In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Russell Knight discuss:
Key Takeaways:
"If you're doing research, you should be taking notes. If you're taking notes, you might as well turn it into an article." — Russell Knight
Connect with Russell Knight:
Twitter: @RDKLegal
Facebook: Law Office of Russell D. Knight
Website: RDKLegal.com & DivorceAttorneyNaplesFL.com
LinkedIn: Russell Knight
Connect with Steve Fretzin:
LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin
Twitter: @stevefretzin
Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.
Website: Fretzin.com
Email: Steve@Fretzin.com
Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!
YouTube: Steve Fretzin
Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911
Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie
Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Russell Knight 0:00
And then hopefully Google notices the word divorce appears 10 times in the article, and then says this article must be about divorce. And this article does point to this website. It's about divorce. So therefore, this is a very divorce II link to a divorce the website, we're going to move them up one step above the next competitor.
Narrator 0:22
You're listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, we'll take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here's your host, Steve Fretzin!
Steve Fretzin 0:45
Well welcome, everybody to be that lawyer. I'm your host, Steve Fretzin. I just want to thank you for joining me today. My guest is an outstanding family attorney and superstar marketer Russell Knight, Russell, how are you?
Russell Knight 0:59
Very good. Thank you for the accolades.
Steve Fretzin 1:02
Well, I'm getting I give the accolades. And then you have to actually step in and give them more of a bio more of a background. So if Yeah, if you would jump into that, that'd be outstanding.
Russell Knight 1:12
Sure, I went to undergrad at Bradley University with a computer systems degree, I'm not any good at computers. So I ended up leaving that and then jumped into law school in 2003, 2006, I graduated and the economy was terrible. And I went to work in a little law office in the west side of Chicago. And I noticed everybody who had cash in hand spoke Spanish. And so I decided to like teach myself Spanish as an adult. And if I knew how much work it took, I would not have done it. Like, two years later, and like a month in Mexico, I could do it. And I can answer the telephone in Spanish and speaking Spanish, which is the hardest part. And then I started, my big idea was I was gonna make Spanish websites. And I would get clients that way. And it kind of works. And it kind of didn't. So what usually happens to lawyers, and any lawyers and listenings, like, whatever you're good at, you'll get more work that's similar to that. And so I started, I was willing to do divorce work, and I liked it. And I was getting good at it. So I got more and more divorce work. And I found myself being a divorce lawyer, even though I had this idea of getting all the Spanish cases and doing a large Spanish language volume shop. And I certainly got a lot of great PII cases I referred out, and it was very lucrative and well worth it. But I ended up learning from these Spanish sites that I own abogado de Chicago, which means Chicago's lawyer, and spanish.com. And I was getting all this work. And so I thought, well, I could do this for my divorce website. And about three or four years ago, instead of just having the standard headshot and template, I decided to hire good photographers. And my idea was, I was getting a lot of good reviews. And so I was gonna say, if I had good reviews, the good looking website, and really good content, I could probably not dominate, but I could get like a ton of work through just the website, because I'm not much of a networking guy. So what I did was I hired Bowles photographer to do my photos, which I thought your notes phenomenal. I ended up still listening from like 12 years of people that I represented, to get reviews. And it's very difficult for a family law lawyer because people don't want to hear their dirty laundry. Sure. And also, on things like Yelp, they don't always advertise everyone's every review that comes in. And then I started banging out articles on my website that would be like, Can your spouse see your texts, things I thought people would look at. And I ended up finding out a lot by experimenting. And I found out that if you write about something that is not General, like a general example being How does Child Support work in Illinois, but if you write something really strange, like how to deport your wife, or I signed a mohar, which is an Islamic prenuptial agreement, what do I do that you will absolutely get clients from the strange questions, because Family Law is so well researched that people will read the situation rule type in their problem, and you'll probably be the only person to answer their questions, and they will immediately make an appointment with you and I've literally had people come in with the article printed out saying like, I need you to do this for me whether it's sealing their divorce, invalidating a prenup, everyone wants to deport their wife. That's the biggest thing. They still couldn't hire me. But that's what I found out what I think was like the real secret sauce. It wasn't so much doing when I was doing my own SEO, building backlinks, etc. But it wasn't as much being on the front page of Google as it was being on the front page of Google for very specific issues, which usually requires a well researched 1200 to 2000 word article, just like you would submit to the Illinois State Bar Association about an issue. And then people will read it. And if I will also cite the law, just like I would, because I'm basically teaching myself. And I've done that for the Chicago website. And I've done that for I also have an office in Naples, Florida. And there's not hardly any competition online in Naples, and it was very easy, maybe like 100 articles, some pretty bare bones, SEO. And then now I'm the first listing for any private attorney, if you type in anything about Naples and divorce, so what I would recommend to people, it's like building a moat. Because if you were willing to do enough content, no one else in America is going to write an article about whether I'm har is going to affect their Islamic divorce. So if you write that, there'll be no competition. No one else in America is going to write an article about how to include language about secondhand smoke in your parenting plan, it just won't happen. No one's going to sit down and do it. So if you're willing to do it, then someone sooner or later is going to read that. And then someone else is getting that person's gonna say, well, this must be the guy, because nobody else is doing it.
