What if someone gave you a bunch of free billboard space in the city that you practice in?
What if the billboard company was willing to give space in the most trafficked areas of your city?
And what if they helped you craft the perfect message? One optimized to get the attention of your ideal client?
Knock, knock…
Getting this for free would be a HUGE opportunity right? And I’m guessing you’d jump at the chance to take advantage of this opportunity.
Well, unfortunately, the billboard companies aren’t giving away physical space for free. But let me share how you can easily and quickly take advantage of even BIGGER opportunities online.
Essentially, you’ll be getting thousands of dollars worth of free online exposure. But you have to do this in the right way. So, here’s what you do…
3 Simple Steps
- Get a good tight headshot of yourself smiling sincerely (use your smartphone to do this)
- Draft a short bio (your “marketing message”) that’s between 101 and 160 characters long
- Copy and paste your picture and marketing message into as many online places (“billboards”) as possible
Now that you know the simple steps, there are only three things that can hold you back.
The first thing will be the nagging feeling that maybe this is one of those “too good to be true” things. And, believe me, I understand.
Skepticism is natural
I’m guessing you’re really busy and you don’t want to waste time on something that you’re not sure will work. This is perfectly reasonable. And I’d feel the same way about pretty much any offer that promised great results by doing something that didn’t cost any money.
Let’s think more about that for a second, shall we?
If someone gave you free billboard space you couldn’t be sure that would bring you enough new business either. You might do it, though, because you’ve heard that other lawyers use billboards and pay lots of money for them.
So, why not give it a shot?
Billboards are such an easy way to get a bunch of people’s attention. But, which people and how much attention can you actually get?
More importantly, how well can you motivate those folks to reach out and contact you (much less actually decide to hire you)?
Beyond the obvious
The key to success isn’t getting attention. The essential element is much deeper than merely getting someone’s attention (even though admittedly it’s getting harder and harder to get people’s attention).
The key to marketing success is in having the right message. Wherever you put that message, and however much you pay to put it there, the message has to be crisp and powerful. What makes it powerful is focusing on the most important thing, as viewed from the perspective of your ideal client.
Now you’re probably wondering, what does a crisp, focused message look like? And how can you create such a message without feeling confused or awkward?
Of course, with the tactic I’m proposing you use, you’re only required to write 160 characters at most. But still, you do have to write something. And you’d prefer not to get bogged down with that, right?
The Good News
The good news is I’m going to show you exactly what to say in your online biography. And I’m going to give you examples of what not to say.
All you have to do is avoid the common problem language, which will be easy to understand. That will get you 80% of the way to an effective biography message.
However, you can easily craft a powerful message so I’m going to show you how to do that. And you’ll be surprised how obvious the “right message” is when you see it.
And once you’ve got that done you can leverage it in many places just by copying and pasting. And I’ll tell you where to copy and paste also.
Now that we have the overview, let’s drill deeper into each of the three steps.
1. Smile broadly to get broadly recognized
You need just one good picture. Once you have that, you’ll use in every online platform that lets you create a profile. You’ll use it if you write an article and the publication wants you to send them a headshot.
The more places that your smiling face appears the more recognized you’ll become. That’s part of “branding” and you need to be strategic about your branding.
Most lawyers are haphazard. They have different pictures of themselves all over the place. But you know better, and realize that having one picture of you everywhere is better.
Also, it makes your life easier because you can keep track of just that one picture. And whenever you need a profile photo that’s the one you’ll grab.
Here’s what your profile picture needs to have:
- You smiling and looking straight into the smartphone’s camera as the photo is taken.
- Natural light so that your skin tone doesn’t look orangish or yellowish (which is what happens with interior lighting).
- Even lighting. Your face needs to be lit in a way that avoids any harsh shadows. Just take the picture outside in a place without direct sunlight.
- Square dimension because that’s what works best in most social media platforms (e.g. LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, etc.). If you want to have a traditional portrait dimension photo also, then just take the traditional one first and duplicate it and then crop the second one into a square dimension.
- Crop in and fill the frame with your face. Make it as easy as possible for people to remember your face. If they have to squint to make it out they’re less likely to remember it, right?
2. Create a dazzling 120 character biography
The sweet spot is 120 characters because that’s what LinkedIn allows in the area they call the “headline.” Here’s a screenshot of my profile so you can see where the headline goes (and what it looks like on a mobile device):
My headline has 101 characters in it, and don’t think adding more words would help. And I, therefore, I didn’t.
