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BE THAT LAWYER – Marketing Mavericks – Part 2 of 2

Steve Fretzin
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In this episode, Steve Fretzin, Erik Olson, Jocelyn Brumbaugh, Jared Correia, and Gyi Tsakalakis discuss:

  • Social media and your law firm.
  • Doing research on LinkedIn for potential connections.
  • Taking accountability for what you publish on social media.
  • Directing people back to your website for the full content and owning your content on your website.

Key Takeaways:

  • Be on the social platforms that your audience is on.
  • Keep your social media posts to information, not advice. Clients want to know about the legal process.
  • Responding to negative reviews is not for the reviewer – it is for the next person who sees it and sees that you are recognizing it.
  • Repurpose the content on your website for social media – don’t make more work for yourself.
  • All content should be guided through the eyes of your audience.

“You’ve got to think about who your audience is. But I will tell you this, from a from a top of mind awareness standpoint, it’s the best, the most efficient, and the most effective way to stay in front of your audience on a regular basis. It’s cheaper than TV, it’s cheaper than radio. Radio and TV don’t even have the eyeballs and the attention span that social media has.” —  Gyi Tsakalakis

Get a free copy of Steve’s book “Sales-Free Selling” here: http://www.fretzin.com/sales-free-selling

Thank you to our Sponsors!

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Overture: https://overture.law/

Get Visible:https://www.getvisible.com/

Lawmatics: https://www.lawmatics.com/bethatlawyer/

Episode References: 

Connect with Erik Olson: 

Website: https://arraylaw.com/

Show: https://arraylaw.com/managing-partners-podcast/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWsbJqhtLMS5wmWmXulpY2A

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamerikjolson/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisisarray

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thisisarray

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/array.digital/

Connect with Jocelyn Brumbaugh:  

Website: https://www.buildenpartners.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelynbrumbaugh/

Connect with Jared Correia: 

Website: RedCaveLegal.com & Gideon.Legal

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jaredcorreia & linkedin.com/company/gideon-legal-software/

Twitter: twitter.com/RedCaveLegal & twitter.com/Gideon_Legal

Facebook: facebook.com/GideonLegal

Connect with Gyi Tsakalakis:  

Website: GyiTsakalakis.com & AttorneySync.com

Email: Gyi@AttorneySync.com

Show: legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/lunch-hour-legal-marketing/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gyitsakalakis

Twitter: twitter.com/gyitsakalakis

Facebook: facebook.com/gyitsakalakis

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

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

[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:27] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome to Be That Lawyer. Today we are going to have a part. Two of our be that lawyer, live marketing Mavericks, another one of our unbelievable episodes with a great panel. Uh, today we’ve got, uh, the repeat or the second part of, uh, of, of marketing Mavericks, uh, with of course, Eric Olson, the CEO of Array Digital.

[00:00:46] Steve Fretzin: We’ve got Jocelyn Brumbaugh, the founder of Build and Partners. We’ve got Jared Correa, founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, and Guy Sakalakis, who’s the president of AttorneySync, all coming your way. Uh, so enjoy the show, everybody. We’ll tie in, uh, we’ll have some fun. So in, I mean, I’ve seen the social dilemma, we’re all, you know, addicted to our phones, addicted to all this.

[00:01:10] Steve Fretzin: I mean, it’s just a, a minefield of junk. However, in the legal marketing game. Social media is, you know, something that we need to, most of us need to lean into. So, pros, cons, best practices for social media. You know, I don’t know where we wanna start or end this, but this is kind of the, the, the, the cave I’m going into.

[00:01:29] Steve Fretzin: So anybody wanna jump in? Sure. We’re back. D we’re back to you. Turn off the

[00:01:34] Gyi Tsakalakis: internet now. Just getting .

[00:01:36] Steve Fretzin: Um, gotta say ran number two and go. Yeah. You know,

[00:01:39] Gyi Tsakalakis: look, uh, you can go look up the user numbers and the, uh, you know, time on. Platform and how many eyeballs there are. This is where people are. This is where conversations are happening.

[00:01:54] Gyi Tsakalakis: I can’t tell you how many times I get messages being like, you know, even people that, you know, in the real world, you know, I met you at this conference. They want to message me on LinkedIn. Cause they, they saw something, I did a video, short video on LinkedIn or something. Lawyers, same thing, you know, uh, the lawyers that are, uh, doing, you know, They’re their authentic selves.