Steve Fretzin 6:18
As far as it is it preferred than to write an article like that for publication for a law journal or publication like that, or to put on your personal website, blog,
Russell Knight 6:27
you can do it, it gives you like, social value, if you can show that it's been published someplace else. If you can publish it on some reason, remotely prestigious website, like, I think I publish things for the Illinois State Bar Association. And then if a link comes back to your website, it works identical to how citations work in for lawyers where the Supreme Court United States is the number one citation, if you get a link from New York, times.com. That's the number one citation, a advisory case that you cite from a different state that has nothing to do with you is the same thing as getting a link from a blog. In China. It's like it's nice, but like, does it move the needle? Probably.
Steve Fretzin 7:08
Right. Right. So the value the value is lesser?
Russell Knight 7:10
Yeah. So one of the things I do do is I do volunteer essays, to other websites than most other websites are dying for content. And the quality is probably not as the same as when I put it on my own website. But it's still general questions, and you can find anywhere in the world, anything is law related. If you write even slightly about something immigration related, then it becomes federal. And they'll almost always publish it. And so I've done that countless times about what happens to foreign property and divorce. I've written that article, maybe 10 times for other websites. And then they point back to me, and then hopefully, Google notices the word divorce appears 10 times in the article, and then says, this article must be about divorce. And this article does point to this website. It's about divorce. So therefore, this is a very divorcing link to a divorce website. We're going to move a lot one step above the next competitor.
Steve Fretzin 8:06
Yeah, I mean, what I like what you're saying, Russell is is very tactical, this is something that's that's that someone could take action on tomorrow, if they had the chops to do it. I think that the point you're making is most attorneys are so wrapped up in the work in the weeds that they never consider how content when done maybe weekly, or more than that, or whatever could really impact how they get found.
Russell Knight 8:29
Well, if you're doing research, I don't think that you really have an excuse to do that. Because if there's, if you're doing research, you should be taking notes. If you're taking notes, you might as well turn it into an article. Yeah, something that happens all the time is people say, oh, there's frozen embryos. It never ever goes to court, because it's such a sticky situation. But then you look it up, how does this get decided? And then while you're looking it up, you cut and paste the citations, and you flesh it out. And, you know, an hour later, you haven't what would have been half an hour of normal research. Maybe an extra hour, I have an article on top of that, and also forces you to do the research properly. I think.
Steve Fretzin 9:06
In some of the things that you've had to figure out whether it was the the opportunity to, to work with, you know, to develop, you know, Spanish websites or or to write content. Are there some hiccups or challenges that you had along the way that you can share? So maybe people could avoid them?
Russell Knight 9:24
Yeah, I would say that, if you're going to do something, do it, right, like a white man, a great website in 2009 that looked at so 2009 websites like a car, you can tell what year it's from just glancing at it. Sure. And so I just let rested on my laurels. And then I would, I did a couple of things where I would dominated obbligato Chicago those words, and I could have just kept doing it instead, I didn't. And now I definitely don't dominate that word. Because other people figured it out. So what I would say is whatever you're doing, you have to keep doing it. Like I was the only person on Yelp for about five years. Did anything that was soliciting reviews as a lawyer. And then in 2014, suddenly everyone started doing it. And then it didn't matter that I had 20 good reviews, because there were another 30 guys with 20 good reviews too. So what I would say is to just keep building on what you're doing, and double down on whatever marketing if you decide to do content marketing. I know a guy in Memphis, Tennessee, who has been doing it since 1996. He has 1500 articles. Wow. You cannot type in a question about Tennessee divorce law that were his thing won't pop up at the beginning of Google. So yeah, that would be my advice. But it's a lot of work.
Steve Fretzin 10:41
Yeah, I mean, that's the that's the challenge that most attorneys are going to push back is how am I supposed to, you know, put that kind of content out there. But the reality is that, you know, they either can do it themselves, you can outsource it to a writer. I mean, we just had Dan gershenson, his his podcast launch today, in early June. And this guy, all he does is make people look good through the content the writing that he does. So I know it's probably best to do the research and write yourself if you can do it. But as a backup, is that is that something you've ever explored or thought about or writer.
