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Andrew Stickel

Is WIX Good For Your Law Firm’s Website? Should You Hire a Branding Expert?

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The Question

I have a branding specialist who is redoing my website. Currently, my website is WordPress and she is using WIX. So, they’re switching over from WordPress to Wix. Any concerns with WIX and SEO?

My Answer

This question got a lot of attention in the Lawyer Marketing Facebook group and there are actually two parts that got attention. The first part is the concept of having a branding specialist and the second part is WIX versus WordPress for SEO. 

WIX Versus WordPress

Now, I personally do not like WIX. I like WordPress for SEO and there are a couple of reasons. The first reason is the same reason why I absolutely cannot stand FindLaw. I cannot stress enough: do not use FindLaw to do your internet marketing. 

It’s a proprietary platform, so if you ever decide to leave, then you have to start over with a new website. You can’t take your website from WIX to WordPress. You have to build a new one. 

So, for that reason alone, I don’t like it. WordPress is probably the most popular type of website. It’s definitely the easiest to use, so that’s an advantage right there. 

Do You Need A Branding Specialist?

Now, let’s talk about the branding specialist because everybody asked, “Why do you need a branding specialist? Fire your branding specialist. What do you need a branding specialist for?” 

And I have mixed opinions on this because what I do for myself and what I teach lawyers and what I coach lawyers on is essentially branding, but branding can be done in a lot of different ways. 

Coca-Cola brands itself every single day by running ads that just say “Coke” and putting billboards up that just say “Coke.” 

And every major company in the world does this. Unless you have a budget that is just astronomical for your law firm, that will not be an effective method. So, if it’s just running ads like awareness ads about your law firm, and that’s what the branding specialist wants to do, then I would agree. Fire the branding specialist. It’s a waste of money.

A Branding Strategy That Works

If their branding strategy is providing content, basically taking the same approach that I do where you’re building a brand for yourself by creating value and helping other people solve problems, then that’s a good branding strategy to have. And that’s what I teach lawyers to do. 

What I teach lawyers to do is really branding because in my masterclass, where I coach lawyers, we use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, we use all that stuff but none of the strategies is dependent on Facebook. If Facebook went away tomorrow, I would be fine because I don’t use Facebook. 

I brand myself to where you see me on YouTube and Facebook and you get my emails. And you also see me on LinkedIn and Instagram, in all these different places, and I’ve got a podcast too.

The Easiest Way To Brand Yourself

The easiest way to brand when you don’t have Coca-Cola money or John Morgan For The People money is by providing value. Do all those things where you’re just solving problems for people and people will start to know you. They’ll start to know your brand and they will absolutely start to trust you, and you’ll start making a name for yourself. 

That’s pretty much what I’ve done. And it doesn’t take a long time either, especially if you know your audience if you know what they want if you know what they’re afraid of and you can provide value by giving them solutions to their problems. 

Getting Quick Results

It will happen very quickly, trust me. I am blown away by what’s happened in the last year in terms of how my business has changed. And that’s just because I get on camera and I talk about SEO, social media and how to get reviews for your law firm. 

And it’s all a brand, it’s all branding, and it’s all SocialFirestarter. That’s my company, or Andrew Stickel, which is my name. It’s all branding. But that’s the way to do branding. Provide value, associate your brand with providing value, and it’ll work really well. So, hopefully, that’s what the branding specialist is doing. They’re probably not, but hopefully, they are.

Do Followers & Friends Matter For Your Law Social Media Page?

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The question

Do you have any tips for getting more Facebook friends, Facebook followers, and Twitter followers? My attorney boss really wants those numbers to go up. I really want to be more authentic with my comments and posts, but I’m worried about being too real. I know I need to represent the law firm professionally, so I hold back and it’s all just super boring. 

My answer

I’m not going to talk about Twitter cause I don’t do a lot on Twitter. Twitter overwhelms me. I’ve just managed to stay off of Twitter. I don’t do a lot with Twitter, so I’m not an expert on that. 

Now about Facebook followers and friends… If we’re talking about a business page — and I had a conversation with a client about this very thing this morning — it doesn’t really matter what the number of people is because the reach is so small. 

About engagement campaigns on Facebook

Facebook has become pay to play. So if it’s just a vanity game, then you can just run ads that are basically just an engagement campaign. 

