I saw this article and immediately thought of my good friend and client Michael Brown of Peterson, Berk & Cross in Appleton, WI – one of the hippest, techiest attorneys I’ve ever met. Michael understood the value of content marketing and business blogging long before most attorneys — he’s been blogging on H1B Visa and employee rights issues for years! Still, I thought this content was worthy of curation, not only for the legal world, but for all small businesses looking for cost effective marketing…

After a half-century of remarkable stability and steady growth, the legal industry got hit by a ton of bricks called the Great Recession. Several years after the initial shock, it is clear that this downturn wasn’t just a momentary blip, but a rather sizable shift in the business landscape. As a result, law firms are being forced to reconsider many aspects of how they do business.What does all this mean for legal marketing? Lots.

During the past two years, my colleagues and I have studied the Great Recession’s effects on legal marketing and law firm Web sites. Our conclusion is that the law firm Web site is about to undergo a revolution. Specifically, we expect law firm Web sites to:

• Become more valuable. Web sites will rival face-to-face meetings in terms of their importance in business development.

• Become bigger. They will grow to accommodate much more content.

• Focus more on attorneys. Law firm Web sites increasingly will cater to the business development needs of individual attorneys.

In short, a law firm’s Web site will no longer be considered supplemental marketing collateral. Rather, it increasingly will be thought of as a marketing platform that is central to all aspects of a firm’s marketing activity (online and offline). This may seem a radical notion for some firms. However, it is a natural reaction to major changes that have occurred in the business environment.

Web sites already play a vital role in law firm business development. Numerous studies show this. However, I strongly believe that they will become even more important–nearly as important as face-to-face meetings. Why? Because face-to-face meetings will happen less and less.

Follow the ‘via’ link above if you’d like to read the rest of the quoted article. If you’d like help in dissembling this information, please comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to your firm — we have a solid track record of helping law firms and other small businesses establish websites that drive traffic and generate leads through content marketing…