Russell Knight 11:14
I would I do it for off site articles, to be honest, where I hire somebody, because they're so desperate for content. And it's also doesn't need to be state specific charity they want like, I use foreign property in a divorce, because it doesn't really matter what the law is in your particular state because you're dealing with this foreign property. And the conclusion is usually the same as that you reserve it until a later date. So I will I do hire people to do that. And then they solicit to other websites saying, Hey, would you like an article. And that's worth it, because they find the person and they read the article. And they do it for 100 to $200 an article. And if it was my time, it would be at least two hours for the same thing. So I do recommend those services. I'm not sure if I would. For me, I like it. And it's like doing a crossword puzzle. So I don't know if I would never pay someone to write articles for my website. But..
Steve Fretzin 12:09
Yeah, again, if you enjoy it, if it's like networking, I can't send someone out to network for me, if I enjoy it, I want to be the guy, you know, eventually talking with people. And by the way, I'm gonna ask you offline who did your website, you have to share that? I'm trying. But I mean, I think it's great. And when I look at a website, where I see great photography, I see calls to action, great content. I mean, you're writing a blog, I mean, there's a blog every day. So yeah, so and then who else is doing that is the right. So you're you're definitely in a space of your own. But I think it's something that attorneys should, you know, consider maybe not trying to be you but at least trying to be, you know, a third of you or a fifth of you what you're doing because it's it's clearly important to put it put all that content out there.
Russell Knight 12:53
Well, there's a gentleman by the name of miles Mason, who's in Tennessee, and he did this. And then he found that he had so many articles that he gave it to a third party person, and they turn it into a book. And then the book is like the divorce clients handbook. And that's what I'm trying to build towards, for Illinois, and Florida. And then he personally advertises the book, in a way, I don't know if he does what he's told me, but I believe he advertises it. But the book is the ultimate authority. Whether you're an expert or not, it might be yeah..
Steve Fretzin 13:24
Yeah. So again, you know, content, you know, it's a lot of it is, it's reusable. So for example, I'm writing articles, I'm creating podcasts, clearly interviewing you, video, things like that, and you know, to put an article in a publication, and then you can, you know, reuse that repurpose that through maybe social media. So now your promo you're getting additional promotion, because you're promoting that blog article or that published article through social media have you have you had some good experience doing that?
Russell Knight 13:54
I have not done that. I imagine that is probably a good idea. One of my ideas, but it occurred to me in this during this crisis is to send out articles to I have a lot of articles that are something in divorce, like for example, plastic surgery, and divorce, there's something that can happen if you've got plastic surgery to close to a divorce, or the law can kind of kick in, my idea would be to forward that article to plastic surgeons. And you know, maybe it sticks in their back of their mind. Or Same thing with my frozen embryo article. Like, if you're doing something, you probably want to know how it interacts with whatever was divorced, he would just intrigue you. The same way where something that someone else does, it intrigues me how that affects divorce. So that's one thing I'm planning to do, but I haven't done it because I think everything's on standstill right now.
Steve Fretzin 14:47
Yeah, but I think I think now is sort of a great time, you know, and I'll just give from my own experience and what I do and what I'm working with my clients on is, you know, you write an article for the Chicago daily law bulletin. Great. That article gets Publish, there's a link to their website, I'll repurpose it on my blog. So then I'm using it for social media, I can use it as another part of my newsletter. So I'm sending out a newsletter to all my existing contacts. And let's say it's 3000 5000, whatever. And so it's just there's, you know, it's the repurposing of content that I also like, because then you're getting the most amount of traction for the effort that you made in writing something.
Russell Knight 15:29
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, I do post it to Facebook, and LinkedIn, and Twitter, I guess, do people see it? I don't know. I hope so.
Steve Fretzin 15:37
Yeah, I mean, they they do and again, you know, then it's about building up a following in those systems and platforms, if you will. And then the other thing that I do is, you know, I'll shoot off a, you know, a post to, to some people that I'm, you know, clients and friends and stuff like that, and say, Hey, you know, here's something to share, you know, with your audience, or your social media audience, because they might appreciate this article that's relevant to them. And so they share it. And then again, it just builds. So you might get instead of like, let's say, 300 views, you can get 1500 views, you know, 10 comments, and maybe five shares? Well, that's gonna give me a lot more traction on that article than I would have had if I had just, you know, posted it for this is for me, yeah.
