Content creation. Websites design and development. SEO. Google Analytics. Social Media. Podcasts. MarTech. We covered a lot this year. As 2022 comes to a close, LISI’s Director of Client Success + Marketing, Taryn Elliott, and Legal Writer + Content Editor, Ann Caskey, share three things they learned in 2022, as well as what they are embracing for 2023.

Taryn:

Welcome everyone to this week’s Three Things. I’m Taryn Elliot, the Director of Client Success and Marketing at LISI and I am joined today by Ann Caskey, the Legal Content Writer + Editor at LISI. Welcome, Ann.

Ann:

Hey Taryn, how are you?

Taryn:

I’m good, how are you?

Ann:

Doing fine. Glad to be at the end of the week. Hurrah for the weekend.

Taryn:

Exactly. We’re at the end of the week. We’re getting ready for the weekend, but we are also at the end of the year, which I know we were talking in the green room before, this is a very busy time for everybody, so lots to look forward to, but lots to do.

Ann:

Yes, I know we’ve got a lot going on with holiday decorations, holiday cards at work and at home.

Taryn:

Yes, we do for both us and for our clients. So I will say from a marketing and creative perspective, this is one of my favorite times of year because I enjoy working not just on the LISI holiday card but on our client holiday cards. I know a lot of our team feels that energy around getting to create something a little bit different and a little bit away from all of the normal marketing that we’re doing as we create holiday cards and go into year-end marketing.

Ann:

Yeah, I’m excited for the LISI holiday card. I got a sneak peek and I’m ready for everyone to see it.

Taryn:

Yes, I know, that is what I’m working on later this afternoon. But yeah, I’m very excited about that. But that also means since we’re at the end of the year and starting our year-end marketing before we kick off all of our plans for 2023, that today’s three things are, you know, it’s always three things that we’ve learned and this is three things that we’ve learned this year. So kind of a little summary, three of the biggest things between Ann and I that we wanted to share with all of you that are kind of new things that we picked up this year. 

So I will go ahead and jump right into this. Something that was really, really popular both in our internal discussions and we got a lot of feedback from clients both by the content they were consuming, but also a lot of questions was about Google Analytics, moving from Google Analytics Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4. A lot of questions about when to make the move, when to start transitioning. The answer to that generally is sooner rather than later. So you are ready to go because they are sunsetting the older version, the universal analytics version or UA version of Google Analytics on July 1st of 2023. 

So they announced that in March of this year. Everybody has plenty of time to prepare for that, but we’re having those conversations now so that way when July 1st of next year hits, we are good to go. Everybody is ready. Like I said, we are happy to discuss one on one what’s right for everybody, but generally, we’ve been recommending that as soon as you can make the transition the better. So that way everything can be set. But you might be wondering what we’re gonna get with Google Analytics 4. So from everything we’ve been reading and everything we’ve been finding out, Google Analytics 4 is gonna be smarter. It really is working to deliver actionable insights without a lot of configuration for just the lay users. 

So I know sometimes that’s something even I struggle with is how do we use Google Analytics in a way that’s useful to us when you have to create individualized reports or segmenting. And so Google Analytics 4 should be a lot easier to get all your data in a way that you can use and make decisions on. And one of the things that’s really exciting is it’ll be across platforms. So if you have a website and an app, Google Analytics 4 will pull all of that information into one place. And for marketers across the board, one of the things that we are also looking forward to is that it’ll be easier to stay in compliance with GDPR or any of the myriad of laws that are coming up about how you can hold consumers or clients private information. And when you have to hold it, when you have to release it, how you can use it, how you have to protect that. 

The new Google Analytics 4 will let you control privacy down to the country level, which will make that a little bit easier. Right now a lot of people just adopt the most restrictive standard because they have to pick one. So I know personally I’m really looking forward to that. Google will also change how they measure interactions with your website. So currently one session could include multiple interactions such as an e-commerce transaction or a page view. All of those are known as hits. And so one session can have multiple hits. Moving forward, they’ll still track everything you’re doing, but they’ll track that session data into one broad interaction. So that way you will know in this one event, this one time somebody was on there, this is all of the things that Taryn did when she was visiting your website. 

