In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Australian attorney Chris Hargreaves. This episode is all about social media and content marketing for lawyers; running and starting their own firms, going solo or planning on it. Solid gold.
Chris is a senior litigation lawyer in Brisbane, Australia, he works as a special counsel for a firm, does internet marketing consulting for law firms and solo practitioners and does a ton of writing; blogs and books.
Chris’s sites:
https://tipsforlawyers.com/
“Learn the skills, strategies and mindset you need to thrive in law over the long term, and build a great career on solid foundations”
https://amodernprofessional.com/
Digital Marketing for Lawyers and Law Firms
“You don’t need to find the “next big thing” in order to build your firm’s digital marketing efforts.
You just need to pick a battle-tested, professional strategy that you can deliver on.
And then deliver on it. Day in, day out.”
Daily writing:
https://wordsbychris.com/
Hacking’s Hack: A tremendous podcast episode about analytics and creating more content based on your analytics.
https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/
https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/how-a-data-scientist-pivoted-into-a-new-brand/
Chris’s Hack: Take an hour or two and get real data about what you are really doing. Ho far articles are people reading? Analyse clicks and page time. Have a real look at the data and figure out what is actually working.
Tyson’s Tip: An app, iREC. You can use it to record calls!
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Transcripts: Chris Hargreaves: Social Media and Content Marketing
Chris Hargreaves
Facebook treats views differently to YouTube, which treats views differently to LinkedIn. And if you’re just comparing views to views, you might take the view that a Facebook video is doing much better than a YouTube video. But when you drill into it, your average view time on Facebook was four and a half seconds. And your average view on YouTube was seven and a half minutes. So which of those is actually a more successful strategy?
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson Meatrix. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.
Jim Hacking
Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting musics a Jimmy, how’s it going?
Jim Hacking
Going? Great man. I like doing these live shows. It’s sort of live without a net. We’re so crazy and wacky. You know, it’s it’s fun to record them live on video and then to use the audio later in the podcast. I’m really excited to have our guests on today. His name is Chris Hargraves. He’s a social media junkie, a great lawyer out of Australia. He teaches tips to newer lawyers, he’s doing a lot of the same things you and I do Tyson and I thought that it’d be fun to hear how he does what he does in Australia. And then maybe we could compare notes and it would make for an interesting episode of the show. So Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris Hargreaves
Thank you very much. It’s great to be here,
Tyson Mutrux
Chris. So introduce yourself to the group, the listeners and the viewers and just tell them what you do.
Chris Hargreaves
Sure. Okay, well, I’m a, as you already know, I’m an Australian lawyer. And that means my accent is gonna stand out, there are loads going on talking at least that I got my first legal job in 2001, which was just after I got married, worked as a clock doing reception and outside clocking it’s called in Australia. So basically, you’re a general dog’s body. Back then, a big part of why I was hired was because I was available to work on a Thursday, which to those who are hunting for legal jobs at the moment in the junior lawyer space is, is pretty horrific because I don’t think that kind of job comes up in a, my main task when I started law was to update all the loose leaf paper services. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with those but but essentially, the joys of research back in the day for those of us who got to do it was that you got a gigantic pile of paper. And every now and again, you had to substitute out page 4621 with a new page with corrected a full stop or something like that. And someone for some reason had dropped the ball on that site about a year and a half’s worth of that to do. It’s one of my one of my inaugural tasks at my new firm. And then from there, I have worked principally in the areas of commercial litigation and insolvency, which which have you guys been bankruptcy, mostly in a corporate space? So that’s been what I’ve done for essentially 15 1617 years with various different flavors, occasional bits of tax litigation and sort of property disputes and things like that, but covering the field and that sort of area, about 2012. I think it would have been I decided that enough. younger lawyers at that time were coming through my door and asking me questions that the easiest way for me to answer them was to jot down a few notes and publish a book, which at the time, had a lot more hurdles to it than what it does now. But that process, I guess rekindled what I had always had, which was a bit of a love of all things, internet E, learning how to do things. Because what happened was I wrote my little book, I put all the words on paper, and then I actually realized I had no one to sell it to other than emailing everyone in my own firm at the time, and politely asking them to buy it, which only many of them did. I kind of ran out of ran out of steam there very quickly. So I needed to learn what was the current trend, I guess at the time in internet marketing. So that’s when I got back into building websites, I had always built websites on and off for a time that I’d never actually had a real reason to it was just mostly for my own amusement. So I then started learning more about content marketing, in particular, bit more about social media marketing, and from there email marketing and all the sorts of things that I guess we now take for granted as being limbs as part of any decent digital strategy so far as lawyers are concerned. So what I do at the moment, I work as a lawyer still, that’s about 10 to 15 hours a week, I stay at home with my kids. So I’ve got three kids, we homeschool them. So that’s whatever remaining hours in the week that I’ve got when I’m doing my other things. I do internet marketing consulting for law firms and for solo practitioners in particular. And I still like writing so I do a lot of writing. I maintain a number of blogs in different different various categories. And I try and work on a book. Every now and again. My daughter and I published a little children’s fiction book last year and I’ll try and do another one this year which is written I’m just waiting on some artwork to come out of the I come out of the artwork department on the other end of the house at the moment. So
Jim Hacking
that’s awesome. Chris doe many different angles. We could go with this because you’ve thrown a lot of good stuff out there. What did content marketing look like when you first started working on it? And sort of what was your mindset when you were thinking about bringing content marketing to the legal community?
