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Andrew Stickel

The Perfect Email Campaign

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Facebook and Twitter are at their height, but email consistently remains one of the best tools for online marketers to reach consumers. While some marketers may say that email “never worked” for them, it’s likely those marketers overlooked some basic steps before they hit the “send” button. Fabulously successful emails are created in six easy steps:

1. Target you audience. If your emails are precisely targeted, they’re much more likely to be opened and read. Are you trying to reach a particular region, or a specific age group? Know your target audience and keep their likes and needs in mind as you proceed.

2. The most important part of any email is content. After picking your recipients, create relevant, targeted messages. If you don’t feel confident as a writer, hire a freelancer or a social media marketing firm to create content for you. Shape your content to your audience’s interests and needs. Start with an intriguing subject line and finish with a compelling call to action.

3. Now you’re ready to create your template. If you’re using an email marketing service provider like Constant Contact or MailChimp – and you should be – they provide a variety of attractive templates. If possible, include images, links, and a call to action button to break up your text. Most services let you preview as you create, so you can see how your changes will change the overall email.

4. Test for deliverability before sending your email blast. Most email platforms provide deliverability and SPAM tests to show you where emails can be improved and how to increase their deliverability.

5. The best “send time” is really contingent on your audience. Typically, the best send times are early morning and early afternoon, but you’ll want to assess your own analytics and your own audience to see if another time works better for you. Feel free to experiment with different times of the day and week.

6. Successful email marketing means constant analysis of data. Be sure you track open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates to see what content is working and where you can improve.

That’s it! Follow these steps and create impressive, successful email marketing campaigns.

LinkedIn For Law Firms

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LinkedIn drives more traffic to law firm websites than all other social media sites put together. Several recent surveys indicate that nearly two-thirds of the traffic to corporate websites from social media sites is coming directly from LinkedIn. Based on that figure, LinkedIn is probably driving much more traffic to your firm’s website(s) than all other social media sites combined, and for a number of reasons.

Firstly, LinkedIn is widely perceived as a reliable source for information about professionals and firms. Secondly, a lawyer’s LinkedIn pages will usually land near the top of a user’s Google search for an attorney or law firm. And thirdly, someone making a referral is likely to send a link to the attorney’s LinkedIn profile. Additionally, most attorneys now routinely print a link to their LinkedIn profile on emails, business cards, and other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Be sure that you’re taking advantage of everything that LinkedIn offers. Make sure your profile is thorough and complete, and update frequently. Otherwise, you’ll probably miss potential traffic to your site.

While the importance of LinkedIn can’t be overstated, professionals and small businesses should also note that Twitter’s influence is up significantly while Facebook seems to be in decline. Twitter generated 14 percent of all visits from social media sites to corporate websites, up from 4 percent only two years ago. While Facebook generated 17 percent of all visits from social media sites to corporate websites, that figure represents a huge drop from Facebook’s 30 percent figure in 2011. Visits from Flickr, YouTube, and Google+ are virtually nonexistent. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook now generate 95% of the traffic to corporate websites from social media sites.

The takeaway for attorneys and law firms is clear; for the best results from social media, take full advantage of LinkedIn and start taking advantage of Twitter.

Legal Blogs Gaining Prestige

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Only a few years ago, blogs were pretty much the monopoly of those offering their personal (and sometimes extreme) opinions on politics, religion, sports, and pop culture. Today, however, blogging is seen as a nearly indispensable element in online marketing, and nearly three-quarters of social media marketers have established online blogs.

Why has blogging emerged as such an important internet marketing tool? Compared to, say, preparing an email blast, a blog post is quick and easy. In fact, the large law firms that first posted blogs with the LexBlog Network did so to save the time it took to prepare conventional email newsletters. Legal blogs are now perceived as credible sources for news, information, and legal insights. They’re cited by other attorneys and by the news media, and they’re easy to read from mobile devices. Walter Olsen, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, believes that legal blogs will soon replace law journals. Of the current Am Law 200 law firms, 78 percent publish blogs.

Blogs provide other advantages to marketers and especially to law firms. Well-written blogs are apt to be shared. They help lawyers and firms attract clients, and they help boost an attorney’s search engine ranking. Unlike a law journal, a blog post is instantly available everywhere. And you can incorporate your blog into your own website, establish it as a separate site, or contribute it to a “blogging community” site like Open Salon.

Of course, you’ll want to post links to your blog on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Coordinated social media marketing is critical to overall marketing success. Finally, if you don’t have a great deal of time for writing, or if you just don’t feel competent as a prose writer, you may want to consider hiring a ghost-writer or a social media marketing company that provides content-creating services.

