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What to write when you don’t know what to write

July 20, 2015 by David M. Ward

“I don’t know what to write.” “I’ve said it all before.” “What I have to say is boring to most people.” “I’m not a good writer.”

This is what many lawyers tell themselves. These are the reasons they offer for not writing to their clients and prospects.

No articles, no blog, no emails. Or very few and far between.

Have you avoided setting up a newsletter or blog because you don’t think you have anything to say? I’m talking to you.

Yes, time is a factor. But you’re smart enough to know that it’s worth finding 30 minutes a week if it means bringing in several new clients per month.

No, if you’re not writing, it’s probably because you don’t think you have anything to say.

You know what? You might be right. You may not know what to say and you may not be a good writer. But it doesn’t matter. If you don’t know what to write, write anything.

You don’t have to be brilliant. You can write something that’s “just okay”.

Why? Because building a digital relationship with your clients and prospects isn’t about information or elegance, it’s about engagement.

It’s not what you say or how you say it that’s paramount. It’s that you said something.

You showed up in their life again, reminding them that you’re still practicing and still interested in knowing them. You shared an idea or observation, or shared something about your practice or your personal life. You asked for their feedback, and asked them to tell you how they are doing.

You don’t need to be brilliant, or even good. You just need to show up regularly and say hello.

Tell them something you did this week, or something you thought. Tell them about a website or book you recommend. Tell them about an interesting case or client you have, or one that another lawyer told you about.

A few paragraphs, once a week, is enough to maintain your relationship.

But here’s what happens.

You keep doing it and your writing gets better. And faster.

You find more interesting things to say, and better ways to say them. You start to enjoy writing, and you look forward to it, especially when you see how it is helping your practice grow.

You don’t have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good.

Here’s what you need to start your newsletter or blog

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Writing

“Keep your eyes on your own paper!”

June 25, 2015 by David M. Ward

When I went to school it was against the rules to cheat off of your neighbor’s paper. Not sure if that’s true today. After all, if you don’t copy off of someone else, you might hurt their feelings. It’s like telling them they’re not smart enough to copy. What if they are a different race or gender? You might be guilty of racism or sexism.

But hey, I’m old. What the hell do I know?

By the way, it’s okay for me to say I’m old, but if you say it, that would be ageism. Wait. What if you’re older than I am? Can an old guy be accused of ageism for calling an older guy old?

Okay, my head hurts. I’ll stop. Wait. Did I just hurt the feelings of migraine sufferers by saying my head hurts?

Where was I?

Ah yes, assuming that cheating (and plagiarism) are still verboten, I want to point out a loophole. A way you can use what other people write to create your own content.

Here’s the thing. It’s not plagiarism to copy someone else’s idea. So if one lawyer writes a blog post about a SCOTUS opinion and says he thinks it sucks eggs, and you agree with that, you can write your own post and say the very same thing.

Don’t use their words, just their ideas.

The same goes for the post’s title. You can’t copyright titles, so go ahead and use it if you can’t come up with your own.

Of course if you don’t agree with what the other writer said, you can say that instead. (Careful, though. You don’t want to hurt their feelings.)

So there you go. You can never say you don’t know what to write about. Look at what someone else wrote and cheat off of their paper.

Filed Under: Blogging, Newsletters, Writing

Why you should recommend products and services to your clients

June 8, 2015 by David M. Ward

Your clients want more from you than your legal advice. They want to know what you recommend in other areas of their life–banking, insurance, cars, and real estate, for example, and the vendors who market them. They may not ask for your advice on these matters but if you offer it, it will surely be welcome.

You’re advice and recommendations save them time and money and help them avoid the risk of making a bad choice. They will appreciate you for providing this information, remember you, come back to you, and tell their friends and colleagues about you.

So when lawyers ask me, “What should I write about on my blog or in my newsletter or on social media?” I tell them to think about what interests them as a consumer and as a business professional.

You don’t always have to writeÂ about legal matters. In fact, most people don’t want you to. Mix it up with a smattering of other subjects. Do you like movies? Write some reviews. Do you know something about re-financing a mortgage? Share your tips.

One topic that has legs right now is identity theft, especially in the wake of the recent theft of the personal information of more than 4 million Federal employees. Most people assume thisÂ will never happen to them but they’re living in a false paradise. They need to know the truth about their exposure to this pernicious crime, and how to protect themselves. You could supply that information.

I have experience in this field and I can tell you that you can’t “stop” or “prevent” identity theft. All you can do is protect yourself so that when it does occur, you are notified and have experts who repair the damage for you. You need to have that protection in place before the theftÂ occurs, however, or your loss may be excluded as pre-existing.

