Advertising, FB, Tweets, Blogs & Paint

monkeys_bunny

Hello guys im hoping you can help or at least provide your opinion. I work for a relatively small firm which started from the ashes of redundancy and over the past 3 years has grown to three offices. MY main concern i the office i work at and how to generate more business and raise our profile in the community.

We have :-

Facebook (has 300+ fiends & 21 followers)
Twitter (has 46 followers)
Blogger
Website (which i think is rubbish & am trying to get the boss to change it)
local radio adverts (start June for trial)

Question:-
1. how can i create more interest and get more Twitter followers?

2. our office does not stand out, the company colours are green, this is the office, how do you think we could make it stand out? (i will try and enclose pic)

we are running a Will Event in which we are donating money to Macmillan for every Will and did a leaflet drop and newspaper add for this. We very recently opened a new office and got 3 papers to cover this. I ask each new client, in the initial paperwork, to tell me how they heard about us in the first place and so far it is all word of mouth or recommendations. Which of course is great, but i know we could do better in the advertising realm and getting ourselves 'out there'.

So any ideas? its harder i think as we are Solicitors firm and therefore have a limited target audience but still we are not 'old stuff' shirt style firm and want to be more approachable i.e. FB, Twitter, blog etc

Any help would be great guys. Thank you

Laurencek

We have found facebook great for networking etc and get quite a few returning customers from it, I find it great to keep it updates with offers and news etc,

Twitter we havnt had much success with it yet... But still working on it.

Have you got a link on the website to facebook and twitter accounts?

Also has your website had time spent on it doing seo so ita picked up on google?

A great tip get listed on the google business account, that's another thing we have found working well to get more local customers.

Regarding blogs wordpress is a great start and some easy ways to get te seo up to scratch to start my partner has just started a wordpress blog for wheat free diets and with there google add ons and abit of personal experience its got to page 1 on a few key words and hasn't even gone live yet!

monkeys_bunny

Laurencek wrote: »

We have found facebook great for networking etc and get quite a few returning customers from it, I find it great to keep it updates with offers and news etc,

We have facebook and i am more familiar with it than Twitter so use it more to interact, you know, wishing people happy birthday with a link to our blog etc attached


Twitter we havnt had much success with it yet... But still working on it.I like Twitter as we use Tweet Deck so you can be there straight away on key search words, like the name of your town etc

Laurencek wrote: »

Have you got a link on the website to facebook and twitter accounts?

thats the thing, i think our website is rubbish, it doesnt have anything like that, but i keep telling the boss to get it sorted. I put the links to our blog twitter and facebook on all my emails and all my letters as well

Laurencek wrote: »

A great tip get listed on the google business account, that's another thing we have found working well to get more local customers.

What is this, i have not heard of this. is it free? do you have any more information on it please?

Laurencek wrote: »

Regarding blogs wordpress is a great start and some easy ways to get te seo up to scratch to start my partner has just started a wordpress blog for wheat free diets and with there google add ons and abit of personal experience its got to page 1 on a few key words and hasn't even gone live yet!

We have blogger, which i like. what kind of key words do you use for yours, im a little slow on the key word things, there is a section on the blogger to add keywords but i do not know if that is just to search in Blogger its self

we do appear on Google if you put in our name and also if you put in our town and the word solicitors.

What do you think to the office its self? any ideas on how to make it stand out?
Thank you for your reply

Old_No.7

Could you try to do talks for certain groups who are using Facebook and Twitter and grow your audience like that? I'm a volunteer with the NCT and one of the things I'm hoping to organise is a talk on wills for new parents by a local solicitors firm. It's a way to link to local groups, who would advertise it on their Facebook/Twitter etc and reach a larger audience online and in real life.

paulwf

This is a really interesting thread as it isn't the type of business where you always get an instant response to a marketing campaign. People tend to stick with the same solicitor for decades and I think they are generally chosen based on their reputation and known expertise. Whereas I might do a Facebook post and expect a response within 24 hours to that campaign you need to think a bit more long term

My local newspaper has an "ask the expert page" where they have a bank manager, solicitor and accountant answer readers questions each week. This is fabulous free publicity for very little effort and makes the companies stand out as the local experts.

As to Twitter I love it because it is so "zen"...the harder you try to promote yourself the less followers you will get! Use it, have fun with it, follow who you find interesting and don't tweet too often and you'll evolve a following over time. Twitter is great to get a general feel for what is going on locally and in your profession, you can follow hundreds of users without getting bogged down and a quick glance will tell you what is happening that might not be on the news.

I really detest offices that have blinds over the windows, closed doors and that sort of stuff...they look like they are covering up secret research or something and no one is going to just wander in and have a quick chat to see what services you provide. Think like retail, have a big inviting open doorway, everything open plan and a reception area that entices people in.

