Newsletters Archives - Page 13 of 30 - The Attorney Marketing Center

When you don’t know what to write, write one of these

February 15, 2021 by David M. Ward

It’s called a listicle and it’s exactly what it sounds like–an article that is basically a list. They’re easy to write because you don’t need to provide a lot of detail or analysis, and the title or headline usually writes itself:

3 things you MUST do before you file for divorce
5 reasons bankruptcy might not be right for you
10 ways to help your personal injury lawyer get a bigger settlement for you
11 websites I recommend to all my estate planning clients
Want to re-negotiate your lease? Here are 15 ideas that might save you a fortune
22 tips for small business owners who want to get paid
127 reasons why you should hire me instead of any other lawyer

Kidding about the last one. Or am I?

Readers like listicles because they know they can scan the article and find a few useful ideas.

To write your first (or next) listicle, start by brainstorming topics, things prospective clients usually ask you, for example. Also brainstorm ideas or tips for the body of your article.

If you don’t have enough content, visit your favorite search engine and scoop up more tips, answers, or ideas. Don’t forget to visit other lawyers’ blogs.

For future listicles, start collecting tips or ideas and saving them to a file. Also collect listicle-type headlines you can use as templates.

You can use a listicle headline from any field. For example, the headline, “5 Steps to Improving Your Garden” can become “5 Steps to Updating Your Estate Plan”.

More ideas for blog posts and articles can be found here

Filed Under: Blogging, Newsletters, Writing

What secret word unlocks email marketing success (But isn’t a secret)?

January 26, 2021 by David M. Ward

One word. A word that can turn a boring newsletter, blog post, or article into something your subscribers look forward to reading. A word that helps you forge relationships with your readers and bring them closer to hiring you and referring you.

The word is hardly a secret. You use it every day in conversation, but perhaps not so much in your newsletter, articles, and blog posts, because “experts” tell you to avoid it.

The word? “I”.

Yes, talk about yourself.

Of course you will mostly talk about your reader–their problems, their wants and needs, their niche market or community.

Talk about subjects that interest your reader, but don’t leave yourself out of the picture.

Tell your story. Let people get to know you and what it’s like to work with you.

Because you are the solution to their problems.

When you talk about the law, use examples and stories from your practice. Talk about how you’ve dealt with these issues before, on behalf of other clients.

Describe yourself in action, talking to people, creating documents, writing letters, arguing or negotiating on behalf of your clients.

Your readers what to know what you’ve done for other clients, because it shows them what you can do for them.

Don’t make your newsletter all about you. But don’t forget to talk about yourself, because that’s how your readers get to know, like and trust you.

Email Marketing for Attorneys

Filed Under: Content creation, Email, Newsletters, Writing

Looking for ideas for your newsletter or blog? Here are 3 places to find them

January 13, 2021 by David M. Ward

Where do you find ideas for writing interesting and relevant posts your clients and prospects look forward to reading?

Here are 3 “can’t fail” places:

1) Books

I know, you already read plenty. But if you only read about the law, or you only read short articles you find online, you’re missing out on an opportunity to create superlative content.

Read more books and talk about the ideas you learn.

Read history, philosophy, and books about business (even if you target consumers). Read books about important subjects, written by smart and accomplished people with interesting information and stories.

If it interests you, it will interest many of your readers.

Entrepreneur Patrick Collison said, “You could try to pound your head against the wall and think of original ideas or you can cheat by reading them in books.”

2) Posts written by your colleagues

Other lawyers are writing about subjects that interest their clients and prospects. There’s a good chance those same subjects will interest yours.

Read the blogs and newsletters written by professionals in your niche. Read what lawyers, accountants, consultants, and other experts are writing about and use their ideas to create your own content.

If you handle estate planning, read blogs written by other estate planners, even in other jurisdictions. Read tax experts, divorce lawyers, financial planners and others who sell to or advise the people you target.

Agree or disagree with them, amplify their article with examples from your own experience, quote them and link to them if you want, or simply use their idea as a starting point to share your own thoughts on the subject.

3) News about your target market

What’s going on in your target market and with the people in it? What are people talking about, complaining about or celebrating?

Report on trends in the market, predictions, and news. Which company or industry is in an upswing, which one is having trouble? What’s expected to happen next month or next year?

Share information and ideas on consumer issues, e.g., taxes, insurance, credit, debt, etc. If you target business clients, talk about avoiding lawsuits, protecting assets, increasing productivity and profits, and bringing in more business.

Identify prominent people in the market and write about them, interview them, review their books and profile their companies, products and services.

Share news and helpful and interesting information people want to know.

3 simple ways to get ideas for content your readers want to read.

Want more ideas? Get my email marketing course

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Writing

You already said that

November 13, 2020 by David M. Ward

In one of his newsletters, legendary copywriter Gary Halbert tells a story about a reader who urged him to re-read a newsletter he’d written nearly a decade earlier. When he did, he found that the earlier newsletter was “almost word-for-word the same” as his latest.

Oops? Not at all. Halbert said, “. . .what I wrote almost ten years ago is as accurate and important todayâ€¦ asâ€¦ it was back then.”

He added:

“It Is More Important To Be Reminded Of “Core Fundamentals” Than To Be Dazzled With Some New Piece Of Contemporary Creativity!”

For those of us who write newsletters and blogs and other content, the takeaway is clear. It’s okay to say things you’ve said before.

