Latest / UnF*ck Your Legal Marketing / The 4 Ps Framework That Turns Social Media Into Your Best Client Magnet with Julie Leffler
Transcript
- Gary Johnson: So today's episode is gonna be a good one, especially if you've ever felt stuck trying to figure out what to post, how to show up, or why your content just isn't landing. And I'm joined by my friend Julie Leffler, who is the founder of Big Hype Marketing. And we're gonna get into what actually works when it comes to content, especially for attorneys who tend to overthink. Over edit and frankly blend in. And we're going to talk about her framework, the four P's, on how to build content that actually reflects who you are and why playing it safe is usually the fastest way to get ignored. If you've ever, ever been posting but not seeing traction, or you know you should be showing up more, but you keep on putting it off, or You are afraid of posting, this one is going to be for you. So welcome, Julie, to Unfuck Your Legal Marketing. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about getting into this. So let's start with your four Ps framework, which is purpose, promise, position, and personality. What is this? And can you break that down in a way that attorneys can actually apply it? Yeah. Well, let's first take a step back. And I wanna say that whether you're an attorney or whatever other job or service or product that you have, the most important thing to know about social media is that we are trying to build relationships with our followers or our potential followers with our and our referral network, like all these people. We're building relationships. So in order to do that, one of the things that I think is most important to marketing is your branding and in social media or anything, your website, anything in particular, there's there's certain messaging that we create, but the most important thing are those four P's. So your purpose is your why. We hear a lot people saying like, what's your why? But really what that is is your purpose statement and why you exist beyond just doing the law that you that you are specialize in. So like why do you get it why did you get into this type of law? What gets you up in the morning and gets you excited about going to fight against you know, the other person, the people suing you, your client, or fight on behalf of your client, or write a contract or whatever. What gets you up in the morning? Why do you exist? So that's your purpose. Your position is what sets you apart from your competitors. So in law, there's a million attorneys who do the exact same thing. So what makes you different at doing what you do? How do you do what you do differently than everyone else? That's your position statement. And it's super important. And it doesn't need to be something like elaborate. It could just be something like, hey, I've got that really like hand holding approach and da-da-da-da. Or it's that I have this many years experience and I've experienced like these types of specific cases. And that's why that I'm more valuable to you than another attorney. Things like that. But being really clear about what is it that sets you apart. Yeah. The third your promise is like what your clients can expect to experience every time they interact with you or your brand. So that's kind of like I promise to have like full transparency in the things that I say. Or maybe it's like there's different attorneys, like some are really like cutthroat and like really direct and and serious and like aggressive. And then other people are more like compassionate not not that the other compassionate, but just like more like no they're not. They're not sympathetic. They're talk they're talking to their clients in more of like a handholding ty type of way. So like what what type of experience are you promising that you're going to provide on an emotional So real quick on that, Julie. ⁓ So you're not saying to expect that, you know, we're gonna work this many hours on your case. We're going to be drafting these proposals or contracts. We're gonna You're talking about what can they expect from you as a human being and a professional of like you were saying is when we work together, you're gonna know that I'm like you had said, compassionate. Like an estate planning attorney. That's a great example of compassion. Yeah. Somebody that really understands their workings on and you can expect I'm gonna pull out all your life goals so that we can formulate something for that, as opposed to a litigator who is you can expect I'm gonna fight like can hell for you. And I am going to go to bat. Is that that what you're kind of meaning? So on an emotional level, not like here's the five tasks I'm gonna do, but more like Yes. I love that on an emotional level. For an estate up an estate planning attorney, maybe they are more aggressive for what you know, with financials or something. Or maybe I just spoke to somebody who was like, ⁓ no, we're like really the only one who like dives in and investigates. We go beyond like the typical services and we investigate like backtrack like who owns properties from the like years and years like historical yeah like I don't know they dig deeper. They're like a sleuth. Yeah like a that's not Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, like they're the other they're the diggers. So like that's something. Yeah. So yeah like diggers. Yeah they dig Is that really a word? Diggers? I like that. They dig deep into your history so that you don't have to un dig out your mother out of their cave. Like a like a private investigator. Yeah. So that's kind of your promise. It like what is that one thing you people can expect from you on an emotional level when they work with you? Yeah. So that's your promise. Yep. And then lastly, your personality. And this one is super important for social media specifically. It's important for your branding and for your website and your other advertising. But for social media as an