Episode No: 390
Abstract
Are you a lawyer that has thought about starting a podcast? Are you lost on how to start one? In this episode, Zack and Robert Ingalls of LawPod, talk about how recording a legal podcast can connect you with new clients, and fit into your law firm’s content marketing strategy.
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Points of Note:
- 1:59 — Why should lawyers start a podcast
- 5:44 — How to get a quality sounding podcast?
- 9:46 — Production process for recording a legal podcast
Speakers
Zack Glaser
Zack Glaser is the Legal Tech Advisor at Lawyerist, where he assists the Lawyerist community in understanding and selecting appropriate technologies for their practices. He also writes product reviews and develops legal technology content helpful to lawyers and law firms. Zack is focused on helping Modern Lawyers find and create solutions to help assist their clients more effectively.
Robert Ingalls
Robert Ingalls is a recovering attorney, professional speaker, and the founder of LawPods, one of the first podcast production agencies for law firms. At LawPods, Robert and his team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcasts that build relationships and drive revenue.
Robert’s path from trial lawyer to Podcast Producer was anything but direct. For years he battled anxiety from the pressure, long hours, and constant conflict of a litigation career. When he was finally ready to throw in the towel, he had no idea what to do next. With no business/marketing background and only a love for podcasts he discovered making one for his firm; Robert decided to see if lawyers would pay him to help them launch podcasts. Within four years, LaawPods was producing podcasts for the biggest brands in law.
As a speaker, Robert frequently speaks on Podcast Content Marketing, Prioritizing Mental Health, Entrepreneurship, and Law Office Technology. In his spare time, he enjoys teaching podcasting at community events, spending time with his wife and daughters, and most any board-riding sport.
Episode Transcript
Transcript automatically created.
Announcer (00:03):
Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts
Zack (00:35):
Hey y’all, I’m Zach Glaser, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist. And this is episode 390 of the Lawyerist podcast. Today we’re diving into another sponsored podcast episode in these we’ll be joined by a legal voice or company, and we discuss the newest features, happenings and trends in the legal world. Again, we’re excited to offer these episodes to our audience, and we hope you enjoy them today. I’m joined by LawPods, founder, and chief strategist, Robert Engles. And we’ll be talking about adding podcasts to your content marketing strategy.
Robert (01:06):
Thanks so much, Zach. It’s such a pleasure to be here long time listener. First time guest I’m Robert Engles, a recovering attorney professional speaker, and the founder of LawPods. One of the first podcast production agencies for law firms and at lo pods, me and my team help some of the premier law firms in the world launch and grow branded podcast that build relationships and drive revenue.
Zack (01:26):
Robert, thanks for, for joining us today. We’re, we’re getting kind of meta in this, uh, law podcast about podcasting for lawyers, but let’s kind of go ahead and dive right in cuz you, you know, a lot about this area of lawyers and attorneys starting, continuing producing their own podcasts for their purposes. I wanna talk about those purposes. First podcasts are obviously a lot, you know, have gained popularity, but what’s kind of the point of a lawyer podcasting.
Robert (01:59):
I mean, other than it’s super cool. Yes. Which is one of the reasons I got into it. <laugh> I mean, there’s, there’s so many good reasons for it, but the first thing I tell people to do is, is stop and ask them self, ask themselves that question. Mm-hmm <affirmative> why are you doing it? Like, is it a random act of marketing? Because when I see firms do that, I see a lot less success because they’re just like, we’re gonna make some episodes and talk and do this mm-hmm <affirmative>. But a lot of the reasons that are really helpful that I see with my clients is retention acquisition. That’s always a really big one SEO thought leadership and then a criminally undervalued. One is the network effect. Most people aren’t thinking about that yet. I hear time. And again, how valuable that has been, you know, I went on a podcast, someone else heard me and now they’re my client because I was on someone else’s podcast in a different area that I wouldn’t have otherwise been discovered. But you’re also talking to someone, developing a relationship with them, kind of developing that. No like, and trust, right. Adding them to your personal network. And from there that person potentially is a referral source, potentially a brand ambassador, potentially a friend mm-hmm <affirmative> perhaps a client.