This information coupled with everything else that you’re gonna get is gonna give you a much fuller picture of what action each individual took on your website to hopefully convert into a prospect, a lead, a client, whatever it is you’re trying to get them to. And also understanding what their progression was to doing that. So having more data like this in an easy-to-read way will allow us to make more meaningful marketing decisions as we are moving into our 2023 plans. And then while we’re adjusting what’s going on as well, you know, nothing’s ever set it and forget it in the world of marketing, you’re always constantly having to change things. 

One of the other things that I really like is that it’s gonna make segmenting easier because you can start tagging in Google Analytics 4 in a way that you’ve never been able to. So creating audiences and then segmenting those audiences, again, it’ll just make a very holistic picture of what you can do on your websites, in your apps. In the whole, the whole marketing sphere will be a little bit smaller. So for us, Google Analytics 4 is a pretty big deal and something that we’re definitely staying up on and learning more about. If you have questions, there is a blog post on our website about getting Google Analytics. Well, like all the steps you need to take to get Google Analytics 4 set up on your website. So make sure you check that out. Our resident Google analytics expert, Dan Martin, has been busy compiling that post and there will be more coming in the next year.

Ann:

So I was gonna ask, you mentioned the transition, is it a huge, big, scary task to transition to Google Analytics 4 like in the realm of one button click to redesigning your website? You know, is it something to be scared of or what…

Taryn:

It’s definitely somewhere in between there, It’s definitely more than a one-button click. I think we have it down to five steps. So none of them are super complicated. You know, the average person can just go through and do it. But I do also recommend understanding a little bit of what the transition means and what data you’re collecting, what data you may or may not be collecting moving forward. So doing a tiny bit of research to understand whether that’s reaching out to us and asking some questions or looking online can go a long way. But yeah, in the scheme of things, it’s very easy to set up Google Analytics 4 on your website and you can do that now. You don’t need to wait until next year.

Ann:

June 30th.

Taryn:

Yes, exactly. I highly recommend you don’t wait until June 30th and because they’ll be reporting data a little bit differently, the earlier you start, you’re that much sooner to having year over year data, which I know sometimes can be difficult when you’re transitioning, how you keep or report your analytics data. So the sooner you transition, the sooner you will have an apples-to-apples comparison moving forward.

Ann:

I love the feature you mentioned about selecting your country cause I know Europe and the European countries have had such restrictive privacy regulations that America’s just not there with that. And it does make it more difficult on American websites, you know?

Taryn:

Yes. And as a marketer, once you even have a little bit of a client or a potential client in Europe, you know that that changes everything. So I know a lot of marketers just either walk the line or take the stance that, just better to do what needs to be done in the most restrictive place. But one of the drawbacks is you might be losing opportunities in somewhere that is less restrictive. So this will allow you to at least, at least have that conversation about what makes the most sense for your marketing. So moving on to the second thing we learned, I will turn it over to you Ann.

Ann:

Sure. Well, my big focus this year was on the ethics of attorney advertising and everything to do with that as it relates to our website redesign, our blogging, and just all of the marketing work that we help people with. It had come up quite a bit just in my general work with LISI last year. We’d get a red flag here or a question from a client about the things they could and couldn’t say or we’d be redesigning a website and something would jump out at us that a law firm had said and didn’t realize it was in breach of their state ethics rules. So it inspired me to learn a bit more about it this year. And obviously, each state has their own set of rules. 

So while we can get a general overview when you’re looking at your own state, you have to look at the states in which you practice, so if we do get a question from a client, we have to be very specific. Like where, what state are we dealing with here? Are we talking about Pennsylvania, are we talking about New Jersey? And in this internet age of course, we’re often talking about many states and many of our clients are in different states and are expanding into different states. 

So some of the interesting things that we’ve come across where, one of my little favorite stories was when we’d get questions about images. Some clients wanted to have, were putting the imagery on their website and there was an issue of well is this a stock photo or is this a photo of an attorney? And in their state they couldn’t use stock photos and imply that that was an attorney. And that’s something that comes up in many websites because we just pull some great photos. But it’s misleading in many states to imply that these are attorneys in your photos or that these are maybe clients in your photos. And the big thing for attorney ethics is that you don’t want anything to be misleading. And that includes your images, that includes all your statements, that includes your blogging. You cannot be deceptive, which I think most attorneys are aware of. But it’s the finer details in each state that trip people up. 

