Andrew Stickel

Lawyers! Here’s How To Hire Content Writers and Virtual Assistants!

The question:

Can you explain how to hire a VA or a content writer from Upwork?

My answer:

You do not want to hire content writers from Upwork. Go to the Cult of Copy job board on Facebook. Just Google Cult of Copy job board. That’s where we get the majority of our writers.

I like to hire Americans as content writers. When you hire a virtual assistant, what you want to do is pretty simple. You just follow the steps below. But interviewing them is the most important part.

How to interview virtual assistants

Make sure to ask them questions that they cannot Google because you want to make sure that you’re able to communicate with them. Ask them questions like, “What do you do for fun?” or “Tell me about your family,” or, “What are your hobbies?”

You want to have a conversation with them and make sure you can actually communicate with them. The mistake that a lot of people make with hiring virtual assistants is that they hire people they cannot communicate with. And then they also don’t give very good instructions.

If you hire somebody that you can communicate with that’s a big part of it. And then you have to give them really good instructions. If you check both of those boxes, then you should have a really good experience with your virtual assistant.

Give them a test assignment

There’s another thing that I you do with virtual assistants when I hire them from Upwork. A lot of times, we’ll give them a test assignment. This is an assignment where the instructions are not extremely clear.

For example, I would say, “Here’s an Excel document. Make me a list of all the estate planning lawyers in Nashville, Tennessee.” When I actually give them a real assignment I would give them much better instructions.

But I want to see how they do when they get not-so-great instructions. If they can do a good job when I don’t give them great instructions, then they’re going to do a phenomenal job when I actually give them really solid step-by-step instructions.

That’s how you do it. You just make sure you hire them correctly. It’s kind of like they say in real estate: profits are made when you buy not when you sell.

The Best Video Service To Embed Videos On Your Law Firm’s Website

The question

Do you recommend any video services other than YouTube for embedding videos on your website or is YouTube just fine? I know the embedded videos have the YouTube logo on it so can this be covered up?

My answer

Why we use YouTube (most of the time)

For the majority of our clients, the videos that we put on their website are on YouTube. We do that because Google owns YouTube, and Google has typically rewarded people that used their products in the past. It would make sense that they would. They would prefer that you use YouTube rather than Vimeo.

YouTube and SEO

Vimeo does look a lot cleaner, especially if you have a paid Vimeo account. If it’s for SEO I typically use YouTube. It may not look quite as nice as Vimeo but I’d rather have something not look quite as nice but have a better impact on my rankings.

I don’t know 100% whether this is true. I haven’t actually seen any test correlations that prove that a website will do better if it has YouTube videos as opposed to Vimeo or Wistia videos. This isn’t a scientific test. This is just what we’ve been doing in our agency with our clients. So if anybody has any data on that, I’d love to see it.

When we use alternatives

When we’re not trying to go for SEO, we typically use Vimeo because you can customize the player much better, especially if you have a paid account. We have a paid account for Vimeo.

On some pages where we want a video to actually autoplay we’ll use Wistia. Wistia is a little bit more expensive. It’s about $100 a month and it’s really for marketing. There are a lot of really cool things you can do with Wistia.

In fact, for some of my sales pages and some of my marketing products, we actually want the video to autoplay, so I use Wistia for those.

Can Lawyers Get More Clients From a Wikipedia Page

The question:

Is there much value in a Wikipedia profile nowadays?

My answer:

Wikipedia is a very authoritative website. Google loves Wikipedia. If you can actually get a Wikipedia profile for yourself to stick then that would be great. The challenge is that a lot of times if you haven’t done something significant, your profile is going to get deleted pretty quickly.

Using Wikipedia for backlinks

One of the ways that you can use Wikipedia is for the backlinks. They are nofollow backlinks but nofollow backlinks are still a big part of a backlink profile.

Find an article on Wikipedia that’s related to your practice area and then write a blog post that could serve as a citation for a specific part of that article. Maybe there’s a part in there that’s talking about a specific area of the law.

So you can write a blog post that talks about that area of the law and then you list it as a citation for Wikipedia. That will work sometimes. That’ll get the link to stick and then you have a link from Wikipedia.

One problem with that is that Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia editors take it pretty seriously, even though it’s a volunteer position. They often remove citations that are from what appears to be a law firm’s website or a personal blog from a law firm.

A workaround

Here’s a workaround… When my clients get links from other websites, for example, when you’re mentioned in the local newspaper about a dog bite or something like that, then it links back to your website.

What you can is figure out how you can either add a line to a relevant Wikipedia article, i.e., something about dog bites or about the specific breed of dog. And then link from Wikipedia to the news article or to whatever other website links to your website.

So when the editors look at where the Wikipedia article is linking, it’s going to be a news site, and they’re not going to look at it and think this is someone trying to game the system. But the result is that you’re getting a link to a news site, which is then linking to your website.

Why backlinking works

With backlinking, the sites that link to you make a big difference. But then those sites are impacted by the sites that link to them. So if you can get good links to the sites that are linking to you, your website will benefit and you will rank higher because of that. Those are a couple ways that I would use Wikipedia.

