Mobile Websites. Why They Are A MUST!

Posted on September 17, 2012 by rachel

In my last blog article I made mention of websites that have mobile capability. If you don’t remember reading this then I will take us back a little bit with some of the statistics that I shared in my previous posting.

So, we have 955 Million users to date that are active users on Facebook. 543 Million of those users are mobile. This means that these are the people that are accessing the world’s most popular website through the use of a cell phone. Now, this is a huge number of people that potentially will be able to see your information. Have you ever tried to access a full website on a cell phone? On most cell phones now there is the ability to view and entire website which is great if you have yet to invest in someone designing a mobile access website for you. However, now times have changed and a lot of mobile users are experiencing a huge phenom which is that the largest cell phone provider in the world, Verizon, has moved away from unlimited data. This could be a huge impact on the way that you are coming across to your potential clients because downloading everything needed to view a full sized website will eat up the precious data that they have paid for. Where does that leave you?? Up a creek, that’s where.

What is a mobile website??? Well, let me give you the definition. According to the Inerenet Marketing Dictionary: A Mobile Site is a website which is specifically designed for optimum performance when viewed not on a regular computer screen but on a small mobile device such as a cell phone, a PDA etc. Low bandwidth for mobile web access brings back a problem from the dial-up-age that seemed overcome with the advent of broadband connections for regular computers. A huge page size would not only make the site loading very slowly in mobile browsers, it would also cost the phone user more money as the fees for wireless data transfer to mobile phones are considerable.

This tells us two things: I told you. And I am right. Now that I have finally gotten that out of the way. Let me tell you a little bit more about why this is super important for you. An article in DailyTech states this: According to the IDC’s Worldwide New Media Market Model, more U.S. internet users will access the web through mobile devices rather than through PCs or wireline services by 2015. If you don’t have a mobile website then you are behind.

As I am writing this blog, on the train on the way to Washington, DC. I have noticed something pretty amazing. That I can actually get some things done on the train on the way up to our capital. But, most of the people in the business class car are using some type of mobile device to surf the internet with. For example the lady next to me is using an Apple iPad, which can view both mobile sites and full websites. I happen to be one of the people who is using my smart phone and my computer at the same time. That’s my inner nerd talking now. So my point is, take a look around you next time you are in a public setting like on your commute to work if you take a train like I do. You will be surprised to see how many people occupy themselves with the internet.

Really quick before I end this, if you were someone who was in an accident and were standing in the middle of the street with no computer…but the first thing you needed to do aside from call the police was contact an attorney because you know this accident was/was not your fault. How would you find one while you are waiting on the police to write any citations? Heaven, forbid that ever happens. But I’m just saying, 99% of people that are right minded after an accident will probably think immediately about obtaining an attorney. How are you going to make sure this person is going to be able to get a hold of your firm’s information on their smart phone? That’s right…mobile capability. Google will actually direct the smart phone being used to conduct the search to mobile friendly websites before showing one that is a full website. Bet you didn’t realize that.

Now that you know a little bit more on what you are missing out on…which potentially is 543 Million people. What are you waiting for? If you are wondering, the answer is yes, I can help you with that.

As always, if you need me. let me know. I am always here.

Signed,

The Attorney’s ATM Gal

Social Media? What’s That?

Posted on September 5, 2012 by rachel

I am sure that many of you have been approached by someone in your firm about social media. Maybe it was a younger intern, or a seasoned pro that has brought this up. Many law firms do not participate in this type of marketing because it simply is not something that is well versed in the legal profession.

Your marketing efforts have produced some pretty great results right? How many people are actually mentioning your law firm on the internet? If you remember in my last post; the most important thing that you can do for your law firm is approve all of the information that makes its way out onto the internet. What about those things that you have no control over? What about postings on Facebook or Twitter? Not sure who pays attention to that stuff? Well, Google and the other big search engines pay attention to everything.

If you haven’t already started some type of social media in your law firm or you have no idea who is working on that for you…you may want to find that out or start working on it.