[00:02:15] Gyi Tsakalakis: Maybe they’re sharing some insights about their practice. Maybe they’re doing tips. Some of them are just dancing on TikTok. And you know, the thing I always say about that one is, is like, that’s great. You’ve got 2 million followers. You’re dancing. You’re super entertaining. The same thing we’re talking about with the content, though, is, is that persuading someone that you’re the right person to help them with perhaps the most serious, difficult issue that they’ve ever faced in their life?

[00:02:40] Gyi Tsakalakis: Now, let’s, the other thing that I think is important for all of this, and this goes back to the audience stuff, you know, look, you want to be a volume based practice, and you’re dealing with a very unsophisticated set of legal services consumers, dance yourself away, because people will hire you, they’ll contact you and hire you, because you pop in their head, because they remember you dancing on TikTok, no different than the billboard lawyer has done, or the TV advertising lawyer has done, it’s the same thing.

[00:03:05] Gyi Tsakalakis: But, If that’s not your game plan, if you’re like, you know, look, I’m really looking for, you know, I think about it in terms of, you know, maybe you want to do very sophisticated, um, divorce work or something or high, you know, high, high net worth divorce, people are always talking about, you think the high net worth individuals are just like going on tick tock and just scrolling through it and like, oh yeah, that dancing lawyer, that’s who I’m going to hire to do my, you know, multimillion dollar divorce, you know, maybe if you’re famous or something, I don’t know, but anyway, the point is, is that you’ve got to think about who your audience is.

[00:03:35] Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay. But I will tell you this from a, from a top of mind awareness standpoint, it’s the best. It’s the most efficient, the most effective way to stay in front of your audience on a regular basis. It’s cheaper than TV. It’s cheaper than radio. You know, radio and TV don’t even have the eyeballs and the attention span that a social media has, you know, look around you and you see all those people with their heads down on their phone.

[00:03:55] Gyi Tsakalakis: What do you think they’re looking at? They’re looking at social media. Like that’s what they’re spending most of their time on. Now, again, that’s, that’s my rant on like be there, but you know, you want to talk about, all right, I’m

[00:04:04] Steve Fretzin: done. No, you want to, you want to.

[00:04:08] Gyi Tsakalakis: No, I, I, you know, I, well, the next, the people are always like, well, what, what social media platform should I be on?

[00:04:14] Gyi Tsakalakis: And I’m like, well, you know, whatever ones that you think that your audience is on. Right. I mean, and so like, you know, the easy ones linked into me because LinkedIn has business intent. That’s the thing that LinkedIn has just like search has actual like search intent, super valuable because your message is showing up right when someone’s looking for it.

[00:04:30] Gyi Tsakalakis: On LinkedIn, people are there mostly, not all, but a lot of people there to talk business. They want to talk, they’re more comfortable having business conversations. They tend to be more willing to make connections with people that they don’t know super close, whereas like on Facebook. Some people it’s like our Instagram.

[00:04:47] Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s like I got a private Instagram thing profile. I don’t want anybody to see what’s going on Instagram. LinkedIn people are a little bit more amenable to that because it’s got the business intent. And so from from a referral standpoint, from social proof standpoint, you know, the recommendations like the mutual connection stuff.

[00:05:03] Gyi Tsakalakis: Super powerful in terms of referral connections. So I’d start there.

[00:05:06] Steve Fretzin: I like the idea that it’s leveled the playing field for many lawyers who are competing against, you know, bigger money, you know, bigger, bigger player law firms that, you know, look, everybody’s sort of on somebody other than like paper, like everyone’s on kind of even ground as far as what they’re going to post and how they’re going to post it.

[00:05:23] Steve Fretzin: Eric, what are your thoughts? Let’s uh, let’s chime back with you, buddy. So

[00:05:27] Erik J. Olson: when it comes to social media, there’s 2 kinds of 2 big categories, I would say, of getting in front of people organic and paid or advertising. So organic organic is where you post and it’s free doesn’t cost anything. And you get in front of your audience.

[00:05:43] Erik J. Olson: I think there’s, I think there’s some value in that, but, um, as he was saying, it’s not exactly like you’re scrolling through Instagram and bed at night. Uh, before you’re supposed to go to sleep and you’re like, Oh, look at that. Uh, this divorce lawyer just posted about whatever they posted about. And, um, I’m going to get a divorce.