Zack (03:01):
Yeah. But like you said, you know, we’re, we’re talking about kind of second steps away from potentially even your listener. But I, I like this one that you said the, the SEO, I think sometimes like, okay, well how how’s somebody gonna find my podcast on divorce law in middle Tennessee, you know, or divorce law of musicians in Nashville. <laugh> it’s how am I gonna gain those listeners? You know?
Robert (03:29):
Sure. So there’s, there’s two angles. There is you’re first thinking about the podcast player. Now people aren’t getting into a podcast player, right. This second, not a lot of people and searching divorce, lawyer Nashville. Right? Right. But at the same time you wanna be showing up in those searches. If somebody wants to listen to a podcast about divorce, there’s probably a reason for that. Right. And you wanna make sure you’re showing up. So you wanna be thinking about the SEO value inside of a podcast platform. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you’re writing your description, you’re writing the names of your episodes. You’re writing your short show notes for these podcast platforms. You wanna be thinking, is this going to drive in search results? And that’s something that we’re always thinking about, but then you’re looking at, you have Google podcast out there. Mm-hmm <affirmative> now that is showing podcast inorganic search results.
Robert (04:12):
So whatever is in your podcast feed is also coming up in Google podcast on organic search results. Right. But then you’re also putting it on your website where you should be. And from there you’re getting a lot of SEO value because a lot of our clients, we have a lot of trial lawyers as clients mm-hmm <affirmative> and they are thinking a lot about SEO, right? They are spending exorbitant amounts of money on SEO already. And what we’re doing is we’re helping them capitalize on that existing SEO spend mm-hmm <affirmative> we’re thinking about what are people searching for them? What are people searching for when they find their competitors? What are people thinking about that they wanna know? What are the big questions that they wanna know? And we’re making episodes about that. We’re also working with the SEO team. Mm-hmm <affirmative> to develop a strategy around how can we create content that will be most impactful and drive people to the website. And it’s not just the audio, we’re thinking long form blog posts with transcripts, with links that are going in and out.
Zack (05:05):
Right. Right. Well, that, that kind of brings me back to your, your statement about random acts of marketing. This is, you know, very different from that, quite the opposite of that, where we’re working a podcast, working content, a separate form of content into the marketing strategy, as opposed to just saying, I like my voice. And I’d like to hear it on apple podcast, which, you know, honestly, if, if that’s what you wanna do, go for it. It’s fine.
Robert (05:33):
I mean, I think that’s, it’s certainly an important part of it, like, uh, right. And, and I’ll tell people, listening, people say, oh, I hate my voice, but then they get themselves set, set up with a good microphone and they go, oh, that’s very different. Mm-hmm
Zack (05:44):
<affirmative> yeah. There, there is a, a difference in microphones, a substantial difference in microphones. And, and that’s why, you know, you, you pay more for some of them, which I, you know, honestly, that, that leads me into a, a little tangent here. I think of, do you have some advice for people on getting good sound for their podcasts? I did a video years ago when I was still doing my tech for lawyer stuff and I did it with my, my headphones in my computer and I was like, Hey, that that’s pretty good sound. I, I like that. And then I got a podcast set up and that sound is trash to me at all. <laugh> so what advice do you have for people for kind of just starting off with, with good sound?
Robert (06:28):
The first step is to throw your blue yetty away or sell it on eBay because that I know it’s big and sexy and you feel like Walter Cronkite. Yeah. But it’s not a good microphone for a hobbyist. Right. Someone who’s just getting started, who doesn’t have a sound studio. I know I say that kind of in jest, but it’s really not a great mic. A lot of people buy it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it’s, it’s not a perfect mic for those kind of sound situations, but what you can do, that’s really, really easy. And you’re gonna end up with some really good sound is a USB microphone. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that plugs right into the side of your computer. That’s dynamic. Don’t worry about what dynamic means. Just make sure when you buy it, it’s called dynamic. Just
Zack (07:02):
Do it. Yeah.