Now there is a list of a few different social media sites that you might want to start up and keep up with it. Yes, we can help you with that. First, I am going to tell you a little bit about what you can see statistically with some of these sites in order to track how many people you are reaching with every post, update and any change you make to your information on these social media sites.

What I am going to show you is one site that has become one of the most widely used website in the world. With even more daily visits than our beloved Google, Facebook has over 955 million registered users as of June 2012. (Facebook Key Facts) That’s pretty impressive for a website that started in a college dorm room in 2004. If your law firm’s website can keep up with Facebook then I need to speak with you directly because I need to be able to buy your secret sauce. For those of you who knew me back in my Google days understand that I am a statistic junkie. Did you know that of those 955 million users on Facebook 81% reside in the United States and Canada? 543 million of those users are mobile! Have you made sure that your website is mobile friendly? You probably should. We will discuss that a little more in next weeks article.

So, now we have the statistics. What is 81% of 955 million??? How many of those users do you think will need an attorney to represent them in the near future? A lot of them. How many of those people do you think that you have reached out to?

Now, I know exactly what you are thinking: “But Rachel, I already made time in my schedule to make sure that I approve all of the information that goes out about my law firm. Now, you want me to make even more time in my schedule to post more information?” Not the end of the world I promise. Just two more minutes is all that I ask. Really, I want you to add these two minutes to the few minutes that you should already be taking to blog once a week. If you are not already blogging then we will need to have a different discussion. If you are not able to blog once a week, that’s not a big deal because I don’t even have enough time to sit down and write a quality blog once a week. But now that I have written this article I will make sure that I definitely start practicing what I preach.

If you haven’t thought about signing up for social media, you are missing out on thousands of potential clients. If you need more help with how to reach out to these millions of people that are viewing just one of these many social media websites then give us a shout.

As always, if you need me. let me know. I am always here.

Signed,

The Attorney’s ATM Gal

Consistency In Your Web Presence.

Posted on August 2, 2012 by rachel

When was the last time you “Googled” your law firm? Did you find consistent results? If not, you are doing it wrong.

It is really important to pay attention to the information that is placed about your law firm on the internet. Especially if you have multiple attorneys in your office. Sometimes you have attorneys that like to go out on their own because they “are the best” at SEO. According to who? Last time I checked your associate had a J.D. right? Unless things have changed, I am pretty sure Law School does not teach you about how to market your law firm on the internet. You may need to talk to this person about a different problem if they actually have a degree in Internet Marketing instead of the J.D. claimed on their resume.

I apologize for my digressions. Moving on.

If your attorneys are creating individual profiles and linking those profiles to your law firm in any way; my suggestion is that you need to be clear that you will need to approve all of the content prior to the release. The last thing that you want, I mean the very last thing, is for one of your associates to accidentally create an issue that will take you potentially years to clean up. I know the time frame because, unfortunately, I have seen this first hand myself. This is what marketing firms call “SEO baggage.” It is the clean up process that not only is frustrating, but very time consuming. This can create a problem when it comes to achieving the results that you are looking for when it comes to the big “G” as well as those “other” sites. Plus, once you are able to find the error, and fix it, Google still will not see this correction for more likely, 90 days. That is a very long time to wait.

The range of information that you will want to check into will be well….and I am serious when I say this. Everything. You will need to check the content in the description, the address, phone number, a few other things, even any photographs and the file names of the photographs. This may seem like a lot of work initially, and you will probably laugh at this article and say “I’m an attorney, I am too busy to check stuff like that…it seems so unnecessary.” But trust me when I say, I have been doing this a long time and if you do not take that five minutes to check to ensure consistency in ALL profiles that are submitted that have the potential to connect with your law firm. You will wish you had and so will your wallet. By your wallet I am referring to missed potential cases and having to pay someone the hours to clean it up.