[00:06:01] Erik J. Olson: Like that’s not, yeah. And so you’re, you’re, you’re hoping that basically someone randomly in your network randomly sees that and is convinced to, to contact you if you’re looking at it from a business development standpoint, like it’s probably going to. Not actually develop a lot of business directly, but it keeps you in front of your audience so that if they do at some point have a need, or they probably more likely they know someone that has a need, then.

[00:06:30] Erik J. Olson: They’ll think of you. Hopefully. Now, if you’re going to do organic, uh, it’s very time intensive or money intensive to do it, right? So, what most people do is they completely forget about it because they have a law firm that they’re running and they have other marketing channels that drive leads to their, uh, firm.

[00:06:46] Erik J. Olson: And so, uh, social media, organic social media posting is an afterthought usually. So, it’s like, if you go look at a law, your average law firms, organic posting, they’ll probably get like 1 or 2 likes and probably half of those people are from the firm themselves. So it doesn’t really do a lot in my opinion to drive revenue into directly drive revenue into the firm.

[00:07:09] Erik J. Olson: One of the things that I do really like, though, is retargeting advertising. So with retargeting advertising, you put a little piece of code on your website and a place like Facebook will know when one of their users goes to your website. And then when the person goes back into Facebook, which probably happens about 30 seconds later, because people are on Facebook or Instagram nonstop.

[00:07:29] Erik J. Olson: You as the advertiser have the ability to pay for an ad to get in front of them. I like that a lot because it’s highly targeted. This is someone that has come to your website. So they implicitly express some level of intent. Now, of course, there could be people that go to your website for who knows why, but they come to your website.

[00:07:48] Erik J. Olson: And in particular, you can even narrow it down to they went to this particular page. So show them this ad and it’s relatively inexpensive. So that I think is a good way to get back in front of people that have expressed some level of intent in the service

[00:08:06] Steve Fretzin: that you provide. And Jocelyn, how are you teaching law firms and lawyers to use social media to get ahead?

[00:08:13] Steve Fretzin: What are kind of your, like, best tips for, for them to, to take advantage of these tools?

[00:08:19] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: Everything that the guys have said so far about how to use LinkedIn and why LinkedIn is better than the other platforms is totally right. But we’re all still talking about using LinkedIn for marketing. And so I think it’s an important piece to talk about how to use.

[00:08:33] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: LinkedIn for business development. So marketing is that one to many, right? Your website, you do one thing and it reaches a bunch of people, right? You have a post on LinkedIn. That’s one thing. And it reaches a bunch of people, but LinkedIn has really great search tools. And he is right that people are willing to make connections and introductions in a way that they’re not on other platforms.

[00:08:51] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: So, before you go to a conference, right, you’re gonna be in Scottsdale, go into LinkedIn, go to your connections, and do a search and see who’s in Arizona, and you’ll be shocked at how many people you went to college with that are out there now, or that guy that you knew before is now in house at that place.

[00:09:08] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: So use that and use and build your agenda when you’re in another city around that, or if you’ve got some target company that you really want to, um, break into, go see who your second degree connections are there. LinkedIn will do the work for you. You can even get, and please don’t. Go on your LinkedIn connections and hit next and the next and the next until your finger falls off.

[00:09:30] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: You can go into your settings and LinkedIn will send you an Excel document of all your connections and look through there and sort there. Um, to figure out where people, uh, what companies are at and where that, what industries they’re in and, and their geographies. And use that to start your business development effort.

[00:09:47] Steve Fretzin: Well, here’s something that I do and teach my clients to do that most lawyers will never do. Uh, but it really, really works. Is I’ll actually go in and into my client’s profile, I’ll pull up their contacts, narrow it down to like lawyers that are partners, get a list of 15 names, send them the names with a script, ask them to pick the three or four that they know best that they think are open minded, interested in BD growth, and would they mind sending that email to those folks?

[00:10:15] Steve Fretzin: And they do, and I get meetings from it all the time, and it’s, it’s, I mean, could it be easier? No, there’s no, no easier way than happy clients, right? Where you basically do the work to identify the people that, that they agree might be good fits and make, and then proactively make those now, 10, 15 years ago, that would have been considered, you know, stalker ish or would have been considered like, you know, you know, rude to do.

