Why: Meet new business contacts. Building credibility through providing relevant information increases the opportunity for referral sources.

How: Gina Rubel from The Legal Intelligencer Blog defines the approach as:
Define Purpose -> Follow-> Listen -> Create -> Engage.
Below is the approach the Auctori:law team takes from Gina Rubel’s direction:

Define what your law firm’s “purpose” is for participating in Twitter conversations.

Decide how you’re going to position yourself and stick to it.

Follow people speaking about topics you are familiar with and professionals in the industry.  In order for people to regularly see that you’re tweeting, they must be following you.  Actively use the “search” feature to find people who are discussing a certain topic, who are in your area, or are in your industry.

*Try searching for a legal professional with a lot of credibility and “following” that person’s “followers.” By doing so, you know you’re following people who already have an interest in legal professionals.

Listen to conversations.  Twitter is an excellent avenue for quickly intervening and participating in conversations. This allows you to rapidly connect with others that can share their knowledge and benefit from yours.

Create content unique content to share with peers; become a resource in the legal industry for Twitter users.

Engage in conversation.  Social Media is a two-way online conversation tool that must be used as such.  Simply tweeting without replying to people, those who have re-tweeted you, and starting a conversation with peers will ultimately result in failure.

Here you will find tips on optimizing your Twitter account to boost search engine rankings.

LinkedIn

Why: LinkedIn allows attorneys to maintain a list of people they know and trust in business, expand their professional network, and locate other qualified professionals.

How: The key to expanding a professional network is engaging other professionals in conversation; participate in LinkedIn’s Q&A section.  Ask questions to receive advice from other professionals in your network.  In order to position yourself as an industry leader, search for questions related to law that you would be able to answer effectively.  “Best Answers” are recognized each week which increases visibility and credibility.

Facebook

Why: Promoting your law firm online as a business through a fan page.

Use for Jury Selection:
Law firms can search Facebook profiles to screen potential jurors.  Facebook pages can tell a law firm more about a person than a background check.  A person’s individual preferences, “Likes” and hobbies can let an attorney know if the juror is a good fit for a trial.

How:

The latest blog by “The Nutmeg Lawyer: Should Attorneys Facebook Their Clients? states:
In my status updates, I began posting things like “in Hartford Superior Court today” or “doing a commercial closing today at 5.”  Although a bit pretentious, my various updates reminded friends and family what I did for a living. “Hey Baron, I hear you are a lawyer now.  Do you do real estate closings, can you help prepare a will for my mom, I ran over the neighbor’s cat – any chance you do criminal defense work?”  For my small practice, the increase in clients was a godsend.  People I hadn’t seen in years began referring friends and family to my law practice. I began seeing my client base grow.

JD Supra

Why: JDSupra.com allows attorneys and legal professionals to showcase their expertise by posting and sharing articles and blogs through the website and its LinkedIn group.

How: By posting articles on a variety of platforms (such as your website, blog, article sharing site), you position yourself and your law firm as an industry leader.  JD Supra allows legal professionals to create an online portfolio of their work including articles, presentations, minutes, and blogs.

When social networks are used to promote a lawyer or law practice, though effective on their own, they should ultimately contain a call to action to drive traffic back to the law firm’s website.  Not only do these social networks offer increased exposure to legal professionals, profiles and content, they also have the ability to increase your search engine rankings if used correctly.

Websites should have the ability to be translated into virtually any language which will allow users to communicate to a global audience in their native language allowing the law firm’s message to reach diverse prospects.   Websites with an i18n Frame allows settings on user profiles to be changed so that the interface is instantly translated into the administrator’s native language.

Translating website content to effectively target a specific market takes time.  Simply throwing the content into an auto-translate tool online is ineffective.  Translating the information from your company’s website into the target language must be done by native speakers in your law firms’ country.

Google’s Webmaster Tools Blog states: “Automated translations don’t always make sense and they could potentially be viewed as spam. More importantly, the point of making a multilingual website is to reach a larger audience by providing valuable content in several languages. If your users can’t understand an automated translation or if it feels artificial to them, you should ask yourself whether you really want to present this kind of content to them.”

If law firms in the United States want the content of their website translated into Spanish, they must be sure that the translator is someone from the U.S. who speaks Spanish to ensure your message is delivered correctly.  Neglecting to do this may result in a mistranslation.   Law firms must have the ability to ensure content is translated with the intention of capturing a target audience.

Successfully launching a multilingual website and marketing campaign for your law firm will increase opportunities to secure clients in a niche market.

