In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Alison Ver Halen discuss:
- Tools for the readability of your content.
- Benefits of writing as a lawyer.
- How to use (and how NOT to use) ChatGPT.
- Getting people to read your blog.
Key Takeaways:
- Legal writing and marketing writing utilize two different parts of your brain.
- Utilizing ChatGPT (or another AI) to write for your website, articles, or blog can be problematic as it scans other content on the internet and uses that to create its writing.
- Own your content whenever you can. Social media is good for distributing content but write for your own website first, then for other publications.
- Incorporate a story into your writing. You are not the hero, your ideal client is the hero.
“We all know what’s interesting to us and what we want to write about. But does your audience really care about that? It all needs to start with who your ideal client is, what they care about, and what are they searching for.” — Alison Ver Halen
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Episode References:
- Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com/
- Yoast: https://yoast.com/research/real-time-content-analysis/
- Hemingway Editor: https://hemingwayapp.com/
- Book: Practical Content Strategy and Marketing by Julia McCoy: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Content-Strategy-Marketing-Certification-ebook/dp/B077SKLYNT
Connect with Alison Ver Halen:
Website: https://avwritingservices.com/
Email: info@avwritingservices.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-ver-halen/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/av-writing-services/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057495307448
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/av_writing_services/
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] Alison Ver Halen: think the biggest mistake I see everyone making, not just lawyers, is forgetting to put yourself in. The shoes of the person you’re writing for. So like we all know what’s interesting to us and what we want to write about, but does your audience really care about that?
[00:00:19] Narrator: You’re listening to Be That Lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
[00:00:41] Steve Fretzin: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Be That Lawyer, I am Steve Fretzin, your host, I hope you’re having a fabulous day today. We are here for you, the lawyer, the busy lawyer, to try to help you to be that lawyer, someone who’s confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker, and it’s an opportunity to learn and get tips and takeaways, that’s what this show’s all about, and people that have been listening to it for a while continually tell me.
[00:01:04] Steve Fretzin: That it’s really been helpful for their law practices and that just warms my heart makes me feel good. I’ve got warm cockles. I think they say cockles. Allison, has he ever heard that cockles of the heart? I have not heard that. No. Okay. That might just be an old man thing. And I’ve got some warm cockles and we’ll have to figure out later what that means.
[00:01:20] Steve Fretzin: But anyway, that’s just some, some good old fashioned fun right there. So I’ve got Allison waiting in the wings. Who’s going to be sharing all of her wonderful wisdom today, mainly focused around helping you be great writer and learn some great writing tips. Or realize you hate it, and it stinks, and you want to outsource it, and Allison can probably help you with that.
[00:01:39] Steve Fretzin: You know, what I want to start with is the wonderful quote of the show, and Allison gave me a great quote. I don’t know that we’ve been able to figure out who wrote this, but it really, I like, I think it’s really good. Easy reading is damn hard writing and I feel that way, like I find like I want to try to write sometimes it’s it’s hard to write, but I think my goal is to make it so that a 6 year old, a 10 year old, you know, 50 year old could read it and get value out of it and get and feel like it’s just, it’s not something that they just like want to just throw away or just stop reading after a paragraph because it’s not, it’s not really working for them.
[00:02:15] Steve Fretzin: So. Anyway, Allison, thanks for being here and being my guest and talk to me about that quote.
[00:02:21] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah. So I just did a quick Google search and Nathaniel Hawthorne is attributed with coming up with that quote. So
[00:02:27] Steve Fretzin: that loser, he’ll never make it.
[00:02:32] Alison Ver Halen: So, yeah, it is. I mean, just like you said, there’s, and I think there’s another quote, uh, someone writing someone on a letter saying I would have written you a shorter letter, but I ran out of time. It’s actually a harder to write short, concise. Get it all down into as short a period as you can. And yeah, making sure that it’s easy for the person to read.
