Earlier this year I was in Verona, Italy, with its imposing statue of Dante Alighieri. Having recently read Dante’s Inferno in an impromptu book club, it got me thinking: if Dante lived today and was a digital marketer, what would he have to say about, well, Digital Worst Practices? Which would he consign to the Inferno? Before we dive into …
Listening: The Most Underrated and Underpracticed Activity Online
Listening. Or put another way: Paying Attention to Others. Not only is this the best way to get value out of social and digital media and build a valuable audience, it’s the way things work now. The broadcast era is long gone. Let’s put this in personal terms: It’s aggravating: We go to a social media platform and share something …
The Digital 100: Rank Your Law Firm Website – And Then Improve It!
Last month I was pleased to see the advent of a new digital ranking of law firm websites: The Digital 100, based in the UK and managed by marketing agency TBD. The Digital 100 is “a subscription service which ranks law firms for their digital marketing performance. A bit like The Lawyer 200 or the Legal Business 100 do for …
Why We Shouldn’t Expect Immediate Results on Social Media
When I give presentations on digital marketing, people normally hear me say that, “Online, no one reads anything. They just look at stuff.” If you’re trying to use social media, websites, and blogs to market yourself, this statement may sound depressing. I don’t say this to dissuade people from using social media and other digital marketing tools, but rather to help …
4 Ways to Get Your Blogging Groove Back
“I want to blog, but don’t have the time.” That’s one of the many reasons we give as to why we don’t blog (more often). Believe me, I have the same problem. I have some suggestions on how business owners, artists (of all types), consultants and others can blog more regularly. But first, we should address the main question: Why …
Leverage Your Digital Audit: Transform Your Website from a Static Brochure to a Dynamic Marketing Tool
By Nicholas Kosar and Stacey Piper of Piper Strategies Every business has a website. Sadly, however, most websites perform merely as fancy “e-brochures” – not as true marketing tools that nurture and develop a growing client base. So how do you take your website and digital assets to the next level? In our work with businesses large and small, we’ve …
Crafting Effective Infographics – From the 1600s to Today
While infographics seem to have been popular for only the last decade or so as part of the wave of social media-fueled content marketing, they’ve actually been around for centuries. In fact, we can still learn from infographics that are hundreds of years old. Three oldies that I like come from 1600s Great Britain, 19th-century Russia, and 20th-century America. That first …
How Is Your Brand Unique? Try Naming Your Color Scheme
If you believe in a Higher Power who is ultimately undefinable, Apophatic Theology makes sense: you define your Divine Being not by what the Creator is, but by what the Creator is not. Defining your Brand, and then Marketing it, has some similarities – you definitely have to know what you are not. For example, I’ve had clients tell me …
The Safe Way to Perform Surgery on Your Website: Staging
Would you undergo painful surgery without anaesthesia? Of course not. And that’s why your business website should have the equivalent of a painkiller: a staging capability. I’ll explain. Why do we avail ourselves of painkillers? For most people, the answer is simple: To avoid the pain that is really happening. But I’ve got a better reason: So the doctor can …
Improve Traffic to Your Website With Social Metadata
Having managed marketing and business development in the legal field for over a dozen years, I have a good idea of how hard lawyers work. So it’s disappointing to see that many lawyers’ websites aren’t working hard for them. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s say that a lawyer wrote an article or blog post about a new …