attorney, I assume some attorneys think that they have to can they have to be serious. Or that on because it's social media, you have to like be ridiculous and you don't have to be those ends of the spectrums. You can find your personality and infuse that into the content that you're creating. So for example, like for our entertainment attorney that we worked with, she we created this like martini, like after hours martini bit that she I remember that. Yeah. So we so it wasn't like silly really, but we did like this nighttime like after dark, like tips from an entertainment attorney and she was drinking a martini and just talking about her her ⁓ just different tips and stuff. And that just like made it more eye-catching. It was energy she's an entertainment attorney. So we got to be like a little shticky with that. But it wasn't like ridiculous. Like we weren't having her be like this business. Yeah. Like we weren't doing TikToks, dances and things like that. But we were creating something that's interesting and memorable. Yeah. For our IP attorney We did like a side by side where he was talking to himself about different ⁓ patents. So we did like the super soaker, which was a patent or the he that guy didn't apply for a patent and he lost all the money in the super soaker deal. So we had like this conversation. So he's like interviewing himself like on a case study aspect. Yeah. And he's like, Can you believe we guy didn't have a patent? ⁓ my god, he lost so much money like having this debate about the super soaker. So again, like we're not Being ridiculous. I mean it's silly, but it's not like uncomfortable silly. He's talking about his expertise in a way that feels comfortable for him. Yeah. And so how do you typically get that out of them? Because I know that so many attorneys are so reserved, right? And they're like, like you had said, they're they're like, ⁓ God, I gotta be serious. And and when you hit record, they become a different person. Yeah. They're like, because they're kinda fun then all of a sudden they're like God, I don't want to do to, you know, and ⁓ like I just spoke to one of your clients the other day, and she says that when you hit record, her like blood pressure goes up, her heart rate goes up, and then and it's like, why? Like what, you know, what so how do you bring that that personality out of them, especially if you know deep down they've got a great personality, but they're not willing to show it. for, you know, lots of different reasons. Yeah, it's it's so funny because as attorneys, like attorneys are so well spoken, articulate, of mo of the litigators stand up in court and have to do this performance, but yet when you turn the camera on, it they can't do that. They don't have that same yes. Like confidence, which is just so funny. I mean, it does take time when somebody works with us, we're coaching them, we're cheering them on, we're helping them. ⁓ with the inflections in their voices. So a couple tips are number one, we you can depending on how well you can edit, you can break down your sentences into sentence by sentence. And that kind of helps our clients. So we'll be like, or like two sentences at a time so that they can like focus on what they're saying instead of just like reading, reading, reading off a telepromp. So that kind of helps. If you're filming on your phone, I recommend using the edits app, which is integrates with Instagram, but you can download and put the content on other platforms. Okay. And that allows you to have a teleprompter on the screen and you're watching yourself while you're doing it. So watching yourself helps you see how your facial responses are and how and you're you're kind of like you're seeing how terrible you look. If you're so you gotta like punch it up. So I think that helps too. Like seeing your is super helpful in. Yeah. And and you know what? One of the things that I see a lot of with attorneys that are doing their videos where, you know, they are either holding it or it's always on the phone. And they have a monotone face. And their face doesn't match on the content, nor does it match their voice inflections. And They're not smiling, you know, or being like, you know, but but they just do this. And then you can tell, holy shit, you're fucking reading a teleprompter. Like, yeah. We can tell you are, and it's not the eyes. It's like right here. That they're like, and I'm like, just like you had said. I love that word. Punch it up. Yeah. So if you're listening to this, punch it up. Look at your face and and be like, and and do an outrageous one, right? Yeah. Overdo it. Overdo it. So going back to the four P's, because think we skipped the point of the four Ps. Yeah. Like of course we did. We went. No, we were just talking about your personality. So that was kind of like the wrap up the personality. The reason why those four things are important is because every kind of every type of content that you create should address one of those four Ps, or at least one of those four Ps should be incorporated into your content. And that's going to make it more interesting. So if you're focusing on your Purpose, why you exist, and you're including your personality, that is create that will hopefully communicate something interesting to your potential viewer. So that is why those four things are important. So when you're creating content, you want to communicate your purpose, communicate your position, why you're different from your competitors, communicate what you promise, and/or include your personality. And your personality alone can show in those other three. P's are when you see people being a little silly just to be silly, then that's your personality too. But people want to see that human side of you. And this is really important. And why we just why I think AI cannot completely replace social media. AI, the like going back to what I said at the beginning, social media is about building relationships. And when we use too