[00:02:55] Alison Ver Halen: I mean, we talk about here in the US, the average adult can only read at what, like a sixth grade level or something like that. Is there aren’t newspapers? I mean, I’m sitting
[00:03:05] Steve Fretzin: around a fourth grade level. So I think that might be, but it’s, I think we have to, I mean, there’s actually now. Automation, I don’t know if that’s through Grammarly, which, by the way, everybody should use Grammarly, it’s like the best thing that’s ever happened to writers, to, to, for, you know, for grammar, punctuation, et cetera, but I think there’s also something now that rates your writing on a 1 to 100% scale.
[00:03:30] Steve Fretzin: That tells you, like, your writing is incredibly readable, that’s a hundred, or it’s not that readable at all, it’s maybe too technical, or just not easy to read, and it gives you, like, a grade. Have you, have you heard of that?
[00:03:42] Alison Ver Halen: I have that, I think it’s Yoast. Yoast? I, my website is on WordPress. And yeah, every time I write something in my website, I get a readability score, which honestly I only kind of pay attention to because it also dings you for like, this is too passive.
[00:03:58] Alison Ver Halen: And I’m like, I’m not going to be passive or I’m not, I’m not going to completely avoid passive statement. But yeah, I think the reason that I get that in WordPress is, is through Yoast because Google also likes content that’s easy to read because it knows that its users want content that’s easy to read and Google wants to be able to quickly scan your content and figure out what it’s all about.
[00:04:20] Alison Ver Halen: So it knows which searches to match you with. So, yes, I have used that. I have also used the, I think it’s called the Hemingway editor where you can either write directly into it or you can copy and paste and it will tell you like, uh, the sentence is too long or Don’t use this. This is especially for you lawyers.
[00:04:37] Alison Ver Halen: Don’t use Latin in your marketing content. Just don’t do it. No one knows what that means, right? So it’ll point out things like that, as well as, you know, if you’re using too many adverbs, things
[00:04:46] Steve Fretzin: like that. Well, I mean, even when I’m reading a social media post on LinkedIn, for example, and someone, let’s say writes four paragraphs in like what I call a rant.
[00:04:55] Steve Fretzin: And I do that occasionally too, is I’ll write like a rant about something that bothers me or something that I want to motivate others and think about. And I find myself reading four paragraphs on it, you think it’s just like scroll and scroll and scroll, but I actually stop and read a four, in the middle of my day, for example, a four paragraph rant that someone wrote.
[00:05:15] Steve Fretzin: And why would I do that? I mean, why did I take the time to read all? Well, because someone drew me in. Someone started off with a one liner at the top. That said, you know, exercises for suckers. And I was like, what? I like that. I don’t want to exercise or whatever. And next thing you know, I’m reading again.
[00:05:31] Steve Fretzin: Of course it’s not. It’s the only thing that, you know, you got to do to stay alive. I find that that that’s why that’s why writing is so important because I think it really set you apart and it allows people to really get to know you through that storytelling before we get into like the weeds on all this stuff around writing give us a little bit of background it’s your Allison Verhalen you’re the founder of AV writing services your whole life is writing and content creation so give us that how did you get into the business.
[00:06:00] Steve Fretzin: I
[00:06:01] Alison Ver Halen: completely fell into it. So, yeah, my whole life always has been writing ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be a writer, was told that writers don’t make any money and I should choose the more practical career. So, got to college, ended up majoring in English and psychology, which is the perfect degree for content marketing.
[00:06:18] Alison Ver Halen: Had no idea what content marketing was, had no clue this was an option. Thought I wanted to work in publishing because I figured if I couldn’t make a living. Writing books, maybe I could make a living making books. Well, I graduated in 2009 right after the job market crash. So there were no jobs to be had, certainly not in publishing, but also not really anywhere else.
