In other words, when the A/S light came on it meant the bad guy were either getting to fire a SAM at you or had already fired it. We called this light the “aw shit” light because that’s how a person would feel when the light came on.
If a surface to air missile were actually fired at the F-4 the pilot would get the following RHAW warnings:
1. The A/S light would illuminate.
2. A very loud and distinct tone would be heard in the pilot’s headset.
3. The Missile light and the Launch lights on the TDU would flash on and off quickly.
4. When the pilot pushed a switch next to the A/S light it caused all strobes on the TV to disappear except the one strobe coming from the missile guidance radar.
Needless to say it was impossible to not know that a SAM was fired at you (unless you had turned the RHAW gear off). When a SAM was fired at an F-4, the pilot had to immediately take the following action to avoid being shot down by the supersonic radar-guided 32 foot long explosive telephone pole:
1. Determine the clock position from which the missile is coming from
2. Turn hard (4 gs) to put the missile at the 2 or 10 o’clock position.
3. Find the missile visually. If you don’t see the missile you cannot take evasive action unless you just get lucky. If no clouds were between the F-4 and the missile the missile was easy to see because it had a flame coming out of it and it left a long trail of smoke.
4. With the missile at the 2 or 10 o’clock position push the throttles forward to accelerate and push the stick forward until weightless (zero g) and start a descent. When the F-4 starts to descend the missile will change it course and descend at a faster rate than the F-4 because it has to always aim at a point in space in front of the F-4.
5. When the missile gets so close you can’t stand it any more pull back on the stick (4 gs) to start a climb. The missile will try to change course and make a sharp turn from descending to climbing, but because it has small wings and not much time it cannot make the turn necessary to get back on a collision course so it will go way behind the tail of the F-4 and detonate harmlessly (hopefully when it passes behind the F-4.
The RHAW system was a very important black box that saved many lives. To learn how to use the RHAW system properly, however, required a substantial investment of a pilot’s time. More than a few pilots did not invest the time.
I noticed that many pilots could not differentiate between the different audio tones or the different coded strobes displayed on the TV screen. I knew pilots who flew into the most heavily defended area in the history of aerial warfare who TURNED OFF THEIR RHAW GEAR BECAUSE IT GAVE THEM TOO MUCH INFORMATION or at least that’s what they said. I believe the main reason they turned off the RHAW gear was because they did not invest the time to learn the technology and could not use it effectively. Some pilots did not invest the time needed to become an expert user of the RHAW system even though their lives depended on the device.
Many powerful software programs used in businesses today are much more complex than the F-4′s RHAW system and require a substantial investment in time to become an expert user. Most people won’t ever invest the time, but you can and should. The investment will pay off many times over. You will be more efficient and productive by becoming an expert user of your software.
To learn more about flying the F-4 Phantom in combat in the Vietnam War see my website called Flying the F-4.
I Love Word
I have used Word since 1998 when the big law firm where I was a partner switched from WordPerfect to Word. The firm offered all non-attorney personnel a 20 hour class on using Word, but attorneys were given only 3 hours. I was one of only 3 lawyers out of approximately 80 who attended the 20 hour class. I also bought a great book called “Word 97 for Law Firms” and studied it. Within one month after my firm converted to Word I was an expert on Word and have been an expert ever since.
Everybody else in the firm was pulling their hair out and complaining about the transition to Word and how difficult it was to convert WordPerfect documents to Word. I created some Word macros to assist in converting my WordPerfect documents to Word, including a macro that converted WordPerfect’s automatic paragraph numbering to Word’s automatic paragraph numbering. I was able to quickly convert without any problems.
I constantly hear people complain about Word (and many other wonderful software programs), but I know from experience and my own use of the same software that the only reason they complain is because they are mere beginning users of the software despite spending tons of time using the software on a daily basis. The attitude of most people is show me the basics and that is all I need to know. Instead, the attitude of a person that uses a software program a lot should be I’ll invest the time necessary to become an expert user of the software so I will be more efficient and productive.