I don’t ever do these because I don’t care about likes, but you can run a Facebook ad that is kind of an engagement campaign. If you go into the ads manager and you go into the different goals, there are different types: there’s a reach, and there’s traffic, and then there’s engagement and different things like that. 

And I’m almost positive that within engagement or within reach, there’s a place in there where you can actually invite people to like the page. That means you can run ads to get people to like the page. So that’s one way you can do it. 

I mean, don’t BUY likes. Definitely, do not buy likes because that’s going to screw all your stuff up. 

A better way to get more likes

Here’s what I would do instead if your boss really cares about it: I would probably create a really good post, a post that solves a problem.

So, for example, here’s one thing we did for a traumatic brain injury attorney: we created a guide that taught clients how to set up a GoFundMe campaign after an accident. A lot of times, people get into an accident and they need money because they can’t work. You know the drill. 

So we said: “Here is a step-by-step guide that teaches you how to set up a GoFundMe campaign so that you can get your friends and family to help out and cover some of your living expenses and medical expenses.” This is also helpful after a wrongful death type of situation. You see these things spring up all the time. 

So, we created a guide that shows exactly how to do that and we ran ads to that post and that post, because you’re paying for it, gets a ton of likes, a ton of comments and it’s actually useful. 

Compare this to a page that isn’t really useful

Compare that to s a Facebook page that just isn’t really useful. For example, my Facebook page — my Andrew Stickel entrepreneur business Facebook page — I really have no idea how many likes I have. I might have 10 likes, I might have a thousand likes, I have no idea because I just haven’t looked at it. 

I just don’t care because I know it doesn’t help me because the reach is just so small. Sure, you can spend this money on building up likes. And if you have just 5 likes, then maybe you should try to invest a little bit to get a couple of hundred likes on there, but it’s a point of diminishing returns. 

What you should do

If you do a good job and you provide value, then people will start liking you. If you put that guide out there, then people will like you. It’s just how it works. So, that’s what I would do. I mean, you can run the Facebook ads, you can ask people — but providing value is probably the best way to do it.

How To Get More Clients From Your Law Firm’s Blog Content

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The Question

What is your philosophy on website content? 400 words or so surface-level content or a thousand words or so with in-depth content. I’ve talked with people on both sides.

My Answer

I can give you the definitive answer in terms of what actually works and what your website copy should be. I know it’s the definitive answer because a couple of years ago we tested this with our clients — about 50 websites. And we got the same result for every website, so I know this is correct. 

The Panda Update

NOTE: The Panda Update was in 2011!

In 2017 (I believe), Google made a major change to its algorithm and added something called the panda update, which basically deals with the overall quality of your website. And one of the major things that Google considers when it comes to your website is the actual website content. 

The Target Of The Panda Update

So we realized that there were websites that had this really thin kind of low-quality, short content, like 300- to 500-word blog posts that really didn’t provide a lot of substance. They were just there for the purpose of being there, and they didn’t actually solve any problems. 

They didn’t help anybody, and they were just kind of blah. What we found is that websites that had a lot of that content actually scored lower on Google’s quality score.

The Results Of The Panda Update

So we went through and got rid of all of that low-quality, crappy content and website traffic went through the roof. It was crazy. 

Our blogging strategy for our clients had been three blogs per week. We would do three blogs per week and they would be like 300-word to 500-word blog posts and they were okay. I mean, they were what they were. 

Their purpose was for search engine optimization. We were doing that for years, and it worked for a long time… until it didn’t. It’s just like with SEO, where the stuff we do today is probably not going to work in two years. You’re always evolving. 

What We Did To Fix It

So we downloaded the Google Analytics data for our clients and we looked at which blog posts over the last three months were getting organic traffic and which ones were not getting organic traffic. 

And if it’s not getting organic traffic, it means that Google is not showing it for the search terms that we’re trying to rank for. When we did these, the blogs would basically be focused around a keyword that had a pretty decent search volume. And if we’re not getting the traffic for that, then there’s no point to having the blog. 

So here’s what we did for every single client… This was a huge project because we had about 50 clients. We left the blogs that had traffic alone. But we got rid of the blogs that had no organic visits over the last three months and did not have any backlinks to them. 

We either deleted them if it was just crappy content, or we added them to other blogs and expanded them into better content. And what ended up happening is that traffic went through the roof. 

What We Do Now

So here’s the answer to the question of “What is your philosophy on website content, 400 words or so?” I don’t really look at website content in terms of numbers.