Follow Prospective Clients With Feedly

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Everywhere, you hear talk about how marketers need to “use” social media “strategically.” Don’t just blog to be blogging; blog strategically. Don’t just have a Twitter account because everyone else has one; line up your social media marketing with your business development goals. Obviously, those goals include deeper relationships with current clients and establishing and building relationships with new and prospective clients. How can social media help you accomplish this? Here are some tips to get you started:

    • Familiarize yourself with Feedly, a news aggregator application for Web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. (Feedly is also available as a cloud-based service.) Feedly compiles news feeds from various online sources for you to customize and share with others.
    • Create a list of clients, prospective clients, and referral sources.
    • Set up Feedly to receive Google News feeds of articles and posts that mention the persons and companies on your list. You may want to set up feeds that mention a company’s executives by name. Move the feeds into Feedly folders marked “clients” and “prospective clients” respectively (or whatever works best for you).
    • Find out if any of the companies or individuals on your list have blogs. Use Feedly to subscribe to them.
    • Make a Twitter list of these people and companies. Most will have Twitter accounts, and many some will have more than one account to cover various products, divisions, or locations. Also include the executives in these organizations.
    • When you have a reason, blog about the companies you follow, and say good things. Your blog should report and comment on news that’s relevant to your audience. You’ll get noticed as the companies you follow monitor themselves. Share your blog post on Twitter and use the company’s Twitter handle in your Tweet. You may also choose to retweet posts the company shared on Twitter. Everyone loves a little Twitter attention.

Focus on those you’ve recently engaged and those with whom you already have a relationship. Like anything else, your social media marketing will become more effective as you gain experience. Don’t hesitate to hire a social media marketing to help you create content and to help you coordinate your overall internet marketing strategy.

The Need For Consistency

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When we design websites, we more or less assume that visitors will “tour” the site in some kind of orderly way, probably first taking in the home page, then reading the “about” page or company history, and finally pulling out the plastic to order a product or service.

The truth is usually altogether different. Millions of internet users keep three, four or more tabs or windows open to monitor e-mails, tweets, posts, feeds, and subscriptions; they’re also sending and receiving calls and text messages, sometimes listening to a radio or half-watching a television, and usually working in a busy office or at home with the kids. The reality of visiting a website online, in other words, is chaotic, although sites themselves have to be designed with order and organization.

Researchers are finding that visitor expectations are a key element in keeping visitors at your website long enough to read content and order products. Have you ever clicked on a link expecting legal, financial, or real estate advice, but you ended up at a gambling site, or worse? That’s an extreme case, but it’s the kind of incongruity that can make a visitor click away from your website in just moments. Your paid online advertising, your social media accounts, blog, website – all of your marketing – should reflect the same kinds of messages and themes. Your messages and themes are conveyed not just with words; keep your symbols, motifs, colors, fonts, and other elements consistent. Create a brand people know and trust. Meet the expectations.

What does a visitor find when he or she Googles your company and clicks on the link? Is the visitor’s experience what he or she expected? Was the visitor’s experience “consistent” from page-to-page throughout the site? If a visitor links to your site from a social media site, will the visitor’s expectations be met? What about email, blogs, podcasts, and video?

Let every element of your marketing strengthen and reinforce every other element. Nothing drives website visitors away more quickly than failing to meet their expectations, especially if they feel they’ve been misled. And if you’re like most people in business – busy – you might consider hiring a social media marketing company to create consistent web content that keeps bringing visitors back for more.

Great Thumbnails And Titles For A Bigger Youtube Audience

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It’s no secret that bringing new visitors to your YouTube channel can help grow your business online. Yet the overwhelming majority of videos on YouTube get only mediocre results at best. One of the proven ways to draw more visitors to your YouTube videos is to design captivating, intriguing thumbnails and powerful, compelling titles for your videos.

For great YouTube thumbnails, use a good headshot or close-up for a personal touch. Make sure the lighting and colors are right, and look your best. YouTube accurately describes thumbnails as “miniature marketing posters” that should attract viewers and compel them to watch your videos. YouTube thumbnails appear in different sizes (and in surprising places) all across the internet, so have a strong, lively image and a well-framed composition. The foreground should stand out boldly from the background. Use appropriate backgrounds; a rock concert promoter, for example, shouldn’t use the same background that a criminal defense attorney might use.

Your text should immediately tell a viewer what your video is about and why he or she should view it. Make your text brief, powerful, easy-to-read, and to-the-point. Be sure you keep the image on the left and text on the right. Thumbnails, text, and title should all reinforce each other and convey the same theme. If you don’t feel like you can do this well, consider hiring a social media marketing company with experience in creating successful web content.

YouTube now draws over a billion unique visitors every month; its viewing hours (six billion a month) have increased more than 50 percent just since 2012. Uploads to YouTube now total more than 100 hours of video every minute, 24 hours a day. Don’t ignore the possibilities of YouTube. Great thumbnails and titles can help you take full advantage of this website’s almost limitless potential to expand your audience and your profits.