Lawyers getting into social media all shoot for the big numbers.  But do they matter?

As lawyer get into social media spaces such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn they are rushing to get as many friends, followers and the like as possible.  Every day I get a barrage of requests from lawyers to become a fan of their Facebook page, become friends, and connect on LinkedIn. I get followed on Twitter in droves – sometimes more than once as lawyers use tools that follow mass numbers of people and then un-follow them if there is no reciprocal follow.

They don’t realize this, but numbers simply don’t matter.

If you’ve got 50 really smart and strong people who follow you on Twitter and hang onto every word you utter, that’s far better than having 5,000 people following you but not paying attention at all.  Look at it this way: if those 50 people were the most influential people in your field and they were looking to you as a source of wisdom and information, that would be a very good thing.

One thing that lots of people don’t realize is that there is a proliferation of spambots on Twitter.  Those who have amassed large following on that platform have also accumulated a huge number of spammers.  If having more spammers follow you on Twitter is your idea of a legal marketing strategy then you may want to rethink that.

Another point is that 71% of all status updates on Twitter are never seen.  Let that sink in for a moment before we move on.  Nearly 3 out of every 10 tweets you send out go into a black hole.

Why is that?

Well, for a few reasons.  First, if you’re following thousands of people then updates pass by pretty fast.  In fact, by the time my Twitter feed updates there’s a good chance that your pithy remark is long gone.  If you’re following thousands of people in an attempt to get them to follow you back then you’re probably missing a lot more than 3 in 10 tweets.  That’s a lot of value passing you by.

Second, if you’re being followed by a bunch of spambots they aren’t even there to see your stuff.  That’s what a bot is, my friend – someone there in name only.  So you could be sending out your best stuff … to nobody.

So you could bang your head against the virtual wall using every possible tool to be followed by so many people you topple Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher.  You could spend tons of time chasing a “magic number of followers.”

But if it’s not going to give you any value or further your legal marketing goals then what’s the point?

Related posts:

1. How A Real Lawyer Uses Social Media
2. Making A Difference With Social Media – Go Global 24
3. FleischmanFollowFriday #1: People For Lawyers To Follow On Twitter

You can create a law firm blog with real value, but if you don’t let people know it exists then it’s all wasted.  How can you promote you blog posts without being sleazy?

We’re uncomfortable with sales and promotion; that goes for the attorney marketing a law firm just as much as any other profession, but I think lawyers are hit particularly hard in this respect.  We’ve been trained to behave conservatively, and in our minds the notion of promotion (hey look, I made a rhyme!) is distinctly NOT conservative.  Add in years of being compared to hucksters and you’ve got most lawyers believing that promotion of any sort is unseemly.

Done the wrong way, promotion can make you feel dirty.  If you look at most of the marketing online you’ll see scads of yellow highlighter and exclamation points that tell you to BUY! BUY! BUY!!!  Is it any wonder why some fairly prominent legal bloggers think that marketing is a word to be expunged from the next edition of Black’s Law Dictionary?

But there’s another side to this coin, and that’s the realization that marketing need not make you want to take a bath in lye and burn your clothing.  If you’re marketing a law firm you want to be not only ethical, but mindful of your professional standing in the community.

Your law firm blog is a marketing tool, no matter how you slice it.  A law firm blog showcases your capabilities, exposes people to your message, and enhances your standing.  It informs, inspires to act, and serves as your online face.  You need to promote the content in order to gain an audience, and you want to do so without being sleazy.

Send Links to Select People Who May be Interested. If you read an article about the foreclosure crisis and are doing a post about TILA, RESPA or any of the real estate-related “alphabet soup” of statutes, send an email to the author of the other article to let him or her know what you’ve done.  Be polite and offer up an invitation to visit the link.  Three lines should do the trick, and it will help to gain one more viewer.  That viewer may send the link along to others if it’s a good enough post.  One thing you need to know, though – do not spam your email address book.  I’m talking about sending the article out to 1-3 people who you know will be interested in it.  If you spam, you suck.