much AI, that to feed that. Counteracts building relationships. You can't build relationships with robots. We just can't. So we've got to be coming up, we've got to be showing up on social media, being ourselves and being authentic, showing our personalities, showing how we're different, not using AI generated photos or videos to create content because that's going to defeat the purpose. So when you're Thinking about like, ⁓ my God, I look stupid, or we don't want to sound monotone, but if you're like, ⁓ my God, I look silly, that's actually gonna help you connect with your potential client and or referral source better than being so matter of fact and legal and full of jargon and monotone. Yeah, totally true. Because it creates this expectation of what can I expect by working with you? Because if your true personality comes out and somebody's like, I don't freaking like that. They're never gonna like you. Which is okay because you would just waste so much time, which is the biggest asset attorneys have is their time. So it's okay. You don't want to be everything to everybody because you will be nothing to nobody, right? But then they go, When I meet you one on one or on Zoom, you know, they go, I know what Julie is. Like I already know I know as opposed to, wait, she wasn't this way. She was You know, whatever, you know. So you have to be true to your own personality, which I think is brilliant. Exactly. And there's back in the day, I don't know when, and I don't know the exact source or or statistics, but back in the day, you used to have to have like I think it was like five points of contact before you make the sale. Like you had to Yes. Do you know this thing or like this statistic? Yep. Now it's like twenty points of connection before making the sale. And social media serves as those points of contact. Like you said, when you're showing up on social media, people are getting to know you. They feel like they have a relationship with you, like they understand. And going back to those four Ps, they understand why you do what you do. They understand why you're different from your competitors. They understand what experience they're gonna have when they work with you. And so when they make that phone call or they make that referral, the sales already done. You've already Communicated everything you need to know or they need to know on your social media over a series of time and then be already are sold. And that goes for fucking brilliant. But as anything. Like when we're interacting with social media and and that's how we feel about celebrities. You know, we see we see celebrities in movies and television and on social media and we feel like we know who they are. We feel like we know about the relationships. And when we're showing up on social media, it Kind of the same way. Like people get to know us and they feel like they know us already. So that's such a relationship. I freaking love that point because you know, 20 points of contact. And you think to yourself, fuck that's a lot. Like I don't have that much time. But that's that's your content that you're putting out. Like if you're putting out content on a regular basis, 20 points is fast. I mean, that'll get you there real quick, as opposed to back in the day. If you were calling or you were emailing or you were meeting with them in person, that can be, you know, exhausting in itself. And it can also sound desperate too. Yeah. And then we used we still have the attorneys who are on billboards and they're serving that billboard serves as that 20 points of contact. Just becoming familiar with that attorney that you see every time you drive by that billboard on the four ⁓ five or wherever. You're building like that mem you're memorizing them, or you're you're like, ⁓ there's that guy again, or there's that silly goose, you know, but like that's a big expensive way to become memorable. Yeah. And social media, I think, is better than an than a billboard because you're getting to communicate a lot more than what's on the one billboard, and you're able to track analytics, like how many people. saw that I mean I think billboard people provide some they're like five million people but it's billboard but like what but it the barrier of entry for a billboard is so enormous because you have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars to dedicate to that billboard because yeah you have to constantly be in front of them all of the time you know and the companies that do a really great job of it They've got marketing budgets in the millions of dollars, you know. So it's like you're competing against that when you don't have the budget for it. You really don't. So then it's like they go, ⁓ there's nothing I can do. And it's like, no, you can do social media. Like you can do other stuff that's really going to capture the attention of people besides this, hey, there's a billboard. There's a $2 a month billboard that you need like 30 of them around town. Right. Exactly. Yeah, because you're constantly competing. I mean, here in Arizona, every other billboard is a personal injury attorney, you know. And, you know, between sweet James, Morgan and Morgan and Rafi, those three are the dominating ones that are here. And everybody knows about them. And they have huge, huge budgets, you know, and and it works for them. I'm not I'm not knocking it in any way. I'm saying that, God, I wish I could do that. Well This is an alternative to that that's gonna save you a crap load of money and also could even get you better results, potentially, if you're consistent with it. So, you know. And you gotta So let me ask you this. Yeah. What actually happens from a content performance standpoint when someone plays it too safe? Hmm. Okay. So let's talk about like the algorithm and some tips to what happens. When you play it safe or what yeah. I love it. Yes. So let me the way the algorithm in general works, they're constantly talking about it changing and bl whatever. But