There are no hard rules about how many characters, other than you need to be able to squeeze into the limits imposed by each platform. Facebook has a 101 character limit, but that’s not why I stopped at 101.
I wrote enough to make the message crisp, with the key ideas being included. That’s the goal: crisp and focused.
The Approach (strategy)
Now, let me show you how to craft your own version of a LinkedIn headline (i.e. “bio”) that will serve as the copy-and-paste template for all other online platforms.
But before we talk about nuts-and-bolts writing tactics, let’s talk strategy.
The strategy behind your message is to get more of your ideal clients to see your message and think “gee that’s the attorney I want to hire.” And if your strategy is to focus on your most ideal client (which it should be) then you need to craft your message with that strategy in mind.
The Recipe (tactics)
If you get the attention of someone who is a potential client they need to know just two things:
- What kind of law do you practice? (i.e. who is it that you primarily help?)
- Do you truly care about helping people, or are you mostly just interested in getting paid?
If you can work both of those elements into your biography in a way that’s crisp and focused then you’ve got a solid gold hit. The first part of the recipe is pretty easy to write, but what about the second part?
Well, that’s where you have to get creative. And, as you might recall from when you were a young child, being creative is fun. As long as you don’t ruin it by acting like a perfectionistic adult.
(I’m joking around, of course. But you know what I’m talking about, right?)
Let’s get creative
And most importantly, let’s not put any pressure on ourselves. You can create a damned good bio in about two minutes.
I mean if all you wrote for your bio was something like “I help [type of people you help described in terms of their legal problem]” you’d have a solid silver hit. Of course, you want to go for the gold, right?
Great. Because it’s not that much more challenging. You just need to get the gist of how to create a solid gold hit and then play around with the words to make your bio crisp and focused.
The best way to do that is to see some examples of lawyer bios. I’ll show you some bad ones first. That way you’ll know what to avoid, which is easy.
What NOT to do
So look at the following three LinkedIn bios and examine what’s in the “headline” area.
Most lawyers have online biographies like these. And that’s why most of us are conditioned to think this is what we should put in our biography.
But let me ask you a question…
We’re you able to figure out what kind of law these three lawyers practice? Scroll back up and look closely.
You can’t figure it out, can you?
So imagine if these folks were given free billboard space and this is the message they chose to put on the billboard. How effective do you think the billboard would be?
Not very effective, obviously.
All they’d have to do to create a more effective message is to explain what kind of clients they serve.
How to do it better
Some lawyers refuse to follow the herd and are able to come up with effective biographies. Here are five examples of how to do it well.
Study these five profiles closely and then go back and compare them to the less-than-optimal ones. And pay attention to the profile pictures also.
Do you see how much more effective the second group of pictures is?
And did you notice the call-to-action in Olivia Sandberg’s bio? She invites interested prospects to set up “a free consult.” That’s uncommon but undoubtedly effective.
Many of her ideal prospects wouldn’t guess that she offers free consults. But if they read her LinkedIn bio they’ll know.
The One Big Thing
So what is the one big question that most of your ideal prospects have? What’s the one big fear, or desire?
For an immigration lawyer like Jim Hacking most clients want to “stay, work and live the American dream.” So that’s what he worked into his bio.
For a trademark lawyer who helps online entrepreneurs, like Joey Vitale, they want to protect their brand (i.e. “call dibs” on it, as he puts it).
For a lawyer like Elise Buie who wants to help divorcing couples whose focus is on the long term health of their family, her 43 character phrase is solid gold: “Your Family’s Future is Our First Priority.”
Marty Sullivan’s ideal clients are property developers who have zoning issues, and he knows all too well how frustrated they feel when they have to deal with those issues. So he nails it when he writes: “I help property developers cut through the often bewildering DC zoning bureaucracy.”
The verb “cut” is crisp and biting. The word “bewildering” is powerful. And the net effect is to signal to property developers that he understands their frustration.
But he doesn’t say that explicitly. Because if he did it would be less effective. And so therein lies the creative element in crafting the ideal biography.
You want to inject the empathy component into the bio in a way that’s natural-sounding, crisp, and also powerful. That takes a bit of brainstorming and patience as you try different word combinations.
You got this
Now you know how to take advantage of all the free online publicity out there. Just reflect on the ideal client that you most want to attract (your strategy).
Then follow the simple steps I gave you (tactics) to create the optimal message that will be subtly embedded into your profile.
Finally, copy and paste your message into as many online platforms as possible. And use the same great profile photo so that your branding is consistent everywhere.