[00:06:37] Alison Ver Halen: So I answered phones for a few years, ended up between jobs at one point. And my roommate at the time, her dad, who is an attorney was awesome and offered to give me stuff to do around his office until I got back on my feet. And one of the things he needed was some entry blog posts for his law firm. And he knew I had a strong writing background, so he offered me the gig and I was more than happy to get paid to write.
[00:06:56] Alison Ver Halen: I was like, wait, seriously, I can get paid. Yeah. Find me up. Yeah. Yeah. So I started writing for his law firm and then for an associate of his, and then for some friends of mine. Did eventually get another day job, but I kept writing on the side and it just kept growing until I could not handle both anymore.
[00:07:13] Alison Ver Halen: So quit the day job about eight years ago now, and I’ve been doing this full time ever since.
[00:07:19] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, well, there’s a definite need in the marketplace. I think that lawyers are very. Either apprehensive or so busy to write. They’re just, it’s just not a priority and there’s a lot of benefits to writing and again, not for everybody, but what would you say are like the reasons that you find that lawyers either don’t like to, or too busy to write?
[00:07:42] Steve Fretzin: Like, what are you seeing out there right now with them? Why are they, because they’re bringing you into the mix as an option.
[00:07:48] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah. Time is definitely a factor. It is very time consuming to write, especially an effective blog post. And I think you and I have had this conversation before we started recording about the fact that you need the SEO and the marketing strategy and, and figure all that out first before you start writing.
[00:08:05] Alison Ver Halen: And now you’re talking about that’s even more time that they have to put into writing this content. And yeah, a lot of lawyers just don’t have that time and they’re, they’re busy writing other things for their job. Um, It’s like a completely different set of the brain, right? There’s the lawyer side and there’s the marketing and it’s like, it’s really hard to mix the two.
[00:08:26] Alison Ver Halen: You almost never meet a lawyer who has both sides working.
[00:08:32] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I think the time is probably the number one answer of why lawyers are hesitant to write. And I think there’s also some level of. You know that many of them are perfectionists and to write something that they would agree is good enough to be published or good enough to post or whatever and it really it really stops them like that the enemy of good is perfection.
[00:08:53] Steve Fretzin: So that’s really a big part of it and then I think. You know, the other thing that’s interesting is now we’ve got this chat GBT popping up and even then I think lawyer just to go into chat GBT and like, ask it a question and try to get some content that way. Well, that takes time and now I’m not sure how to do that.
[00:09:09] Steve Fretzin: And so I think that’s also a potential solution, but. I don’t know if you, if you’ve, I got disciplined, if you will, by my SEO company that I can’t use a chat, chat GVT article, primary article on my website because it’ll get dinged by Google. Have you heard anything like that?
[00:09:28] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah, it’s interesting because Google has said they, uh, don’t like AI written content and will ding you for it, but they’re also investing a lot of money and creating a competitor to check up.
[00:09:41] Alison Ver Halen: So, and they use a lot of AI in, in their algorithm. So it’s like, are we just having robots fighting robots now? Is that what that are?
[00:09:51] Steve Fretzin: Well, no, that’s the reality of our future, but I think it started, that’s for sure. I think what I did was I used ChatGBT just to get an article started. And it only gave me two or three hundred words, I need about seven fifty, and then I went in, looked at what it gave me, got rid of some of it, kept some of it, added to some of it, added my spin, my twist, my storytelling, if you will, and I think that’s what made it a good article, but I don’t think ChetGBT on its own is gonna put an article together that I would find Has my voice or that would be something I’d want to put out.
[00:10:24] Steve Fretzin: So I think, but, but then on top of that, the fact that it really maybe should be used for social media at this early stage, then a website.
[00:10:32] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah. Well, and I, I’ve played around with it some, not a lot. I have heard that you can train it to write in your voice. The problem is it works by scanning the internet for content that’s already out there and basically regurgitating that.
[00:10:46] Alison Ver Halen: So. I was just talking to another writer this morning who said they were wary about using things like chat GPT because it could get flagged for plagiarism. Cause it’s so similar to content that’s already out there. Yeah. So we were like, yeah, we look at this and we go, we can’t publish this. So I do think that’s a great way to use it.