[00:10:38] Steve Fretzin: But I think today, when, when lawyers are considering getting referrals or giving referrals, it’s like anything that makes it easy, it’s like they want to hit that easy button. And if you can make something easy, right, it’s, it’s, it’s a game changer. So I love the marketing aspect of, of social media and LinkedIn.

[00:10:54] Steve Fretzin: And you’re right. You’re spot on Jocelyn that, that the BD element is, is huge and Jared’s laughing at me. No, I think he just

[00:11:01] Jared Correia: called you a stalker

[00:11:02] Steve Fretzin: in the chat. Oh, I am a stalker. Okay. Yeah. All right. But in the chat, but yeah, I’m a good

[00:11:06] Gyi Tsakalakis: stalker. You’re a good stalker. I’m a good

[00:11:07] Jared Correia: kind of stalker. A good kind of stalker.

[00:11:08] Jared Correia: Well, I mean, like, this is a great point. It’s that like LinkedIn in particular is amazing for research. Like you want to know where the people are that you want to connect with. That’s a great way to, I’m actually having lots. So the job market’s really tight right now for law firms. I got a lot of firms, a lot of law firms I work with that are growing, they’re looking to hire people.

[00:11:27] Jared Correia: They’re having trouble hiring people through their existing channels. So we’ve been finding candidates on LinkedIn that they’re just reaching out to directly. It’s like, Hey, how are things going?

[00:11:35] Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. No, I mean, LinkedIn’s

[00:11:36] Steve Fretzin: been the My job sucks. I mean, Jared, LinkedIn has been the biggest tool for recruiters for the last 10, 15 years.

[00:11:42] Steve Fretzin: I mean, they, they have the, the, you know, 10, 000 accounts that they need to have just to, to use LinkedIn the way it needs to be used for candidates. So it’s But I’m saying, I guess my point is like lawyers aren’t thinking about it strategically. They’re thinking about, Oh, it’s another social media or it’s, it’s just something I just, I just scroll through and hit like occasionally do, but like doom scrolling, you can doom scroll on LinkedIn.

[00:12:04] Steve Fretzin: I guess you can. Oh, sure. You can. Okay.

[00:12:06] Jared Correia: Um, the, the other quick thing I want to say is like, I think there’s two ways that you can position yourself on social media. One is like you have a personal account, right? So we’ve been talking about LinkedIn, you got your LinkedIn personal account. I got my LinkedIn, Jared Korea account.

[00:12:19] Jared Correia: But then I have one for a software company I own. I have one for my consulting business. That’s a different messaging, right? I’ve got brand components where I’m speaking as a brand. And then I’ve got my personal stuff where I’m going to say a whole lot of other stuff that I wouldn’t say on the brand accounts.

[00:12:33] Jared Correia: So there’s a couple different ways for you to market yourself on social media, and you can do that for almost every social media platform and LinkedIn. Like it’s really easy to acquire people to follow your business accounts because they allow you to reach out to like 250 people a month to invite them to like your business.

[00:12:49] Jared Correia: And even if you get like 20, 30 of those, that’s just another, uh, place where people can find out information about

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[00:14:47] Steve Fretzin: out. All right, let’s move on. I mean, there is another piece that someone had asked a question about, um, and this is like a sub question, I think, because I don’t, I don’t know how much we want to get into this, but some lawyers are concerned about posting on social media or writing blogs because they’re concerned that there might be ethics issues or things that they may get wrong.

[00:15:07] Steve Fretzin: What do you guys think about that? Is that, I mean, obviously it’s a concern and they need to know what they’re writing, but at the same time, not at the, maybe at the level of, of just not writing because of that fear, what do they do to kind of Ensure that the things that they’re posting are going to be, are going to be ethically sound.

Ethics.

[00:15:22] Jared Correia: Look, no one’s unmuting for ethics. I’ll, I’ll take the bullet for this one. Gee, I’ll take the bullet for

[00:15:27] Gyi Tsakalakis: this one, man. There we go. I’ll join you.

[00:15:29] Jared Correia: All right. I don’t, look, when I get this question from people, cause I get it a lot, two big things for me. One is like, you’re not referencing like specific cases and specific clients in terms of like how that case is preceded.

