Law firms should know what their clients (and potential clients) are up to. That’s a given. But how can a small firm with no budget for a product to do this follow their clients in the news?

How about RSS? And a small, obscure site called Google News.

I wrote a script that automates much of what I’m about to describe. But since most people reading this blog do not have their own web server or FTP and write access, I’ll give some of the more “manual” details here.

1. RSS Reader: Fire up your favorite RSS reader. I use Bloglines, as it’s free, easy, and it has a very intuitive layout.

2. Go to Google News: Let’s use Snapple as an example. I have a Snapple Iced Tea in front of me, so that’s what I’m going to use here. Let’s pretend I’m a law firm. Actually, let’s pretend I’m a marketing manager at a law firm, as I can’t be an entire law firm myself.

Anyway, Snapple is one of my clients. My firm does some work for them, but we’d like to do more. So I’m going to set up an alert that lets me keep track of what Snapple is up to.

Google News Home Page

Step One: Enter the word Snapple in the news box. Click “Search News”

Here’s what I get:

Step Two: The initial search gives me news sorted by relevance. That helps, but since I want to be able to see the results chronologically, I want to click the link in the upper right that says “Sort by date”.

So now I have what I want. News about my client, sorted by date. But I don’t want to go to Google News every day and search for every one of my clients. That would take much too long.

Step Three: Get the results as an RSS feed.

In the lower left hand corner of the page, you’ll see this:

Copy the link for “RSS”.
Step Four: Add it to your RSS reader.

With Bloglines open, I click “Add” and add the URL to my subscription list. That’s it!

Now, when I’m in Bloglines, I see:

So, every day when I look at my news feeds, I can keep track of what my client is up to. Why is this so great?

• I can see if Snapple is doing anything that could result in work for my firm.
• The next time I talk with the client I will bring up what I’ve seen in the news.

If you worked for Snapple and you were talking with an attorney, how would you feel if the attorney was up-to-date with all the happenings at your company? Would you think “Wow. This attorney is really focused on us.”? I know I would.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Last week I came up with an idea for a small firm’s ad. Small firms have a disadvantage in that the larger firms are much more likely to have name recognition. So when a small firm is going to place a print ad in a publication, they are faced with an additional challenge. They need to answer this question:

Why should you choose us, a small and unfamiliar firm, over a mega-firm that you’ve heard of?

To answer that, small firms need to emphasize the advantages of a small law firm. Maybe they want to show that being small and focused can result in close interaction with the client. They could play up the “relationship angle”.

Conversely, a small firm could show the disadvantages of a larger firm. Either way, if a small firm can show reasons why a client should ignore the larger, better known firms, they’re doing something right.

Back to my ad idea. Explaining why I had a gorilla mask in my office is another story entirely, so I won’t get into that here. This is very rough, but I do like the idea:

Now, I am not delusional enough to believe that small firms would run an ad like this. It’s a little bit (okay a lot) too “out there” for most law firms. But I think the point is valid: just getting your name out there is not enough for small firms. You can’t just say why clients should come to you; you also need to address why clients should not go to the big guys.

Popularity: 8% [?]

While spending the last four days moving from one apartment to another, I had a lot of time to quitely think to myself. In doing so, I came up with a question that I challenged myself to answer:

How is marketing different from gambling?

Think about it. When you gamble, you spend money on a chance that you’ll get a desired outcome; one that pays you more than what you’ve spent. Let’s say you decide to buy a scratch ticket. The cost: $5. But, if you’re lucky, you could win $10, $20, $100, even one million dollars!

Marketing is very similar. You spend money on your web site, your brochure, advertisements, etc. hoping that you will attract enough new work to offset the expense.

What’s the difference?

Offhand, the first difference I see is that when you buy a scratch ticket, you know that you have a chance. There is a finite number of prizes, and all you have to do is get lucky. In marketing, you’re not assured of any prize whatsoever.

So is gambling better than marketing? No. That’s not it at all.

Here’s the other difference, and it is absolutely crucial to understand: You can change the variables.