Post the Article to Facebook. 500 million people are registered on Facebook as of this writing; when you post a link it shows up on the stream of all of your friends.  If something interests you enough to write about then it’s probably interesting to the people you know and connect with on Facebook.

Tweet a Link. Twitter is a hive of activity, with people sharing links to content that interests them.  Though you may choose to post your links automatically (I do this), the secret sauce is to create a compelling question rather than sending out the title of the post (which should be compelling anyway, but I know sometimes you just can’t make it sexy enough.  For example, I recently sent out a tweet to someone else’s blog post.  Her title was, “Is Bankruptcy Right for Me?”  My tweet was, “Is bankruptcy a good idea or best left to others? Ask yourself these 22 questions.”  Which one looks more interesting?

Hit The LinkedIn Group. If you’re a member of a LinkedIn group associated with your field of law then you’re already associated with a bunch of people who are interested in the topics you’re blogging about.  When you’ve got a particularly interesting post (not one of those, “who is the Chapter 7 trustee in my area,” ones) head over to the LinkedIn group and post a link with a description.  Your colleagues may find the content interesting enough to pass along to others.

Comment On Related Blogs. Blog commenting is an excellent traffic generating tactic for your law firm blog because it gives you exposure to the other blog’s audience.  But let’s say you’ve got a meaty post on your site that you’re itching to share.  Chances are pretty good that there is another blog out there talking about the same issue.  In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that your article may be yin to another blog’s yang.  Go to the other blog and comment appropriately (again, no spamming please); in the area where you enter your URL, paste the URL of your article rather than the main law firm blog URL; in this way, when people click to learn more about you they will be taken directly to your related post.

Ask Your Readers To Share Your Law Firm Blog Content. Using blog plugins such as Sociable, Tweetmeme and the FBLike you’ll make it easier for readers to share and pass along your law firm blog posts to other people.  Good content has a way of traveling fast, so if you’re providing real value to readers you should expect the traffic bump.

Your law firm blog isn’t going to take off into the stratosphere overnight.  It’s a slow build, but when you consistently use these promotional techniques you’ll have a greater chance of reaching more of the people who may find your content interesting.

Image credit:  victoriafee (Flickr)

Related posts:

1. 6 Ways To Market Your Law Firm Online Without A Blog
2. A Law Firm Blog With Paid Ads? Really?
3. Knowledge, Information And Why Your Law Firm Blog Won’t Create A Pro Se Army

Do you want to have a personal Facebook profile to interact and connect with people? Absolutely!  Do you want your law firm to have a fan page on Facebook?  Yes.  But don’t expect it to have a ton of people on it.

Facebook isn’t just big – it’s huge. More than 500 million active users, 50% of which log on each day. In fact, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Each month, that number grows by leaps and bounds.

Full disclosure – my law firm has a fan page. I set it up when the firm was formed in January, and have actively ignored it since that time. Read on, and I’ll tell you why.

Your law firm provides solutions for people with legal problems. Not many people like to broadcast to the world that they have legal problems, and have sought the help of a lawyer to get them back where they want to be.

When you get someone to join your firm’s fan page, that information is automatically dropped into their profile.  It’s visible for everyone to see.  And for many people, being publicly outed as a client of your law firm may not be too appealing.

Consider the divorce client who hires you.  Do you think they want their ex-spouse, friends and colleagues to know even more about their marital woes?

How about the bankruptcy client?  Sure, your prior bankruptcy clients may be an excellent source of referrals … but do they want their high school buddies knowing about their financial problems?

Criminal clients – well, you know where I’m going.  It’s like giving your clients a t-shirt that says, “I got busted with a bag of pot in my glove compartment – ask me about it!”

With that in mind, you can easily see why the prospect of getting your clients to “like” your law firm Facebook fan page isn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world.

So why would a law firm want a Facebook fan page if it’s going to languish in obscurity?

Facebook is, as I said at the top of this article, a highly-trafficked site.  Lots of people are there, and there often.  Your law firm Facebook fan page provides a lot of information about the work you do and the solutions you provide, and it’s all publicly-available and searchable in the Facebook ecosystem.  Having that content online is never a bad thing, and customizing the fan page is relatively simple to do.