[00:15:41] Jared Correia: Like you can be like, Oh, Hey, I won this big settlement from my client or whatever. And then the other thing is you’re not giving advice per se. So the way I look at it is advice versus information. If you keep it strictly to information about the practice, the process, that’s helpful. And the other thing I would say is like, if we’re looking at like, I think it was a CLEO legal trends report for maybe like two or three years ago, where clients have this real need to understand the legal process.

[00:16:08] Jared Correia: And they can do that in a conversation with you, but they could also do that prior to talking with you. So, if you can give the client some insight onto what you do and how the legal process works in general, I think that’s really helpful because A, they’re going to ask you anyway, and B, it’s something they’re like super curious about, and C, you can make it sound horrible so that they really want to hire a lawyer.

[00:16:30] Jared Correia: And same thing, like I tell, the analogy I make is like, If a plumber came to my house and he’s like, look, you’re like the 17 stages is going to take to unclog your toilet. Cause it’s real mess in here. I’m not going to be like, Oh bro. I got it. I’ll do that myself. I’m going to be like, please, can I hire you?

[00:16:46] Jared Correia: And faster. Yeah.

[00:16:47] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Not, not up for that. Yeah.

[00:16:50] Gyi Tsakalakis: I mean, so the easy answer is don’t talk about your practice at all. Right. You can do all sorts of stuff online. Uh, Jared alluded to some of the things that you can do that will help you stay top of mind that will, uh, you know, that people call talk about brand affinity that will make people gravitate to you because they’re interested in the same things that you’re interested in.

[00:17:11] Gyi Tsakalakis: You can do that all day. You want to talk. Legal expertise stuff, then yeah, first of all, like, you know, are we do, are we in like rules of professional conduct class 101? Like, yeah, you shouldn’t be on, on YouTube talking about your cases and your clients. Is it that, that’s not that hard, right? We should all know that.

[00:17:30] Gyi Tsakalakis: And talking about specific advice, you know, you know, someone like printing out an old blog post that you wrote and said, Hey, look, back in 10 years ago, you wrote this thing, like that’s not a thing. But that being said, you are accountable for what you publish. So just like. You’re accountable for what you write in a brief, or what you say at a cocktail party, or what you say anywhere, you know, if you’re in a…

[00:17:51] Gyi Tsakalakis: You get on CNN, and you start making, uh, wrong legal conclusions, although apparently that’s like a popular thing to do today. But, point being is, is like, yeah, like, you have to speak about the things you’re competent to speak about, and you don’t have to get into all the details of specific representation, um, and all this stuff.

[00:18:10] Gyi Tsakalakis: And the other thing that always comes up with this one is a slight… Not quite the same thing, but we’re always asked about it. It’s like, what do I do about the negative review? Can’t respond because it’s going to breach the confidence and all that stuff. And we could do a whole thing on that. But the short version is when you respond to that, you’re not responding to try to convince that person to take the review down.

[00:18:29] Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re responding to the next person. Demonstrating that you’re sad that this person had this experience and that you’re there listening and empathizing. That’s what really matters when you’re talking about that. So anyway, you know, I think this, but Steve, I think that you’re alluding to this point, you know, lawyers get so paralyzed by all this stuff so fast because ethics.

[00:18:52] Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t want to worry. I’m worried about ethics. Well, ethics isn’t going to be a problem for you if you don’t have any clients. And so, um, you know, just putting your head in the sand. And saying, I can’t do anything online because I’m worried about giving specific legal advice. Like, that’s just, uh, shirking your responsibility to like, understand how this stuff works and what you can do and what you can’t do.

[00:19:12] Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah,

[00:19:12] Steve Fretzin: it’s a bit, it’s a bit of a, it’s a bit of a cop out, but I think people are, people are, it’s, it’s, for some, it’s not about the ethics. It’s about that blank page you guys talked about with ChatGBT. Like, it’s a blank page. I just, what am I writing? Like, what am I doing? Like, how do lawyers come up with great content?

[00:19:29] Steve Fretzin: What’s the, what’s the… The process that you guys go through, or that you help your lawyers go through. To create content and then the follow up to that is where does that content go and how is it used and how does it work to actually get people through your funnel or to notice you so that I think maybe B2B different than B2C in some, in some ways, but Jocelyn, this is a, I know you’re jammed, so I’m going to let you lead off.