Chris Hargreaves
I think, from the get go, content marketing at that time was was principally about article writing. And I think, law firms have always been in that space, you know, they’ve they’ve pretty much for as long as I can remember at least being regular producers of content. That is they write case updates, and they try and push stuff out, they deliver newsletters, and so on. And in particular, when I was coming up through the ranks, that was a part of what I did. So I would have written a couple of 100 articles for my second firm that I worked out, I was, I was part of developing or trying to develop the newsletter system in my first firm. And that’s always been something that I’ve enjoyed doing. I think one of the things and it’s probably still the case, to be honest, that was really apparent to me then, was that a lot of law firms were doing things just because they ought to do them or or they felt they ought to do them. But without necessarily paying a great deal of attention to why they’re doing it, or applying a strategic veneer to what is the purpose of this particular article, or this particular newsletter? Everyone knew that was a good thing to be doing. But what was missing? Was that that element of strategy, which is okay, we’re going to write an article about x. Who’s it for? What tone should we take in it? How are we going to make it valuable, it was more just a process of, we’ve got to get an article out, someone writes something, you know, trawl through the latest cases, find something that we haven’t written about in a little while, and write that and then push it out as quickly as possible. So it was always and to be honest, even though that was that’s coming up on 10 years ago, I think it’s still is one of those necessary evils for a lot of law firms, they know they should be doing it. And so they do it. But they haven’t stopped to think about those, those first questions about why they should be doing it and how they should be doing it better. And as a result, you get a lot of, I’ll call it mediocre, but not in the sense that the content itself, like the value of the content, and the legal accuracy of it is, is all by and large, pretty sound. But it’s not necessarily very engaging, or very high value, because it’s been pushed out in a hurry by busy lawyers, every lawyer will always tell you how busy they are. And this is not part of their core training, you know, lawyers, lawyers here and I’m gonna kind of take a punt lawyers there have zero minutes training in producing content that’s valuable to people as their as part of their law school upbringing. And then of course, they want to be lawyers, they don’t they don’t get into this gig to necessarily be content marketers. And so there’s a mindset change that needs to take place. So far is how and why they do things. Because I’m
Tyson Mutrux
just curious. So I’m looking at my notes, it looks like you so your 10 to 15 hours a week of legal work, it sounds like Do you have any resistance ever from clients wanting to hire you because of that.
Chris Hargreaves
So the way I’ve managed to land at the moment, I have the great joy of not owning my own firm. And as a result in Australia, the hierarchy I’m in at the moment, I’m called Special Counsel. And the firm I’m now working for is delightfully flexible. And as a result, a large part of my contribution is in fact, Supervisory. So I help people settle material, I help people sort of sharpen up their written work and get letters of advice out and I help them with questions they might have in in areas where they can’t necessarily spend 15 hours doing research on those topics. So the benefit of that is I have a lesser amount of client facing work. The truth is the 10 to 15 is so flexible, because I’m not rigid about it. And with technology, you can pretty much serve a client from anywhere. So for the few clients, I actually do have the day to day conduct of their matters. As far as I know, there haven’t been any any horrific complaints about my response time. So I try and make sure that that’s obviously high on the high on the agenda, which is not making myself inaccessible. That in itself comes with a certain number of challenges, of course with with kids and other activities, but it seems to be going okay, so far.
Jim Hacking
All right, Chris. So let’s say that we have a hypothetical attorney. She’s been out of law school for about four or five years. She’s working 80 hours a week. She’s miserable working at this firm. She’s got a boss who half the time is a jerk. And she thinks that she’s smarter than he is and she wants to go out on her own to hang out her own shingle and start her own thing. How would you if you were sitting across the table from her having a cup of coffee, how would you advise her What would you want her mindset to be? What would be the things that you’d say she should be thinking about?