Following my own advice, I recommend the identity theft planÂ I have had for the last 12 years. It offers better protection than any other planÂ I’ve looked at. It’s cheaper, too. But I am biased. I am an affiliateÂ for this company and it’s other services. So are many other attorneys who market these plans to their clients and contacts.

Look at the products and services you use in your practice and in your personal life. Tell people about the ones you recommend, and why.

Filed Under: Blogging, Increase your income, News, Newsletters Tagged With: identity theft

Activating your list for fun and profit

May 8, 2015 by David M. Ward

You have a list of clients, prospects, and professional contacts. What are you doing to activate that list and turn it into repeat business and referrals?

How do you get that list to DO SOMETHING?

Some of the people on that list will do something merely because you stayed in touch with them. When they need something you offer, or know someone who does, they will click or call.

What about everyone else?

What about the people who need you but think the problem will go away by itself? What about the ones who don’t know how bad the problem can get if they don’t do something?

What about the people who don’t realize all of their options? What about the ones who didn’t have the money before, or didn’t want to spend it?

What about the ones who know people who need your services but didn’t think about referring them?

You need to do something to get these people to do something.

But what?

How about creating an event and inviting them to it? A webinar, teleseminar, or video hangout.

Invite your list to see some new information, or new ways of looking at the solutions. Teach them how to stop the problem from getting bigger and keep it from happening again.

You’ve got to get them thinking about the problem again. Comparing solutions. Considering the options. What better way to do that than to invite them to access this free information from the comfort of their tablet or smartphone?

During the event, make them a special offer. A free consultation, perhaps, so they can discuss the specifics of their situation with you. Or a discount, bonus, or inexpensive partial solution. Tell them you now take credit cards or offer a payment plan.

Give them an incentive to do something and tell them what to do to get it (e.g., call, fill out a form, stop by the office).

Record the event so you will have something to offer to new subscribers. Transcribe the recording and turn it into a report or ebook.

You can create an event today and announce it to your list tomorrow. By next week, you can have more people calling, subscribing, and referring.

How to set up an email list for your website or blog

Filed Under: Email, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Seminars and webinars

How to write faster than you thought possible

April 14, 2015 by David M. Ward

I wrote the first draft of yesterday’s blog post in 5 minutes. I also wrote the first draft of today’s post in 5 minutes.

If you want to write faster, here’s how to do it:

STEP ONE: CHOOSE YOUR TOPIC

Choose a topic you know well. If you need to research your subject, do it before you sit down to write.

What do you want to write about? What point do you want to convey? Write down your topic.

My topic yesterday was, “How to promote an event or offer”.

STEP TWO: TURN IT INTO A QUESTION

Take the topic and turn it into a question. Why? Because when it is in question form, your subconscious mind gets to work and searches for answers. The question primes your mental pump and the words start flowing.

My question was, “How can I promote an offer or event?”

STEP THREE: WRITE DOWN 3 “SEED WORDS”

Think of three words related to your topic. Whatever comes to mind. These may change as you start writing but these 3 words will help you start.

My seed words yesterday were, “Excitement,” “Urgency,” and “Repetition”. They became the three points I wrote about to answer the topic question.

STEP FOUR: WRITE NON-STOP FOR 5 MINUTES

Set a timer and write. Don’t stop to correct spelling or do any editing. Just write, as quickly as you can, until the timer goes off.

I’ve heard that most people who do this will write between 200 and 400 words in 5 minutes, and that’s what I did. When the timer sounded yesterday, I had written 269 words.

The 5 minutes flew by for me. I had more to say so I continued writing for roughly another two minutes.

STEP FIVE: EDIT

Using this method, you will probably find that your first draft is quite good and won’t require a lot of editing. I found that to be true.

I did some cutting, added a thought or two, edited, and changed the title. Total time from start to finish was around 20 minutes. That included time to make notes about what I was doing,Â in preparation for today’s post.

Not too shabby.

By the way, although this method is meant for writing short pieces, you could also use it to write longer pieces. Yep, in 5 minute increments.

So, how many posts, articles, and emails could you write if you use this method to write your first draft in 5 minutes?

Why not try it and find out?

Need ideas for topics? Get thisÂ

Filed Under: Blogging, Email, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Writing Tagged With: write faster, writing faster

Another technique for improving your writing you won’t want to do

March 27, 2015 by David M. Ward

Yesterday, I told you about a technique for improving your writing. I told you that I dramatically improved my writing by hand copyingÂ other people’s writing that I admired and wanted to emulate. Today, I want to share something else I did that elevated my writing to an even higher level.

Behold:

Every morning without fail, I rolled out of bed, grabbed a spiral notebook and pen, and wrote for twenty minutes.

Some would call this journaling, but that implies that I had something to say that I wanted to capture on paper. Instead, what I did was “free write”.

There are two rules to free writing.