ultimately, this is how it works. The algorithm, when you post a reel or a a graphic, the algorithm sends it out to approximately 200 people. If those people watch your video your reel all the way to the end, and this is pretty standard for any of the platforms, if somebody watched your reel all the way to the end. That tells the algorithm this is good stuff. If they share it or comment, that also helps tell the algorithm this is good stuff. And the more people that do that, then the algorithm pushes out to another 200 people. And then if those people interact, then it pushes out to another 200 people. So you've got to keep it interesting because you want people to watch your reel all the way to the end, or if you have a carousel, which is a post with multiple slides. You want people to swipe all the way to the end of that series. Doing either of those things helps tell the algorithm, send this out to more people. And every time somebody does those things, it sends it out more. And that's how things go viral. So, and if you start to analyze your analytics, you can you can start to see like how things go viral or what's happening. Like we'll see like a straight, like there's a graph that says like how many people are viewing and you can see it going straight up. And then you're like, this is gonna go going good, right? And then it kind of sometimes be like, but it's cool to watch when you start to understand. So how do you get people to watch the end or how do you get people to swipe to see what you're saying? The first thing to know is that you've gotta have a great hook. This is what's important for any type of marketing, but we talk about it a lot with social media. You've got to have something in the first three seconds of your reel that grabs people's attention and gets them to keep listening for that payoff at the end. And same for the carousel or your slides. There the beginning slide, that cover slide has to have a hook that gets people to slide to those other slides to see what you're gonna talk about next. So it can't be just like, I mean, you can do like five tips from a business attorney, but like, What's really gonna be losing is something like these five tips save my client from losing five million dollars or whatever. Right. Like that. Like that's gonna grasp that's a hook. That's a hook. So of all the things, but we wanna include one of our four P's, but we also need a hook. We've got to keep people interested. We've got to use keywords, which should naturally come into your what you're saying. That's gonna have people pay attention, I think is the Biggest point. Yeah. Yeah. And and so is there a certain length that you have found of videos that works extremely well? And is it the same with all platforms? It changes a lot. So but in general, I think the shorter under thirty seconds is is a good place to stay. Yep. With attorneys, we we tend to give too much information. Dumb. This Social media is different than your contracts and your litigation and your state like all of your everything that you normally do. You have to keep it simple, stupid. That's the saying. Kit keep it simple, stupid. Kiss. You're s I love that saying because I'm that last S. Yeah. Love the last S. You gotta keep it simple. Like get to the point quickly. All the other information, you can put it in the caption. You can film another reel or another carousel that follows up with it. Information, but people, we have to keep people's attention on social media. So you got to do those hooks and a couple of things. There's four different hooks. One is that first speaking hook. There's also visual hooks. Like if I just sit down at the beginning of recording, that's a visual hook. So I can sit down and say something really like something that grabs your attention. There's also like sounds that you hear where people are like making swoosh sounds and bell noises. Those are hooks. And then what's the last one? I'm at the ⁓ text hooks, like having your hook repeated as as like text on the screen is another on the video, right? Yeah. So you've got that visual hook, the verbal hook, the audio hooks, and the text hook. So those are the four hooks. Keeping people attention. Should they should each video have all four or is that too much? It's kind of too much, but one or two is great. If you could just do one, do it. If not Yeah. And with attorneys, like a lot of attorneys wanna be legal and cover all their bases. So I recently did a a reel with a family law attorney and the hook was, Do you wanna know why your grandparents stayed married and now the divorce rate in Orange County is seventy percent? It wasn't because they were more in love. It was because back then gr your grandmother didn't have another choice. And you know, I th I thought that was a good hook. And she started saying, Well You know, we don't know how old people are and so it might not be their grandma and what about the grandpa and da da da da and I was like, You're ruining it. You're ruining it. Like this Don't fucking ruin this shit. We don't have to answer every question when it comes to social media. And it's okay. You can address grandpa in another reel. I don't think grandpa gives a shit. Like being divisive is really great for social media. When we one of my top performing reels for an attorney was we've gotten over two and a half million views. And it was about ⁓ men having like not believing, not wanting to pay Alamona, not wanting to pay their wife when she was a stay at home mom and like the thought process behind that. And people were are still going off in the comments because and they're fighting with each other. And that has helped that post go viral because we're like, hey guys, sorry, your wife did nothing and you have to pay. But obviously that's gonna piss some people off. But the reality is like that's just that's the law. And we address like she didn't do nothing. She gave up her career. You guys agreed for her to give up her