Russell Knight 16:20
Well, those I don't do that. But I really should. So
Steve Fretzin 16:23
Well, we can we can chat offline and share best practices there. But the things that I want to ask you about that? I know you do. Well, we've already talked about blogging. Well, let me ask about that. Are you being specific in your language in a blog to make sure that you're using think terms that will come up in for SEO search engine optimization? To help? You know, is that just the question that you're answering or when you write a 1500 word article?
Russell Knight 16:43
For the most part, I try to write for the reader. Everything I read, though, says that you really shouldn't do that you're supposed to target a keyword that that's how Google understands the world. So if it's plastic surgery and divorce, you want to say plastic surgery 10 times once they divorce 10 times, you won't have the words together, if you can you try to do your best to tell Google that this is what it's about. And then nothing you do is you link to an article that's almost identical to yours. And that becomes a big clue to Google about what you're all about. Hmm. Not a competitor, but somebody else, maybe another stage is doing something similar.
Steve Fretzin 17:27
Oh, that's a great tip, a great tip. Okay. And then I know you mentioned earlier about the Google reviews that that's something that you did many years ago. But how important is that for, let's say the solo and small, firm player, trying to get their name found on Google somewhere.
Russell Knight 17:44
It's very important for Google Maps, because it's one of the things that will put people at the top of Google Maps if you're downtown Chicago, it's a bit of random this who gets on there, and Google tries to rotate people. But if you are in a smaller market, like I am in Naples as well, it's extremely easy to dominate Google Maps, you have to use real clients. I know some people don't. And because Google looks to knows where the people live, that are reviewing you. And so if a guy in Bangalore, India is reviewing you Google's like that's probably not real. But if a guy down the street is reviewing you, Google thinks that's golden. It doesn't take a lot. Is he? I mean, does anyone even if you had 100 reviews, would anyone read those? No. But if you have like four or five, they're just really where people really write out the value that you provided, and the faces on it, then you're going to get referrals just because in divorce or criminal law or bankruptcy, nobody wants to hear their dirty laundry. So if you can convince somebody to write a review, and use their real identity, then you're going to have good feedback.
Steve Fretzin 18:53
I've got a tip I'd like to share. And I don't know if this would would be effective for everybody. But I will share it that when I ask people to write reviews for me, I typically tend to coach them a little bit on what I'm looking for. Because if they write a review, and it says Steve is great, I like Steve Yay, Steve, right? Like, that's not really going to do much if somebody does decide they want to read about me and what I do. So I tend to coach them a little bit First, get them to agree that they're that they're open to it. And then once they do, I said, Do you mind if I give you a thought about they say sure, they'd actually appreciate it. And I use an acronym I call the bar ba r. and it stands for before after recommend or before after results. So essentially saying, you know, before I worked with Steve lackluster business development skills wasn't really you know, all the things they told me before they hired me, then they're crushing it. So we talked a little bit about after you know, what happened since working with him, here's kind of what's gone down. And then what were the results, you know, I doubled my business or I highly recommend them and here's why. And so that just gives a little bit more of a kind of a story in two or three sentences. That someone could write versus again, something that ends up becoming like nonsense about, about the in the recommendation. So just doesn't mean anything. Yeah, it doesn't mean anything. And I think people do do look at reviews, maybe not 100. But I mean, I was just buying. This is silly, but I, you know, I'm I Love New technology. And I was looking at that the purple cushion these pretty not to maybe put on my office chair. And I was looking at that I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. But yeah, I started reading Braille 11,000. Now 11,000 reviews. I mean, how many of those are real? And how many are not? I don't know. But I try to, you know, I try to read at least five to see if I think they're real. But you know, I don't go to restaurant new restaurant without reading reviews and seeing their scars. And it's what we've become, it's just become a part of the culture and how we make decisions and how we decide to spend our time or money in different places. So I wanted to ask you, if you had to recommend three things that any lawyer should be focusing on right now, to build their brand to get noticed to get business, what would you say are kind of the top three that you'd recommend as far as ways to spend their time and energy to to grow business?
Russell Knight 21:09
For time and energy, there's no doubt that writing articles about what you do, and then having your voice come through, that will pay off. There's no doubt it won't pay off right away. It might take a year. To be honest, I had I've one article that I wrote and it took a year and now it dominates this one keyword, and we get like a client a month from it. Right. And so just, it's really like rubbing a lamp and waiting for that Genie. The other things that I would recommend to do is to look for something that nobody else is doing. I had such great results with Yelp for a five year period, because I was the only divorce lawyer doing it. Now other people are doing it, which really proves that it works because other people started doing it. But there's other things that people aren't doing like Tick Tock is huge. Right now, every middle aged woman is looking at people dancing on tik tok. I'm not sure how someone could use that in their marketing. But I would think that that is the next thing, simply because other lawyers aren't doing it. I looked yesterday, there's literally two divorce lawyers who have their non paid their free, free Tiktok campaigns. So I would look for something people aren't doing. And the third thing I would say is, it is so cheap to invest in your website, if you find a private person to do, it's not an agency. And that private person will usually have a little bit of an artistic bent, and they will make sure that you look good. That's their whole job.