Let me paint a little bit of a picture for you so that you understand what I mean. Let’s say that you go to Google Maps and you type in the name of your law firm. You see along the left hand side all of the results of what you have typed in. You don’t just see your one Google + but you see that you now have seven! Not only do you see that you have seven, these profiles all have different information. If the first one in the results has the incorrect phone number, lets say the number actually was mis-typed and the phone number is actually a number to a preschool instead of to your personal injury firm. Your new potential clients are going to assume the worst and are going to move onto the next attorney. That’s a lot of potential money walking away! (Metaphorically of course.) Had you taken five minutes to ensure that all of your information going into different profiles was all the same…i.e. your phone number, you would not be panic stricken about how many potential new cases you could be working on at this very moment. The kicker is that even if you get Google to fix the issue, chances are they found that information from some where else. Guess what?? Google will not tell you where it came from and within a few days, it will change right back to the incorrect number. All because that one profile with the mistake will tell the Google “spiders” to change it back to the incorrect phone number. Now you are on your own to find the inconsistency in one of thousands of directory possibilities on the internet. So five minutes turns into years because the internet is a really big place.

The moral of this story is this: Take your time! Check everything that goes onto the internet about your law firm! Make sure that you create consistency in your web presence by checking the phone number, to the file names that your photographs hold, and everything else in between. If you don’t, you might regret it later. After all, the best line I ever heard from a movie was this: “The Internet is not written in pencil. It is written in ink.” (The Social Network, 2010) That is absolutely right on the money, literally.

So Google yourself if you haven’t done it lately. You may be surprised at what you find.

As always, if you need me, let me know. I am always here.

Signed,

The Attorney’s ATM Gal

Who Am I?

Posted on July 30, 2012 by rachel

This is my very first blog as The Attorney’s ATM Gal! I have decided that since a lot of you who are viewing this website for the first time because well, it’s brand new. I figured I should tell you a little more about who I am, and what my company does.

My name is Rachel Donner. I am a Pisces, I love ponies…just kidding. Okay, seriously, I am the Director of Business Advisory Services for a company called The Attorney’s ATM. Yes, it is a mouthful, but that is really because I am one of the people that make a lot of the magic happen. I am definitely not the most important person, but I am working on getting right up there with the “Wizards.”

Who are the “Wizards?” Well, that I cannot tell you officially, actually I can. But I will tell you that they also who make the magic happen at our company. You see, The Attorney’s ATM is one of the only marketing firms with a written guarantee on our work. We will turn your law firm into an ATM machine, we guarantee it. In fact, we are so confident in our abilities, as a company who markets strictly for attorneys, that if we don’t deliver on what we promise, we give your money back. Pretty good stuff huh?

What if I told you that most people who utilize marketing firms will almost never see their return on investment? Kind of strange considering that there are soo many of them out there. Who do you trust? Who do you not trust? Well the answer is simple. Trust, no one. Unfortunately, a lot of times great marketing firms are found through trial and error, a lot of unnecessarily spent money and something called the waiting game. Yes, marketing companies usually have you sign a contract. We do the same thing, but remember our contract has a guarantee attached to it. In reality, you have nothing to lose by doing business with us.

I should probably tell you how I got to be The Attorney’s ATM Gal…well, I can’t go into too much detail but I can say this. My new boss used to be my client. He wrote a blog about me and even made a video about me! How cool!? Actually, at first it was a little strange and new. The good news is, when I left the company that I was working with, I had a place to call home. I am so glad that I am here.

Now, the point of this blog is that I am going to share with you some things that we feel are important for you to know as someone who represents a law firm in their marketing aspect, or the managing partner of a law firm. Maybe you are someone that needs a little bit of help in simple marketing aspects? We not only provide a marketing service that is proven to be effective; we are also willing to tell you about some things that you need to know about how to market your firm successfully.

So stay tuned into my blog for further updates about things that you should know about the amazing world of attorney marketing.

As always, if you need me, let me know. I am always here.

Signed,

The Attorney’s ATM Gal