Companion Post to the Solo Practice That Didn’t Finish (Part II): The Marketing Plan That Started to Work

Editor’s Note:  In the previous post, the solo lawyer who is transitioning out of his practice mentioned that his online marketing efforts were starting to bear fruit.  In this post, there’s a description of the activities that started the turn-around.  Don’t get the wrong idea – online marketing isn’t a silver bullet since if you botch those cases, the Internet will work against you (in the form of negative reviews). But referral-based marketing or personal contacts alone just aren’t enough, particularly when your circle isn’t large enough or your area is too competitive and consequently, the referrals you generate aren’t very good.  In any event, the author describes a fairly solid online marketing strategy that might work for your practice as well.

I started a blog on blogger, which I promoted on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  I wrote substantive content at a rate of 2-3 articles per week.  I also systematically used Twitter to tweet or retweet
updates and news relevant to my practice areas.  I targeted local people and attorneys in similar or related practice areas as followers, and went from 200 to over 500 followers.  I also reviewed my presence in various online yellow-pages type sites and found that with respect to many that I had thought I was listed in, I either was not or the information was sparse and not up to date.  I submitted to dozens of listing sites and submitted updated information to others. I created a JDSupra profile and Justia profile, answered Justia and AVVO questions, and linked together my website, online listings (where possible), Q&As, JDSupra profile, and blog.

Several of my blog articles were retweeted or +1’d or forwarded around from LinkedIn.  Finally, I slightly revamped my website to update my contact me form, and to ensure that contacting me was an option in more places, and I also added content about certain practice areas and removed content about practice areas I neither ever got nor any longer wanted contacts about.  And I added a Zopim chat box on my site, which I now need to turn off.  At first all of this activity seemed to have no effect, but within the last month I have been getting a lot more calls or emails from people who say they found me on the web and who are interested in things I actually do such as debt defense and FDCPA.