[00:11:04] Alison Ver Halen: Just using it as a prompt, you know, get a few hundred words, get, go, get those creative juices flowing. You can also have it create an outline for you. So you’re still the one creating the content. And again, putting your, your brand on there, your voice, your unique perspective. Cause yeah, it’s a robot. It doesn’t have a unique perspective.
[00:11:23] Alison Ver Halen: It can’t effectively set you apart from all the other lawyers out there when it’s scraping content from those other lawyers to create,
[00:11:33] Steve Fretzin: but like, here’s an example of how I found it useful. Like I, I went in, I was writing a, why does, why do lawyers need a coach? Okay. So that didn’t give me too much, but then I asked it again, um, What’s the history of coaching and it gave me like the little bit of the, you know, paragraph or two of the history of coaching.
[00:11:49] Steve Fretzin: Well, that I was able to then incorporate that history of coaching into the bullet points that I wanted to share about why hiring a coach might be a good thing for a lawyer. And that actually helped just add a little more, you know, background to the article that normally I wouldn’t have done that research.
[00:12:05] Steve Fretzin: I don’t know if that’s because I’m lazy or not, but it was just nice that it pumped out, like, here’s what they found to be the history of coaching. And I, and it was right, cause I did know. The history of coaching. I just want to see if it knew it. And also if it was, if it was going to give me something that was worth putting down on paper.
[00:12:19] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah, well, and I will say always check it’s worth with things like that. I mean, yeah, that can be a great way to use it to just get those facts and statistics and the boring content out of the way. And then you can add your personality to it. But check its work to make sure that it’s accurate. I mean, we saw the ad with Google’s BARD that came out not too long ago, where BARD gave a wrong answer.
[00:12:39] Alison Ver Halen: And the first time I asked ChatGPT a question, it gave me a wrong answer. So AI is not perfect. It does get things wrong. So don’t rely on it. Do
[00:12:49] Steve Fretzin: double check its work. Well, and that takes time. So now we’ve just turned lawyers off to that. So moving right along here. Did you know that 36% of potential clients would take their business elsewhere if they had a bad caller experience?
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[00:14:25] Steve Fretzin: So let’s get into what are some, you know, upsides. Now a lawyer can write him or herself, can get someone to coauthor, maybe get an associate to help, can outsource, right? There are people like you that are more than happy to learn their business and write articles that would be, you know, very good on their website and et cetera.
[00:14:44] Steve Fretzin: But what are the, the general, like two or three primary benefits of writing for lawyers?
[00:14:50] Alison Ver Halen: Educating your audience. It’s a big one. SEO is a, another big one, but I do want to go back to educating your audience. That’d be a big one. As far as, I mean, so many people think they can be their own lawyer and they, they can’t, and they really need to understand why they can’t and what all of the things that a lawyer can do for you and all the trouble they can help you either get you out of or help you avoid in the first place.
[00:15:15] Alison Ver Halen: Ideally, you So that’s a big one. SEO. I mean, Google scans your website for content and it uses that content to figure out what you’re all about and which searches to match you with and determine if you are an expert in your industry. And I, the third one is positioning yourself as an authority in your industry, which again is why I’m wary of things like chat GPT.
[00:15:36] Alison Ver Halen: It’s like, can you really create, you can’t like set yourself apart from the competition if you’re creating all the same content that. Okay. Everyone else is creating and that chat dbt is creating for everyone else. So you gotta, like we said, there are ways to use chat GPT where you can get the boring stuff out of the way, but make sure that you are putting your own stamp on it and really positioning yourself as a, as a thought leader in your industry.