Even for those who casually stop by without clicking the “Like” button, you can (and should) have the following information available:

• your law firm website and/or blog URL (much like you’d have in your email signature);
• office address and directions to the firm;
• office hours of operation;
• links to your blog posts and other pieces of content, which you can have automatically inserted using a wide variety of tools (I used Twitterfeed);
• a landing page with an opt-in form for your tractor beam and/or newsletter.

Sure, you can go crazy and trick it out, but why?  People are likely going to use the fan page as a jumping-off point for their future contact with your law firm, a way to get to know you without leaving the Facebook ecosystem.

So, how’s your Facebook fan page working out for you?

Related posts:

1. Your Law Firm Logo – What Does It Say To Your Clients?
2. How Clients Can Make Your Law Firm Systems Better
3. Has Your Law Firm’s Identity Been Stolen?

Social media for lawyers – specifically Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin – has been getting a ton of coverage in the past few days on the heels of this article in Mashable.  And it seems to have ignited a bit of a debate on Twitter because there are a few attorneys who question whether the experts quoted are able to speak from experience.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a social media expert.  I do believe that there are people who are well-qualified to discuss how to build trust, relationships and communities for business purposes.  These are the experts, the ones who teach us how to be more human in the way we conduct business.  When these people talk about using the platforms at our disposal, I listen and take notes.

Social media is an all-encompassing term that speaks to platforms, and how they are used to accomplish a particular goal.  Those platforms currently include legal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, Posterous, Foursquare, Gowalla, and the list goes on and on.  But bear in mind that these are platforms only, and are subject to change without notice.  A few years ago it was Friendster.  A decade ago it was Usenet.  And on and on.

To say that you’re an expert in Twitter means that you know how to set up an account and use the tool.  It doesn’t mean you know how to connect with people or businesses who may have some use for your service.  When Twitter goes away or, more likely, evolves in ways we can’t currently imagine, the “Twitter expert” will be as useful as a “mimeograph expert”.

The person who’s skilled in the broader skillset of creating and maintaining relationships will continue to thrive.  Because that’s not just good marketing, it’s good for life.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I thought it would be useful to outline how I use the various social media platforms to achieve my goals.  Those goals, by the way, are fluid.  Sometimes I’m looking for help with something.  Other times I’m promoting my expertise as a bankruptcy and consumer protection lawyer, or as a guy who knows a thing or two about marketing a law firm.  Maybe I’m going to be a new place and need some recommendations for a good place to have dinner.  In all cases, the song remains the same overall (hat tip to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page).

Content Distribution And Promotion

Every time I create content on this or any other platform, I promote it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Doing so exposes my work to people who find the subject matter compelling, and cements my standing as someone who knows about the fields in which I spend my time.

Information Sharing

I’m a newshound, and read hundreds of blogs each day.  When I find something that catches my eye, I share it with people.  More information is a good thing, no?

Connecting With Interesting People

Here’s where people say Twitter is a waste of time, right?  I mean, why would I spend time typing out 140 character messages to strangers?  Well, why would you spend an evening at a networking event filled with a diverse group of people?  To meet them, get to know them better, and establish a relationship.  Maybe that plumber I meet will never have need of my legal services, but I’m betting that he knows of someone who will eventually need me.  The stronger my relationship with Mr. Plumber, the more likely I am to be the name and number (OK, email address) that he passes along to his friend who’s going into foreclosure and needs help.

What if Mr. Plumber is in Oklahoma, far from my state of admission (which is New York)?  No worries – I can send the referral to one of my colleagues in Oklahoma.  I’ve connected with some of them on Twitter, others on Facebook and some on “old school” listservs.  Send a referral to a trusted colleague and I get good karma in return.  It’s happened so often I’ve lost count, and it increases the chance that I get a referral in return.  Karma’s like that, you know.

Strengthening Bonds Established Elsewhere

Let’s say you meet someone offline – a networking event, a social event, whatever the case may be.  You connect with them on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter or whatever platform you choose.  Now you’re exposed to them on a regular basis, and they to you.  Share information, keep up with one another, and allow your humanity to continue to unfold before one another.  It takes a causal meeting with a total stranger and allows you to make something more of it.