Again on images, one of my favorite stories was an attorney, a case out in California of an attorney who photoshopped herself into photos with celebrities. And so she had on her website, she had herself on photos with past presidents, multiple past presidents from both sides of the aisle. She didn’t mind. My favorite one was she photoshopped herself into that famous selfie from the Oscars with Ellen and I think Julia Roberts is in there, Bradley Cooper I think is in there. She had put herself in that and put it on her website and she was pulled up by the California Bar, disciplined and I believe she’s no longer an attorney for that and other violations, that wasn’t the only thing. But she wanted to get some exposure and get some clients by using these images in her advertising. I’ve also learned in researching this and in dealing with some real-world issues that clients have that attorney ethics are not equal in every state. Some bars are much more picky than others, both in the rules that they put out there and in the way that they enforce them. 

Florida has really caught my eye both cause we have clients down there who practice down there and because their rules are incredibly detailed for attorney advertising. We had one mailout that we helped with and the Florida rules required a specific line at the start of the letter. So we put Dear Client and that was our first sentence in the letter and it was rejected cause it wasn’t the first sentence at the top of the letter. There was a header with whatever, the firm’s name. And there was the address and there was the date and there was the introductory Dear Client. And so that was rejected because it was the first sentence of the body of our letter, but not the first sentence on the piece of paper. 

So they really are sticklers down there and you don’t want to cross them. You can end up with fines, you can end up with suspensions, you can end up with public reprimands. It’s just not a good look. Not a good look at all. And we discussed, I know recently on one of our LISI workshops, we were talking about attorney ethics and some of us talked about whether or not, like how does it really come up in the real world? Who cares? Who’s looking at it? Who’s really gonna raise the issue? And the obvious one was disgruntled clients. You know if you have promised to never send a bill or that this case will be free to you, no out-of-pocket costs and then the client loses and you do send them a bill, you know that client may go to the bar in your state and report you for an ethics violation for promising something that you’re not going to deliver on. 

And then we did have actually an instance of a competitor reporting a law firm to the state bar for things on their website that they alleged were violations. So you do have to be watchful. There are competitors out there who will take the opportunity to bring you down I suppose. So I think there’s a lot to talk about in ethics, which obviously we’re not gonna cover everything here. It’s very specific to the client, it’s very specific to the state in which you’re in, but it’s something that we need to be aware of and both in websites and in old style marketing and very, very much on social media, which is, that’s gonna be my goal for next year, is to learn even more about the ethics of social media and what you’re posting out there on Facebook or Instagram. What clients are posting in response to your posts, what reviews, negative reviews that may be out there, and how you handle them. And that whole side of things is very new and the states haven’t caught up to it. And so I think that’s maybe this time next year I’ll be here talking about that. I hope so.

Taryn:

I hope so too. One of the things I failed to mention is that Ann is also a licensed attorney. We have a few licensed attorneys on staff, but I know I was really thankful when you took this on both because you’re an attorney and you have that background, but because I do think it’s really important to understand the rules around attorney advertising for each jurisdiction in which you practice. And I think a lot of attorneys and legal marketers know that, but I also think that there’s just a lot of confusion or it’s not necessarily an area with the myriad of other things that we have going on, whether we’re a practicing attorney or we are doing legal marketing, you know, sometimes it falls by the wayside. 

And for me, what you said at the end really resonated because I think the rules are pretty clear if you are sending letters to potential clients. But it gets really murky as you’re trying to take advertising rules that were written 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago, however long ago they were written, and so much has changed especially with digital marketing that a lot of it is very different. Like for instance, I was talking to our intern today about the Yellow Pages and I was telling her that when I started my, both when I started my professional services marketing career and even when I started working in law firms, Yellow Pages advertising was a big part of the marketing mix. And were you advertising? Was your listing correct? You know, there were a lot of moving parts. It took up a lot of time and it’s funny, I laughed because we’re so far away from that now and it’s been replaced with other things. But you’ll find a lot of attorney advertising rules are very clear on how you can advertise in the Yellow Pages book. And now when you’re transitioning that to Google organic search or paid search, it’s really very different. And sometimes it can be confusing to interpret those rules for.