Robert (07:03):
Right. Just do it. It’s dynamic. And that you wear some headphones, preferably some that are gonna go over your ear or some that have that little rubber piece that’s gonna seal in your ear. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because what we’re doing there is we’re ensuring that none of the sound from the speaker you’re listening to is coming out of your headphones mm-hmm <affirmative> and it’s gonna create an echo and that can vary. That can be very difficult to solve sometimes. And so those two things really are all it takes. That’s what a lot of my clients, one of my biggest clients, that’s the exact setup. They use a USB microphone, a USB dynamic microphone. I’ll throw out two mm-hmm <affirmative> that I think are really good. The Sampson Q2 U good microphone. And then the ATR 2100 X, those are very budget level microphones, 60 to a hundred bucks. And then if you wanna up it a little bit and still be in the USB range, the sure. MV seven is a great microphone at around two 20 to two 50.
Zack (07:51):
Okay. Well, and I, I think that, uh, people can, if they don’t remember those exact letters and numbers and all that, you have that information on your website@lopods.com. Right?
Robert (08:02):
Absolutely.
Zack (08:03):
So, yeah, you can just hop onto lawpods.com and you have some information on, on some setups and, and I think a suggestion about six or so, uh, microphones for people to use.
Robert (08:12):
Yeah. We have a few up there and then, you know, to just finish up on that, just really think about having a quiet recording environment. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> try to go in a room that doesn’t have the AC unit right in it, right. Or a cat meowing in it. But past that, you really should be able to use a setup like this in the office at home in Fiji. Like if you have a decent internet connection and a laptop, this setup’s gonna work everywhere and you’re gonna get really good sound that almost no listeners are going to be able to differentiate from what you and I are doing right now. Right.
Zack (08:42):
Right. I think having a good quiet space, you know, if I kind of add my slight 2 cents in there having a good quiet space that has, you know, some, some softness to it, you know?
Robert (08:53):
Sure. Having, you know, having carpet in the room is great. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> having some extra furniture in the room is great. But at the same time, I, you know, I work with lawyers mm-hmm <affirmative> and I have discovered very quickly that the more homework I give them, the more things I say, the less likely they’re going to wanna do any of it. <laugh>. And so I try to keep it, I mean, getting someone to wear headphones sometimes is like a super bad it’s like, do I have to? Um, so yeah, those things are important, but at the end of the day, if you’re using a dynamic microphone, it’s gonna do a lot of that heavy lifting of not letting a ton of background noise in for you.
Zack (09:25):
That’s great advice. Great advice. Well, so once we get past that recording aspect, you know, I I’ve recorded my, my episode. I’ve determined what I want it to be on, and I need to get it out there. Can you kind of give us an idea of what the production process is for a legal podcast? Uh, specifically, I guess.
Robert (09:46):
Sure. So one of the first things that you’re doing, you’re recording that podcast. You are gonna edit that podcast. You wanna clean it up, cut out any awkward pauses, ums, not that trial lawyers or lawyers do that in general, but still, and you know, we’re such eloquent speakers. Oh
Zack (10:00):
Yeah. <laugh>
Robert (10:02):
Clean it up. And it really helps to have some audio branding in the beginning, maybe some professional voiceover mm-hmm <affirmative> in your intro and outro with a soundtrack that really gives it production value. And people go, wow, this is not just somebody sitting in their conference room talking into a terrible microphone. Mm-hmm <affirmative> this is something well produced. These people are some, I mean, that immediately ratchets up that trust factor of, okay, they’re spending time and energy to make this good. And so that audio quality, those little things, editing it, getting tho that audio branding into it is very helpful. And then from there, write some show notes that are helpful for people. Frequently, people will land on a podcast and they will scan the show notes. Mm-hmm <affirmative> before listening to the episode to see if it’s even something that’s gonna cover what they actually want.
Robert (10:44):
So write show notes, timestamp those things. So people can look at things in a really easy way. Scroll them really fast, make it easy to see, put your links in there, make sure that you’re linking out everything you’re discussing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> make sure you’re giving them your contact information. If they’re in a podcast player, make sure they can click one button and call you or click one button and end up on your website, make it really easy for them. And then from there, we like to transcribe everything we do because we put that into podcast players as well. So it could be searchable and a lot of podcast platforms are making it searchable. Now mm-hmm <affirmative> and then we’re gonna use all of that on the website as well. We’re gonna put that player on there. We’re gonna write long form blog post for it.