Now you want me to prove that it works, right?  Here are a few of the things I’ve accomplished by using the platforms available to me:

• coverage in print and broadcast television (Twitter and LinkedIn);
• paying clients (more than I can count from Facebook in particular, Twitter less so);
• quotes and attendant backlinks from highly-regarded online sources, which has increased the ranking of my own site and resulted in more clients (primarily Twitter, but Facebook and LinkedIn to a certain extent); and
• referrals from other lawyers as well as from non-lawyers who deal in consumer finance issues (Twitter).

Of course, none of this speaks to the business my firm has received over the years as a result of a never-ending commitment to content creation through our blog and elsewhere.

Is this list comprehensive?  Does it take into account all of the nuances of how a real lawyer can use social media to help his or her practice?  No, but it does give you the high notes and prove to you that this isn’t just another time suck.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Lawyers Using Social Media Should Realize Numbers Don’t Matter
2. Making A Difference With Social Media – Go Global 24
3. What Is The Real Job Of A Consumer Bankruptcy Lawyer?

One of the best content distribution sites for lawyers is JDSupra, run by a team of awesome and smart people who want nothing more than to give you the widest possible exposure for your content. JDSupra is not only highly-trafficked and well-indexed, but the service provides a number of feature-rich Facebook pages and widgets to pump content out far more effectively than would otherwise be possible.

In the interests of full disclosure, I had the chance to meet with the JDSupra team while in California last month for the annual National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys convention.  Aviva Cuyler bought me a turkey sandwich and a Diet Coke while I was hanging around with Adrian Lurssen (I think she was worried I’d pass out from hunger because I’d been talking with Adrian for so long).  That might be something warranting FTC disclosure, though I did offer to pay her for lunch.

In fact, this graph from compete.com shows that JDSupra has grown by 226% in the past 12 months alone.  Pretty impressive, no?

But using JDSupra as a distribution mechanism is still new to lots of lawyers, so I thought I’d share how I use it as part of my online legal marketing efforts.

4 steps, that’s all it takes. Ready? OK, here we go (and by the way – if you click the pictures they will open up full-size so you don’t have to squint):

Step One: Choose “Post A Document”

Step Two: Choose “Legal Article/Newsletter,” upload the PDF document, add the title of the document (which should be the title of the blog post), and add the “Document Date” (which will be the date on which you are uploading the content.

Step Three: Scroll down and choose your category.  My stuff is usually related to either bankruptcy or legal marketing, so those are my go-to categories.  Then, for document summary, enter the first 1,000 characters of the content.

Step Four: Click “Continue,” then “Submit.” (or “Submit & Post Another Doc” as the case may be).

That entire process should take you about 3 minutes.  Greater distribution for your content marketing, better results from your online legal marketing efforts, and the basic level of service is entirely free.

So are you using JDSupra?

Related posts:

1. 6 Easy Steps To Setting Up Google Places For Your Law Firm
2. 6 Reasons To Syndicate Your Legal Marketing Content
3. Online Legal Marketing Secret Revealed – Why No Web Content?

OK, it’s no and either-or sort of thing.  You’d probably do all of those things and a lot more.  But when it comes to marketing your law firm online there’s a certain amount of forecasting we can do without any help.  All it takes is a quick glance around to see where the rest of the world is today.

That’s right, we can see the future of online legal marketing by looking around us right now.  As a backwards-looking profession, we live in the past.  It’s in our legal pleadings, our reliance on precedent, and our education.  But the fun thing is that the rest of the world is living in the present.

Look outside the window and you can see where the world is right now.  Take the audacious step of joining the world, and you move way into the future of legal marketing.

