Launching a new blog or website for your law firm is a heady time. You’ve spent some money, created some content to get the ball rolling, and are looking for a return on your investment.

So what do you do? You wait for Google to pick up your site and begin indexing it. Maybe you send out a blast to Facebook or Twitter announcing the new site. If you’re active on a listserv, you tell your colleagues about it.

When you check your web analytics package at the end of the month, you see a huge spike on launch day and then a trickle of a few visitors each day afterwards.

This sucks, you think to yourself. You briefly consider a pay-per-click campaign, but aren’t in the mood to sink more cash into this project.

Why not try getting some traffic without waiting for the Google overlords to bless your law firm with a path for visitors? [Read more...]

Who’s your ideal client?  Knowing the answer can make the difference between a successful law practice and filing your own bankruptcy case.

Ever try to ask a room full of strangers out on a date?  Of course not.  It would be pretty crowded, but also wouldn’t score high on the intimacy scale.  Beyond that, it would be impossible to craft a daring pick-up line that would get everyone interested.

You want to date someone when you’ve got something in common.  There’s got to be a sense of congruence – be in common interests, background, education, or something similar – or you’re not going to be bothered.

So, too, with marketing your practice.  You need to have an angle you can work to get someone to hire you.  Without one, it’s an uphill battle. [Read more...]

Press releases can be useful for lawyers, even in this digital day and age.  It’s a good way to get out the word about some newsworthy event like a major victory or new initiative, though cultivating relationships with the press before you have a potential story is far more likely to bear fruit.  Still, sometimes the old ways are good enough.

Lots of lawyers are using online press releases as a means of attracting valuable inbound links and attention, thereby raising their SEO profiles.  Nothing wrong with that, either.

The disturbing trend I’ve been seeing, however, is the dissemination of online press releases for evens that are far from newsworthy.  It’s the online equivalent of broadcasting your child’s first successful use of the potty.

Actually, it’s worse than that because the potty trip is exciting for at least the parents and grandparents.

[Read more...]

As December winds to a close, we’re bombarded with predictions for the upcoming year.  Everyone wants to sound off about what’s going to happen next year.  Blogging will be hot, Twitter will be super-hot, Google+ will be on fire, Foursquare will explode, and somehow Yellow Pages advertising will make a comeback.

The reality is that nobody can reliably predict what’s going to happen.

Case in point (and stay with me to the end, please).

[Read more...]