Steve Fretzin 22:34
Yeah. And make sure you validate the marketing people that you work with, I get them from a referral, a lot of the people that are just calling you randomly to sell you websites and marketing. You know, there's a reason they're reaching out, you know, they're not getting referred enough. If they were getting referred enough, they wouldn't have to do outbound marketing the same level. So true. Yeah, so true. So we definitely want to look at that. And then we'll kind of wrap up with with this final little segment that I call things they never taught in law school. So you know, I hear this all the time, Steve, I never learned business development in law, school marketing and law school. What are some things that lawyers should be learning in law school that would that would help them so much more, when they get into the into the real world of practicing law.
Russell Knight 23:20
In law school, the professor will call on you when you are sitting there and not ready for it. And then we'll ask you about a piece of law or a theory. And then you get really scared because there's 50 other people in the class and the professor, and then you give some half assed answer. This is no different than when the phone rings. And someone calls you up and says, I have a problem. What should I do? You have to be prepared to say, you should stay take steps A, B, and C. And then results one, two, and three will happen at a moment's notice. Because the person is calling. That's exactly what they want to hear in the calls be other people and you want to hear from other people. They'll hear Oh, Mr. Jones, can't make your call right now. Would you? Would you like to schedule a call on Thursday? Well, no, they don't want to they have a problem. That's right now they're giving them anxiety, you have to be able to know enough about your sub the subject matter where you know what to do. And if that means practicing 10 years, that's fine. If not, you can wax philosophical about what you do know about the law, just pick up one of those horn books at the library and read it we're lawyers, what we do for a living is we read and we communicate ideas. It's all the same thing I talked about the content marketing is the same thing while being on the telephone. In the end, it's the same thing as when you're talking in front of a judge, you're taking a bunch of information and putting it in the best light possible in the briefest form possible so that it can be digested and someone can make a decision.
Steve Fretzin 24:50
Yeah, but I mean, my take away from what you just said might be a little different. I'm thinking about having a really good way to do intake. You know, when someone calls you What do you What questions do you ask how do you build rapport? How do you, you know, how do you get into a dialogue that's going to be it's going to, you know, make them, you know, want to engage you. And then the other thing you mentioned is responsive, you know, you know, being prepared to either pick up the phone or be prepared to have somebody pick up the phone and do that intake to make sure you don't lose somebody. Because, you know, we all have attention spans have a flee at this point. So how fast someone responds and how things how things move forward. You know, that's a big deal, somebody who waits two days to call me back, they're done like they're out. I'm out of it. So I get that. Well, listen, Russell, I want to thank you for being such a great guest and for sharing such wonderful wisdom, it's clear that you're a top player in your space. And from a marketing perspective, you've gone above and beyond I think, attorney should be listening to this and maybe listening twice, to, you know, get the takeaways that you're sharing, because this is this is absolute gold, and it shouldn't be taken lightly.
Russell Knight 25:56
All right. Well, I appreciate you. Yeah, well, thank you.
Steve Fretzin 25:58
Anything, anything that you'd like to promote, or you want to share your website, before we take off?
Russell Knight 26:03
I have two websites, www.rdklegal.com, and www.divorceattorneynaplesfl.com, I think you should check it out to see, you'll see the Chicago one looks like 2020. And then the other one looks like 2018, 2017. And you're like how dated is that? That's pretty data. And then just look at your own website. And you're probably surfing on the equivalent of an ad to Christ.
Steve Fretzin 26:29
That that I spent a lot of time looking at websites and it's from for I don't know if it's nine out of 10, but it's some some massive number. It's a brutal, it's absolutely brutal. And yours has ever, you know, the calls to action and the click ability and everything is answering questions that I'm interested in learning. So so that's really what people need to emulate. So thanks again, and just in wrapping up, want to let everyone know that it's really important to continue to learn marketing, learn business development, you know, be a student of, of the business, you're in the business of law, it's a business and you have to learn some things to make sure that you stay relevant in the space. And my goal is to help you with that and to just be that lawyer confident organized in a skilled Rainmaker. Thanks, everybody, stay safe and be well.
Narrator 27:23
Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life Changing strategies and resources for drilling a successful law practice. Visit Steve's website Fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today's episode, check out today's show notes.