Below are a few key professional document sharing platforms:

DocStoc
DocStoc, a document hosting service, contains over 23 million professional documents in a variety of categories including: legal, business, financial, technology, education and creative.  This award winning community allows users and businesses to upload and share their documents with professionals across the globe for free.
Recently, DocStoc launched “DocStore,” a members-only feature that allows professionals to sell documents via DocStoc’s embedded document viewer.  The DocStore Marketplace will allow professionals to monetize documents created for their business, such as agreements, wills and trusts, contracts, etc.

Scribd
Scribd is a document sharing service that allows users to read, print, download and send documents to their mobile devices.  The Business/Law Category on Scribd includes legal documents, presentations and articles written by lawyers.  The Scribd Store’s Business/Law section contains over 100 pages of professional documents.

SlideShare
SlideShare is widely known as a PowerPoint presentation hosting center, though it is also a document and video sharing center for professionals.  SlideShare boasts an event calendar for professionals that can be accessed anywhere in the world and does not require a paid account to add a professional event.

Web CMS Document Manager
A Web CMS Document Manager allows law firms to post their published works directly onto their website.  Web CMS’s are built for search engine optimization and to drive traffic to a law firm’s website – the site administrator has to power to add, edit and delete articles in a centralized location which allows for easy access and sharing.  The user also has the freedom to organize countless documents and determine how the articles are displayed on the page.

JD Supra
JD Supra is a document sharing website solely for lawyers and legal professionals.  JD Supra allows users to create online portfolios of articles, newsletters, alerts, court filings and presentations.  Along with the website, JD Supra also boasts a LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook which it streams articles to.  The site also syndicates articles to third-party resources such as Newstex, Complinet and Justia.

Positioning yourself and your law firm as a thought leader through a variety of platforms not only establishes credibility, but builds a large online footprint for your law firm.  For more information on optimizing all aspects of your Internet marketing campaign visit: http://www.auctorilaw.com/search-engine-optimization.aspx.

According to WorstPills.com each year:

• Over 28,000 cases of life-threatening heart toxicity occur from a commonly used digitalis
• 41,000 older adults are hospitalized; 3,300 die from ulcers caused by NSAIDs
• 16,000 injuries occur from automobile accidents which are attributable to the use to psychoactive drugs
• 32,000 older adults suffer from hip fractures attributable to drug-induced falls
• Nearly 163,000 older American suffer from serious mental impairment caused or worsened by drugs
• Drug-induced Parkinsonism has developed in 61,000 older adults due to the use of antipsychotic drugs.

Each year, more than 9.6 million adverse drug reactions occur in older Americans adults which means every hour, another elderly person faces a life threatening illness from a drug-related reaction.  Many, however, do not report their reactions to doctors because they associate their illness with age, or unrelated illnesses. (Source: worstpills.com)

Those who are affected, both family members and patients, that are unaware are unable to seek a proper settlement for the hardships they’ve endured.

The key to awareness is ensuring your law firm is a top Internet resource in alerting the public of drugs immediately after they are recalled.
Maintaining up-to-date information on your law firm’s website is imperative when raising awareness about these drugs.
In order to do so, you must have access to your site 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without the hassle of contacting a web developer to make changes.  Strengthening your firm’s Internet presence will build your law firm’s credibility and improve your search engine ranking.  When people are looking for a solution, you want your law firm to be top-of-mind when they are searching for a resource.

What has been your law firm’s most effective avenue in alerting the public of drug recalls?

The next time you sit down to blog or make a video, take a second to think – “What am I writing about? Who am I targeting? Why will people want to read my blog out of the millions of blogs that hit the Internet each day?”
The answer?  There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for being interesting.  Tailor your message to your geographical area, your target market, and the interests of people in your target market.  Someone who isn’t actively searching for a lawyer isn’t likely to surf online for law articles and blogs, which is why catering to your target market’s interests will capture their attention, engage the reader and keep your firm top of mind when they are looking for legal representation.

Case in Point:
St. Louis law firm Sandberg Phoenix & Von Gontard has done an excellent job in reaching out to potential clients by connecting with people on a more personal level.  They’ve recently reached out to their community and sponsored a Wine Tasting Event though their city’s Chamber of Commerce.   The event had little to do with law, but it gave Sandberg Phoenix an opportunity to reach a broad range of targets that may not necessarily be actively searching for legal representation.  The firm used their social media networks to support marketing for the event which helped engage those interested in the law firm and those who were interested in the event.

