Court Filings, Decisions and Legal Articles : JD Supra : Cases, Briefs, Documents, Forms

Marketing guru Seth Godin asks in a recent blog post: Who answers the phone?

Godin's point? That with marketing, we're willing to prioritize considerable time and money on a new logo, a television ad (even a website!) - and yet often when it comes to the inbound telephone call, the prospect calling you:

the lowest-paid, least-respected, highest-turnover jobs in the organization now do the most important marketing work.

("The new rules mean that the most valuable marketing event is almost always an inbound phone call.")

The new rules.

The new rules also mean that you have an online presence, whether you've created one or not. Imagine: someone in your referral network mentions your name at a meeting or over dinner. What will that new prospect, that potential client, find when they follow up and Google you? You should be asking yourself this question. You should know the answer.

If someone goes online to put together a picture of you, what will they find? And have you done enough to influence the results?

For example, your website. It probably cost a lot to produce, but are you now doing anything to promote it - more importantly, to optimize it? Have you made the site easy to find? Is it listed anywhere? (Simple: the more high quality links, the better.)

What about all of the marketing collateral (newsletters and articles) you've spent enormous amounts of money producing in order to demonstrate your expertise? Any of it online? If not, why not? If yes, in how many places?

Do you have a professional profile? What does it say and include? Does it link to your website?

Can a prospect piece together a good portrait of you online - something substantive, demonstrating expertise and a level of quality? You should know the answer to this question, because in all likelihood they're trying to do exactly that - right now.

 At JD Supra we like the term content marketing. It describes one key service of our user-generated legal research directory. Lawyers and members of the legal community share their content in order to build the directory (briefs, articles, decisions, filings) - and as a result they're able to market themselves to anyone using the directory by calling attention to one of the most compelling pieces of marketing material available to them, their product, their expertise, the written evidence of their daily work.

But, there's more to it. You - not just your legal documents - are part of the story. Undoubtedly you've seen it written in other ways in the marketing books and on blogs ("You are your own brand!"). At JD Supra, think of it like this: via your professional profile, you are your first piece of content in content marketing. (Consider that the profile is not just available to visitors at JDSupra.com; often it is also what people see when they, to borrow a phrase, "Google" you.)

Meaning? Take full advantage of your JD Supra profile. Make it human, tell a story, stand out in the crowd. Definitely include your academic and professional accreditations, your employment history, your publications, your professional successes - referrals and prospective clients will want to see all of this information - but also use the page to paint the whole picture. Describe how you make a difference, how you made a difference. Don't just give your title; explain your role. (And if you are part of a large firm with a single presence on JD Supra, stand up and create your very own profile.)

There is no single way to do this. Quoted from active JD Supra profiles, here are a few varied examples of the kind of extra language we think makes a difference:

"Some of my cases involve representing petitioners and aliens where the CIS has denied (or revoked its approval of) a petition, and who are advised by the agency that 'there is no appeal from this decision.' It has been my pleasure to prove them wrong on several occasions."
- Edward Reisman

"A law firm founded by six Muslim women, they realized, was likely a first in the nation, and indeed, their investigation confirmed their suspicions. Carrying this banner and their passion for the law, the partners understood that they were paving a new path for future Muslim women, providing society an example ... and giving hope to a community ..."
- Amal Law Group

"Hagan’s research continues to fuse crime and justice issues, examining the projection of human rights advocacy in an era characterized by the increasing perpetration of war crimes. His current work on Darfur argues that criminology has too long neglected crimes against humanity and genocide, 'the crime of crimes.'"
- John Hagan

How are you telling your story?

Content marketing is not the wave of the future - it is the essential marketing tool of the present  - and JD Supra contributors are on the crest of this wave.

As Joe Pulizzi reports,"Marketing today is all about publishing":

Leading marketing organizations such as IBM and Siemens are focusing the majority of their time, attention and resources on the creation and distribution of their own content to customers and prospects .

. . . By providing this type of content marketing and setting up the building blocks for a long-term relationship, the opportunity is now available to actually sell your solutions, because they trust you, have a stake in your brand, and believe in your solutions-oriented message.

The whole idea of this, even ten years ago, would seem like the hard way to increase sales. Today, it's the only way.

Just yesterday, Brian Ritchey of More Partner Income also wrote about the increasing role of substantive content provision in business marketing, and the importance of "information-driven business development for law firms" (the post does not seem to be available today). While Brian primarily focused on blogs, the leading marketing organizations are not only blogging, they are creating "relevant and compelling content consistently, and in multiple formats" and syndicating that content on other websites.

The best news of all - unlike IBM and Siemens, we don't need to expend enormous resources to create compelling content - as lawyers, our product is content, and with JD Supra, it is easier than ever to get that content in front of prospective clients in a way they can easily access.

In a recent post, Steve Matthews showed how The Scoop section on JD Supra creates an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your work directly to the media.

Indeed, we built The Scoop specifically to generate media attention for our contributors and to give reporters and editors hot leads on new stories with a steady supply of "buzzworthy" legal documents, filings, and decisions before they're available anywhere else. This fresh source of legal news even has its own RSS feed.

Any JD Supra member can include a document in The Scoop by designating it as "Hot" during the posting process (on the document upload page). But if you do plan on participating, please start by reading these extraordinarily helpful writing tips, put together for the JD Supra community by lawyer and legal journalist Jordan Furlong.  "Think like a reporter." That's Mr. Furlong's first tip (and he would know: currently he serves as editor-in-chief of the Canadian Bar Association's magazine, National, and writes a blog at http://law21.ca). Additional tips (example: "Don't write like a lawyer") and samples of excellent document summaries are available for your consideration here.

We're thrilled and grateful that a member the legal media would not only be excited by The Scoop but go so far as to contribute writing tips to make it more useful and usable for his journalist colleagues. Thank you, Jordan Furlong.

[Stay tuned for an upcoming round-up of recent Scoops.]

Marc Stern recently wrote that JD Supra takes lawyer marketing into the 21st century. Well, there's no question that our contributors live and work in the here-and-now. Just look at these smart (one might even say hip) profile portraits for proof of that:

Not your grandfather's legal directory.

[From top left to bottom right, these JD Supra members are: Scott Riddle, Ekaterina Schoenefeld, Connie Crosby, Dan Canon, Faith L. Charles, Robert Chilvers, Janet H. Moore, and Lisa Solomon.]