First rule: write whatever comes into your mind, no matter how silly or meaningless. Write gibberish if that’s what comes. Write, “I don’t know what to write,” if you don’t know what to write. Write a list of words that have no connection to each other, or write the same word over and over, until your mind coughs up something else.

Which leads to the second rule: don’t stop. Keep your hand moving for twenty minutes and don’t stop for any reason.

So, what happens when you do this? At first, not much. You write a lot of useless junk and your hand gets really tired. Eventually, however, two things happen.

One thing that happens is that you start writing cogent thoughts about important things. Your writing taps into your subconscious mind and reveals your deepest beliefs and feelings, long forgotten memories, and amazingly valuable ideas you can use in your business and personal life.

Free writing becomes a kind of self-examination. It is cathartic and therapeutic. You write your way through problems and find solutions. At times, it is frightening, but ultimately, it is liberating. At first, your writing might reveal feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or pain. After a few weeks or a few months, you start feeling better about yourself and get really clear about your future.

Fun times.

The second thing that happens with free writing (when you do it long enough) is that you become a better writer. Your practice of writing daily (and freely) eventually clears away the warts and blemishes that disguise your writing and protect you from revealing your true self.

You start writing plainly and clearly. Your writing has energy and emotion. Writing is fun, and faster, because you are primarily talking on paper.

If you do this, do it first thing in the morning, before coffee, before you are fully awake. Your adult brain will be tired and put up less resistance, allowing your inner child’s brain to be heard.

Don’t show your writing to anyone. It’s just for you, at least for now. But don’t read what you write, at least for several months. Reading your insane scribbles might frighten and inhibit you.

How long should you do this? As long as it takes. Three months, six months, a year, a lifetime.Â You don’t have to figure that out right now. Just start, have fun with it,Â and trust that when you come out on the other side, you will be a better writer. Because you will.

Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Personal development, Writing Tagged With: free writing

A simple way to improve your writing you probably won’t do

March 26, 2015 by David M. Ward

Do you want to improve your writing? Of course you do. Well, there’s a simple way to do that but I’m afraid you won’t doÂ it.

Yes, it’s simple. Easy, even. But it takes a fair amount of time. Most people aren’t willing to put in that time.

But it’s worth it. I promise. When I did it, it changed the wiring in my brain and I became a much better writer.

I used to write like a lawyer–stilted, passive, thorough to a fault, and boring. Everything changed when I started using the method I’m about to share with you.

In a nutshell, this method involves finding writing exemplars you would like to emulate and copying them. I did this with sales letters and newsletters that tickled my fancy, but it will work for any kind of writing.

The idea is that the inputting of words into our brains processes those words differently than when we output them. When you studied for the bar exam, for example, you re-read your notes and outlines and all but memorized the information. But it wasn’t until you did practice tests and outputted that information that you truly internalized and could best use that information.

Something like that.

Anyway, find good writing samples and copy them. Re-type the entire piece. Then, do it again. Keep doing it until you know what the next sentence will say before you read it.

This process allows your mind to slow down enough to see things you ordinarily ignore. You’ll ask yourself why the writer chose one word instead of another, you’ll see how they started and ended sentences and paragraphs, and you’ll notice patterns in the way they staged the information.

You’ll also see how how the writer gets your attention and makes the piece easier to read with headlines, sub-heads, and bullet points.

Now, if you’re really committed, you’ll do what many professional copywriters did when they were learning their craft. You’ll copy the entire piece by hand.

Writing by hand invokes a more direct connection to the brain. You may have read articles recently about studies showing that taking notes by hand improves recall of the information. Copying someone else’s writing works the same way.

Whichever method you use, keep at it. Do it several times a week. Give it three or four months. Maybe more. Eventually, you’ll notice that your writing has started to change. It’s clearer, more concise, and more persuasive.

I can’t swear to it, but I’m pretty sure that when I stopped writing like a lawyer and started writing to communicate, I started settling cases faster and for more money.

Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Writing

Why didn’t you write this?

March 12, 2015 by David M. Ward

I saw a post on Mashable this morning and thought of you. The title is How to decide whether to elect an S-corp for your business. I’m mentioning it to you because I wanted to ask, “Why didn’t you write this?”

In the five hours since it was published (as of this writing), it has 1300 shares. If you had written this, a lot of people would have seen your name, your bio, and a link to your website.

The post is around 900 words. You could have written this in less than an hour. You might not have had it published on Mashable, but maybe you would. The author isn’t an attorney. She got it published. Why not you?

You could write a basic article like this about any practice area. And there are hundreds of places to have your article published. Blogs, magazines, and newsletters galore that need content, written by authorities like you.

Maybe you haven’t written an article like this before and don’t know where to start. No problem. Start with this article (or find one in your practice area) and reverse engineer it.

