Integrity Marketing

I’m a New IMS Client … Now What? (Part 4!)

Our designers are closing in on the full form of your website and you are contributing to its success by blogging each business day after completing Blog Training last week. Part 4 of this series introduces you to your Google+ Business page and the system that manages your quarterly print newsletters.

FOURTH MEETING

Benefits of Google+ (Google Plus) Business Page:

• Visibility
  Google will use the information you enter as search results seen by local, potential clients.

• Credibility
  Clients will see where you are located, read and/or post reviews and endorsements.

• Drive traffic to your website
  This page is just a snapshot of your company.  Clients will likely click the link to your website to learn more about your firm.

If Google has a “Contacts” list, you want to be on it!

Many of your potential clients will use Google to search for information about estate planning or elder law services in the area.  Having one, up-to-date Google+ Business page will give those clients searching for answers a taste of what your practice is all about. 

While very helpful in building visibility and credibility, your Google+ Business page is not a source for much content. It helps you “get on base.” Visitors to your page will be encouraged to see your full site for more information. 

Another opportunity to “get on base” and put information about your firm in the hands of potential new clients or referral sources is your monthly print newsletter.  Your account manager will walk you through the steps for setting up your account that is already part of your Essential Solution package.

If you continue to take these “small” steps, you increase the opportunities new clients or referral sources have to find you, or “get on base.” Your optimized website will move clients forward with a clear outline of the next step to call your office, sign up for a workshop or fill out an online questionnaire.  These little things add up and help you score runs for your team!

What Next?  Our goal for your marketing is to provide a means of high success in your preferred locations in the few practice areas you find most satisfying.  A “best in some,” rather than “mediocre in many,” approach, if you will. The discussion in our Fifth Meeting: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will narrow down your areas of focus to help you rise to the top.

Review Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the New IMS Client Series.

Website Optimization

Part three in a series of three.

Website optimization combines best-practice strategies for website development, design, content structure and hierarchy, coding and file compression. This not only serves the purpose of providing search engine crawlers and spiders an environment that is expected (and rewarded by SERPs), but it also supports a quality user-experience.

All aspects of a website design work together to support coding standards. An optimized website provides a well-organized structure of headings, subheadings and copy content while also maintaining a quality set of graphic files that look great and can be downloaded quickly.

For more about optimization, review Optimization … What Are You Optimizing? and Search Engine Optimization.

Find out if you're ready for the Essential Solution® by taking a short quiz at: http://www.integritymarketingsolutions.com/the-essential-solution/

Have a great week!

- April

Is Your Website Designed for Thumbs?

Did you stand in line in hopes of purchasing a new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus this past weekend? If you did, you were not alone! According to a New York Times article, Apple announced that it sold over 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices over the first weekend they were available in stores. 10 million! That’s a record-breaking number.

Whether or not you’re an Apple fan, the announcement of the iPhone 6 with a larger screen than ever indicated that all major mobile device manufacturers are now on board with the large screen trend. Reports show that mobile browsing on phones with 4” screens or smaller is already on the decline.

Time to “Design for Thumbs”

With larger screen sizes gaining popularity, it’s becoming even more important to “design for thumbs” – meaning that websites need to be built so that the most important items are within the thumb’s natural reach when holding the device.

Experts have conducted studies to determine how most people hold their phones while using them and then have created “heat maps” to show the areas where thumbs can naturally navigate items, areas where navigation is possible but a stretch, and areas that are difficult or impossible to reach quickly and easily. Take a look at the image below* for an example of the different zones on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus screens.

See how the larger the screen is, the more "ow," or hard-to-reach space there is? The same basic principle applies to any phone, regardless of maker. To make your website as pain-free for your viewers as possible, and to maximize the number of clicks your "call to action" items receive, make sure these buttons are placed in the "natural" or at least in the "stretch" zone of the screen.

Put Your Website to the Test

Take a minute and pull up your firm’s website on a smartphone.

The first question to ask yourself is – “Is it responsive?”

Does your website respond and adapt to the screen it’s on for optimal viewing? Or do you have a separate mobile site, leaving viewers with less information than your full website? Or do you find yourself pinching and zooming in on the screen because your site isn’t optimized for mobile at all? If your site is responsive, congratulations! You’re off to a good start. If not, contact your IMS marketing team to learn how to optimize your website for mobile viewing.

Next question to ask – “Can I easily reach the most important items on the page?”

Think about things like the navigation icon, buttons and your phone number. Are they all easily accessible? If so – great! Anytime you come across a device with a larger screen, give it another test. If your website has some important information in hard-to-reach areas, contact your IMS marketing team. Together we’ll come up with a solution that will make sure your website is fully optimized for as many devices as possible.

*image provided by Scott Hurff

Source: The blog of Scott Hurff, (September 17, 2014). “How to design for thumbs in the Era of Huge Screens” 

I’m a New IMS Client … Now What? (Part 3!)

In Part 3 of the New Client Experience series, we'll be covering the details of the third account management meeting: Blog Training.

