Pat France: Hi! I’m Pat France. I’m here at the 2009 LMA Conference. I’m here speaking with Jay Berkowitz the principal of Ten Golden Rules. How are you today?
Jay Berkowitz: I’m great Pat. Thanks for having me on.
Pat France: Well thank you so much for joining us. One of the things we’re doing today is talking a little bit about marketing in this recession environment and particularly how to use online tools as well as social media to advance business calls for law firms, etc. Tell me a little, excellent session today that you had.
Jay Berkowitz: Well thank you so much.
Pat France: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about what marketing should be doing?
Jay Berkowitz: I think you have to cover up the basics and then you have to get in to some of the social media stuff and start testing or finding your ways. So let’s talk about the basics I mean the basic thing is search really. It’s the core of every decision anyone’s making the researching online. I think over 94% of major purchases are researched online including professional firms and you know everyone is going to our website at the very least to check it out when they’re considering looking for an attorney or any kind of service. So the basic stuff around searches is first search engine optimization, adding the words to your site that you put searching for and building lots of links to your site getting other sites to link to your site. So any chamber of commerce or any boards or associations or charities that you’re involved in, make sure you list you site as http://www.tengoldenrules.com. I give my company as a full url.
Pat France: Right.
Jay Berkowitz: And really that’s the one thing I’d like to get in exchange for some of those partnerships is the link to my site. So it makes my site more important in the eyes of Google and in the other search engines and then when you add lots of words to your site, you can be found in the free site searches and then the paper click on the right hand side, you can fix specific phrases that people are searching for. And a lot of people have tried paper click but they hadn’t made it work and really what I’d like to recommend is make sure you have something in your site that’s free or something of value that people can download and you can measure that action. So have a free weight paper or have a - you know how to pick a lawyer. You know seven things you must have for you know. The eleven mistakes everyone makes in you know in covering there intellectual protocol.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: You know so have something really valuable that people can download and then you can measure what percentage of people click on your ads and what percentage of people take in action and you’ll know if it’s profitable, you’ll know if it’s generating leads for you in your website. And then you get into the social media stuff and the one thing I am telling everyone these days, get your twitter name. Then if you do nothing else from listening to this video make sure you register your name on twitter because it’s almost like it’s 1995 again and there’s a really important space on the internet like domain names work in 1995. If you don’t register your twitter name, there’s a good chance it will be gone and you want to register your own personal name.
Pat France: Right.
Jay Berkowitz: And register you firm’s name and make sure you lock that down and get a little bit of stuff on there and you may even come back to twitter in six months or it may go away. I think it’s going to continue to grow. There’s over 6 million people in the space now. All the media’s on it. Britney Spears has over 500,000 people following everything she does. Barrack Obama has over 500,000 people covering what he’s doing. CNN Breaking News has 700,000 people now following them on Twitter. So you really have to check out that space and then a firm from a business perspective should be on Linkedin as well as the next most important social media for businesses.
Pat France: Okay. All right and one of the things that I’ve been hearing today is about the integration between various marketing channels so whether you’re talking about print or on person or online. For the companies that you do work what do you find the most successful ones had really integrated all the platforms? I should say all the verticals and channels?
Jay Berkowitz: I’ve been a big believer in integrated marketing for many, many years and you know some of the basic things are make sure you have you website address and maybe now your Twitter address.
Pat France: Right.
Jay Berkowitz: On your printed materials and then you know tie everything together at very consistent messaging throughout everything you’re doing and really try and find an area of specialty. Find your USP or Unique Selling Proposition and really build up of whatever it is that makes you unique.
Pat France: Okay. In other marketers in terms of stretching their budgets and that sort of thing, have you in addition to social media are there any other things that your recommending?
Jay Berkowitz: Let me talk about the three Es of social media.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: I’m finding this is a really good strategy for everything that you – for all communications because everything is social today.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: You know if your website, if your blog is not engaging people, if you’re not developing a two-way dialogue, you’re really not doing or taking advantage of the media tools that are available to us today and some of your portfolio products really cover that as well. So the three E’s are number one educate, number two engage and number three entertain.
Pat France: Right.
Jay Berkowitz: So educate, you know teach me something when I come to your website, like I said have a free download. Have a white paper –
Pat France: Right.
Jay Berkowitz: And have something available to people that can’t get the information. Number 2, engage you know so have a comments section. Have a way to develop that two-way dialogue and then entertain a little bit at the very least make sure the copies are readable maybe there’s a bit of a smile in it. And certainly once you get into things like social media and twitters, you know once in a while as a blend of your education and engaging content, throw a laugh in there. I’m putting a link to blip.fm.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: It allows me to be a DJ.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: And if I hear a great new song, I’ll link to it on blip.fm.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: Or if something really funny is happening with Shaquille O’Neil I’ll re-twit you know I’ll re-post what Shaquille O’Neil said on twitter. So just have a little bit of fun with it and don’t always be so serious and you know really follow the three Es.
Pat France: Okay.
Jay Berkowitz: Educate, entertain and engage.
Pat France: Okay. Great! Well Jay, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. We appreciate it.
Please contact us for more information on the release date of the Ten
Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Workbook, written by our lead internet
marketing consultant Jay Berkowitz, CEO, TenGoldenRules.com.