Using our scratch ticket example, think about what a player is able to do to improve the chance of winning. The answer: not much. You can buy more tickets, but that’s about it. But in marketing, you can change the entire game. If your ad isn’t attracting any new clients, you can always change ads. Or, you can advertise in a different place. Maybe you’d do better by spending more on online PPC advertising, allowing you to specifically target your potential clients.

Sometimes marketing feels like gambling. But if you dedicate the time and resources to understand the game, marketing becomes a game of skill; not just a game of luck.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Yesterday’s Boston Globe Online (maybe offline too……I didn’t see it) carried an article entitled “Law firms learn how to compete: Rivalry forces attorneys to act like a business, seeking data on other firms and their clients.”

The article, by Sacha Pfeiffer, talks about how competitive intelligence is only beginning to be used by law firms due to increasing competition:

“It used to be that in-house counsel would pick up the phone and call a friend, and that’s how work came in,” said Jasmine Trillos-Decarie, who is also director of marketing for the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, which has offices in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C . “Or you always worked with one company, so you always got that work. But the nature of the business has changed dramatically, and we’re being expected to compete more. . . . Competitive intelligence analysis can help us understand how to do that.”

My favorite quote in the article:

`To a client, one big law firm looks much the same as every other — all our websites look the same and all our brochures look the same — so we’re all struggling with how to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace,” Smith said. “Competitive intelligence has to do with being smarter about where you look for business and how you go about doing that. And as marketers and business development people in law firms, that’s really our goal: to help our lawyers do just that.”

The quote is from Brian T. Smith, director of marketing for the law firm Day, Berry & Howard LLP.

It’s a different approach. Rather than trying to appear distinct so more clients come to them, firms are actively going to clients. And before going to the client, they’re doing their homework.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Recently I’ve been posting a lot on law firm marketing, which I love. But in doing so, I’ve been neglecting one of the main reasons I created this site in the first place: Helping attorneys and law firms promote their blogs and sites (the site is called LawFirmBlogging.com after all).

So this morning, I’d like to share my “blogging toolkit.”

I. Blogging Software:
There are two main kinds of blogging software: User hosted and Developer Hosted.

A. User Hosted: These are programs that users put on their own servers. If you’ve got a web host and you want control over your own data, you can install user hosted blogging software yourself. Here are a few examples:

• b2evolution
• Drupal
• Movable Type
• TextPattern
• WordPress

What I Use: WordPress
I’ve tried nearly every user-hosted blogging software I could find when I started out, and I’ve found WordPress to be the best for what I’m doing. WordPress is easy to install, it’s free, and there are thousands of add-ons, plugins and themes to extend the software.

B. Developer Hosted: These are blogging programs that are hosted elsewhere. If you’re new to blogging, or if you do not want to install and maintain software yourself, developer-hosted blogging software may be the way to go. Developer hosted software is mostly template-based. Though some features can be customized, you can’t get “under the hood” to tweak some of the design or functionality features.

The one big drawback to developer hosted blogging software (to me, at least) is that your data resides on someone else’s server. So, if the service breaks or if there is some kind of glitch, all of your posts could be lost. I doubt that a service like Blogger would disappear, but if it did, you’d be out of luck.

Here are some of the more popular developer hosted blogging services:

• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• TypePad
• LexBlog

What I’ve Used: Blogger
This was the first blogging software I used when I started. It’s free, it’s very easy, and I really think Blogger is a great way to start if you’re not sure blogging is for you. But the layout of your blog is somewhat restricted. Don’t get me wrong; some legal bloggers have made beautiful designs using blogger’s templates (Denise Howell’s Bag and Baggage immediately comes to mind). But in my experience, Blogger’s limitations make it intolerable for tinkerers. And I am a tinkerer.

II. Statistics
Like blogging software, there are mainly two kinds of statistical software: user hosted and developer hosted.

A. User Hosted: User-hosted stats software sits on the web server and, in most cases, reads the server’s access logs. How does this work?

Each time someone visits one of your pages, they send a request. When you go to LawFirmBlogging.com, you are basically saying: “Get me everything that is tied to the index.php page.” That includes each image and file. Every file you request from the site is logged to a file, in this case it is called access_log.

Log File Analysis Software looks at the access_log file, processes the data, and spits out pretty looking graphs and stats.