You have an optimized domain name (the website your clients will type into their Internet browser to view your page) and our design team is developing the ideas discussed during the Design Consultation to make the site your very own. Using the blog account created in the second meeting, your Personal Account Manager will show you the super simple steps to create a tool that will likely be your top referral source to your site!

THIRD MEETING

Benefits of Blogging:

• Keyword-rich pages of content 
  Google loves this! Blogs can help move your site up to search page one.

• Easily found for very specific, “phrase” Google searches
  For example: "Estate Planning Attorney with experience creating Wills in Miami, Florida."

• Drives traffic
  A blog can be a top referrer to your website.

• Frequently engaging your clients and allied professionals

Your Blog: The hard part of blogging, the content, has already been completed for you! Researched and written by lawyers, our content is edited by several pairs of educated eyes and then proofread again before you receive it. Your account manager will walk you through the steps of posting your very first blog using the content provided by IMS weekly. 

You will then have the opportunity to complete the process of posting to your blog yourself to make sure you (and/or your staff) understand each step and can continue the posts each day after training. 

We will review how to add a photo to add interest to posts, schedule them in advance so as to “set it and forget it” during the week, and also offer tips for customizing posts to drive traffic directly to your site.

Goal for This Meeting:

• Provide an amazingly simple, low-maintenance tool that provides outstanding benefits like keyword-rich content that links readers directly to your site.

What Next?  Part 4 of this series (next week) will introduce you to Google+ (Google Plus) and the system that manages your quarterly print newsletters.  Your website reveal is coming in the next week or two! 

Review Part 1 and Part 2 of the New IMS Client Series.

IMS Client Spotlight - Attorney Marty Burbank

Our Client Spotlight this week is Marty Burbank from Fullerton, CA.

Marty’s well-maintained website, e-News, blog, video center and print newsletters all pull their weight and work together to help him dominate the search engines for terms like Fullerton CA Estate Planning, Fullerton CA Veterans Benefits and Fullerton CA Medicaid Planning.

Marty also has an AdWords campaign which brings in qualified leads and acts as a booster shot to his website! Well done, Marty!

www.ocelderlaw.com

Should You Use LinkedIn's Publishing Platform?

If you've spent any time on LinkedIn reading updates, you've likely come across some articles published directly on LinkedIn's Publishing Platform. While this platform used to be reserved for "Influencers" only, LinkedIn has now opened up its publishing tool to members. So if you don't have access to publish a post yet, just know it's coming! LinkedIn is in the process of rolling it out to members now.

I actually requested to get early access to this tool and have already published my first post on LinkedIn Company Pages. Here's what I learned so far:

Display of Content: Once you create a post, it is then placed on your LinkedIn profile in the Posts section. The post is also shared on the news feed with your connections. And what's even more exciting about this post is that it is searchable on LinkedIn and off LinkedIn (as in organic search). If you've ever searched for articles on the web using Google or a similar service, you may have found links to articles on LinkedIn - and now your articles will be part of that mix!

Follower Reach: Once you have posted on the LinkedIn Publishing Platform, members that are not currently connected to you may find your post. If they do, they have the option to follow you and receive an update whenever you make a new post. What a great way to build connections!

Topics: For topics, LinkedIn shares this advice: "Your long-form posts should share your professional expertise. Write about challenges you've faced, opportunities you've seized, or important trends in your industry. This could include your most memorable work experiences, lessons you've learned along the way, or topics you're most passionate about."

Also, consider using your blog posts for topics. You already have a lot of good content to choose from, so the key is to make it unique to your area of expertise and tweak the post with "your voice." You also want to include any references, images and appropriate adjustments to links in the post so that it makes sense for LinkedIn's platform. Remember, this isn't your personal blog. So try to appeal to the public members of LinkedIn.

Go online to learn more about the LinkedIn Publishing Platform and review Best Practices for this tool.

I’m a New IMS Client … Now What? (Part 2!)

In Part 1 of this series, we walked you through your first meeting as a New IMS Client: The Design Consultation.

After your successful Design Consultation, having met your marketing team and, together, defined goals and preferences for the focus of your uniquely branded estate planning or elder law website, your account manager will now help you take advantage of opportunities to establish an online presence that will drive traffic to your site, including a Domain, Social Media Accounts and Blogging.

SECOND MEETING

Before Our Call: It’s worthwhile to have all your known usernames and passwords for your current website's domain host (like GoDaddy, etc.) and social media accounts ready, both practice and personal.  Because of how some of the social media accounts are set up, a personal social media account login may be needed to create a business page.

Domain and Social Media Accounts: If you do not currently have an estate planning or elder law website, your Personal Account Manager will help you navigate to a registration site to select your “domain name,” or the website you’ll use to promote your practice.  If you do have a site, we will either help you cancel your current hosting, or forward traffic to your new (and improved!) site.

Next, your Personal Account Manager will guide you through the process of creating or updating previously created social media accounts and a blog page. This is where those usernames and passwords mentioned earlier come in handy! Access to the accounts will simply be established.  Training on using each account will be completed in a later meeting.