Ann:

And it can be difficult as well, There’s a real generational difference in lawyers I think when it comes to advertising because there was no attorney advertising before the seventies. So if you’re dealing with an older old school lawyer who just thinks it’s uncouth to advertise at all, then you know, it’s a very different approach to some of the younger generational lawyers who are very used to advertising and they’re more accustomed to the kind of advertising that could cross the line, that is really out there and making big statements like, I’m the best, I’m the only, things that you can’t say. And I find that now it that’s just more risky with the younger generations who are more accustomed to all the advertising that we’re hit with on TV, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook, everywhere, you know?

Taryn:

Yep. And even the last couple years, I know that there have been some instances that have come up that aren’t so much related to attorney advertising, but where the attorney lives versus where they practice. Or how you are sharing that information and a lot of that’s a result of the work from home work from anywhere ethos that came out of Covid and people starting to do that more. And that’s, I think it’s a good example of how this is again, like I said earlier, there’s never a set it and forget it and you have to constantly be thinking how is what I’m doing fitting in with these rules that may or may not have been written with this in mind? Because all it takes is one person to maliciously or not maliciously bring it to the attention of the disciplinary board and then all of a sudden, you’re spending a lot of time working through an issue that might not have been an issue if you’d just made a couple tweaks.

Ann:

Exactly. And that can be expensive and time-consuming and I think the bars are usually pretty good about giving you the opportunity to fix things, but who wants to deal with that in the first place.

Taryn:

Exactly. Exactly. Well if you have more questions on this topic, Ann has written a blog post, Five Things to Consider When Advertising Attorney Awards, that you can find on our website as well as hopefully we will get a couple more blog posts from Ann on this topic moving into 2023. I know it’s something that we as an organization feel like it’s important to know and I know it’s something that, as Ann has said, she’s dedicated to keeping up on and getting more information out to everyone. 

So moving on to our third thing that we learned this year is podcasting. For those of you who, this is not your first Three Things, you will know that LISI has started a podcast adventure this week and we, not this week, I’m sorry, LISI has started a podcast adventure this year. Not only did we launch a podcast for ourself, we launched podcasts for clients as well. And so this has been a learning experience for us in every sense of the word. And it’s also been a really, really positive experience. So you will see LISI with our “All the Things” platform for our podcast. We take all of our livestreams, so Three Things, News + Views + To Do’s, and Ask Me Anything. And we put all of those in podcast format because we understand that sometimes being at your computer at 12:30 on a Friday to catch us live is not possible. 

Sometimes you need to take that time to hear what we have to say, catch up on what’s new in legal marketing as you are picking your kids up from school or going for a run or driving to see your in-laws for Christmas, whatever it is we’re trying to be wherever we need to be for everybody. And then we also started a brand new format called, One More Thing, which we put out once a month only in podcast format. And that’s just an opportunity for us to catch up with people we know in the legal industry about that one more thing they want to share. And I mentioned all of this because one of the things we learned in doing the podcasting is to have a plan. And we very much have a plan for who our audience is, how they might wanna take in the information, the format they want it in, and the topics. 

So if you’re going to launch a podcast, one of the first things that I would do is, one of the first things I would say is sit down and think about that. Who are you trying to reach? What are their lives like? How can you best do that? What do you wanna talk about? And what are some topics? Like, don’t just be like, yes, I have an idea for this one thing that we’re gonna talk about and we’re gonna do that in January 2023. Cool. Because February’s gonna roll around and you’re gonna be like, okay, now what? So I generally recommend if you can do the first six episodes, that’s really helpful, with an idea of how you’re gonna fill in the rest of them. 

One of the things to think about is, is this gonna be once a week, once a month, every other week? Are you gonna do eight episodes and then take an eight-week break? There’s a lot of different options about how to do your podcast. So figure out what works for you and then move forward with the planning of the topics. And part of the planning of the topics that we’ve found really valuable is really thinking about the guests that you wanna have on your podcast. So sometimes our podcast is just our internal team because it’s something that we want to share and it’s right for the topic we’ve chosen, but we’ve also had a lot of success, as have our clients, with picking the right guests to have on the podcast. 