About getting a Wikipedia profile

It’s really hard to get a profile just because of the fact that you’re probably not someone significant. If you’re someone significant, it works, but otherwise, if you’re not someone significant, then it’s very difficult to get them to not delete your Wikipedia profile.

What you should do

There’s one other way to do it: if you find a citation that you can use right on your blog post. You can get a link that way but sometimes that will get deleted as well. So the best thing to do is to get other websites to link to you like news articles and different things like that. And then try to get links to them which will then link to you. That’s what I would do.

Should Lawyers Transcribe Videos To Make Blog Posts

The question:

Is it okay to have video content transcribed and used for a blog post or will you get dinged for duplicate content?

My answer:

Yes, that’s fine.

What I do

That’s actually exactly what I do every time I do a video. I have them transcribed and then we send the transcript to a writer who basically just cleans it up and puts it on my blog because I don’t talk like I write.

That way, the information is still mine. We’re not paying a blog writer to research the post. Instead, they basically take the information that I provided and restructure it in a way that works really well.

No problems with duplicate content

You won’t get dinged for duplicate content unless you’re copying that blog post to multiple different websites. I wouldn’t do that. But if you’re just wondering if you get it transcribed and then post it, will it be duplicate content? No, I haven’t seen that, especially because you’re getting it rewritten. At that point it’s really not even duplicate content.

How to get your videos transcribed

We have a guy that does it for us but rev.com, it’s kind of like rev your engine. That works that works really well. It’s $1.00 per minute and I use that all the time when I’m when I need to transcribe stuff because it’s pretty quick.

Should You Mention Specific Areas in Your Law Firm’s Marketing Videos

The question:

I cut a video about a criminal arraignment. Should I make specific videos for each county in my area, or should I keep it a more generic? o

My answer:

So you made a video about a criminal arraignment. Should you make a specific video for each county in your area?

I guess you’re a criminal defense attorney and you focus on multiple counties. Should you create a different video for each county? I would say yes, because the more specific you can be the better.

Being more specific is better

Let’s say you’re in in Florida. What is the arraignment process like in Florida? That’s okay. That applies to the entire state. But if you’re in Orlando, you could do a video about the arraignment process in Osceola County. What is the arraignment process like in Orange County? What does the arraignment process look like in Polk County? What is the arraignment process like in Seminole County?

The advantages of being more specific

Even if the process is the same it’s much more specific and that way someone searching for Polk County arraignment or Orange County, Florida, arraignment, they’re more likely to find your video because it’s so specific. It’s also naming the specific locations. In fact, if you can, make specific videos about each county and each city in the area. That’s what I would do.

How To Deal With Negative Law Firm Reviews Left by Non-Clients

The question:

What do you recommend if a non-client leaves a poor review? I’ve had a few that I’ve spoken to on the phone but they apparently didn’t like what I had to say so they left a lousy review. There have even been a few that I’ve never spoken to or have met me in person that still left a bad review.

My answer:

Where bad reviews usually come from

We’ve seen this happen a few times, especially with family law clients. In fact, I’ve seen this happen to multiple clients. They get a really good result for their client and then their client’s spouse will go on and leave a review for the attorney that just beats them up and talks about what a horrible attorney they are.

It’s interesting because they’re not clients. So you just have to respond in a way that is not going to make you look like an idiot. You never want to call somebody an idiot or a liar because you always look bad.

How to respond

Instead, you want to say something like this: “Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review. We value all feedback and take all feedback seriously. Upon further review, we are not able to find any record of you being a client of our law firm or having ever been a client of our law firm.

“However, we still would like to know what the issue is and what has caused you to be so upset. Please contact me at the office. You can send me an email or call me at the office. I’d love to chat with you and see if we can figure out a way to fix the situation amicably.”

How this kind of response helps you

The reality is that this person is never going to call you. The response to that review is not even for that person. It’s for all the tens of thousands of people that are going to see those reviews in the future because Google will not remove a review just because the reviewer is not a client.

We’ve had that happen many times and we’ve tried to get it removed many times as well. You have to respond in a way that doesn’t make you look like a jerk.

The need to be proactive

You also have to be proactive and get a lot of reviews that are positive. In fact, you should be doing this all the time. That way, one negative review won’t hurt you quite so bad because it’s very rare.

Businesses are run by people and people make mistakes so if you have you know 50 reviews and a couple of them are negative, that’s not that big of a deal. Let’s say you have 44 5-star reviews and then a 3-star review and three 1-star reviews.

Those 1-star reviews are not going to hurt you that much because the majority of people had a good experience with you. That’s going to be reflected. You’re going to have a 4.4 star rating.

If you don’t have many good reviews

If you only have two reviews and one of them is negative even if they were never a client that’s still going to hurt you. We have one client in Cerritos, California, and the only time we ever hear from him is when his phone stops ringing. And every single time that his phone stops ringing I don’t even have to look anymore. I just go into his Google profile and I see that he got some negative reviews and his star rating dropped.

I say, I told you the last three times to go get more positive 5-star reviews and you’ll have a better reputation online, and people will start calling you again. Every single time that happens, I don’t hear from him again for another year until he gets more bad reviews.

That’s one thing that makes a big difference. You really want to protect yourself from having these types of reviews affecting you by proactively going out and getting a lot of reviews.