Chris Hargreaves
Hmm, so how does that have a law firm? I think, obviously, she’s going to need some clients. And at the end of the day, that involves patients, and it involves showing up. So I think for anyone wanting to jump ship, the first question is, if you had zero clients for six months, would you be okay? Because if you’re gonna flee the scene and set up your own firm, then you’ve got to have that patience to actually get some people. And then the thing after that is simply relationship development I, for all the glitz and glamour of technology. Ultimately, every single tool we use in one way or another is harkens back to that age old, no one liked and trusted. So the question for her is going to be, what can she commit to day in day out? That is going to be ticking off progressively those boxes of no one liked and trusted by the people that she’s looking to actually get in touch with? So what community groups, can she start developing relationships with? Which Facebook groups can she start getting yourself involved in? How is her content going to be valuable to people? Can she leverage from other people she knows? Can she get herself on? On some podcasts? Can she do some sort of LinkedIn campaign, whatever it is now depends, of course, what area she’s going to be working at. If you’re working in an area where the majority of your clients won’t have access to the internet, there’s not a huge amount of point in jumping on LinkedIn and doing 24 posts today, because most of the people you’re looking for probably aren’t going to be there. Or if they are, it’s not going to be the kind of hiring decision they’re going to make. So if you’re doing immigration or something like that, Jim, and depending on where your target market is, you want to be where they’re at. You can’t just expect them to come to you. So for her, I’m gonna say, Who is it you’re looking to serve? Where do they hang out, go and hang out with them as consistently and regularly as possible. And just be nice. I know you guys are a huge Bob Bob Berg fans. And that’s where his principles come into play, be generous, be giving and invest in the community. And ultimately, you will see the rewards. But like I said, it is a it is a patience game. So you might want to have a couple of clients, at least in the pipeline before you or a couple of people who will refer your clients in tow before you jump ship, and hopefully not get sued for some sort of restraint clause that you’ve got going on with your with your current employer who you dislike,
Tyson Mutrux
dress, we’re getting quite a bit of feedback on the chat board through Facebook. But one question that stands out to me, it’s from Tamra McCormack it’s a really good question. She says, How should associates brand themselves in large firms? I think it’s a really good question. But what’s your advice on that?
Chris Hargreaves
I think associates in large firms have some of the most undervalued, creative assets that a firm has to be honest. And and the reason so many associates feel that they’re not being necessarily given opportunities. And so there’s this this this tension, because the partners of the firm often want to be the front facing elements of the firm and the associates going well hang on, how am I going to have any opportunity to build my personal relationships? If everything I succeed in everything I do, ultimately, the credit is taken by the person above me. And I think that’s a that’s a fair, a fair assessment. Before I answer tamaraws question, I think the big warning sign here is, of course, that a lot of firms are very protective about the kinds of things I’m about to say. There are any number of social media policies and Associates putting themselves out there policies that might encroach on some of these things. But so far as an associate building their own practice and their own personal brand goes, I think the same principles really apply. There is nothing that would stop an associate from deciding to do exactly what I just described for Jim’s hypothetical, young, new lawyer getting into practice, which is, what are you interested in? Who do you care about serving over the medium to long term because you’ve got to have a certain amount of interest, it can’t be purely, I don’t think it’s sustainable. If it’s something you are genuinely disinterested in, it might get you some money for a little bit of time. But I think you should pick an area that you’re actually interested in, and then just start doing stuff. At the end of the day. The vast majority of sound marketing strategies, whether it’s personal branding style, or bigger picture content, sort of corporate brand style, have a reasonable prospect of working if you invest in them, and train yourself to do them well. So if I’m an associate, and let’s say I’m working or we’ll take a different field, I’m working in corporate law, which is more challenging thing because of course your decision makers are going to be sort of higher up the higher up the chain so far is getting yourself now and again, you want to get in front of the right people. So you might do Within a couple of local organizations, you might join chambers of commerce, you might join those kinds of organizations where you can just engage with people and meet them and develop relationship and be generous. So for associates their problems going to be time. And especially if they’re doing something that their firms not encouraging them to do, because they’re not going to want to disrespect or get criticized by their firm for doing these kinds of extracurricular activities. So how are they going to manage that, and at the end of the day, there’s going to be a trade off probably, which is you can’t necessarily work 80 or 90 hours a week, and devote another 10 or 20 hours a week, over the medium to long term. So if I was an associate, and I’m looking to build up my personal brand, what am I going to do? The first thing I’m going to do probably is I’m going to speak to my immediate supervisor, I’m going to say, look, I’m interested in doing this, is this something you want to support me? And can we can we go together, rather than necessarily going out on their own, get some support, because you know, that that I think is going to do much better than trying to do it entirely by yourself. And they might have some good suggestions, they might be able to introduce you to some people, depending on the answer to that. If you’re in that corporate space, then I think content is going to be good. I think content is a good long term strategy pretty much across the board on vegan content space. Social media, I think is good for relationship development, but they take different boxes. So we find that associate, what am I going to do? Personally, I’m probably going to start my own blog. And I’m going to practice writing. I’m going to find topics that just interest me. And I’m literally just going to practice mastering the art of writing things in a compelling and meaningful way. And because it’s mine, rather than my firm’s, I can apply a little bit more personality to it. If it’s a corporate space, I’m probably going to be on LinkedIn. And I might find myself on Instagram too, because there’s a lot of relationship development opportunities on those platforms, where you can actually reach out personally to people with fewer barriers in the way. And because if you are constantly showing up, if you’re commenting on people’s posts, if you’re if you’re giving your thoughts out, if you’re sharing a bit about yourself, if you are doing the occasional video, even live video, depending on how far you want to go with it. That will start to take off the known element of are known and liked and trusted trifecta. Hopefully, you will be likable enough that as you do these things, and you’re engaging with people, you’re just being friendly, and you’re offering helpful tips and advice and comments, not necessarily advice in the in the strict sense, but just thoughts for people to consider or questions that might take them down a more valuable path. And trust, it will happen over time as you develop your content. So as people start to get to know you, they will start to look more into you. And if you do have that underpinning blog, where you’ve written about topics of value to them, then that will build that as well. So if I was going to pick a couple of things, it’d probably be one social media platform where the people hang out. And I would definitely have my own website, which I’d be building, if you can get your name, then well done. There’s not many of them available. But if you can’t find something that’s relevant to what you do and go with that.