What I Use: AwStats
Here are some of the reports AwStats provides:
* Number of visits, and number of unique visitors,
* Visits duration and last visits,
* Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week),
* Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection),
* Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list,
* Most viewed, entry and exit pages,
* OS used
* Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version
* Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site

B. Developer Hosted: With developer hosted statistical software, you put a piece of code on your page, and when someone visits the page, the code sends data to the developer’s servers.

What I Use: Google Analytics

III. Promotion
If you’re like me, you want people to read your blog. Makes sense, right? To get people reading your blog, they’ve got to find it somehow. Though getting a very high Google ranking would be ideal, there’s little you can do to make that happen immediately. So let’s focus on the promotion techniques you can get immediate benefit from.

A. Technorati: Technorati is a blog search engine. It’s a “real-time” search engine that keeps track of blog posts.

But, in order for your blog posts to be included in Technorati, you’ve got to let Technorati know when you’ve posted a new entry. There are a few ways to do this. The easiest way is to set up a technorati account. It’s free and easy. Once you set up an account, you’ll get a piece of code to add to your pages. That’s it. You’re done.

You can also “ping” technorati. This is a manual way to inform technorati of your posts in case your blogging software doesn’t allow you to embed technorati code.

B. Blawg.org: Blawg.org is a directory of legal blogs. If you have a legal blog, you can submit your site to Blawg.org for inclusion.

C. Getting Links: One of the best sources of traffic is having other sites link to you. I will talk about linking strategies further in future posts. Find other relevant sites and link to them. Then ask the site owner to link to you.

D. Comment: I cannot understate the importance of leaving comments on other people’s blogs. It lets people know that you’re reading their work and that you find it interesting. It also lets other bloggers know that you exist. If someone comments on my blog posts, I will check out their blog. Always.

When readers see comments, if they like what they’re reading, they’ll often visit the comment author’s website.

Summary: These are just a few methods and tools I use on a daily basis when blogging. I hope you find this overview useful in your blogging adventures. If you’ve got any questions, or if you’d like more detail on any of these items, just leave a comment. I’ll get back to you (and of course, I’ll check out your site).

Popularity: 12% [?]

Attorneys make their money by giving advice and answering questions.

Yes they do more than that, but on a very basic level, that’s what they do. So it seems counterintuitive for an attorney to give away advice for free. Let’s take a web site for example. Many law firm web sites will have articles written by attorneys. The articles are meant to demonstrate expertise and competence on a particular legal issue. But, the articles are not meant to be comprehensive and exhaustive. If they were, people could just read the articles themselves without needing to hire an attorney (yes, I realize there are MANY exceptions here). So it seems as if there is a line between offering enough information to show mastery of the topic and giving away too much.

I think that the best approach is to give away the simple in order to charge for the complex.

Let me explain.

Simple:

Sometimes people are looking for a quick answer for a legal problem. A tenant that wants to know if it’s okay to stop paying rent until the landlord fixes the hot water heater. Someone that wants to fight an unjust parking ticket.

In these cases, people just want to know their options. They’re not really ready to hire an attorney, as they’re in the very early stages of their legal issues.

I think people looking for the simple answer are too often ignored. But why would a firm spend time trying to give away advice to people not looking to hire an attorney? Isn’t that just a waste? I don’t think so. Here are a few benefits of giving away the answers to simple questions:

1. Trust- The entire nature of the attorney/client relationship is built on trust. Offering answers to fundamental, frequently asked questions is a way to establish trust with people needing answers.

2. Visibility- If a firm is able to compile lists of frequently asked questions about particular legal issues, people will find them. Pages that list valuable, useful information move to the top of the search engine rankings for all the right reasons.

3. Understanding- Giving away answers shows that your firm understands the issue as well as other related factors that may often be overlooked.

4. Educating- Educating your potential clients is always a positive. I can’t think of a situation where an attorney would be disappointed that a client has a clear understanding of the issue.

And my favorite reason:

Simple to Complex:

Problems that start small have a way of becoming complicated. I would guess that the vast majority of people that hire an attorney have done some research on their situation first. And if you are able to find good, accurate information on a law firm’s site, who are you going to call when you decide you need representation? It’s easy to trust a firm that has already demonstrated expertise.

Popularity: 6% [?]