[00:16:02] Steve Fretzin: And is it better to write for yourself and for your website and put that content out and certainly, you know, repurposing is an important thing for us to talk about, or is it better to write for. A publication or two. So I’m writing for, for example, the Chicago daily law bulletin and have for seven years, I’m also writing for legal business world and that’s an international publication and I’m writing for my website and I’m writing for social media.
[00:16:28] Steve Fretzin: So it’s like, that’s a lot of writing. Yeah. If lawyers have a limited amount of time, is one better than the other? Or is there, yeah. How would you separate that? I always
[00:16:37] Alison Ver Halen: recommend owning your own content. Uh, so yeah, social media, I think can be great for distributing content, writing for publications like that is always a good idea.
[00:16:47] Alison Ver Halen: But again, then you don’t own that content. So I would always prioritize. Writing for your website, making sure that you own that content. And again, just trying to optimize it for Google as, as much as possible. And then as a secondary thing, I don’t want to discount the value of writing for those other publications, especially since that can be a great way to get a backlink to your website, which, and it gets you in front of new audiences and that boosts your visibility and your SEO and.
[00:17:15] Alison Ver Halen: All very important things, but yeah, time you could easily spend all your time just creating content for yourself, but no one has that kind of time. I have
[00:17:23] Steve Fretzin: a regular, you know, I run all these round table groups and yeah, I always ask them to share something new and good and one of my, uh, executive compensation attorneys wrote an article and, you know, he’s been, you know, sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it takes six months, sometimes it happens right away, but he’ll get a call from someone who read the article and, and he wants to engage him or wants to at least have a conversation about engagement and, Look, I’ve been writing for the Chicago Daily Level for seven years.
[00:17:50] Steve Fretzin: Am I getting, like, my phone just doesn’t stop ringing every single day because of it? No, that’s not, not happening at all. In fact, uh, I’m all about email and stuff like that. And people going to my website and filling out that form. It has produced… That thought leadership, it has produced, you know, regular readership and in a following that then translates to my website, translates to my podcast, translates to my YouTube channel.
[00:18:16] Steve Fretzin: So I think it’s like 1 arm of of an octopus that has many. So you might just be, you might just be writing for 1 publication or for your website, but if you incorporate that with business development and maybe even some other marketing channels and repurpose that content. Right. That’s going to be the, you know, the biggest bang for the buck that a lawyer would get.
[00:18:37] Steve Fretzin: Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And what are, what are some tips that you can provide to the lawyers listening on how to get people to actually read their blogs? Cause it’s one thing to write it, but it’s another to get people to actually read it.
[00:18:53] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah, I think the biggest mistake I see everyone making not just lawyers is forgetting to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re writing for.
[00:19:02] Alison Ver Halen: So like, we all know what’s interesting to us and what we want to write about, but does your audience really care about that? And it all needs to start with who your ideal client is and what they care about. What are they searching for? So that again, will then lead you to the keyword research and using the right keywords and covering the right topics.
[00:19:19] Alison Ver Halen: But Every aspect of that content down to the language that you use and how easy is it to read? Is this something that your ideal client can read or is this something that another lawyer can read? Right. Cause those are, those are two different things. So yeah, have, have that marketing persona, that ideal client in mind and keep them in mind throughout the process.
[00:19:40] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I would, I would, and I think you might use this as another tip, but I’m stealing it from you right now. Um, I think it has, it should be something like that’s, that’s either coming up there that’s happening right now. So like this morning I heard, I listened to the Daily Podcast. Every day i love it i think it’s great it’s in depth and they were talking about chat gbt but more about talking about being and i think that’s microsoft and it is how okay and how that may be taking away the the um the pay per click and the way that ads are done on on google um or that are done on the internet at all.
[00:20:15] Steve Fretzin: Well, that’s going to really impact the lawyers and especially the personal injury lawyers and the lawyers that are spending millions of dollars getting their, their leads through those means. I don’t know if that’s going to be a year or two or five, but wow, I better start writing on that. I better, I better put an article out to, you know, let people know that this is coming.