In fact, it’s a good thing. Here’s why:

You continually have new subscribers and followers, reading you for the first time.
Most people don’t read everything you write.
Most people don’t remember what you said before.
Some people may not have needed to hear your message before but very much need to hear it now.
You may repeat the basic points but use a different headline, lead, examples, stories, or quotes. You may say it more persuasively or make it more memorable.
Some people need to hear it again (and again) before they’re willing to do something about it.

If what you say is important, if you’re writing about “core fundamentals,” the best thing you can do for your readers is to write about it often.

So don’t worry about repeating yourself. Say what you want to say, as often as you want to say it. (Just don’t make it boring.)

And, on those days when you can’t think of anything to write about, find something you wrote about before and write about it again.

The core fundamentals of a lawyer’s newsletter

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Writing

Who’s on your “hot list”?

October 16, 2020 by David M. Ward

You have contacts you want to stay in touch with. Clients, former clients, referral sources, prospective clients, centers of influence in your niche, and so on.

When you first met them or connected with them, you may have scheduled follow-up dates and stayed in touch. But you got busy, you forgot about them, or you ran out of things to talk about.

What can you do?

First, create a “hot list” of no more than 30 people you want to focus on right now–your “Focus 30” list.

Schedule time each week to look at this list. Choose one or two people and contact them.

Call, write, message them. Ask about their business, their family, their health, their latest project or their next one.

Keep notes about them and your conversations and emails. Keep a list of their websites and social platforms so you can see what they’re up to.

Keep another list of generic ideas or conversation starters, questions you can ask anyone on your list, things you can offer, things you can tell them about or invite them to.

NB: When you regularly create new content you always have something new to tell people about or offer.

Keep your list up to date. Remove people who aren’t responsive and add new ones when you find them.

Give your personal attention to your “Focus 30” and stay in touch with everyone else via your newsletter.

Here’s how to do that

Filed Under: Client relations, Networking, Newsletters Tagged With: stay in touch

How much, how often?

October 14, 2020 by David M. Ward

Information overload is clearly a thing.

According to a 2014 study by UC San Diego, each day we spend an average of 11.8 hours consuming media on our devices, the equivalent of 174 full newspaper’s worth of information.

That’s approximately 113,000 words per day, and this is increasing 2.4% each year.

So it’s not surprising to hear many people tell those of us who write a blog or a newsletter or produce videos or other content to cut back.

But I’m not cutting back and neither should you.

Because we have people with problems that need solving or goals they wish to achieve, and the information we send them helps begin the process.

So, let other people cut back. Not us.

When you send out valuable and/or interesting information that educates clients and prospects about their problems and the available solutions, you give them hope for a better future.

And you can’t do that too much or too often.

Where many marketers go wrong, however, is by sending out information that’s not helpful or interesting, so people stop reading it and forget your name.

Which doesn’t help anyone.

The message is simple. Write something people want to read and send it often, because you don’t know how many times they need to be reminded that you have the solutions they seek, or when they’ll be ready to take the next step.

How to write content people want to read

Filed Under: Communication, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Writing Tagged With: content marketing

Super simple way to create your next article or post

October 13, 2020 by David M. Ward

I see you. You’re sitting in front of your computer trying to come up with something to write for your blog or newsletter.

And you’re stumped.

The well is dry, you’ve got other things to do, and you don’t want to spend all day staring at the ceiling.

No, I’m not going to lecture you about keeping a running list of ideas. Instead, I’m going to come to your rescue and give you your next idea.

All you need to do is identify a book or article you read, or video you watched recently, and tell your subscribers or readers about it.

What it was about, what you agreed with or liked, or what you found lacking.

You could write about the article about taxes or retirement or insurance you just read. Tell them what you think, what you agree with and recommend, and what you plan to do with the information yourself.

If you read an article about a productivity app, you could tell them about your experiences with that app, or why you like something else better.

If you just read a bar journal article or watched a CLE video, you could mention a few salient points and tell them how you will use this in your practice.

What is your local paper writing about your community? Crime, fires, store closings? You can write about those, too.

You could write about anything. Even the post you’re reading right now.

If you represent business clients or anyone who writes a blog or newsletter or posts on social media, you could pass along your thoughts about the idea in this very article. It’s something they can use when they’re fresh out of ideas.

So, what will you write about next?

Want more article ideas? Here

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Online Marketing

Ten tips for writing faster

October 6, 2020 by David M. Ward

I’ll keep this short (which is my first tip for writing faster).

Most of my posts are a few hundred words. You don’t need more than that to get my point, and I don’t want to write more than that to make it.

So there.

Lower your standards. You’re not writing literature. Tell people what you want to tell them, do a quick edit, and get on with your day.
Keep a well-stocked supply of ideas. For me, deciding what I want to say takes a lot longer than actually saying it.
Avoid (most) research. Write what you know.
Write (something) every day. You’ll get faster and better.
Schedule it. Decide when you want to write and put the time on your calendar. You’ll train your brain to accept that it’s time to write, making it more likely that the words will start flowing.
Time it. Give yourself 15 minutes to write a first draft. (30 minutes if you must.)
Learn to type faster. You can practice here
Dictate. You speak several times faster than you can type and you can do it anywhere. Editing takes longer, though.
Re-cycle. Most of your readers haven’t read or don’t remember what you wrote on the subject last year so write about it again this year.

Still think you can’t write a weekly newsletter or blog post?

Think again.

How to (quickly) write an email newsletter clients want to read

Filed Under: Email, Newsletters, Productivity, Writing