I talk to a lot of lawyers who tell me they don’t have time for blogging or marketing on the Internet (or any marketing, for that matter). You’ve heard me say it before, marketing is the most important part of building a law practice.
I don’t care how good you are at practicing law, if you don’t have (enough) clients, you’re going to starve. And while your reputation and the natural referrals that flow to you as a result of doing a good job for your clients cannot be discounted, if you aren’t regularly engaging in marketing-related activities, you’re making a big mistake.
Marketing will bring you
- More clients
- Better clients
- Better paying clients
- More time (by hiring and/or outsourcing more lawyers and staff)
- Writing and speaking assignments (that further build your reputation and bring you more clients, better clients, etc.)
- Do I need to go on?
In the online world, you need (a) quality content, in (b) sufficient quantity, to attract (c) more traffic to your web site. People come, they see you as an authority who offers value (good content), and they (a) hire you, (b) refer clients, and/or (c) opt-in to your newsletter or other lists whereby you can stay in touch with them until they are ready to (a) hire you, or (b) refer clients.
But that’s just for starters. The traffic you generate to your blog who like what you have to say will tell others about you and your blog and those others will, in turn, (a) hire you, (b) refer clients to you, and (c) opt-in to your lists whereby you can stay in touch with them until they are ready. . .
And (and this is the big point) those visitors do the same. On the Internet, the growth of your web site and your practice is geometric, as this recent article explains. More begets more and if you’re not leveraging this opportunity for growth, you are missing out.
And so instead of saying, “I don’t have time. . .” you should be asking, “How can I find the time. . .”, because once you’ve made that transition, you will find the time. We all have 25 hours a day (God gave lawyers one extra hour) and we cannot manage time, all we can do is manage our priorities. When your priorities change, so will your schedule.