[00:20:36] Steve Fretzin: Let people know now. Yeah. Well, But that would, but that would get, but Allison, that would, my point is, I guess that would be red. I mean, that would be something that, that it’s not been talked about now for. You know, the last six months it’s happening right now and it’s being reported right now. This is the time to write.
[00:20:53] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So what are, what are some other things that you, that you recommend to get people to read blog posts and read, read writing,
[00:21:03] Alison Ver Halen: definitely incorporating a story into it is the number one. And again, you are not the hero of the story. You’re your ideal client is the hero of the story. They have a problem.
[00:21:14] Alison Ver Halen: Focus on that pain point, start with that pain point because that’s going to be the hook that draws them in and then take them through a story. What does, what does it look like if that pain point gets worse and what does it look like if that pain point gets better? Help solve it for them. What does their life look like then?
[00:21:28] Alison Ver Halen: And then have that call to action at the end. Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing what that next step in the buyer journey is and how to get to them to
[00:21:39] Steve Fretzin: take that next step. Yeah. And then what other suggestions do you have as it relates to marketing a blog? So like I mentioned, like I’ll write a blog and then maybe I’ll promote it on, on social media.
[00:21:51] Steve Fretzin: Are there any other things that people can do to get that blog read so that it wasn’t something that they feel like, you know, Hey, it’s just like a best kept secret.
[00:22:02] Alison Ver Halen: Yeah, definitely. Social media is great for that. So always recommend that. As well as a newsletter, hopefully everyone has a newsletter, that’s a great opportunity to distribute your blog and let people know that it exists.
[00:22:18] Alison Ver Halen: I just had another thought. Oh, I always do videos kind of in conjunction with my blog where I cover the same topic. It’s just in a different format. And then I always provide a link back to my blog. So it’s kind of like social media, but it’s also like it’s another way to get in
[00:22:33] Steve Fretzin: front of people. Well, but I love that idea.
[00:22:36] Steve Fretzin: So, for example, a lawyer could, could do a zoom video for 20 seconds, right? We all know how to pull up zoom. We all know how to hit record 20 seconds about the article and why it’s relevant and why it’s important to read and then have that video set up the blog, maybe link people to your website or put that up or maybe even public.
[00:22:56] Steve Fretzin: Do you, do you publish it in LinkedIn? Is that a good idea or is that a bad idea? I just went down a whole different route. I just went down a whole different rabbit hole.
[00:23:03] Alison Ver Halen: Sorry. No, it’s fine. It’s like I said, you always want to own your content. So if you do decide to publish on LinkedIn, yes, there are, there’s value to having that on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn wants to keep people on LinkedIn.
[00:23:18] Alison Ver Halen: Right. They don’t want people to leave. So getting a converting those leads can be really challenging. And again, you don’t own your content, uh, LinkedIn can decide to delete it for whatever reason or for no reason at all and not give you any warning on that. So, yeah, I always recommend having, again, having it on your, your own website, owning that content, and then using social media sites like LinkedIn to distribute that content.
[00:23:45] Steve Fretzin: Sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll put the promotion or the, the, you know, the start writing the article into the. And then, and then instead of linking to it in the post, what I’ll do is I’ll add the link in the comments and say, Hey, if you want to finish this article, and then I think if it’s in the comments, then it’s not impacting, uh, how LinkedIn feels about, uh, what you just posted that you’re pulling people off the site, which is really what I’m doing, but I’m doing it sort of under the radar through a comment.
[00:24:11] Steve Fretzin: Yeah.
[00:24:12] Alison Ver Halen: Kind of sneaky, but yeah, then put it in the post. A little sneaky, but yeah, then put in the post that the link is in the comments so you’re not making people
[00:24:19] Steve Fretzin: look for it. Right. Right. And yeah, mention it. Right. Exactly. So fantastic. Well, this is great. And um, if people want to get in touch with you to learn more about AV writing services and they say, you know what, I heard all this, this is all great.
