Marketing Myself

Some updates on various marketing items:

WEBSITE: About a month ago I purchased a domain name (brandonwilsonlaw.com) and parked it with InMotion hosting for some day down the road when I decide my solo practice needs a web presence. That time came sooner than expected, as I talked myself into letting InMotion build a site for me. The cost was $899 ($299 + $50/month for 12 months), which beat all of the dedicated law marketing companies by thousands. Most of them wanted $2K and up PLUS the monthly fee for as long as you keep the site. The quality of the site is great - plus they claim to help with search engine optimization, which should increase my local awareness. Definitely recommend this company.

BUSINESS CARDS: Tried one of the "free" offers from VistaPrint. They still charged shipping, plus I upgraded to a glossy front, so the order came out to around $20 for $250 cards, which is still quite a bit cheaper than what other printers charge. I didn't like the standard templates they offered, so I tried to create a custom one myself in Microsoft Publisher...but VistaPrint doesn't take native Publisher (.PUB) files. So I exported it as a PDF - which they do take - but couldn't get the size right, despite the Distiller settings VistaPrint lets you download right on their site. I'm not a desktop publishing whiz, so maybe you can figure this out, but it was too esoteric for me. Blah. Anyway, fell back to a pre-built template, and even though I'm not in love with the result, it'll do in a pinch. Later when I hit the big time I'll go with a more custom look.

RESUME: As I hinted in an earlier column, I'm testing the waters to see if I can find a full-time law job, so I hired the good people at Monster.com to rework my resume. I bought the full package, including 3 format resume (Word doc, keyword scannable and ASCII) plus a cover letter. The resume looks good, but if I had it to do over again I would skip the cover letter - it was far less polished than the resume, plus it is something that I will want to tailor to each company I'm applying with anyway. FYI, as soon as I posted my resume online, I got an email from a company called Attorney Resume that appears to target legal job applicants directly. Since I already spent my money, there's no point in me checking them out, but passing along the link in case you might be interested.

MONSTER.COM: So once that resume was finished, it went up on Monster.com. It's been up a week now, and other than the occasional marketing company like Attorney Resume (above), I've only received one hit - from a telecommunication company wanting me to interview for a project management job. Not exactly what I'm looking for. But I'm keeping the credentials out there to see if I get any nibbles.

Everything is on the table as far as the career possibilities go. I'm developing the solo practice at the same time as sending out resumes to small/mid-size firms, so if the solo stuff takes off I may decide to quit my job and go solo full time. I also still have at least one iron in the fire with my company, so there might be hope to stay on there. Hopefully things will start developing over the next few months that will really shape the early stages of my law career. It's an exciting time!