[00:19:53] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, you

[00:19:54] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: know, one thing that I want to make sure that people understand is the website is where the blog should live. But you shouldn’t give it away in other places, right? When you send out a newsletter, when you do a post in social, you need just a snippet. You want to use that content to have somebody say like, Oh, shoot, I really need to learn more about this.

[00:20:13] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: And so I get so many, I get a lot of love from newsletters. And there’s so many that I get that it’s Six paragraphs and all, all the goods are there. That’s not how you do it. You, you know, Steve, you and I’ve talked about good subject lines like lots of times. And so you need to send it out and then entice somebody to go to the website to read more.

[00:20:32] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: Because these firms that are, it’s such a missed opportunity when you put all the content in the newsletter, because then where is that content, right? It’s not helping you for SEO. It’s not living somewhere for someone to look at in the future. So make sure that all of the content, all these good, smart things that you’re saying lives in its entirety on your website and everything else is directing people to the full

[00:20:52] Steve Fretzin: content.

[00:20:53] Steve Fretzin: Yeah, really, really important. I also love the idea of repurposing content. So, you know, taking that blog and then is that something that, you know, make social media posts? Is it if it’s five tips on how to, and then that might actually make five blog posts or five social media posts because you’re breaking them into five parts.

[00:21:13] Steve Fretzin: So I, I just, I just don’t know that lawyers are effectively, you know, creating the right content and then repurposing and using it and putting on the right platforms. Jared, why are you nodding? Don’t nod,

[00:21:24] Jared Correia: speak. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean myself. Lawyers love making extra work for themselves. Like, I can’t tell you how many lawyers I’m like, they’re like, hey, can you read this blog I wrote?

[00:21:32] Jared Correia: And I’m like, this is like a law review article, bro. No one’s going to be reading this. It’s got sections in it and stuff like that. There’s Latin words. I’m like, look, let’s take a look at this and let’s figure out like, can we break it into more parts to your point? This is a 1500 word article. Can we get four blog posts out of this?

[00:21:49] Jared Correia: And let’s take this through a lens of legal consumers. Like, A, what would a legal consumer want to know, and B, what would they actually understand? Because when you’re talking about, like, the process of probating a will, like, people might not know what probate even is. So you can mention that, but you need to explain it some way, too.

[00:22:06] Jared Correia: Talk to, talk to people like they’re

[00:22:08] Steve Fretzin: five. Yeah. I, I’ve got a friend, uh, just started a podcast. Jim Coogan, shout out to Jim Coogan. He just said, uh, Coogan knows the law. And he’s, he’s doing exactly that. He’s taking what it is to, to what is probate, what is, you know, how to, you know, everything about like, like litigation and breaking it into, and I like listening because I’m not a lawyer.

[00:22:29] Steve Fretzin: I know enough to be dangerous because I’m around him all the time, but like, I love listening to him talk about the very simplest thing, you know, things that I can start to wrap my head around. The

[00:22:37] Jared Correia: ultimate guide to probate, right? Broken down into various Yeah, like it’s Lucas would love

[00:22:41] Steve Fretzin: that stuff. Yeah, the keep it simple, stupid.

[00:22:44] Steve Fretzin: Deal. So when we’re talking about creation of content, there’s video, there’s blog, there’s so, you know, there’s post, there’s all these different options and all these different places to, to, to work them. How do you, let’s, let’s start with like, just do a speed round on like B2C first and then move to B2B because I think they’re different, aren’t they?

[00:23:03] Steve Fretzin: Dee, what do you think? Don’t look surprised.

[00:23:05] Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I was going to, I was going to say this, I was going to say that, you know, go back to the audience thing, because the answer is, is like, how does your audience consume this information? Right. And so I think there is a segment B2C versus B2B. There’s some difference there, but I’ll, you know, I don’t have to tell it right.

[00:23:22] Gyi Tsakalakis: You don’t have to be a internet marketing expert to know, like no one’s reading anything anymore. You know, go ask people, even people like go ask lawyers when’s the last time they read a book. And anyway, so if your audience is. Doom scrolling, then I would start with short form video content, um, probably on LinkedIn if I was gonna do it nowhere else.

[00:23:42] Gyi Tsakalakis: And, um, but again, if you’re, if your, uh, target audience is general counsel of fortune 500, uh, companies, maybe writing makes sense because again, for them to vet your expertise, they’re probably going to want to do they’re doing, they’re much more sophisticated legal services consumer. They’re not just like.