Jim Hacking
Chris, I love the answer. I love the mindset. I think a lot of associates sort of wait to be told what to do, as opposed to sort of taking that affirmative action towards networking or towards social media. And so I think that’s a really good mindset for the associates to have. Let’s talk about the flip side, if we are attorneys, and we have an associate who’s coming to us, and they seem interested in business development in creating a social brand for themselves, those kinds of things. What What kind of a mindset or advice would you have for attorneys like us who are supervising attorneys who want to get into it?
Chris Hargreaves
It’s actually come up a bit recently, I think there’s two things come to mind most most commonly. The first is that a lot of partners who have built their firms with an element of comfort with risk, about their marketing strategies, for whatever reason, refuse to give their associates a certain amount of rope to take risks. You’ve done all the risky stuff, but you’re not prepared to let someone else do it, even though for you. It’s paid off. And I always find that a little bit strange. I mean, I understand it, obviously, because at this point, you’re trusting someone, it’s easy to back yourself, it’s much more difficult to back someone else who know a little less well. But I think giving your associates more permission than what you’re comfortable with to take risks and to fall flat on their face. And to and to fail at things is a huge one. Especially once once a firm gets to a particular size than the number of policies and rules and regulations that are essentially oldest roadblocks to associates trying anything, they will immediately throw things in the too hard basket if they need to navigate a 78 page social media policy before they join a facebook group. Then I think that’s the wrong approach, you want to be encouraging that risk taking within reason. I mean, the fact is that the vast majority of lawyers are fairly risk averse anyway. So in fact, if you’re more comfortable with it, you’re in fact, probably going to have to pull your pull your associates off of it, because they’re going to be naturally disinclined towards doing anything that might seem embarrassing, or might not work 100% guaranteed, because that’s kind of the job that we’re in. So I think that is a shift in mindset, both with the way you engage with your associates and the permission, they have to try things and fail. To some extent, I’m not saying you should let them go completely mental, but something, something in the middle is probably a good place to go. The second one is training them in the right things. And again, I’ve said I’m, I’m a big content aficionado, a little bit of training and copywriting goes a very long way. And if you’re running a local law firm blog, the fact is, a lot of your associates are going to be the engine room to producing some of that content. And because they’ve been trained, and so far, as I can tell us here is very similar to Australia, which is your training as a as a law student, and as a young lawyer is largely in writing academic work. But for a blog to be successful, or for articles to be successful, they can’t be that it’s an entirely different playing field. And a little bit of training, and copywriting will go a long way, a little bit of training in delivering a message and public speaking goes a very long way. Those sorts of soft skills, together with the permission for them to actually try it out, I think would be a very powerful combination.
Tyson Mutrux
So Chris, whenever you’re consulting your attorney clients, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see them making? And what are those? I guess some of the things that attorneys now whenever they’re starting, the firms can stop doing. So I guess, really, what are the mistakes you see them making.