Robert (11:20):
And then you should also put the transcript on there and link that transcript out as well, with everything that you talked about. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and then from there, I mean, I can go on for a long time, but there’s full length videos that you’re capturing while you’re making the podcast, right. That you edit, put branding on, put on YouTube optimized with keywords mm-hmm <affirmative> and you’re gonna end up getting a lot of additional traffic there. I just saw a, um, numbers released yesterday that said, I think 24% of people want to listen to their podcast on YouTube. So if you’re not putting that podcast out there and the way to do it is put that video out there, right? If you’re not putting it there, you have 24% of people who are wanting to listen, who might not listen if it’s not there mm-hmm <affirmative> so that’s a really good place to put it.
Robert (12:00):
And then from there you take your marketing assets. You pull that podcast apart, turn it into little quote, images, little video snippets with captions on it that has your branding on it, that you’re putting into social media mm-hmm <affirmative> and that’s a really good way to market the podcast. And we kind of discovered that because we were, we ran into a problem where people were launching these amazing podcasts and they were having a hard time getting traction mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that, I mean, as any business that intends to thrive, we have to figure out a way to help them do that. Right. Right. And that’s where those marketing assets really came in handy for us, because we noticed in anybody who has, you know, social media who handles social media, when you go out, a lot of lawyers will record that episode. They’ll go to LinkedIn.
Robert (12:41):
They’ll put that link in the box. And they’ll say we have a new podcast, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> listen. So two things happen there. First it’s a link and social media hates links. They’re gonna suppress it. Links take eyeballs off the platform that’s bad. And so in the event, somebody does see it. What are the odds that they’re gonna press play on that? You know, you’re scrolling through your feed. You’re probably just have some downtime. And you’re like, you see that in your feed. You’re like, you ain’t gonna listen to that podcast. That’s a lot of friction, right? These marketing assets, these video snippets, these quote images are the kind of things that people look at. It’s the kind of things that make people stop and pay attention mm. That they stop scrolling and, and social media keeps up with that. They know how long somebody pauses, right.
Robert (13:20):
On a particular thing. Even if they don’t interact with it, it matters that they stopped and looked at it. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so images with quotes on them. And then these video snippets with the captions on them. And they’ve got a video of the speaker mm-hmm <affirmative> and you’re branding on them. People stop. And they look at them and a couple things are happening there with those videos is you’ve got a title that is compelling. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that your target listener would see and go, Ooh, that, that matters to me. And then it has captions. So they can pause for a second. We’ve all done that we pause is this for me, they’re qualifying themselves. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and maybe it’s not. And they keep going, but they have stopped then. And they’re being branded to either way, right? Either way, they’re getting that branding and they’re actually seeing it.
Robert (13:57):
But what we really like to see happen is they go, wait, that’s actually, for me, they tap the screen. Now they can hear you. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and they watched that 62nd, two minute clip, whatever. And they, I gotta know more about that. And now you’ve turned someone into a listener who, if they’d seen, even if they’d seen that link, the odds of them converting into a listener in that moment are extremely low because you were asking them too much, instead of giving them something that was really low risk to interact with, you were asking them for a really big thing for them to do, and they’re not gonna do that.
Zack (14:27):
Right? Yeah. It’s just a, it’s a bridge too far without knowing what we’re, what we’re getting into.
Robert (14:33):
Right. Come on. It’s like sending me a four minute YouTube video come on.
Zack (14:37):
Right? Right. That’s something I, I think is interesting about this is your approach, certainly. And I think this is a reasonably common approach, but this is content marketing. It is a different way to come at it, but you’ve created content. You’re breaking it apart. And you’re getting the most out of that asset that you possibly could. You’re getting video out of it. You’re getting written content out of it. You’re getting audio content out, out of it. You’re getting it on podcast players. You’re getting it on YouTube. You can put it on your website. You can put it on, you know, it’s going to be searchable via Google, via being, if anybody uses that anymore on Facebook, on LinkedIn, you know, if you do it correctly, I can envision a scenario. And I don’t use TikTok very much, but I can envision a scenario where you could take some of that, cut it up and put it onto TikTok, even if you want it.