[00:24:02] Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, I saw you dance on Tik Tok. I’m ready for you to come and represent our company. They want to know, have you published on this? Do you have all the same mutual connections? Have you worked with other clients similarly situated to ours? Have you dealt? Are you like the person who knows this one obscure nuanced issue and have you written a ton about it?

[00:24:22] Gyi Tsakalakis: So anyway, that the answer is, is it’s always through the lens of the audience. Everything you do has to be guided by Who your audience is and how they are consuming this information. You know,

[00:24:33] Steve Fretzin: I’ve, I’ve written a bunch of books and it, to your point, nothing has been more impactful. In my business and in my, in the people that I want to work with is been the podcast because I think what I’ve been, I did video, I spent a lot of money and time on video too.

[00:24:49] Steve Fretzin: And I’ve even found that video for lawyers is difficult because they don’t want to sit and watch a video or learn a skill through a video or invest hours in watching, you know, lessons on business development, for example, however, to sit in their car in traffic while walking a dog or doing laundry or just having it on in the background while they’re working.

[00:25:08] Steve Fretzin: Very acceptable and very easy to take that content. And so who’d have thought that, you know, in 2023, that we’d be going back to basically like listening to the radio. It’s kind of what podcasts are. Um, but that’s that. And then of course that content can be then shaped in, in, in, um, in, in, in put together and repurposed in a dozen different ways, which I think has been another amazing thing.

[00:25:29] Steve Fretzin: So what do you guys, Eric, what do you think of your, you’ve got a wonderful podcast. Thought, you know, what do you think about that?

[00:25:34] Erik J. Olson: I appreciate that. Um, so I, I think when it comes to content creation, regardless of what the media is, a podcast video, the written word is, what’s the purpose of that piece of content?

[00:25:46] Erik J. Olson: What’s the objective? So, um, if it’s like, if, uh, talking about what he was talking about, if you’re going after, like, say, like a CEO or corporate executive, then you probably want to position yourself as a thought leader and you probably want to get them a piece. Uh, maybe in printed format that goes right to their desk as a letter or something like that, like physical, right?

[00:26:05] Erik J. Olson: Uh, that can make a lot of sense. Uh, if you’re, if you’re trying to get people off of the Internet that are searching for the service that you do, then the purpose of that content is probably a little bit different. Because what you want to do is you want to get really Google’s attention 1st, get that ranked on the 1st page, get people to click through.

[00:26:22] Erik J. Olson: Now, like he was saying, uh, the moment that they get there, they probably won’t read it. Like the, the time on page is typically very low, but now that have a sense of who you are and they’ll start clicking around and then hopefully they’ll contact you because you’ll convince them that they should contact you.

[00:26:37] Erik J. Olson: So the purpose of the content needs to be identified first that he really should have a strategy because all of this content creation, like anyone can create content and we all probably create content, but. Uh, it’s very, very time consuming and potentially resource intensive. Why are you doing like, what is the actual strategy at the content piece?

[00:26:56] Erik J. Olson: Why are you writing this particular piece? Or why are you making this particular video? Figure out what that purpose is, and then you’re going to have a lot more success with it.

[00:27:04] Steve Fretzin: Well, and that’s why it’s so important to engage, you know, you all in marketing folks to help because then law, most lawyers are great at the law.

[00:27:12] Steve Fretzin: They’re not great at marketing and they’re not great at knowing how to find out targets, how to create content, how to get to. So like getting the direction, then they have some way to go and then repurposing and getting it put up and making sure that all shines. Um, we’re wrapping up guys. We just have about a minute left.

[00:27:28] Steve Fretzin: Jocelyn, final thoughts on, uh, on this topic or general marketing that you want to share? Yeah, you know, I’m

[00:27:33] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: in the B2B space. That’s what Build Does and hats off to all of you that do B2C because consumers are tough, but they change their minds all the time. So you are very smart and congratulations. But in the B2B world, it is about repurposing and, you know, they’re still doing old school RFPs.

[00:27:50] Jocelyn Brumbaugh: There’s still that appendix that you got to fill up with what’s the value add that you’re going to offer to us. And so. All these analysis that you do about whatever law is changing, or whatever crazy things happening in California. All those things are important, and they end up showing your credibility, because when you’re in the B2B space, you’re not just convincing one person.

[00:28:10] Steve Fretzin: Spot on, spot on. Jared, final thoughts?