Chris Hargreaves
So there’s two depending on the size of the firm, I guess, for solo practitioners, and and for smaller firms, I think the biggest mistake is biting off more than you can chew. You do on marketing strategy in the in the quiet of your holidays, that’s 197 pages long. And in your own mind, you can find a way to invest time in every single social media platform in 490, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you know, strategies, and you’ve got it all boiled down to the nearest second exactly what you can do. And then it sounds great in isolation, but then the real world encroaches. And in fact, you get none of it done. Because you’ve chosen so many things to focus on that you end up with this sort of ad hoc approach to throwing things out, left, right and center. The downside, there is two things you’re not showing up in the same community often enough, whether it’s article writing, or social media, or whatever it is, you’re not, you’re not turning up regularly enough to make a significant inroad. And the second is, you never end up mastering anything. If you’re going to write a blog, the only way to get better at it is by doing it consistently and investing in yourself to actually master that platform. And once you’ve done that, I think moving on to the next thing is better than trying to do too many things and being mediocre at everything. Because there’s a vast amount of mediocre stuff happening. And if you’re getting new into a firm, you don’t just need to be another voice among the millions that are saying the exact same thing, you need to in some way, figure out how you’re going to master a platform, it comes back to what I said before, if you were to pick any one marketing strategy and be really really good at it, the chances are you’re going to see some success from it. But if you pick 25 marketing strategies, and you’re not that good at any of them in the noise versus signal ratio, you’re gonna end up in the in the noise space rather than the signal space. For larger firms, I think the biggest mistake I see is an obsession with clinging on to their professional image. And that’s going to rub some people the wrong way. But because more and more buying decisions are being made and in truth always have been made on personal connection. I think there is a certain rigidity that a lot of midsize and up law firms apply so far as as holding on to their brand, and their perceptions of what’s professional. And I always find a little bit ironic that you know, you have this website, you know, you’ve got a $35,000 custom built website and the logo where the particular color red took 680 focus group meetings, but it turned out to be the best one after a year and a half’s worth of research. And then on the flip side, in fact, the biggest clients you’ve got you got because you went to a went to a sporting event with them and had enough beers with a CEO that in fact he decided just to hire you as a lawyer. So I find this strange sort of paradox there that on the one hand, the lawyers want to cling on to this but in the reality it’s the personal side that’s always brought In the business, so I think they need to do a little bit more of this so far as their front facing stuff goes. There is there are some risks there. Of course firms that do large corporate and government work, in particular need to be fairly careful about that kind of thing. Because obviously, no one wants to tie themselves to a firm who’s just done a live stream of the office party where they all were doing tequila shots off the bar or something like that. So there’s a balancing act. As always, with all of this stuff.
Jim Hacking
You’re listening to the maximum lawyer podcast, we’re lucky today to have Chris Hargraves, a legal marketing and small firm solo expert out of Australia, Chris was bragging to me earlier that it’s like 33 degrees Celsius in Australia right now. So for those of us breezing our two kisses off here in the North America, it’s tough to hear. But Chris, we’re really glad to have you. And I think that the level of engagement that we’re seeing on the Facebook group just really is a testament to how well your message is resonating. I should say that, we probably need to have John Fisher on here, because he’s been commenting nonstop, the show began and he has a lot of great suggestions. So make sure that if you are listening to this on the podcast, that you go back and tap into John’s good advice, because it’s sort of like a running commentary to everything that Chris has been saying. So, Chris, where do you think things are headed? Where do you think the social media and marketing landscape is headed for lawyers? And and what should what should the people that are already paying attention? What should they be thinking about? As we move into 2020? and beyond?
Chris Hargreaves
I think there’s a there’s a huge amount of opportunity for firms who are prepared to be nimble. I’m not a big fan of of chasing the latest shiny object I do, I do sort of boil everything down to fundamentals and strategic decision making. But
Tyson Mutrux
pay attention, pay attention to what he’s about to say, Okay. Pay attention. All right. Very funny. Sorry, Chris. Sorry, Chris.
Chris Hargreaves
You’re right. shiny objects are fun to follow, I guess. But. And so I guess for me, you know, I boil everything down to four core areas, which is your website’s strategy, your social media strategy, your content strategy and your email strategy. And if tested, I can, I can probably shove most things in one of those categories at the end of the day. But what we’ve seen recently is that a lot of firms who were unbelievably slow on the uptake so far as websites and email marketing, and Facebook pages are only just getting into it, they’re seeing essentially no results. So there’s that tipping point with shiny objects where if you have a firm that’s paying attention to what’s going on, not necessarily that you sink a million dollars into every single new thing, new option that comes up because you’d go bankrupt. But if you’re paying attention to what’s going on, and you can choose a couple of new ish things, and really solidify your position in those new ish things, then I think that’s a powerful strategy. Now I could offer some suggestions about what that might be today. But by tomorrow, I might be out of date. So but for example, just one example, as a space to watch, which is obviously the Alexa Voice space, how you as a firm, considering where that’s headed, how you as a firm considering the strategies you might be, where if someone says to Alexa, hey, Alexa, find me an immigration lawyer? How are you going to be on the list? How is that going to work? How are you positioning yourself in that space? And is there other things you can be doing now that might help both and things you’re currently doing, but in things that might be happening in that sort of area? I think within that a lot of firms still have a lot of catching up to do to be perfectly honest. Because I don’t think content marketing as a strategy is going anywhere, anytime soon. And I think you need to be thinking about what your contents for. And I think, within that, you can’t just pick stuff because other people are doing it. So I know you’re sort of after a future prediction here, Jim, but classic example here is Facebook live video, like we’re doing now, as well as recording a podcast and you’re using this asset in a number of different ways. You’ve got to know why you’re using it. And you’ve got to look at your metrics properly as you’re determining the success in something. So we’ve been chasing shiny objects, if you pick a shiny object that you love, and you test it out for six months, know what your measurements actually mean, to figure out whether something is successful or not. I mean, at the end of the day, every strategy one is actually to get clients. And if it’s not doing that, then it’s a then it’s a terrible strategy in some way. But one example is views. Facebook treats views differently to YouTube, which treats views differently to LinkedIn. And if you’re just comparing views to views, you might take the view that a Facebook video is doing much better than a YouTube video but when you drill into it, your average view time on Facebook was four and a half seconds. And your average view on YouTube was One and a half minutes. So which of those is actually a more successful strategy. But I think firms need to tighten up what they’re looking at, they need to bed down those core areas of of email, social content and, and website strategy and have them working nicely together so that they’re positioned to be nimble for the next thing, not just 10 years too slow, to pick up the things that have already sort of plateaued to some extent.