Robert (15:27):
And absolutely. And that’s, and that’s part of what we do is when we make those videos, we’re not making them in just a square format. We’re making them in square. We’re making them in landscape. We’re making them in vertical. So then you can post them on stories. You can post them on TikTok mm-hmm <affirmative> and that way you’re getting it. You’re really. And that’s one of the things that we stress is we are maximizing the mileage of the content you exist, right? That you create, you sit down, you talk for 20, 30 minutes. And now that thing turns into thousands and thousands of words on the page with your transcript, your long form blog post, and then all of those pieces of marketing content that you can repurpose AB test and just use some of this is depending on the firm is evergreen mm-hmm <affirmative> you can use this for years mm-hmm
Zack (16:10):
<affirmative>. And even if you can’t, you spent 20 minutes creating this content, you know, and I know as a lawyer, we many lawyers like using dictation devices, you know, and they, they like taking notes by talking. I would personally turn my phone on and talk while I was driving in the car as I was taking notes or something. And this is a, it is a way of getting content in a form that we are very comfortable with just talking.
Robert (16:38):
Yeah. That’s been one of the easier things as well is having focused on lawyers. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I have not had a lot of trouble finding lawyers that are very willing to jump on and talk, right. Especially at, uh, at, uh, litigation firms.
Zack (16:50):
<laugh> well, so let’s talk about that as well. Finding guests for your kind of niche podcast. Do we need to find guests? Do we need to just talk to ourselves, talk out there, talk, add an audience. What’s your take on that?
Robert (17:05):
So I think that comes back to why are you doing it? Okay. Because it really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, but frequently a podcast can be good for a variety of those things. Mm-hmm <affirmative> we have a lot of injury attorneys and they’re thinking a lot about SEO. They’re thinking a lot about the FAQ strategy. What do their clients want to know? What are they searching for? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, they have been writing blogs and creating content for years. They know the kind of things people wanna know. So they’re creating content like that, that people wanna listen to. But a lot of them are also bringing on guests. They’re bringing on different personal injury lawyers in different markets that might not otherwise know them. That might then you have access to their market. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when they share your content, cuz you’re gonna make all that really great content and send it to the guest and they’re gonna wanna share it.
Robert (17:48):
Right. Right. That’s a great thing, you know, with having guests on the podcast and then you can also bring in experts that are guests mm-hmm <affirmative> depending on your practice area, there’s lots of experts that work with you, or they might need to work with your clients after they’re done working with you. Those are really great people to bring on is guests. And then another one that works really well is current events that are tied back to your practice area. One of the firms that I work with was doing a jury misconduct episode and they wanted to explain jury misconduct. And it was, I, I always butcher her name. Is it, is it JLAN Gill lane Maxwell?
Zack (18:23):
I honestly, I I’m, I’m not sure exactly, but I think people listening will know who we’re talking about. Yeah. People
Robert (18:28):
Know. So they did an episode about that and it was by far their best performing episode because PE it was around a subject that people already wanted to understand. And it was very timely. Mm-hmm <affirmative> there was this jury misconduct issue. People wanted to know about it. And just people from all over. When we looked at their analytics, there were people all over the country and some people all over the world listening to this when this is a Southeast firm that is very much trying to market in the Southeast, but they ended up like they had astronomical views on YouTube for this, because that was something people were searching for. They were finding that video and they were like, here’s an explanation. Mm-hmm
Zack (19:01):
<affirmative> well, so Robert, on your website, we’ve got a, a blog post that’s best practices when starting your, your law podcast. And I think you got a lot of good advice there, but I wanna ask you kind of about determining cadence, determining our audiences, you know, like what we’re aiming at, how do we make that determination when we just get started?
Robert (19:23):
Yeah. That’s a, the, the cadence question, I get a lot it’s how frequently should I be doing that? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and we’ve really, we offer one, two or four. And that’s what we tell people. If you’re gonna do it. I think one a month, two, a month, four a month is, is really, you should stay in there somewhere. Mm-hmm <affirmative> now I don’t think there’s any downside to doing more than four a month, but I mean, whew. So that’s a lot <laugh> but if you’re doing it less than one a month, I think you’re not getting the value out of it that you could, you’re not staying relevant. You’re not staying top of mind. You’re not constantly putting out something new and interesting. You’re certainly not taking advantage of current events. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and driving clicks with those. And some firms will say, well, we don’t know if we wanna commit we’ll do you know, a season we’ll do 10 episodes about XYZ subject.