Learn to Use the Tools of Your Trade
The lives of attorneys, legal assistants, legal secretaries and law firm personnel do not depend on being experts in law office software so they have little incentive to invest the time needed to become an expert in a software program. I submit to you, however, that if you use a program like Word a lot in your business why wouldn’t you want to be an expert user of the software? If you are an expert the software can help you to be more productive. I’ve always looked at learning my software as something absolutely necessary to help me be more efficient and productive so I could make more money. When you think of it that way rather than a necessary evil you tolerate, you have taken the first step to independence from experts towards the goals of doing your job better and making more money.
How to Easily Learn a Software Program & Become an Expert User
Learning to use popular software programs today like Word is extremely easy in the 21st century and not all that time consuming. The best way to learn how to become an expert user of a software program is to watch one or more instructional videos at Lynda. I’ve paid Lynda $25/month for years to have unlimited access to it library of software training videos. As of the date of this article Lynda has to 1,320 courses and 75,244 video tutorials organized by subject and software. Watching Lynda how-to videos is an easy way to become a software program expert.
Several years ago I bought Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional because I wanted to make pdf fillable forms for online engagement agreements. At that time Lynda had a 20 hour instructional video course on Acrobat 8 Pro. I didn’t watch all of it – just the the parts that related to making fillable pdf forms. In no time I was an expert. See for yourself – check out the online pdf fillable engagement agreement people use to hire me to form an Arizona limited liability company.
Last year I bought Word 2010. It’s great. It does have some differences between Word 2007 and a lot of differences between Word 2003. The Lynda videos on Word 2010 quickly brought to the expert level. One area that I spent time learning was styles, which were substantially different from styles in Word 2003. If you are a Word user who doesn’t know how to use styles and who doesn’t actually use them, you are missing a very powerful and useful Word feature. Every document we create in our small law firm uses Word’s styles.
When Acrobat 9 Professional was released, I watched portions of its 20 hour instructional video to learn the new features of the program. I now use and recommend Adobe Adobe Acrobat X Professional for making pdf fillable forms and Acrobat 10 standard Adobe Acrobat X Standard for people who don’t need to create fillable pdfs.
A Happy Infusionsoft Customer Reviews the Web Based Software that Automates Marketing, Sales & Customer Relationships
My small law firm has used Infusionsoft for customer relations management, automatic followup marketing and delegation of attorney tasks since October of 2007. Infusionsoft is a cloud-based software product that is responsible for adding hundreds of clients and substantially increasing my law firm’s revenue.
Here are the important facts I want you to get from this Infusionsoft review:
A. The contest winner went from $0 revenue and no product in February 2008 to one informational product and $844,832 in revenue the last 10.5 months of 2008,
B. A finalist went from $35,000 gross sales in 2006 pre-Infusion to $838,569 in 2007 and $2,099,706 in 2008, and
C. The third finalist’s company had $2,000,000 gross revenue pre-Infusion then had gross sales of $6.1 million in 2007 and $10 million in 2008. For details about how Dentist Profits quadrupled revenue in two years ($2 mill to $10 mill), see Darcy’s online how to web page.
I suspect you are like I was before I bought Infusionsoft, i.e., you are not really marketing.
You get leads, but do not have the time to follow up with prospects to turn them into paying clients or customers.
A prospective business lead who contacts you today, but does not hire you or purchase your service or product today is likely to need your service or product in the future, but will probably not remember your business name, your name or any contact information when the prospect is ready to purchase.
If you follow up regularly with prospect over a period of time, the prospect will probably purchase from you when he or she is ready to buy.
Following up with prospects will not happen unless:
A. You dedicate an employee to actually do the follow up (a very expensive solution), or
B. You use an automatic system like Infusionsoft to do the follow up.
Infusionsoft will do a better job of marketing and following up with prospects than any marketing person you could hire, but it costs only a small fraction ($299/month for a 5 user license) of what you would pay an employee to do follow up marketing.