Tyson Mutrux
Chris, you mentioned before, but I believe you said something about copywriting trading, you at least talked about copywriting? Where do you recommend that people get copywriting training if you’re already an attorney?
Chris Hargreaves
It’s a challenging space. But I think to be honest, my my personal Mo, when I decide to learn something, is just to invest a lot of time in it, I’m in or copywriting, chances are, you’re going to end up in the internet marketing space. So you’re going to look at people who write good copy. So for example, there are any number of good copywriting sites out there copy blogger, I think is is a no brainer. So far has written content goes in particular, it has a consistently high quality content. But you can apply a less rigorous approach in that as well, which is what do you read and enjoy the most? What are the articles that are most engaging? What are the headlines that you click on? And how are they framed? Are they asking questions? Are they making sort of hyperbolic superlative statements? Like, is this the dumbest lawyer decision ever? Or something like that? What what are the things that actually get you engaged in content, and just start actually incorporating that into your own and see what works I think the best method of training is to start trying new stuff, and not just rest on your laurels that you you did 480 Case Summaries when you were in law school, and therefore you know how to write I think if you try new stuff, see if it works, that’s the best way to get better at copywriting. But otherwise, any internet marketing guru generally has something to say about copywriting. If you look at remade society, if you look at Derek Halpern, if you look at Gary Vaynerchuk, all of these people have things to say about a good copy, eat the fish leave the bones, some of it you won’t agree with. And some of it just won’t be appropriate for lawyers. Because it might seem a little bit too far down the the spammy salesy side of things than what you’re comfortable with. But there is plenty to learn about how to craft a headline to get people to click and then a first sentence to get them to read the next sentence. And if you can do that, then that’s a that’s a good way to bid things down. But ultimately, it’s it’s, it’s really in the boring side of things, which is analytics, have a look at your own content, what’s working and what’s not. Why do you think the article that was really popular last week was really popular? Why did lots of people click on it? Was it just because it mentioned some famous person or was it for some other reason that people are interested in it presents such
Jim Hacking
great advice. I was down in Tampa about two months ago. And I pulled out my camera and I shot a video, after having left the immigration office and with my back to the ocean are actually Tampa Bay and people. That video is like outperforming all of the other videos that I’ve posted with my green screen. For the last couple of months, we’ve really been spent a lot of time looking at it. The view time to the end is like 85%. So I think looking looking at analytics is really important. What I was hoping you could do for us is not in a cursory very short handed way. But talk about the different things that you have going on where people can find you talk to me about Tips for Lawyers about your Twitter feed, like where are you deciding to put your time in showing and doing that explain to our listeners where they can find you?
Chris Hargreaves
Yeah, sure. Okay. This year, and I do change things up fairly regularly. Partly because I lead a fluid life with three kids that I look after. But it’s I’m spending a lot of time writing still, which I know seems seems old fashioned and boring. My first blog, I guess it was called at the time, it’s it’s now acceptable to have a blog, whereas it was really nerdy probably when back in the day. But first blog was tips for lawyers.com. That was mainly focused towards junior lawyers, and in particular soft skills for junior lawyers. So it centers around communication. It centers around marketing skills, but not too heavy on the digital side. It centers around business development skills, and it centers around financial understandings of how professional services actually work. Because I think those are sort of the core elements that are missing from much law school education until you actually start to devote yourself to learning it yourself from there, and that’s sort of my first platform and that’s probably still where, where I get the most traffic in terms of analytics. From there I branched out to a modern professional.com That’s a modern professional.com modern professional was taken unfortunately by someone else, that that is where I focus on the digital marketing consulting side. So for Little while actually didn’t know what to do with that. So in terms of testing and doing stuff, a lot of people will know that I’m more likely just to do something and see how it goes than to think about it for too long, I’d rather in the time I could think about it, I’ll just do it. So I didn’t actually know what to do with that for a little while, for for a time, that was actually a site just where I wrote sort of tech reviews and I spoke about different platforms that I used and didn’t use them what I liked and didn’t like, and then I, I pivoted that probably halfway through last year, start to halfway through last year to be more focused on lawyers, and on how attorneys can actually use that core digital strategy properly. Rather than just sort of running around like a truck with your head cut off and trying to push every single button you can find, because I believe very firmly in a in a strategic approach to decision making, even though I’m a fast mover, I do think you should apply some thought to it before you move. So I’m on professional is probably that’s the platform I’ll be focused on this year, I’ll be doing a lot of writing there. And the reason is, I think still writing is very