Social media is a tool used to support marketing efforts not a stand-alone solution.  Businesses must remain human; don’t let your love for all-things online overshadow your potential to be a well-rounded legal resource.

Engage Prospects

Firms now have the ability to engage their prospects more frequently with important information which can include – but is not limited to:

• Recent changes in laws and clauses (copyright laws, federal regulations, etc.)

• Important information for business owners

o Such as potential losses and liabilities in acquiring a business.

• Participation in community and charity events.

• Noteworthy news items.

• Articles published in newspapers, magazines, journals.

• News on settled claims within the firm.

• New associates and partners and their specialties (malpractice, personal injury, etc.)

Retain Existing Clients

Clients – in any industry – appreciate communication. Updating a website with relevant information builds trust with current clients- which increases the chance for that client to return and recommend the firm’s services to others. Auctori:law’s legal content management system allows law firms to frequently add and update their website’s information.

Firms can also utilize Auctori:law’s custom field generator to further customize the news and articles they post by grouping them in categories such as: practice groups, attorneys, as a homepage display, or to organize publications by attorney and practice.

Organizing and providing links to publications by attorney or practice allows firms to position themselves as leaders in the legal industry and makes their information easily accessible to those searching for an attorney online.

As law firms become more prevalent on the internet it will become essential to work with a company that provides law firm SEO services.

In addition, your legal blog is a very important component of your law firm’s Internet marketing strategy, due to the fact that it is one of the most effective places for you to demonstrate value to your clients online.

When it comes to law firm marketing the value of blogging is unlimited, as it creates a clear, credible and constant voice for your law firm. Blogging also allows your lawyers to showcase their strengths and attributes, which can separate your firm from the pack. Through active blogging, prospective clients will develop a sense of security with your legal team as they read your blogs about similar cases, verdicts and opinions, reassuring them of your legal expertise and knowledge.

In conclusion, with high quality content and SEO integration, you will achieve better search engine rankings for your site, which leads to an increase in the amount of unique visitors, resulting in new clients.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of internet marketing that increases your website’s visibility by improving placement on organic search engine results. SEO can position your law firm above the competition resulting in an unmatched method for advertising and promoting your firm. Be sure to update your website with profile cases, upcoming speaking engagements, news, articles, commentary regarding new laws and lawyer biographies. These regular medications emblemize a law firm’s credibility validation. In other words, it demonstrates that the attorneys are leaders, who are current in their area of expertise. Implementing a legal content management system, such as Auctori:law, eases the process of having an up to date website. A Legal CMS automates the crucial processes of integrating new updates, ensuring search engine visibility, as it multi-tasks as an automated Internet marketing instrument, syndicating events, news and other legal matters to search engines.

To learn more about our brand management for law firms, please contact us.

In conjunction with having a well-designed and search engine optimized legal website, it is critical that your business has a strong presence on social media networks.  A successful website will receive as much traffic from law firm social marketing as it does from search engines, and a comprehensive social media program is necessary to achieve this. Social media sites have the ability to steer clients to your website, send targeted messages, establish your brand online and create an open line of communication between your law firm and your clients.

A recent survey from communications consultancy Greentarget notes that, “While the more traditional marketing channels for law firm credentialing continue to dominate … in-house attorneys now are using new media platforms to deepen their professional networks; to obtain their legal, business, and industry news and information; and to enrich their social and personal lives. Most importantly, they expect that trend to accelerate in the future.”

1. Do you know enough on the legal topic to write a blog post?

If your law firm has hired a professional writer, do they have enough background legal knowledge and do they put in adequate time to research the topics in which they are writing? If not, you may have a problem, which will only result in your firm losing credibility.

2. Can people outside of the legal bubble understand the post?

 Non-lawyers are genuinely interested in the law and topics lawyers may be writing about.  They are also potential clients. Have you written your post in a way that is easily understtof by a variety of audiences?

3. Is your post keyword optimized for search engines?

No matter how great it is, content must be found before it can be of use. If your website is still new and small, achieving a good ranking through the use of the most popular keywords may not be the best strategy.

4. How does your blog entry fit into your law firm’s marketing and public relations goals?

How do you see your law firm’s website or blog fitting into your firm’s internet marketing and PR plan? Do you have concrete and specific goals for these tools? Are you measuring the performance through programs such as Google Analytics?

In conclusion, one of the best ways to put a face and voice on your legal expertise is to blog. When done correctly, building a credible discussion resource on legal topics can boost credibility, attract new clients, maintain current clients and build your reputation as a leader in the industry.

To learn more about social media services for law firms, please contact us.