Finally, research shows increased activity on sites with photos, a personal message welcoming visitors to the site, and biography information about elder law and estate planning lawyers and staff. You likely already have most of this content on hand and will be encouraged to send it to your Personal Account Manager over the next couple of weeks.

Goals for This Meeting:

• Claim a search engine optimized domain for your website.
• Create a blog page for interesting estate planning and elder law content that can be promoted through your social media accounts.

What Next? You definitely don’t want miss Part 3 (next week) about how easy it can really be for you/your staff to make your first blog post and schedule future posts to update on their own the rest of the week.  Voilà – daily, interesting content driving visitors to your site!

Review Part 1 of the New IMS Client Series.

Search Engine Optimization

Part two in a series of three.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy used to build up a website to target a key demographic (by local area) and key service or practice area for the purpose of being displayed in search engine results pages (SERPs). Of course, there are many more aspects and focusers for SEO, but for Essential Attorney™ clients, this is the gist of it.

As part of the Essential Solution practice development system [see what I just did there?], the IMS team will guide you – and limit you – to select two to three key geographic areas (locally) and two to three key practice areas to create a focus for your website. It is extremely important for a web site to be focused and relevant (e.g., not keyword stuffed) to a key set of researched search terms to increase the organic search results while maintaining a balance that ensures the copy is written for people – first and foremost – to nurture the user-experience.

Other best-practice SEO strategies, to name a few, include a complete physical address appearing (in textual display and not graphical display) on the home page of a web site (usually toward the upper right) and practice areas that are easily located (usually toward the upper left). You may not realize it, but the way a firm's address appears is very important for SEO, as well as the order the firm's practice areas are listed! One should also consider this when entering the firm's address into other online listings and association profiles. A consistent address listing will influence the search engines in a positive manner!

Tip: Putting practice areas in order of importance will help a search engine spider give appropriate weight and relevance to your key practice areas. For instance, if a firm's top practice areas happen to be Special Needs Trusts and Veterans Benefits, having them at the top of the list will reinforce that importance to the crawlers … as opposed to listing them in alphabetical order which would put them way down at the bottom of your list!

Search engine optimization that co-exists with website optimization will go a long way in making the Web spiders happy, aid in appropriate displays on your search engine results pages (SERPs) and result in sitelinks that users will be compelled to click.

What can you do to make sure your website has a balance of search engine optimization and website optimization? If you are an Essential Attorney™, you've already taken the first step to achieve that balance. If you aren't, you can get started today by contacting James at 877-352-2021x80 or by completing the online form located at http://www.integritymarketingsolutions.com/estate-planning-request-a-consultation/.

Last week we wrote Optimization … What Are You Optimizing? Check back next week for a review of website optimization.

Have a great week!

- April

I’m a New IMS Client … Now What?

You’ve had the phone calls with James.  You understand the value of a consistent marketing foundation that generates new, preferred clients. You know Integrity Marketing Solutions’ Essentials program and staff have the experience necessary and proven track record of success to boost your practice to the next level.

But now what?

Now the fun begins! Over the next few weeks I will be highlighting one of the six weekly meetings you will have with your Personal Account Manager and what to expect in order to align your marketing strategy for success.

FIRST MEETING

Before Our Call: Your Personal Account Manager will meet with James to discuss your specific goals and ideas in preparation for our first meeting together, The Design Consultation.  

The Design Consultation: We review your completed questionnaire to finalize design concepts: long-term goals, office processes (for example, is a client’s call-to-action coming in for a meeting first? or completing a questionnaire?), and feedback on the tone of your company and how a website can best represent that (for example, traditional, family-centered or a contemporary touch). It can be helpful if you have websites you like to reference for inspiration -- see our portfolio here: http://www.integritymarketingsolutions.com/portfolio/.

The notes from this discussion spark the graphic designer’s direction for your marketing foundation – a logo (if needed), newsletters (e-mail and print) and a website all customized to you, your specific region and practice fortes.

Goals for This Meeting:

• Meet your marketing team and establish that working partnership. 
• Help your team understand -- and start building -- your unique brand.
• Set clearly defined goals and preferences for the focus of your website.

What Next? Your Personal Account Manager will help you complete the other opportunities to establish a presence, including social media pages, blog training and support, and more. Be sure to check out next week’s blog for Part 2!

Optimization ... What Are You Optimizing?

Part one in a series of three.

When it comes to website design, do you know what optimization is? Perhaps the term search engine optimization (SEO) comes to mind or perhaps website optimization is what you think of.

"But aren't they the same?" you may be asking yourself. Absolutely not!

Search engine optimization and website optimization should co-exist and work together to make the Web spiders happy and aid in appropriate displays on your search engine results pages (SERPs) and sitelinks.

So what can you do to make sure your website has that appropriate balance of search engine optimization and website optimization? If you are an Essential Attorney™, you've already taken the appropriate steps to achieve that balance. If you aren't, you can get started today by contacting James at 877-352-2021x80 or by completing the online form located at http://www.integritymarketingsolutions.com/estate-planning-request-a-consultation/.

In the coming weeks we'll review the differences in search engine optimization and website optimization.

Have a great week!

April