powerful, especially because I market to lawyers. So So here, assistants in decision making I market to lawyers, lawyers read very quickly. And a lot of lawyers will prefer to scan something with headings and know what they’re about to get into. And they can read an article, if I have, say, a five minute video, a lawyer could read that article in a minute and a half to two minutes. And timing what it is, they want to focus on the areas that they care about. They want to read the in a nutshell, I have a version of it. And I want to move on as quickly. And I want to respect that I don’t want to have someone have to sort of Fast forward to random bits in a YouTube video necessarily. Now, within that, I’m also going to be doing some more videos this year, I’m still tossing out whether that’s going to be on Facebook or or YouTube. So my tips lawyers YouTube channel again, that was the that was the earlier one. I’ve tested out various things there. But the reason I’m focused just again, so people have a little bit of insight in the decision making. The reason I’m focused on some of these less glamorous areas, like article writing and YouTube video, is because I believe in building up digital assets. So the downside to Facebook video at the moment is that over a course of time, six to 12 months, it’s going to have less traction than something which is highly search engine optimized on YouTube, same video either way, both might have a transcript, but right at the moment, and this could change at any at any minute, of course. But right at the moment, YouTube has a greater longevity. And people are on YouTube more often to actually watch videos on Facebook. Of course, they’re there for different reasons. So I will still be using YouTube as a big part of my video strategy. People can find all these things. Don’t just Google Chris Hargraves, because regrettably I share a name with an English sporting person. So the picture there is not me that you get. And nor is any of the information about what I’ve done in the UK. So if you Google Chris Hargraves lawyer, that’s that’s probably where you’ll find me in various different places, but Tips for Lawyers in the modern professional, I do have another site, which isn’t really connected with us today called Words by Chris, which is just actually daily right there. At the moment, I’m trying out daily writing. So far, I’ve done one everyday this year, that’s just for me to practice my craft a little bit more, because I do a lot of writing, I really want to have that ability just to constantly sit down and deliver stuff. Some of its good, some of its less good. But it is part of my mindset that I want to dedicate to actually getting better at these things that I’m trying to be good at. So those are the three big places. Twitter is an interesting one. Jim, you mentioned that. And for those who don’t know, Jim, Jim followed me on Twitter before we ever, ever really interacted. Twitter in Australia is a less useful platform than it is in the US. It obviously has a lot of power for engaging with people that you might not otherwise be able to reach the starting conversations and for getting in front of people that you want to get in front of. But there’s just not a lot of use in it. In Australia. Most of my Twitter feed is exactly what I tell people not to do with Twitter, which is it’s principally sharing stuff that I’ve written and that’s semi automated. So although I reply to things, and I do I do sort of interact with people a little Twitter isn’t a big part of my personal strategy.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, Chris, we’re kind of running out of time. So I’m going to actually be selfish and ask you two questions. The first one has to do with the YouTube versus Facebook video. Something that I’m doing is taking those Facebook Live videos, actually downloading those and then uploading those to YouTube. So I want to get your thoughts on actually doing that if that’s a good or bad strategy. And the other thing is, so you’re a lawyer. You’re right. You stay at home, take care of the kid, and then you do console thing, what’s the most difficult thing that you do?
Chris Hargreaves
So, I think the first strategy is a really good one. And at the moment, I see no reason not to do it. So hopefully you can hear me because you’re cutting out there a bit. But I think definitely, that is a good strategy. Because you get the short term benefits of Facebook Live, you get the bump in the algorithm that everyone’s freaking out about at the moment. But at the same time, you get the longevity of YouTube, and you get that asset, you can point people to more easily. So while while you can obviously share Facebook feeds and so on. YouTube just has a bit more searchability. At the end of the day, it’s the second biggest search engine still, as far as I know. And if you can get a transcribed video on relevant topics up there, then I think you should, the hardest thing I do, to be honest, is prioritizing what I’m going to do next, which sounds like a little bit of a cop out. But when I left full time practice as August 2016, I left full time practice and started doing this slightly more fluid approach to things and that’s when my wife started going into her practice. She’s a nutritionist, I think the thing I really struggled with is, where should I be putting my time, because at the end of the day, we’ve all got the same amount of hours in the day, we want to both be doing the things we must do, but also the things we want to do. And that’s that’s daily, a fairly challenging decision. But the faster I make up my mind, usually the better it goes. Because if I, if I don’t make up my mind quickly all end up just sort of wafting through the day, not doing anything particularly meaningful so far. But deciding what to do the most challenging part of what I do is ensuring that I have time to still deliver constant free content through my various channels, while balancing the needs of clients. So again, that’s the same thing prioritization.