If you buy and use Infusionsoft properly, you will get more business and make more money and the cost of the program will be peanuts compared to the money you will make from using Infusionsoft to collect leads and do automatic followup marketing.
Buy Infusionsoft now. It’s a no brainer.
Why I Bought Infusionsoft
The primary reason I bought Infusionsoft is because I had (and still have) a tremendous amount of people entering my store (that’s what I call my website), but I was not able to convert many of the visitors to paying clients. During 2011 my law firm’s website ( www.keytlaw.com) had 1,957,043 visitors (an average 163,000/month) according to a 2011 year end report generated by my web tracker software. Before I bought Infusionsoft, I did not collect visitor information or market to website visitors. Infusionsoft collects prospect information automatically from our website and does automatic follow up marketing over an extended period of time.
Infusionsoft has paid off big time. The software has generated a tremendous amount of additional revenue for me and my law firm. I expect even more increases in future revenue as we automate more and more of my law firm’s marketing.
Infusionsoft is a web-based automatic marketing system. Here’s how Infusionsoft describes its web-based marketing system:
Infusionsoft is an “Active” web-based solution designed to help small businesses double their revenues by automating and improving marketing, sales, and customer management.
Our flagship Infusionsoft product revolutionizes how small businesses run from end-to-end. With a heavy dose of marketing automation and additional tools to manage customer service, sales force automation, e-commerce, billing, and a lot more, Infusionsoft replaces the disparate, incompatible systems currently in place and leaves you with more time to strategically grow your business instead of managing fire after fire.
Infusionsoft is a full time UNPAID automatic marketing robot that doesn’t forget to send an email, letter, fax, or voice blast to a client or prospect. It also notifies your staff when they need to contact a client or prospect. It does it all automatically based on the follow up sequences you create.
My Pre-Infusionsoft Lack of Marketing
In my pre-Infusionsoft days, I did NO follow up marketing. For example, a lot of people who are interested in forming an Arizona limited liability company call or send me an email every day. Pre-Infusionsoft, I talked to the prospect on the phone and then manually sent the prospect a marketing email message that said why the prospect should hire me and that had a link to my online LLC formation agreement. That’s it. I never contacted the prospect again. No follow up and tons of lost business. I did not have a system in place to follow up with prospects.
Marketing gurus tell us that most of the time when a prospect contacts you the prospect is not ready to buy. That fact is why you need to get the prospects name and email and/or phone number so you can do follow up marketing to the prospect. If you do not do follow marketing the prospect will probably not remember you when the prospect is ready to buy.
Marketing gurus say you need an average of 7 – 9 touches before a prospect is ready to purchase. That is why follow up marketing is so important. The more often you follow up with a prospect you increase the possibility that the prospect will remember you and hire you when the prospect is ready to buy. Unfortunately for most people their day job interferes with follow up marketing to prospects.
I checked my Time Matters database on November 17, 2007, and found that I had sent and received over 1,400 email messages during the preceding 20 months, the subject of which was forming an Arizona LLC. I never followed up and pursued any of these 1,400 prospects for either LLC formation services or LLC operational related legal services. I lost a lot of business by not having a system that automates follow up marketing with prospects and clients.
How Infusionsoft Can Automate Collecting Leads & Doing Followup Marketing
Usually the hardest part of the sales puzzle is getting contact information from a prospect who is interested in your specific product or service. When you find that kind of prospect, you need to collect their name and email address and/or phone number and do follow up marketing. Now, thanks to Infusionsoft, my law firm has a system designed to collect lead information and do automatic follow up marketing 24/7/365.
My Post-Infusionsoft Marketing
I am going to describe how I set up Infusionsoft to collect information about leads and do automatic follow up marketing to sell more Arizona limited liability company formations. The first type of law business I used Infusionsoft for was LLC formations. The system and process I created for generating more LLC formation business is typical and could be replicated for any type of service or product.
and predicted its death. He says:
