Social Media Marketing: Strategy Tips for Law Firms

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing

Social Media Marketing Strategy Tips for Law Firms

08/28/2019

 

Kelly Street: Hey Gyi, how are you today?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Kelly, I am great.

 

Kelly Street: I am so excited. Have you watched any good shows lately?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Nope.

 

Kelly Street: I have been watching some shows, trying to get back into Stranger Things.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Stranger Things?

 

Kelly Street: Do you watch that show?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I watched the first several episodes. I think I saw the whole first season, but I am not caught up, so please don’t spoil anything for me.

 

Kelly Street: I won’t, I won’t, and I am not done with the third season yet, and also I probably should stop watching it, because it regularly gives me nightmares.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, that’s good.

 

Kelly Street: So yeah.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Nightmares is what it’s all about.

 

Kelly Street: Yes. Anyway, so they have — with Stranger Things, of course there is always product promotiony kinds of stuff. They re-launched apparently New Coke, which — New Coke came out the year before I was born, and so I have no idea what it’s like, but I figured you were alive in the world, so you might know about it.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, in fact, I have a post up here from somewhere, I don’t even know where this site is, but New Coke rebranded as Coke II in the 90s, so now you know how old Kelly is, was discontinued in 2002.

 

So wait a minute. It was discontinued in 2002, you are –

 

Kelly Street: I was alive then.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You are 15.

 

Kelly Street: 2002, 16, well, depending, in the summer of 2002 I would have —

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: How is Drivers Ed going?

 

Kelly Street: Drivers Ed was going well except my Drivers Ed teacher, when we would go over a railroad crossing, he would — if you didn’t stop and look both ways he would scream, turn and scream at you, choo choo.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Ah. Well, you know what, you never probably forgot to do that ever again.

 

Kelly Street: I never forgot to do that again and it scarred me a little bit.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Did you cross a lot of train tracks during your Drivers Ed course?

 

Kelly Street: Yes, because the small teeny little town that I am from only existed because the railroad went through it.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: There you go, learned something new.

 

Kelly Street: Learned something new.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Kelly, I know that we have talked in the past that you have deleted all of your social media apps, but if you were to use social media apps, would you use them for advertising?

 

Kelly Street: I mean I so briefly deleted them.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You are back.

 

Kelly Street: It was kind of just one of those — oh, I have been back baby.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: You have been back.

 

Kelly Street: It was one of those kind of irrational moves of like, I am done with this, I am not going to be feeding into the machine anymore, and then I realized that with my line of work that was a teeny bit irrational.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Embrace the addiction, everybody is hooked.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, definitely, I would 100% use social media marketing. I think in the legal field it’s underutilized or not always done very well, but I have seen a lot of lawyers who are advertising on it and doing really cool things. So I think it’s kind of — there is a big divide between how lawyers are using it.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, hopefully if you are a lawyer and you are listening today, you learn a new way, because we have a true pro joining us.

 

[Music]

 

Intro: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, with your hosts Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street, teaching you how to promote, market, and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

 

[Music]

 

Kelly Street: Hey Gyi Tsakalakis.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Kelly, what’s going on?

 

Kelly Street: Well, I am so happy to report to everyone that you are exceptionally energetic today.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I am feeling it.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah, and I think it’s probably because our guest today has an awesome podcast called Social Media Marketing Happy Hour, so I am guessing you already had a happy hour by yourself in your office and that’s why you are in such a good mood.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, it’s 11 a.m. here in Chicago and I figured perfect time to start my day with a morning happy hour in celebration of our guest today.

 

Kelly Street: Yes. Well, before we get started with our guest today, I understand that you have something to share with our audience.

 

(00:04:51)

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, I do. I would like to thank our new sponsor Nexa, formerly known as Answer 1, which is a leading virtual receptionist and answering service provider for law firms. Learn more by giving them a call at 800-267-9371 or online at nexa.com.

 

Kelly Street: Reading phone numbers is always a challenge. Good job.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, well, I don’t know, I might redo that, but whatever.

 

Kelly Street: That’s all right.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: We can do that after. We don’t want to waste any more of our guest’s time today.

 

Kelly Street: Yes, thank you sponsor Nexa, and now let’s introduce our awesome guest, Traci Reuter, I am super excited. I met Traci at a conference called REACH LIVE, which is all about learning how to do better speaking, so we will try to do better speaking today, but really kind of crafting a platform. And I met Traci and her brother actually who both work for her company, Divine Social.

 

So welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Traci.

 

Traci Reuter: I am so happy to be here. You guys are a blast and we haven’t even gotten started yet.

 

Kelly Street: Yes, exactly. So why don’t you introduce yourselves a little bit to our guests and kind of what should they know about you.

 

Traci Reuter: Well, it’s always fun to get to share with your listeners, but my name is Traci Reuter, like you mentioned, I am the CEO and Founder of Divine Social. We are an Instagram and Facebook advertising agency. Essentially we focus on social traffic and we specialize in customer journey and customer experience and sales psychology.

 

Prior to all of this, I used to run a division of AT&T, right there in Gyi’s backyard, I worked on 227 West Monroe, Gyi, for about a decade.

 

So I have a very deep sales B2B background and then my degree is in marketing. I live in the suburbs of Denver and yeah, like you mentioned Kelly, my younger brother works for the company and we just have a ball serving amazing companies with incredible entrepreneurs behind them and it’s just been a lot of fun.

 

And also actually I authored three chapters in the bestselling book on Facebook advertising called the ‘Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads’. It’s the third edition and I wrote three chapters in that book, so I have been doing Facebook ads for a while now, started doing digital marketing before Facebook was even a thing. So I will most likely age myself multiple times on the show today.

 

Kelly Street: Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know about the book, that’s so cool.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah.

 

Kelly Street: What a huge accomplishment.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, thanks. It was a fun project to be a part of.

 

Kelly Street: Awesome, yeah.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Traci, our audience of mostly lawyers and legal marketing professionals always comes to us in their feedback and says things like, you know, I am a little bit skeptical about the Internet for client development or I don’t really know what I should be doing on Facebook or my clients are really on Instagram, how do you respond to some of the I guess skeptics out there and get them more comfortable with just the idea of social media generally, especially for client development; and two, kind of how do you validate the impact that social media can have for professional services, people, and specifically lawyers?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, yeah, no, I am a — that’s a great question and I get it — I actually get it all the time and it doesn’t matter what your background is, what you do professionally, there is a lot of people that share that Gyi.

 

So first of all, the world is on Facebook and on Instagram. I think that’s the first thing. We work with clients that are B2C and B2B client services. We work with New York Times bestselling authors. We work with a plethora of different businesses, and I can tell you that if your ideal client is a CEO of a company, that CEO is still a person, and odds are that they are on one of those two platforms or they are on Twitter, they are on a social platform. So that’s the first thing I would say.

 

The second thing that I would say that I think is probably even more important is you cannot judge the social behaviors, you cannot judge the people’s behaviors when it comes to using social media on your own behaviors.

 

If you are somebody that never uses Facebook, you might think well, I don’t use Facebook, so no one else does, and that’s actually a really ignorant standpoint to have, and I say that with love, and a little bit of tough love, because it’s just not true, there are tons and tons of people on there.

 

And I think there is a specific approach. I actually worked with a law firm a couple of years ago, so I have got some experience in this space, it’s not really our focus these days, but I definitely have some thoughts, because there are some things that are working today when it comes to social media that apply to every business, every shape, size, every color, everything. So there is ways to do it that work and there is ways to do it that doesn’t work, and I think the problem is Gyi, is too many people have tried it the wrong way and they get a bad taste in their mouths and they develop this idea that it’s not a good use of their time and that’s not really the case.

 

(00:09:54)

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, no, I think that’s a really useful way to kind of open this conversation, and I will direct folks, you have a post on divinesocial.com on Know, Like, Trust and Remember and I think there are some really nice themes there that we talk about all the time. And the truth is, is that a lot of the ways that we engage with people and make decisions about, whether it’s hiring a lawyer or buying a product or whatever it is are still based on those traditional notions of know, like, and trust, but now that conversation and those interactions is happening on the web.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, it really is, and I am glad you brought that up, because that’s actually — the whole concept of Know, Like and Trust comes from a book called Endless Referrals, the author’s name is Bob Burg. It’s a great, great book. But one thing that I took a long time ago from that book that he talks about a little bit, but he doesn’t bring it home and the phrase is, is all things being equal, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. And that’s super important especially when it comes to hiring an attorney, that’s a big deal.

 

I have a cousin who is an attorney and I can promise you, I know him, I like him, and I trust him, so you are going to go there first, right. But the fourth component is this component of remembering and that’s where digital comes into play.

 

In the past, it’s really funny, my husband is disabled and so everyday he sits down and has lunch and he turns on the TV and it’s bombarded with law firm commercials and he can recite them. He can tell you this guy got that person $200,000, because they are bombarding people midday with these commercials.

 

Well, in a sense what they are trying to accomplish is the remember piece. So if you think about it this way, I like to use the analogy of plumbing, it’s the middle of the night, your plumbing breaks, your toilet breaks, it starts flooding everywhere, it’s a massive crisis mode and you need someone right now.

 

Now, you might know somebody that has been a plumber for years, maybe you go to church with them, you know them, you like them and you trust them, but they don’t mention what they do, it never comes up in conversation, but another guy or another gal has been sending you direct mailers, they have been in your Facebook Newsfeed, they have sent you postcards, they have been in front of you.

 

During that emergency if let’s say you have a magnet on the fridge and I know a magnet is not digital, but just bear with me for the example, in that emergency who are you going to call, the person that you know, but it’s not front of mind or you are going to call the person that has been in front of you on a regular basis building up their credibility? In an emergency case it’s always going to be the person typically that you remember.

 

So that’s why know, like and trust is incredibly important, but without the remembering piece, because if you think about it, the average adult is bombarded with over 400 marketing messages a day, so how do you stand out in that? You have to find a way to stand out in that.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah. Okay, that’s one of the questions I wanted to ask you as someone who does this everyday is how are, especially considering our audience of lawyers and law firms, how do you make a message and an offer that stands out above the rest, and some of the things we have seen just to kind of let you know, some of the things we have seen that are working for lawyers are starting a funnel of go on to our webinar, learn about the issues that we can help you with, that sort of thing. But what are some other options that you can think of or just how to craft that message and to think about your audience and what might stand out for them?

 

Traci Reuter: So that’s awesome. That whole webinar process is really, really effective and I am glad to hear that that is working for lawyers these days, because I think there is a lot of value in that.

 

Where we come into play and what I look at is, I actually look at even before then. If you look at the customer journey and you can Google it, Google has different — there is different ways to define what that customer journey is, but there is people that don’t know about you, people who are just finding out about you and are now aware of you. They are giving consideration to what it is that you do, and then finally, the ultimate is they are brand advocates, they are loyal, they are telling other people about you.

 

So there is different points on the customer journey, and when it comes to crafting your marketing, there is a wonderful book, it’s really old, it’s called Breakthrough Advertising, and in that book it talks about the different levels of awareness and how your messaging has to match the different levels of awareness.

 

So kind of take that into play. So if you think about people are all at different stages in their journey, their life, and what they may or may not need, the webinar process is awesome, like come on this webinar, learn about these issues, that’s fantastic. But how do you even get someone to that point? How do you even get them to even get on the webinar?

 

And what we see is working really, really well and this is — again, this is business agnostic, it doesn’t matter what it is that you do, but it’s providing value, it’s content marketing, and whether that content marketing is with paid ads or with organic reach, YouTube videos, it doesn’t matter.

 

(00:15:03)

 

Content marketing used to be king and it’s still king, and this is so, so important to be able to have a strategy, have a plan, and Kelly, like we talk about, how are you going to stand out with all these messaging, but if you have a plan to be able to provide and educate, maybe it’s informed, it’s educating, it’s demonstrating, it’s showing your ideal target market something that they didn’t know before and starting to build up a level of credibility in their minds that it makes it so much easier when it comes time to making the ask and making the offer.

 

And so we do a ton of work in this space where we are helping our clients craft really valuable content that is congruent with where they are ultimately trying to move their prospects on the customer journey. And by doing that it actually shortens the sales cycle and it can decrease the cost per webinar, the cost per client acquisition, all of those kinds of things.

 

So content is everything.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah. Are you thinking that these messages can be sent out organically or are these the kinds of things that you are doing as paid to get that interaction and get the promotion?

 

Traci Reuter: Yes, yes to both. I mean this is something that — the thing about organic social, organic social right now is one of those things that it’s a necessary evil. So you want to make sure that you have a — you want to make sure that you have a presence. So the days — there used to be a time where you could post two or three times a day, you could game the algorithm, you could get in front of people, but the truth is, is that most business pages are not going to get the kind of reach that they could have gotten a year ago, two years ago and beyond.

 

But you still have to be there, because if you think about it, what people do when they are making the decision to, especially when it comes to hiring an attorney, they are going to want to see what your digital footprint is, like what are people saying about you on the Internet, like what are you putting out on the Internet.

 

And so at the very minimum you can use this content strategy to be creating some type of regular cadence of putting out social posts. I think if you only post to ask and you never post to give, people are going to see that and they sense that and it’s naturally repelling. So you can use it for organic social. You can actually use it in your email.

 

That’s something we do. Every week we publish a brand new YouTube video, there is really no selling whatsoever and that YouTube video goes out to our email list. So it goes on all of our social channels. So you can have like an organic strategy, where you are sharing valuable content, and then if you have got a piece that really, really resonates and it’s really leading towards where you want to take your prospect, then that is the best time to put some paid amplification behind it, because then you can control with a paid ad who is seeing that.

 

So it’s getting maybe it’s the right geography, it’s the right demographic, it’s the right interest base and you can’t do that with organic. You can only really do that with paid. Does that make sense?

 

Kelly Street: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, no, we have seen a very similar thing with the “Reach Apocalypse”. Facebook is a publicly traded company, they have got shareholders too, and so they have really dialed back the organic reach and so yes, I think your tips there about amplifying through paid really, really valuable.

 

And that takes me to another thing too, which I know I think you mentioned at the outset and on your site you talk about this as well, is this idea of trying to do some kind of meaningful attribution to your social ad dollars or even your organic posts.

 

And so I talk to the audience, so let’s say I am a lawyer, maybe I am a criminal defense lawyer and I am buying and I am hearing what you are saying, I get my audiences online, so one, what kind of value can I start to think about, maybe some just quick brainstorms, but really importantly, once we have that, how do you best try to do attribution? Are you doing — are you running — for example, are you doing like Facebook lead generation campaigns or is this more engagement clicks back to the site or all of the above or none of the above?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, I suppose it really is going to depend Gyi on where you are in the process. And so typically the way we would start it, we developed some methodology that I call the Three Pillars to Successful Social Ads, and we break it out into three sections, so three pillars obviously.

 

So the first one is Audience Building. It’s always building that ecosystem of people who know you. They may not like you or trust you yet, but they know you, so that’s one piece.

 

The second piece is what we call the Engagement piece, and this is everything we are talking about right now with content, it’s going to fall into the Engagement.

 

And then the third component is what most people go to paid traffic for, which is the Conversion piece or lead generation or webinar registrations or consultations, whatever the case might be. So we kind of break it out into those three things.

 

(00:20:00)

 

Let’s say you are a defense attorney, personal injury attorney or something like that, what I would be doing is I would be — that’s kind of a difficult thing. In fact, the client we had, that’s what they did. And so one thing that we recommend is how can you — like what — if you had — if you were sitting across from me, maybe we were at a Chamber of Commerce event or it’s local Rotary or you are meeting people in the community, what do they not know about personal injury or what do they not know about your specialty that they should know, that if they did know they would be better equipped to make a decision when they needed to?

 

Because a lot of times those examples are, you don’t hire a lawyer for something like that unless something happens, so how could you educate people. And that’s kind of the brainstorming around what type of content should you be amplifying upfront.

 

And then what that allows you to do, if you are using — specifically if you are using paid traffic for that, well, it’s — I guess it would be the same if you use organic, you are just not going to get the same kind of reach, the reach pop — what did you — how did you call it?

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: The Reach Apocalypse.

 

Traci Reuter: Reach Apocalypse, okay.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: I read that in the headline somewhere at some point, so it stuck with me.

 

Traci Reuter: That’s good. So you are not going to get the same reach on organic, but let’s say that you are driving people to a blog post on your site. Well, what paid traffic or even with the organic traffic, what it allows you to do is then create an audience of people that hit that site, and now that tells you, oh gosh, like they are only going to click through to this if they are actually interested in the topic.

 

And now what you are doing is you are building up an audience of people who are highly likely to be interested in the next piece of information you want to provide them, and that could be a webinar invitation, that could be like a straight up invitation to call for a consultation, it could be a variety of things, but that’s really — if you start by providing content first and then retarget to people who are highly likely to be interested, you are going to see much better results using social than if you went straight for the ultimate ask, because how do you know that 90% of those people are even remotely qualified for what it is you want them to hire you for.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, right, right.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah. Okay, so speaking of that and speaking of building your audience, before you have that first thing, I think that’s another one of the big challenges that people have is how to know who to target your ads to, because if you — like for us, we can, as a digital marketing agency that focuses on lawyers, that Gyi and I are part of, we can focus on organizations that the lawyers we are trying to target are a part of, but when you flip that and it’s a personal injury attorney looking for someone to build an audience for their paid social media, what kinds of things do — triggers or things should they look for besides just the typical age range of person they are trying to serve, that sort of thing?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah. So I mean that definitely can be tricky and an audience targeting is — can be a really great part of using social ads. It’s also not the end all and be all, so that’s important to kind of put it out there. So it’s a little contradictory, but it’s just how it is sometimes.

 

But a lot of it is going to go back to what is the demographic, what is the psychographic of your ideal clients. If you know that you serve a community, then that’s where I would be starting, like I would be starting with a geographic area. Be looking at how can you build your credibility, your authority, your thought leadership in that community, and it wouldn’t necessarily be — just some of the old school ways, like I mentioned earlier with my husband seeing the commercials every single day.

 

So it’s not just bombarding people with commercials, it’s not just putting your face on a bus bench, how can you demonstrate as — if you are serving, let’s say you are serving a local community, what kinds of information can you be sharing with people in the local community to give you an excuse to get in front of them, that’s relevant and valuable to what it is that you do. So that’s one way that you could be looking at it. So it’s not just age, but it might be, if there is a specific space.

 

If you focus on, like I don’t know, maybe you represent athletes, now that’s a little bit different, you can back out to the whole country possibly, or maybe whatever states you are licensed to practice in, and then you can look at based on interests what people are doing. So it’s going to be — that answer Kelly is going to really depend upon what that firm’s specialty is and then you start to think through, like all right, if I could sit, right, if you think back to where we met at REACH LIVE, if I could sit in a room or if I could be on stage in front of a room of my ideal people, what would they have in common? Like what would they look like? What would matter to all of them that is similar? And that’s how you start to look for people in Facebook to get your valuable content driven messaging in front of.

 

Does that hit what you are looking for?

 

(00:24:53)

 

Kelly Street: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really smart different way to look at it, because I think so many people do get trapped in the, well, what kind of groups is my potential client a part of or what kinds of interests do they have and you can start out a little bit broader than that and then end up narrowing down your audience from there.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, sometimes we over-engineer our targeting in the beginning where we’re trying to get so, so specific, in reality you want to — you are going to do what I call be broadly specific. So as broad as possible with some similarities and especially if you’re using this strategy where — our engagement strategy where you’re amplifying maybe it’s a video, maybe it’s a blog post but it’s some kind of valuable content that you’re educating potential clients with. Then, you can really dial-in and go after them once they’ve consumed it because they’ve raised their hand effectively by saying, well, this interests me, maybe they watched 50% of a video or 75% of a video or they clicked through to a blog post, because Facebook and Instagram allow you to create audiences of people based upon the behaviors, if you’ve got your account set up properly. And so that itself going a little bit broad at the start really gives you a lot more opportunity to get more narrowly focused once you start building out those audiences.

 

Kelly Street: Awesome, I love it. We’re going to take a quick commercial break and hear from one of our sponsors, and when we come back I want to dive into what you were talking about, Traci, of building out your account properly.

 

[Music]

 

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[Music]

 

And we are back talking with Traci Reuter about Social Media Marketing. So let’s get back to you said — just I want to pick on what you said about — or not pick on, I want to go further into what you said about, setting up your account properly because that’s interesting. I am thinking, I know what you are talking about but I want to make sure that is that something to do with a Facebook pixel and some stuff there?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, yeah, so these are a couple of things to setting up your account property and number one and this is like basic one-on-one but it’s worth repeating or it’s worth mentioning, make sure that you are using a business page, like that is really important because sometimes people I’ve seen attorneys do this, I’ve seen other types of professionals use their personal page, and you want to make sure that you are using a business page because that — even though you are throttled in terms of your reach that is definitely not amazing, but there’s so many other benefits that you’ll have if you’re using a business page.

 

So first and foremost, make sure you are promoting your services through a business page. So let’s get that out of the way. So assuming that you’re doing that, then what you want to make sure that you are doing is you are utilizing the Facebook pixel and the Facebook pixel is just a piece of code that goes on your website and you can get extremely advanced with it or you can just be really basic, and by having that pixel on everything, on all of your web properties, if you’re doing webinars, making sure that that’s installed on your webinar software if you’re using something like ClickFunnels or Leadpages or whatever is it you’re using, making sure that at the very, very minimum you have the Facebook pixel on there because that allows you to create remarketing audiences to be able to target people and if you followed — what was it, about a little over a year ago with the whole GDPR thing in Europe, we don’t have those laws in the US but you could put — you can put something on your pages that basically say that you have a tracking cookie on there. People are pretty accustomed to that by now.

 

Just having that set up, Kelly, really then gives you the foundation to be able to start building out these retargeting audiences so that you can get tailored messaging in front of the right people because that really is the magic because when you can get the right message in front of the right person at the right time, that’s when social media marketing, whether it’s organic or paid, that’s when it’s magical and that’s where you take — these are — a question to start off like what about people that think it’s a waste of time, or they don’t think their potential clients around there, you’ll shut that down really fast when you get it right. People are like, people suddenly become believers and they start preaching social media when they see at work.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, once you can connect it back to open case files and new clients and your CRM and you’re saying, oh, this is from — directly from this social campaign. It’s really easy to connect those dots. So that’s great. I think that’s really valuable appeal to hear.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, it is and then I didn’t — you mentioned it earlier, Gyi, but I didn’t answer a question but when you start to talk about like — after the whole idea of content when you dial it in and you start retargeting with really specific offers, you can use things like Facebook lead ads which are very, very different where you’re actually getting the name and the phone number.

 

(00:30:09)

 

There’s tremendous software that you can use that — you can use specific phone numbers so that they can call in, even especially if you’re local, there is — now I haven’t done it in a while, so it may have changed, because Facebook changes, it seems like every 20 minutes, but I know there used to be something where you could run a local ad and it had a button where it says, Call Now, and you can actually have them call directly into your office and you can connect that to a specific phone number so you can see where that lead came from.

 

So those are all things that I’m sure your listeners use things like that outside of social, but you can incorporate that into social, so it’s really, really helpful.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, right, I like that and I think it plays nicely in this, again just recommend that people go check out at divinesocial.com, the three pillars worksheet and I like how you frame it for folks in these three different pillars for lack of a different word, because I do think that sometimes that third pillar of the conversion aspect is the part that people struggle with, so I really appreciate that.

 

And which brings me to another question about just content creation in general, is talking about gear. So you have like just looking at some of your stuff and we’ll make sure we have this in the show notes so people can see the content you’re putting on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube. So let’s say I’m a lawyer and I’m like, all right, I’m into it, can I do this on my phone, do I need to get a camera, do I need to create my own studio? What do you usually tell folks there that whether they’re clients of yours or other colleagues that are trying to get in the content creation game, what do they need?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, that’s a great question, because sometimes I know when we are a — when we’re a service professional, sometimes we think we have to have our t’s crossed and our i’s dotted and we have to make sure everything is perfect, and there is a time and a place for really well-produced content. This shows a great example, right, it’s really well-produced.

 

There are other times where people become suspicious of that or they tune it out because if you look at the — if you look at the newsfeeds, most people are not putting up professional photo shoots, most people are not putting up highly produced studio videos in their feed and you want to be native to the platforms you’re on.

 

So if you follow me then we are going to see some times where you can tell that obviously the pictures are a photo shoot and other times they’re not, and some things are going to be — the video quality is going to be amazing and sometimes it’s not.

 

I was out one day shooting a bunch of content and it like I shot for an hour and it was amazing content and my camera was not focused, and I was so frustrated. But I made the decision and some people might disagree with me, but I made the decision that I was going to put it out there anyway, because I tell my clients like just put the content out there, they’re more interested in what you have to say than was your production perfect.

 

And so there are some cases that of course, like if I’m going to run an ad I’m never going to use a blurry video, but for one — there’s a couple videos in my YouTube channel that they’re blurry, the background is amazing. I mean, I’m overlooking this incredible valley here in Colorado and I was like, well, we’re just going to use this as a case study, we’ll see what happens to it.

 

So as far as gear, Gyi, you can literally create this content with an iPhone, the quality is so-so good these days or Android whatever the case, Samsung, whatever you’re using, you can create great videos on the fly, especially if you want to embrace what I’m talking about with this engagement, this value-driven engagement content. You could be that attorney in your niche that is putting out a tip of the day or you’re putting out — whether it is that you’re using Instagram live or Facebook live and you’re getting on for 10 or 15 minutes every day and you’re answering questions to people in your community. I promise you if you do something like that with an iPhone and I understand there’s like — when it comes to legal things there’s only — there’s clearly limitations, you can’t necessarily give legal advice. But I hope you get the spirit of what I’m saying like you could get on every day and do a frequently asked question or handle different things that are not crossing any lines for what you do but you can do that with a cell phone.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Absolutely, I totally agree, and I think one of the things I like that you said those different contexts, where, you know, hey, this you might really want to have something professionally produced, maybe even work with a producer on, but I think that reduce the friction, right, so like the less that you’re worried about production quality and the costs and lighting and all this stuff, it’s going to make you more inclined to actually put something out there, and so many times that seems like the major obstacle, people are just like, ah, I’m so overwhelmed by doing all of this. And so take your iPhone and just start shooting something tips, as you’re going through your day like what are the questions that people are asking you, I think that’s really good advice for folks.

 

(00:34:54)

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, anything you can do to lower the friction. I mean, we’ve even gone so far as to test running the webinar — running a client’s webinar straight in the newsfeed, meaning no opt-in, no nothing. Because we can create audiences if people who watched a certain percent of the video. So we’ve tested like anything we can do to lower the barrier to relationship.

 

So sometimes you have to be willing to kind of break some rules or to try to do things in a slightly different way than what everybody else is doing to see if you can provide that value.

 

I’ll give you an example, there’s a guy recently that reached out to me, we all get bombarded with pitches, I do anyway, right? I get bombarded on LinkedIn, I get bombarded everywhere. And this guy reached out to me to help me with my YouTube SEO.

 

I know it’s a thing that I need to improve upon. I just don’t have the bandwidth, right? So he reaches out to me with an email and it’s super-customized, there’s a picture of him, he takes a selfie and in the background is my YouTube channel, and it’s like, okay, this guy is serious, and so I basically said, sure, shoot me your video, shoot me or your value-driven video to give me tips of how I can improve my YouTube, and I’m thinking, how great it’s going to be.

 

Well, it was so good, like it was so good that I turned it over to my staff and said start doing this. So he gave me this insane value for free, he didn’t charge me a nickel, but here’s what’s happened in a super-short period of time, because he provided me with so much value that was actually like really good and results are coming from it, I guess he’s thinking about hiring him now.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, yeah exactly.

 

Traci Reuter: Right?

 

Kelly Street: Yeah.

 

Traci Reuter: So think about that as an attorney or whatever it is, how can you out value your competition, how can you provide so much value through your content that people are compelled to want to hire you? I think that’s where you set yourself up and use social in a way that no one else is doing, people are not doing it that way, I promise you.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yup, exactly, and what a great way to stand out too.

 

Traci Reuter: It’s huge.

 

Kelly Street: I will say about the posting things without them being perfect. I definitely, I have trouble with that myself and so I get it when our audience pushes back and they’re like, oh, but I have to have all this equipment. I will say the one piece of equipment for less than $10 on Amazon that will make your videos on your cell phone look just that much better is the Selfie Light.

 

Traci Reuter: Oh yeah, good lighting. I would agree, good lighting is — if I look at my gear now I definitely have more than I used to have. I do have a really good DSLR camera, but that’s the same camera that sometimes shows up blurry because apparently it’s user error on my part, but good mic, good sound, good lighting, like those things are really, really helpful.

 

But you don’t even have to spend like you said, like Kelly said get a Selfie Light for $10, you can get a Diva Ring to put in front of your desk for I think $80. I mean it’s really, really inexpensive, you don’t have to have a whole lot to do this.

 

So — but I think that the key is, is get started. Get started, start developing your reputation and then as you start to see some traction, start making some investments in gear, but don’t wait to have all the gear before you take action, because I promise you, someone else is taking action while you’re waiting to get ready.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right and then and all the gear in the world if you’re not using it properly isn’t going to help you and so the thing that I think is useful for folks is that it’s more important to know some basic concepts about sound and lighting than it is even have this fancy gear and we’d like to direct folks over to wistia.com, they have a whole thing about like thinking about lighting as you’re shooting and thinking about sound because so many times even with the best gear in the world if you’ve got your setting — when we’re doing the pre-launch for the show, we all have this professional gear, but if the settings are wrong, if it’s configured incorrectly, it doesn’t help you at all.

 

Traci Reuter: That’s true.

 

Kelly Street: Yeah, and we don’t spend the entire hour or we don’t record the entire podcast until we have those things tuned in and defined and so that’s one of the other mistakes I have made in videos is recording a whole video being like, oh, this is so great, and then realizing that I didn’t check the settings for my microphone and so it was picking up my computer mic instead of the actual Lavalier mic that I had on.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

 

Traci Reuter: It’s so maddening, but I think all of this, it’s really comes back to being thoughtful about how you’re going to market your services. So a lot of times what I see is people put a lot of energy into the creation of the offer. They will build out, they want to have this great presence on their website and then it’s like — you got a lot to do, right, you’re trying to run a practice, you’re trying to run a business, hopefully you have a personal life and marketing sometimes gets — it kind of gets the leftovers and it gets done halfway and it’s not necessarily something that is going to then represent you as well as you want.

 

And then on the flip-side you get so hung up on everything being perfect that you never actually take action. So I think if you have a strategy and you have a plan and you — I want to bring it back to the whole customer journey and understand that not everybody is ready to buy right now. I know I’ve got several videos on our YouTube channel that talk about like the whole concept of when do people buy, when are they ready to sign up with you, when are they ready to hire you, and then what do you do from the time that they’ve met you or they’ve heard of you until their time that they are ready and how do you nurture them?

 

(00:40:07)

 

And so having a plan and a strategy for all of those things will help free up some of the mental clutter that I think marketing can create for people that are trying to do a whole bunch of other things.

 

Kelly Street: Yes, okay, this perfectly ties into kind of the last question that I really had in mind to talk to you about, and that is ClickFunnels, because they did a whole presentation at the conference where we met and I’ve known of them, I know other companies that use them, but I noticed from the first time I went to your website and then a month or so later that there was a big change.

 

And so I wanted to ask you about using ClickFunnels and kind of just because you’re talking about the customer journey how — that’s one of their main things is taking people through your customer journey and your funnel. So can you talk to me about how you use ClickFunnels or more about that?

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, so a lot of our clients use ClickFunnels. I think it’s a — whether you use ClickFunnels or something else, having a sales funnel and having a process I think it’s really, really important and you probably, Kelly came when we were — this isn’t a great example of what you’re just talking about like not waiting till everything is perfect.

 

Our agency grew organically, it grew fast and it was like, okay, slap up a website and then I went one day and I was like, this is horrible, like somebody should take my marketing license away, like this is so bad. So we had to make some adjustments and some changes and so we took some time, I think it was after we met Kelly where I sat down and kind of pulled myself out of the day-to-day operations of the agency and really thought through like, okay, how can we serve more people?

 

Because not everyone is going to be ready to hire a done-for-you agency, not everybody could afford to hire a done-for-you agency but there’s a way we can serve a greater number of businesses. And so, that’s when I started using ClickFunnels and thinking through what are the different levels, some easy ways that we can help serve people.