Make an outline from the article, then write your article from that outline. Add different information, add stories from your clients files, write in your own voice and style, and change the title. Done.

Here’s your homework:

Set up a file for this project and start adding ideas for articles you could write.
Do a search with keywords appropriate for your practice area and find articles you could have written. Add the links or actual articles to your file. Use these articles to write your own version of these articles, or to get more ideas.
Search for websites and blogs in your target market. Find their “editorial guidelines” (article length, topics, focus, etc.) and their submission or query process. If all of the articles appear to be staff written, you can still query the editor. You never know. Yours might be the first outside post they accept.
Write your first article this week. If you’re not ready to submit it to a blog or magazine, publish it on your website.

Publishing articles brings website traffic, enhances your bio, and gives you material your can re-purpose for reports, ebooks, and presentations. It can get you invitations to speaking engagements and interviews, and opens doors to getting more articles published.

Still not sure? Write a “practice” article that you won’t show anyone. Give yourself permission to write something awful.

When I was getting started writing, that’s what I did. I told myself to just get a first draft written, no matter how bad, and I could fix it later.Â When that draft was done, I found it really wasn’tÂ that bad. It was actually quite good.Â A little editing and I had something publishable.

I’m betting it will work out that way for you.

Need ideas for writing?Â Get this

Filed Under: Blogging, List building, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Web traffic, Writing Tagged With: article marketing

Email marketing for attorneys done right

February 26, 2015 by David M. Ward

I readÂ an article for real estate agents about ten ways email marketing beats social media. It’s a good article and I agree with all of it.Â I was going to tell you that it makes no difference whether you’re selling legal services or houses, email reigns supreme.

I even had a favorite “reason”–number 9 on the list: “Email is more intimate”. I was going to talk about how email allows you to have a simulated conversation with people, which helps you build a relationship with them, so that, over time, they come to know, like, and trust you, even before they’ve ever spoken to you.

But I’m not going to do that. Not today, anyway.

Instead of trying to convince you to make email your number one marketing tool, instead of beating the drum about how you are losing clients and money and making your life so much more difficult by not having an email list, I’m going to assume that you’re on board and talk about the right way to use it.

I see a fair amount of lawyers’ email newsletters, mostly because many of my readers think it’s okay to add me as a subscriber to their email list (it’s not). What I see, in my humble but accurate opinion, isn’t getting the job done.

For starters, just because it’s called a newsletter doesn’t mean it should look like a newsletter. Newsletters tend to be boring and self-serving, one small step removed from advertising. They “look” commercial–with stock photos and html layouts and links that say, “click here to finish this article”.

One glance at these and the reader knows that this email is probably not very important and doesn’t have much to say that is of interest to them. They know it’s probably all about the lawyer and not about them. The lawyer’s “exciting news” about how they are expanding or how they won a big case is exciting to the lawyer, but nobody else.

Most newsletters go unread because readers have come to know there’s nothing in them that interests them. There is some value to having subscribers see your name in their mailbox, reminding them of your existence, but it is so much better if they open and read your emails, appreciate them, and look forward to them.

So, for starters, your newsletter shouldn’t look like adverting or anything commercial.

It should look like a letter.

A letter (email) with some news or helpful, relevant information. Something readersÂ care about, something that makes their life better, something worth reading.

It should also read like a letter, from a real person. Not from a committee or “the firm”. Not “canned” articles purchased from a newsletter company.

It should be written in “me to you” format, just like you would write a real letter to a real person. It should look like you sat down and penned a personal message to an individual. Because while you may be sending this same email to hundreds or thousands of people, each person who reads it is an individual.

Write to one person, not to “everyone”. Talk to that one person, as though he or she was sitting with you in your office or talking to you over the phone.

If you do it right, when your subscriber sees your email show up in his or her email, he should get a little excited. “I wonder what [you] will share with me today?”

Kinda like what you’re reading right now.

I share information I hope you find interesting and helpful. I tell stories from my days of practicing and stories about my life today, to add color and interest to that information. Sometimes I’m serious and preachy, sometimes I’m funny, but I’m never boring orÂ irrelevant.

Yes, most of my emails are cut and paste jobs of my blog posts, but my blog posts are usually written like emails.

Many subscribers tell me they read my emails every day and look forward to them. Some tell me they are the highlight of their day.

That’s what I’m going for. A relationship. Intimacy. Transparency.

So, if you aren’t using email to build your practice, you need to. I’ll pound on that again at another time. If you are using email, but you believe social media is more important, go read the article. And if you understand why email is supreme and you want to get better results usingÂ it, take my words to heart.

Kill the fancy newsletter, write letters to the people on your list, and tell them something they want to hear.

Learn more about email marketing for attorneys. Go here

Filed Under: Communication, Email, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Social media