You could try and think completely different and think what would Mary Portas do? If it was me next to the open inviting reception I'd have a drop in room where anyone could come in any time and get 15 minutes free advice on any subject. Dedicate a member of staff to this (tie maybe but no suit), I bet you'd get loads of people in and even a 10% conversion rate would be cheaper and more effective than running a radio campaign. Solicitors are such stuffy, closed off and downright scary places to most members of the public, how can you overcome this?

JuniorDesigner

I have found on Twitter that the more RELATIVE people you follow, you will get followed more and more, RETWEETING other's RELATIVE opinions and blogs or anything related to your business can gain you followers also.

I have today been reading blog after blog all from an initial Tweeter, then every once and a while I come across something I like and I will 'Tweet' it using the button they normally display.

This has been the best form of networking I have found so far, my personal webpage views have shot up also.

It also helps to have info about your company on your twitter background?? I have this for mine which I designed and it displays everything I want viewers to see when they 'land' on my page i.e. web address, things I provide and some small graphics!

I hope this helps, in summary, just tweet, re-tweet and follow! But make sure it's relative to your line of work!!

Horace

Networking events..attend them or run them yourself. I know of one solicitors firm in the Midlands who has their own monthly breakfast meet with over 150 people there (mainly other solicitors). The same firm who organising this networking event also holds a ladies lunch (they managed to get a bank to sponsor it and I think the same bank sponors their breakfast meet), recently they held a will-writing session where profits went to a local charity.

Maybe you could align yourself with a local charity having a week of will writing? Networking - it puts you in front of people who will want a will or knows someone who wants one because if there is one thing that is certain in this life..we are all going to die.

Also try connecting with people who offer services such as wedding planning, financial planners etc - all will want will advice.

The thing with twitter is to not tweet about work all the time, same as blogging try blogging about other things and inject some personality into it that way people will see you as a person not an entity that writes wills.

Laurencek

Sorry short message as on my phone,

Search for google business ( I would put a link but not able too)

Yes it's free are you able tinkled your company name and I can have a look at your website?

steve1980

Laurencek wrote: »

Search for google business ( I would put a link but not able too)

Are you talking about Google Sites (GBBO)? You're obviously not a web designer! That is the most horrendous website building package out there.

It should be renamed as Google Sites - Great For Your Personal Life, But Not For Your Business!

monkeys_bunny

Old_No.7 wrote: »

Could you try to do talks for certain groups who are using Facebook and Twitter and grow your audience like that? I'm a volunteer with the NCT and one of the things I'm hoping to organise is a talk on wills for new parents by a local solicitors firm. It's a way to link to local groups, who would advertise it on their Facebook/Twitter etc and reach a larger audience online and in real life.

sounds like a very good idea. its hard to get throught to people the importance of making a Will. Most see it as a nail in the coffin so to speak and would rather just ignore it

monkeys_bunny

paulwf wrote: »

As to Twitter I love it because it is so "zen"...the harder you try to promote yourself the less followers you will get! Use it, have fun with it, follow who you find interesting and don't tweet too often and you'll evolve a following over time. Twitter is great to get a general feel for what is going on locally and in your profession, you can follow hundreds of users without getting bogged down and a quick glance will tell you what is happening that might not be on the news.

to be honest i run the twitter, blog and facebook pages and i tend to run the twitter more as a person, not totally personal of me, but not business stuffy. if you know what i mean, i chat with people and things

paulwf wrote: »

I really detest offices that have blinds over the windows, closed doors and that sort of stuff...they look like they are covering up secret research or something and no one is going to just wander in and have a quick chat to see what services you provide. Think like retail, have a big inviting open doorway, everything open plan and a reception area that entices people in.

this is one thing we really all agree on in the office. our office has its door open all day but it has frosted windows and we all agree they should be clear letting people see in and see that we are not scary. BUT at the moment we just cannot afford it. We are a double fronted property ranging from 10 -12 and also it increases the insurance (we have looked into it). SO as much as we know this is very important at the moment its just unachievable, which we all agree is rubbish but there is nothing we can do about it JUST yet

paulwf wrote: »

You could try and think completely different and think what would Mary Portas do? If it was me next to the open inviting reception I'd have a drop in room where anyone could come in any time and get 15 minutes free advice on any subject. Dedicate a member of staff to this (tie maybe but no suit), I bet you'd get loads of people in and even a 10% conversion rate would be cheaper

This is a good idea, and I really do not want to seem like im poo pooingyou’re your ideas, but, again, at the moment this would not work for us. We have 2 conveyancers and I am the only dogs body *cough* I mean typist, I do the blog, facebook, twitter, type all the letters, open the post, fix the machines etc etc. We have a receptionist who is a wonderful front of house person very friendly and approachable etc and we have a Solicitor who does the Wills, Probate, Employment etc who has 2 part time members of staff. So my point is as good as your idea is, and I will put it to the boss, we just don't have any staff to dedicate to this idea. The only way to do it would be if we knew they were coming but this would involve appointments and tends to undermine the whole point of your suggestion
thank you for your response and time taken..