One of the difficult tasks you will face soon after starting your own law firm is what to delegate and what to do yourself. And more importantly, what you delegate in house and what you delegate out of house. I was reminded of this lesson today when a colleague of mine (in the sense that all criminal attorneys are colleagues of mine) was called out for outsourcing his marketing and having the marketing company use some less than professional methods of marketing.
If you know anything about internet marketing (and if you don't and are starting your own law firm you better learn) and marketing your law firm, you quickly discover that one thing can send you to the top of the Google ranks faster than anything else - links from other sites to your sites with your keywords in them. But, as you might expect, getting those links is harder than you might expect (and, by the way, if anyone wants to link to this site, feel free - I love links). Some people try to get them in less than honest ways (and there are different degrees of this).
One of the dishonest ways is called comment spamming. Comment spamming is when you troll other blogs and websites and leave comments for the sole purpose of getting a link back to your site. Usually these comments contribute nothing to the article or the conversation in the comments. They are made solely to get a link. The funny thing about these links is that Google doesn't even count them (I could explain this in more detail but it would take to long) so they are doing this for nothing.
My criminal defense attorney friend found himself in the cross hairs of some angry bloggers because he was comment spamming on their site. And after he promised to stop he kept on doing it. His name is Bradley Johnson and you can read those posts at the following links - W-T-F?; Bradley Johnson, Seattle Spam Lawyer; I'm Going to Make a Bet with You Bradley Johnson, Seattle Personal Injury Lawyer, And Spammer; and Don't Be Bradley Johnson.
The real problem I have with something like this is that you have to be in charge of the content you are putting out there and have to know what your name is being put on. If you don't, there is the chance that you could end up with something like above happening, which is extremely hard to get rid of. Your reputation is everything. For me, I require the approval of all marketing materials that go out with my name on the, particularly on the internet (they will stay around forever).
Bottom line, being a criminal attorney or DUI attorney is tough. The market is tough. There is a lot of competition. And it is all moving toward the internet. But that doesn't mean you should cut corners. Take the extra time to figure out what you need to do to be successful, and then create your own content. You'll sleep much better at night knowing the above won't happen to you.
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