Jim Hacking
Alright, Chris. So my last question for you is, how did you make that leap? To leave full time law practice? Did you have any mental barriers to that? Did you talk yourself out of it for a while and sort of what what went through your mind as you made that last transition,
Chris Hargreaves
I described myself at the time as eerily calm, I thought I’d freak out more than I did. At the end of the day, so my wife had finished his studies, and she was about to start as a clinical nutritionist, and that we knew was going to be a lot of time investment on her part. Because we have kids that are homeschooled, the question was, how do we do that? And the natural evolution was that I, I take the dive and give her that opportunity to set herself up in business. So in a sense, it was fairly easy. I’d been ruminating over the side hustle versus main hustle issue for a couple of years, we spent a lot of time in prayer about it. We spent a lot of time essentially thinking, you know, what is where is the direction that we’re headed here. And this ticked a lot of the boxes for a number of reasons. So my firm at the time, and it’s not the same firm I’m with now, but they were gracious enough to say, look, rather than you just dive in completely, how about we put you on as a casual. Now that that was more for my benefit, so that if it did crash and burn, I could go back. So I had that safety net, I’m grateful to them for, for offering that to me. Thankfully, at the end of the day, I didn’t need that. But that really helped, I guess, to some extent mitigate some of the fear that if it did, did all go horribly, horribly wrong. And I could, I could at least come crawling back with hat in hand.
Tyson Mutrux
So we do need to wrap things up. But before we get to our tip and our hack the week, I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook page. Most of you can actually see this video on this Facebook page. But for the listeners, make sure the Facebook page and get involved in the conversation. And then also go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast give us a five star review. We would really appreciate it. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
So as if on point, Pat Flynn, in his latest episode of Smart Passive Income, had a data analytics nerdy kind of guy on his show. And this guy was making YouTube videos about data analytics. And then one day he got interested in Tesla’s and he did a YouTube video about Tesla. And he has turned this into a full time job. He is invited to the Tesla conferences. He figured out a way. Apparently Tesla gives you credit if you refer someone else to buy a Tesla, but give you 2% credit on your next car. Well, this guy went out through YouTube and signed up 50 people. For Tesla’s to buy Tesla’s they use his code. And he’s getting a new Roadster, which is like the brand new top of the line model when it comes out. Later. The episode is mind blowing in the fact that it talks all about watching your analytics and following your analytics and creating more content based on your analytics. I thought it was a tremendous episode and it tracks exactly what Chris shared with us today. I just want to end by saying that I am sorely disappointed, because Chris promised me that he would use the word crikey in today’s episode, and I’ve yet to hear it.
Chris Hargreaves
So with that, I’ll pocket Jim that was that. The last 10 minutes or so I’ve been trying to fit it in there. But I could say crikey, crikey, it’s hot. Or crikey, there’s a there’s a crocodile in my backyard or something like that, but hoping for something.
Tyson Mutrux
Well, you got it. Alright. So Chris, I don’t know if Jim told you it was his responsibility to tell you. But we asked her guest to give a tip of the week, do you have a tip for us?
Chris Hargreaves
I do. Look, I’m I’m gonna pick straight up on that one that Jim’s just shared, take an hour or two. If you have a marketing team, then get them to take an hour or two. Get some real data about what you’re already doing. Don’t just look at views. Don’t look at pageviews if you can get it. If you do articles, find out how far down your articles people are reading. By that how your clicks through versus your page time actually measures up. If you’re running a 10,000 word article, and people are there for 15 seconds, that’s not a good thing. Have a real look at the data in order to figure out what is actually working. Figure out what a Facebook view is versus a YouTube view versus a LinkedIn view and compare apples with apples, not apples with oranges. So that then you’re armed in your strategic decision making going forward. And if you take that time, and you understand the data that you’re actually getting, and you’re getting real data, not just relying on on vanity metrics, that will really inform your decision making going forward. So that’s my tip, boring and horrific as it is that I think is a powerful tool for anyone engaged in any form of digital marketing.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. All right. So my tip of the week is another app. And I actually stumbled upon this last week. And it’s actually something I can use with witness interviews and things like that, which will be really helpful. It’s called the Hi Rick, it’s I racked with I record call recorder for iPhone. So you can see that it’s right there. Thanks for really helpful. So it’s pretty easy to use. Let me give you a tip though, in addition to the tip. So you know, it’ll want to charge you a monthly plan, whenever you open the app back out of it and say you don’t want to do it. And then I’ll give you an opportunity to buy the app for $4.99. So it’s actually it’s really cheap. It’s for this kind of a function. It’s pretty nice. So you can Gemini can be talking on the phone, and we decide to start recording the recording the call and be really great. So I know that Google Voice has that functionality. But if you don’t have Google Voice, you can use this instead. So I find it to be pretty
Unknown Speaker
helpful. So you can record a phone call with it. You can record
Tyson Mutrux
a phone call. That’s what’s so great about it’s, it’s hard to find an app that actually does that. And that’s that’s one of the few that I’ve actually found that actually works. So it’s I rec i r e c i r e c. So, Chris, thanks for coming on. We really, really appreciate it. Thanks for our listeners and for our viewers. And really great show. Lots of great information. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Great to be here.