 

So I know Gyi mentioned our three pillars. I have a free mini course and if you go to divinesocial.com/lunchhourlegal, it’s specifically for your audience and you can download my free mini class, I’ve got some worksheets. And so that — and as a matter of fact that will be a ClickFunnels’ page when you go there.

 

And then if you get that mini class, you’ll get offered to get on an early bird notification of a master class that I’m going to be doing where we go deeper into the psychology and the strategy of these three pillars and how do you execute them. And so I use that three pillar — not three pillar approach but like ClickFunnels with the customer journey because some people you might have a listener right now that hears me and it’s like, oh my gosh, she’s amazing, we need her, we’re going to hire her firm right away.

 

And then probably 99.999% of the people aren’t going to feel that way, and so how can I benefit them and so that’s what I use with the ClickFunnels approach is I use the option to give you the free mini course or maybe you want to take my master class when it comes live. So it’s a really nice way to be able to have multiple offerings and their software is phenomenal.

 

We work with that and we work with some other things as well, but really, really understanding what — how can you ascend people from I want to dip my toe in to really — I think I want to work with you a little bit more to I’m all-in and I want to hire you right now. And I think that can work in any business, in any service industry. I think it’s a great platform.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Excellent. And now for the most important question of the day which is — and I actually asked you slightly differently than I usually do just because, well, you will understand when I actually asked a question. Let’s say that you were in Chicago, where would you be going to have lunch today?

 

Traci Reuter: Ooh, if I was in Chicago where I’d be going to have lunch today, probably True Food Kitchen.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Love True Food Kitchen.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, probably True Food Kitchen. I love Chicago. Actually, all right, let me be honest, if I was going to lunch today if I didn’t have the food allergies and the health issues I have today, if I was going to go to lunch today, I’d be going to Lou Malnati’s, I’d be having a deep-dish sausage mushroom and garlic pizza with an antipasto salad and a iced tea lemonade.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: There you go.

 

Traci Reuter: That’s what I would have today.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Both ends of the spectrum, true foods to lose, perfect.

 

Traci Reuter: Yeah, yeah.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: And then the second part, Part B of this question, where would you have lunch where you are now? Where are you now?

 

Traci Reuter: I am outside of Denver.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Outside of Denver.

 

Traci Reuter: I lived for — your listeners probably don’t know because I think we were talking about it offline, but I did live in Chicago for 20 years. I worked downtown and love, love, love that city and about six years ago, we sold it all and moved across the country and said life’s too short and moved to a different lifestyle. So we’re just outside of Denver and if I were to eat lunch somewhere today, honestly probably, on my back patio.

 

I absolutely just — we live in a beautiful, beautiful place, but if I had to choose outside of that, I’d go back to New England where I’m from and I’d sit on York Beach Harbor and I’d have — actually I’d sit at Nubble Light in Maine and I would have a lobster roll from Gaskins Barbecue.

 

(00:45:04)

 

And I would sit on the rocks and eat that because that was my last meal the last time I was in New England and I wanted it so badly.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, I’m getting on a plane right now, that sounds so good.

 

Kelly Street: I am so hungry.

 

Traci Reuter: Gaskins, I mean, this is a little barbecue joint that has the best lobster rolls, they are just amazing, so anyway.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Love it.

 

Traci Reuter: I’m a foodie, I’m a foodie who has food restrictions, it’s really, really difficult.

 

Kelly Street: Oh no.

 

Traci Reuter: I am so good.

 

Kelly Street: So beyond where we could find you eating lunch or wishing to eat lunch, where — we’ve talked already a bit about your website and that sort of a thing, but where can people find you, follow you, reach out to you?

 

Traci Reuter: Yes, so if you just Google my name “Traci Reuter” I have that on every single platform. I do like I mentioned I put out a YouTube video every single week, really working hard to make sure that the value is there. I don’t focus on hacks, I don’t focus on that stuff, I really focus on strategy because I really believe that strategy always trumps tactics.

 

So you’ll be able to get that from me every single week, if you go to divinesocial.com/lunchhourlegal, all of my little social links are there. So you’ll be able to connect with me. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, pretty active on Instagram, and then YouTube is a big focus of ours. So you can find me pretty much anywhere.

 

Kelly Street: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and of course, thank you to all of our listeners for hanging in here to the end. And if you already aren’t subscribed, make sure to hit that Subscribe button, give us a rating or review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast.

 

[Music]

 

Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and/or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

 

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own, and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, or subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

[Music]

 

Kelly Street: Oh gosh, what am I — my brain just collapsed. Gyi, my brain just collapsed. And I have to edit this again.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, fortunately, it collapses all the time, so I’m very familiar with this situation.

 

Kelly Street: I just got distracted by looking at the participants, sorry.

 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay, close your eyes.

 

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