career, whatever. There was a lot to it. But two point five million views because people in the comments were like, F that woman or this is ridiculous, or California, dah, dah, dah. Like that got that to go viral. So on that so specific. Don't no jargon. Keep it simple. ⁓ my God, no jargon. It's not a contract. Don't answer every single possible scenario. Yeah. One point. Yeah, one point. So one of the things like so you brought up your client got 2.5 million and tons of comments. If if she got a ton of comments, is she Commenting on those is she because if you get even a hundred comments, that's a full day's worth of work. That's like exhausting. Now, granted, most people are not gonna get, you know, they're gonna get a few comments here and a few comments there. But I think, and I've heard attorneys go, I don't want to do, I don't want to go viral. Because if I do go viral, that means that I have to spend all of my bucking time on social media and I actually have to work. Like I got billable hours that are here, right? So do they do they have to do it or should they do a little bit of it or should they should they fully be in there and commenting on the other comments that people are making? Well, I'll tell you a secret. Behind all of our attorney clients, it's us. Like we we are the ones. They are not they're alive. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you can hire you can hire a firm like you or PR firm that will comment for them that's in their language, right? Or in their h how they speak. And well or you can have your law clerk or your paralegal or your assistant or whoever answering if you if you're doing that on your own. But yeah, in most cases, people are just like like for that one, people were like, fuck that one, you know, that the wives shouldn't and we're and then we're just responding with something really just benign, just like, well, unfortunat like that's the law in California. Like we're not giving legal advice most and then if they're if it requires legal advice, we're saying, hey, you need to reach out to set up a d a discovery call. Like it's not we're not like blah blah blah blah blah blah states that da da da like we're not doing that. So it's really just like, ⁓ sorry that happened to you or something, you know, because they're like, My wife took millions from my bla and and I she doesn't deserve it. And now like I have the kids and then we just are like, ⁓ that's too bad. We're so sorry that happened to you. It's really unfortunate. Whatever. So but that how would they how would you recommend them dealing with hateful comments? Like you are a stupid Mitch. I can't believe the shit that you're putting out there. You're ugly. You're disgusting. Why are you doing this? Stay in your lane. Yeah. All the toxic shit, you know, do you recommend they delete that? You know, because you can delete comments out. Yeah. Do they comment on those? 'Cause I've seen a lot of it where people will they're all in. They're commenting like, hey, da da da. And then there's others that are like, I don't comment on any toxic and I'd actually delete them out. Yeah. I mean, you can hide those comments depending on how toxic it is. Like if it's really like threatening and and yeah, really like a bad reflection of your services, then maybe hide it. But remember, like those comments are helping push your Yeah. out into the algorithm. So, you know, if it's something you can respond to in a tactful way, I think do it. And if it becomes an issue, you can block that person so that they're not commenting anymore. We've got a somebody who was commenting stuff like that. And we DMed them and said, Well, you know, we're so sorry you feel this way, whatever. And, you know, unfortunately this is not nothing to do, I don't know, whatever we said. We tried like classify it and then they kept doing it. And so we had to block them. But You know, it just is a case by case basis. If you're struggling with this, you have to call her. Look at how she just wants to give you more and more and more information. She's not holding back. I mean, the information was brilliant. I love how you started out with building relationships with social media. You know, it's it's so important. And using the four P's, purpose, position, promise, and personality. And then you've got all these really cool little things like using the edit app. That has a teleprompter in there so that you can edit quickly, but it also yeah, it gives you the shit that you actually have to say or 20 points of contact. Like if you want to land business, you have to connect and contact on a more and more basis. ⁓ and be very particular with your videos in regards to make sure that they have a good hook, make sure it's the first 30 seconds. You got speaking, visual sounds, and text. You Want to use certain keywords, get it under 30 seconds. You don't have to tell about all the fucking things that are out there. Keep it to the point, no jargon, you know, and talk to your target audience. We skip that part, but top five. Talk to your target audience. Yeah. And next time we're gonna talk about content, specific content where we dive into Wow. Yeah. So watch for that next one because it'll be coming soon. And if you do want to get a hold of her. In the notes is gonna have all of her contact information. Her and her team are amazing. I know this because I've referred several people over to her and they're always like, Thank you, Gary. She makes me look like a rock star. Like, and I love that because she cares about her clients and she works her ass off for them. So, Julie, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I can't wait to have you on again. Yeah. Like really soon. And follow along, big hype marketing on all the platforms. Yes. Yeah, and we're gonna put all that in there too. Everything. Yeah, learn more though. So all right. See you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. My pleasure. And I will see you soon. Okay. Bye.