Robert (20:03):
And I think that that’s a really great idea. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because if you wanna just have a section, like if you wanna have 10 things to do after you get a DWI. Yeah. I think that’s great. You make a chunk of content that is specific for a certain thing and you put it here. Here’s where it lives, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> you can always update it. You can always add onto it. And what a lot of my clients will do is they’ll actually just have weekly shows and then they’ll take those and make playlists from them. So they’ll make a playlist mm-hmm <affirmative> over 50 episodes. They might have 10 that matter for this specific subject equity distribution, whatever, you know, and they’ll make a playlist where they have a player that just has those 10 episodes on it. And it’s like, Hey, are you having this problem?
Robert (20:42):
That’s a really good way to promote the podcast as well. Yeah. Cause you can go out and promote it. Are you having this specific problem? Here’s your block of episodes. Mm-hmm <affirmative> instead of like driving ’em to one episode and then hoping they’ll go to the next, you can send them to a page that has a block of episodes that has all those things on it. So I think that’s a really good cadence. It keeps you going, it keeps you in front of people. It keeps you creating content, keeps you from slacking off. I know that’s a hard one. Like if you don’t have a, a specific commitment to it, it can be very hard to return to it once you stop doing it.
Zack (21:09):
And you know, I think that’s a good point. Cause I’ve seen a lot when we started with the pandemic, I think a lot of people started experimenting with, you know, different things that they were doing in their office. And we saw a lot of podcasts get started up and we’ve seen a lot of them. We we’ve seen a lot of them fall off because people didn’t have the, the kind of rails on saying, Hey, you need to do this every month or you need to do this once a week or, or something like that. So I think there’s a lot of value in having specific cadence that you have to stick to.
Robert (21:39):
Right? Yeah. It’s I mean, you, you certainly I’ll tell you the pandemic was terrible in general, but our business exploded in that moment. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and a lot of production houses as well because people had this extra time, they couldn’t go anywhere. They had all this budget that was supposed to be for live events for business development. And so a lot of people started podcast and you’re right. A lot of them were not so great, but a lot of amazing shows came outta that moment as well. Right. That I think otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Right. Because people showed up and they went so many people like we don’t lose clients. It’s incredible. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I I’d like to think it’s because we’re so amazing. Right. But at the same time, it’s a medium that once people get onto, and especially if they’re working with somebody who, where they just show up and do the talking and they hang up and they’re done, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, it’s so easy. And they get all that content from it being so easy. And so that was it. It was a moment that allowed podcasting to thrive in a way. I don’t know that it otherwise would have mm-hmm
Zack (22:32):
<affirmative> well, let let’s, let’s kind of talk about the easy of this with law pods. Obviously somebody can go out, they buy a microphone, they buy a, you know, recorder and they can do this and they can figure out a way to get it up on apple podcasts and all that stuff. But there are companies out there like law pods specifically that will help people get that with that production process. So I’d like to ask, what’s it like working with lo pods? What is it that you guys are, are able to do for people?
Robert (23:03):
Um, I hear it’s amazing. And, um, and, and I, and I say that, um, not tongue in cheek at all, because we do a lot of testimonials with our lawyers. Um, we just had Lizza GOIA from McGuire woods, give us a phenomenally glowing testimonial that we’re putting on social media, because it’s the experience. And it just tells people, look how great we are. Right, right. That’s always helpful. But our clients, I said it a moment ago, they stick with us because they like us. But what we really offer to people is the easy button really? Right. Just to steal someone else’s marketing <laugh> and it’s, it’s really everything from the beginning, from strategy from helping you think about why are you doing this? Mm-hmm <affirmative> because some people will show up. And the idea is, I think a podcast will be cool and that’s the fully baked idea.
Robert (23:43):
Right. Okay. Yeah. And so we’re thinking, okay, who is your target market? You know, we don’t wanna, if you have five different practice areas, we don’t wanna cram all of those into one feed because that’s not a good listener experience at all. So we wanna be thinking, is there a specific area where this will work better? And it’s usually the area in the firm that is doing the most revenue. That’s the one we wanna double down on. Right. We’re spending the most SEO there. We want to, you know, pour the gas on the fire there. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so we, we really wanna think strategy. We wanna talk to the SEO team. We wanna think about what are we making episodes about. We wanna make sure that we are preparing those episodes correctly, that we’re getting those show notes drafted correctly. And then we’re also gonna, we’re doing your cover art. We’re gonna make something with your branding. That looks really good on the small screen. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, that’s something we have to think about. Yeah. Cause you see that done wrong a lot is there’s like all these tiny subtitles and you’re like, come on, man.