[00:28:14] Gyi Tsakalakis: I was putting something in the chat, so. Oh, okay.

[00:28:16] Steve Fretzin: He and I are killing the chat right here, I just don’t want people to think that. By the way, you guys are terrible on the podcast, great in the chats, just saying. Terrible in the podcast,

[00:28:25] Jared Correia: that’s savage, my god. Um, final thought?

[00:28:29] Jared Correia: Yeah, like, I don’t know, my final thought would be like, especially if you’re a new attorney. Like this was a question that was in the chat that we didn’t address. So I just want to address that. Like you want to, one of the things you want to have as well as like a price sheet, because I see a lot of people run into trouble with this, the question was like, can you control pricing?

[00:28:47] Jared Correia: If you can’t control pricing, you might not want to be running a business. So I have a price sheet ready to go for each of the types of cases that you take on and have those conversations with people upfront. That’s not necessarily straight marketing, but there’s a marketing component to that as well.

[00:29:01] Jared Correia: Now I’m going to complete what I was going to write in chat.

[00:29:04] Steve Fretzin: All right. There we go. You know, and there’s a reason I didn’t get to that question right away. Not because it wasn’t a great question. I just, you know, I thought there’s a kind of a, it’s somewhat marketing, somewhat operational, and I didn’t want to kind of muddy the waters too much.

[00:29:14] Steve Fretzin: But, uh, Guy, you were wonderful in the chat and yes, you were wonderful on the podcast. Final thoughts. I

[00:29:19] Gyi Tsakalakis: actually aim to be better in the chat. But anyway, um, thanks for having me and a great panel. Very grateful to be a part of it. Folks standing out. It’s all about standing out because again, so many people, you’d be shocked how many people make their hiring decision almost like it’s on a whim.

[00:29:38] Gyi Tsakalakis: Like it’s, it’s fascinating to watch it happen. Even people that you know, You go ask them, go ask them what you do. Some of them be like, yeah, you’re a lawyer and they won’t know, but you need to stand out. And ideally you stand out for something that is like some expertise. But think about it in terms of like expertise, plus the stuff Jared’s talking about expertise, plus affinity expertise, plus, you know, you’re a soccer ref expertise, plus you love food or something.

[00:30:06] Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s the thing that’s going to help you stand out more than just saying city plus practice area plus lawyer.

[00:30:12] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Outstanding, outstanding Garrett.

[00:30:15] Erik J. Olson: So as a lawyer, you have a strategy for every case that you handle. So I would recommend you have a strategy for your marketing as well. It’s very, very easy.

[00:30:23] Erik J. Olson: And To get distracted with lots of different marketing channels. I mean, radio, billboard, podcast, written LinkedIn, Facebook. I can go on and on and on and on. And a lot of people just try a little bit of this. It doesn’t work. They go, they try a little bit of that. It doesn’t work. So come up with a strategy, whatever you’re going to do.

[00:30:42] Erik J. Olson: Why are you doing it? What’s the strategy, put it down on paper and then execute the strategy. And before you even execute, have some criteria. I’m going to do this for. With this budget, for this long, and this is what I hope to get out of it. So if I get it, great, I’ll do more. If I don’t get it, then I’ll probably reconsider.

[00:31:02] Erik J. Olson: But have a strategy for everything you do, and I mean down to the piece. You don’t have to initially have a five page document for every blog post that you want to write before you write it, but at least have an idea and a link it to your overall strategy. Yeah.

[00:31:16] Steve Fretzin: And I just want to thank you four for being here.

[00:31:18] Steve Fretzin: Jocelyn Brumbaugh, Eric Olson, Gisaka Lakas, and Jared Correa for being such an amazing panel and doing this two part series on Be That Lawyer. You guys are, you guys are the gold standard and I’m just so thrilled that you’re here and sharing your wisdom and having a few laughs and not taking things too seriously.

[00:31:33] Steve Fretzin: Uh, because that’s, that’s the name of the game, right? We want to, we want to do this and have a good time. And everybody that’s, uh, listening right now, hopefully you got some great takeaways from these two episodes and, uh, helping you to be that lawyer, someone who’s confident, organized, and a skilled Rainmaker.

[00:31:46] Steve Fretzin: Take care. Everybody. Be safe. Be well. We will talk again very soon.

[00:31:54] 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.

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