And one of the things I love about having outside guests is that they bring a different perspective and they bring kind of a different way of thinking to what you’re sharing with your audience. Because as knowledgeable as you might be about a topic, there’s always somebody else who has something more to add to that. And oh, another bonus is that by having guests on your podcast that might be outside of your organization, you’re broadening your marketing reach, which is one of the things that you need to consider when thinking about podcasting is how are you gonna market your podcasts? You know, getting it up on a platform like SoundCloud or Libsyn that will push it out to all the podcasting platforms is great, but it still needs to be supported by marketing. Are you going to put it on your website? Are you going to send it out in an email? Are you going to put it on social media? If you’re gonna do those things, how often are you gonna do it? How far in advance? How far afterward? 

All of those things need to be talked about and considered when putting together your podcast plan so that way you know exactly what to do. And if you do a little bit of planning upfront, it makes it a lot easier to just plug and play as you go along. And related to that is creating assets. Your podcast should have a name, it should have a theme, it should have a general brand, a look, and feel, a color scheme, images that you’re using, fonts that you’re using, spending a little bit of time before you launch. Planning all of that out makes it a lot easier once you do launch to change the titles. 

You’ll notice for all of our podcasts, everything has the same background, it has the same general look and then we swap out the information as appropriate for that episode. We have loved doing a podcast and one of the things that I say to people is that it’s not gonna be perfect the day you launch it, but you will tweak it as you go, and eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re like, yes, this is exactly what it is, this is what it should be. Again, it’s never set it and forget it. You’ll keep tweaking it as you go, but don’t feel like it has to be perfect the first day. Get it to really good, get it to what you’re comfortable with and launch it. Cause if you wait for it to be perfect, you generally end up waiting a long time. We’ve loved doing this, we’ve loved doing this for clients. We will keep doing this. 

And if you are ready to get started with podcasting, we do have a Five Tips for Starting your Firm’s Podcast Adventure article on our website written by Robyn Addis, who has been with us every step of the way as LISI has launched their podcast this year. Plus you can check us out on any of your podcasting platforms.

Ann:

Would you say, Taryn, there’s an optimal podcast length? Do I have to get on there for an hour if I wanna launch a podcast? Or can I, is 10, 15 minutes a good start?

Taryn:

I would say that very much falls under who’s your target audience? What are you trying to accomplish? What topics are you discussing? I know some podcasts where the whole point is that it’s 10 minutes, you’re in and out and that is what they wanna share. Other podcasts, it’s an hour to an hour and a half because it’s a deep dive into one topic. You know, my son listens to a podcast that’s like everything you need to know about whatever the topic is. And those are a very deep dive into everything about that topic. 

So a 10-minute podcast isn’t going to work for that format. It needs to be closer to an hour I think. Whereas some people are like, you know what, I want them in and out and I’m gonna put out a bunch of 10-minute podcasts and other podcasts, it varies. You know, I always say our podcasts have a goal length, but as long as we’re having a good conversation, let’s keep going. So sometimes the answer is the length that you produce for your podcast is the length that you’ll actually execute on or the length that needs to be there for the topic that you want to address. Some topics you have might be really short, there’s not a lot to say about it. Other topics, you’re like, you know what, I need to make three episodes about this.

Ann:

Yeah, I feel like the consistent message is get started.

Taryn:

Yes. 

Ann:

Plan and get started. Just try it.

Taryn:

Exactly. Like if you’re gonna do a podcast, exactly, plan, think it through, make sure that you have the bandwidth to commit to it. But then just, just jump in. You’ll get there.

Ann:

Love it.

Taryn:

Well, speaking of time, I definitely try to keep our livestreams and our podcasts to 30 minutes or less if we can. And we are inching toward that 30-minute mark. So Ann, thank you so much for joining me today on the Three Things livestream.

Ann:

It’s a pleasure.

Taryn:

I’ve enjoyed doing this with you. Next week LISI will be back with a special holiday-themed Ask Me Anything. So 12:30 Eastern time on our LISI livestream. Check that out. It will be, like I said, special holiday Ask Me Anything. You can always find our livestreams on LinkedIn, you can find them on our website and all of our livestreams and our podcasts are on all the podcast platforms. So check it out and have a great day. Thanks, everybody.