Zack (24:31):
Yep. Yep. I can’t read that on my, on my phone. Absolutely.
Robert (24:34):
Yeah. And then professional voiceover actors, like we only work with people who are professional voice actors. These are people that are doing Nissan that are doing PlayStation commercials. We just lost one of our favorites to Disney. He’s doing all these Marvel trailers now <laugh> and so this guy who you hear doing Marvel trailers, mm-hmm <affirmative> does a bunch of our clients’ intros and outros. Right. It’s amazing. So it’s gonna sound good. It’s gonna be really, it’s gonna be really cool from there. You know, after we get it launched to make sure it’s on all the platforms, we work at your web developer to make sure it’s on your website and that it looks good. You’re using best practices there. But then when the episode comes okay, now that we made it and it looks cool. Now what? So we’re gonna have a calendar link for you.
Robert (25:12):
You go to that calendar, you’re gonna find a time that works for you and your guest. You’re gonna book it. You’re gonna put in their email, everyone’s gonna get an automated email. And from there you just click on the link. You show up, you talk, you hang up. That’s the end of it. And for a lot of our attorneys, especially our trial attorneys, that’s the last they ever see it mm-hmm <affirmative> because they don’t wanna listen to it after we edit it <laugh> they don’t wanna look at anything they’re done. They showed up. Right. They did their part. You go do the rest and we’re happy to.
Zack (25:37):
Right. Right. Yeah. And that, and that’s about as easy as it can get, you know, showing up and, and going, you’ve got somebody doing the, the production. You’ve got somebody doing the editing. You’ve got, you know, I can attest it is nice. Just showing up to the meetings, recording. And uh, you know, it would be nice if somebody else had my recording, I have to send it off, you know? Right. Um, but yeah, that, that’s a great way to do it.
Robert (25:59):
And yeah, to go back to earlier, I had said, if you give ’em too much homework, we learn that lesson. Mm-hmm <affirmative> every time that we made it, even a little bit of friction, we ran into trouble. They’d slow down. They wouldn’t get things done on time. And so we figured, like, we really thought a lot about how can we make this so, so, so easy. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that people would feel silly, just not doing it. It’s like, well, this commitment is so small. A number of ’em will book four episodes in a two hour block and they’re done for the month.
Zack (26:23):
Yes. That’s another thing I think people don’t think about is that you can record these things all at the same time as well. And so yeah, you can kind of come in, use a Friday afternoon, knock ’em out and you’re good for a while. Absolutely. Right. Well, Robert, I really appreciate the information on this. I could talk to you for a while about podcasting and kind of all the strategy that goes on behind this, but you guys have a lot of information on lo pods.com and if they want to contact you guys, um, they can go to lawpods.com and I think they can get a free assessment or, you know, talk to you guys about what they can be doing to get started with the podcast, right?
Robert (27:02):
Yeah, absolutely. For anybody who doesn’t have a podcast, you can book a meeting and we can talk, you know, just a quick strategy session to discuss how it might be helpful if it’s gonna be helpful, if your firm’s the right kind of firm that can benefit mm-hmm <affirmative>. But also if you already have a podcast and you want help, we’re gonna do a free audit. We’re going to go through that podcast and we’re gonna listen to it. We’re going to look at like, where is it on the web? Is it actually where it needs to be? Is it showing up on your website? Right. What are the things that you can be doing? And, you know, if I can sound like a car commercial, no obligation, you know, <laugh> the success of every legal podcast is our success. So we, you know, that’s the benefit of being so passionate about what you do. Mm-hmm <affirmative> is I would get up and do this if there was a lot less money in it.
Zack (27:43):
<laugh> right, right. You know? Well, fantastic. Uh, I really appreciate you, uh, giving our guests, our, our listeners, some information on this and, uh, yeah. Thanks ring with me.
Robert (27:53):
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Announcer (27:57):
The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First. If you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab to schedule a 10 minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you.
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