[00:24:33] Steve Fretzin: Never going to do it. Need to outsource it. And Allison sounds like she knows what you’re doing because you do. What’s the best way for them to reach you?
[00:24:40] Alison Ver Halen: I am on LinkedIn a lot. So you can always find me over there. My website is AZ as in my initials, Alison Verhalen. It is azwritingservices. com. You can.
[00:24:51] Alison Ver Halen: Read a ton of content about me over there and, uh, I’m at info at a, the writing services.
[00:24:56] Steve Fretzin: com. Okay. Very cool. And your game changing book, we originally started with emath and I was like, ah, emath. I haven’t done that. Like I have a lot of people love emath and I do too. It’s a great book, but I like it’s overkill.
[00:25:07] Steve Fretzin: So you gave me a fresh new book that no one’s heard of on the show. At least practical content. Strict shoot. I just screwed up practical content, strategic strategy and marketing. Yep. I get that right. And that’s by Julia McCoy. Sorry, Julia, I just destroyed your title, but interesting title that basically tells you what the book’s about, as opposed to, you know, a title like E Myth where you’re like, E Myth, what is that?
[00:25:32] Steve Fretzin: Right. You that, about Julia’s book and why you, why it’s your game changing book. Yeah, it
was
[00:25:40] Alison Ver Halen: one of the first books I read, I think about content marketing strategy, I had figured. You know, I’d been on the blocks for a while and was learning some there and that’s how I found Julia McCoy and then I found her book and decided to read it and it was really good and it, it does take you through, you know, the process of creating content and really good content as well as.
[00:26:00] Alison Ver Halen: Working in the SEO and how do you get good backlinks and how do you find good keywords? And I think it even goes through like the process of doing an SEO audit and what that looks like. And so it, it’s a really great, like all purpose beginner’s guide to content. Yeah. Practical content strategy and marketing.
[00:26:18] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Well, people should check that out. If you’re, if you’re curious and interested about, you know, how to leverage content on your website and, uh, get found on Google and all those great things. And I want to take a moment before we wrap up to just thank our sponsors, Moneypenny, who’s amazing and has been, uh, on my website now for a long time, answering people’s questions with live chat.
[00:26:39] Steve Fretzin: It’s not a robot, it’s a real person. And they also do live reception, so if you want to get away from those ridiculous, what are they called, the, uh, where people get like, press 1 for this, press 2, like phone trees, phone trees. Yeah, I hate the phone trees, ugh, they’re brutal. And, of course, Legalese Marketing, who’s helping you automate your marketing, and I think they’re really great, especially with looking at the, uh, practice management softwares and helping to automate those and take them to the next level to assist with your marketing.
[00:27:05] Steve Fretzin: And Practice Panther, which people regularly tell me is the easiest practice management software for lawyers to get started, uh, using. Like, you just plug and play and it’s really, really easy. So that’s really our show today, Allison. I want to thank you again for being on the show and being a great guest and sharing your wisdom.
[00:27:21] Steve Fretzin: Just, uh, let’s, let’s keep it a loop. I’d love to, to keep in touch and make sure that I’m following all the content you’re putting out. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. And thank you everybody for spending some time with Allison and I today. Hopefully you got a couple of good takeaways and tips and, you know, trying to figure out this whole writing thing and get it handled and managed.
[00:27:39] Steve Fretzin: I, there’s no question it’s important, it’s just a matter of either making time for it and, and having some focus or outsourcing it and getting it done that way. I think if you’re not doing writing or social media, things like that, you’re probably getting left behind. And you may not feel that today, but you might feel that in a year or five or two or five.
[00:27:57] Steve Fretzin: And that’s really when, you know, when this type of stuff starts to play a role in your ongoing success as a lawyer. Try to be that lawyer, someone who’s confident, organized, and a skilled rate maker. Take care everybody. Be safe. Be well. We’ll talk again soon.
[00:28:14] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin. com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.