Yup, I’m telling you to join the human race.  And with that in mind, here are my 4 online legal marketing trends for the future (which you should be doing today):

1.  Content Creation As Online Legal Marketing Tool

Look, you’d have to be Rip Van Winkle to be blind to the reality that content creation is how the big guns are making their impact online and creating authority.  What began as teenagers showing their angst with blogging has turned into a valid business model over the past few years.  WordPress 2.9 has been downloaded 9,342,201 times as of 5:00am on May 25, 2010 (for more updated number, go here).  There are over 126 million blogs (according to BlogPulse).  There were 234 million websites as of December 2009, and 47 million of them came online in 2009 alone.

With that volume of content online, it’s not a stretch to say your 10-page law firm website isn’t going to make much of a dent.  Without a content creation strategy in place, your online legal marketing efforts aren’t going to amount to much.

2.  Email For Law Firm Marketing Purposes

With such an overwhelming volume of content online and greater demands on our time than ever before, we need to meet our clients where they are.  To a large extent, that’s in their email box.  With 247 billion email messages sent per day, it’s safe to say that people are using email more than ever.

Email marketing is seen by some as an extension of junk mail.  The reality, however, is very different.  Junk mail comes unsolicited to recipients, and ends up in the trash.  Email, however, can’t be sent unsolicited – sending unwanted email is a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, and can land you in serious hot water.  Using autoresponder systems and opt-in lead generation on your website or blog allows you to attract only those who want to be contacted with information about your offerings.

Using email for your law firm marketing allows you to bypass the search engines because people who opt into your email marketing list won’t need to go back to the search engines for their information.  Instead, it will be delivered on a (virtual) silver platter in the form of relevant and interesting content.

3.  On-The-Go Law Firm Marketing

It seems as if everyone’s got a smartphone these days – iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, even PalmOS and Windows-based phones.  In fact, as of January 2010 it was reported that 42% of the U.S. used a smartphone.  And a mere 28 days after the release of the iPad, Apple confirmed that it had sold 1,000,000 of these devices.  The tablet form factor promises to be a huge growth market, as everyone and their Uncle Sol is releasing one in the upcoming months.

Every device has bazillions of apps available, and people download those suckers like kids eating M&Ms (OK, like me eating M&Ms).

All those people are using their smartphones and iPads to find information, get answers, and do stuff.  They’re abandoning their televisions and radios, ditching their stereo systems and cancelling their newspaper subscriptions in favor of staying online.

At the same time, location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla let people check-in to tell the world where they are and what they’re doing.  It’s part social-media, part game.  People are flocking to these services in droves, collecting badges as a new type of customer loyalty program.

Most companies are still playing in the shallow end of this pool, trying to figure out how mobile marketing can help them.  By getting in early, you may find the sweet spot before your competition even knows what hit them.

4.  Social Media As Law Firm Marketing

Facebook is the big thing right now.  Facebook’s got ads you can target with stunning accuracy (how does the dentist advertising on my Facebook page know I’m 40 years old and graduated from Buffalo Law School?), fan pages, and a host of other ways to get people together and build community.

Some companies have done a good job at it, and others have fallen badly.  But chances are pretty good that the extent of your law firm’s Facebook presence is a fan page that has been “liked” by 28 of your friends and colleagues.  But that ignores the true value of Facebook as a legal marketing tool – the power to bring together people of similar interests in one centralized location.

Facebook fan pages can be tricked out with custom HTML forms (email marketing once again), discussion boards, and even used as a distribution point for your blog.  Using these features at the very least can help you engage with people and increase the level of trust and authority given to you by your existing and prospective clients.

Twitter’s also a social media darling, a place where people gather to share what’s on their radar at the moment.  Interesting stuff gets passed around all day and night.  And it’s not just, “here’s what I had for lunch today,” either.  There are Twitter feeds for discounts on airfare and hotels, local coupons, and more.  Mobile food trucks in big cities are using Twitter to tell their customers where to pick up lunch (uh oh, there’s that “what I ate for lunch today” thing creeping up again).  Retailers are using Twitter for customer support.

How does this tie into your online legal marketing efforts?  Using Twitter to syndicate your online content, alerting the public of news and information, and connecting with journalists are all easy ways to use Twitter to market your law firm.  But what about using it to communicate broadcasts to your clients?  Telling people when you’re going to be out of the office and unavailable to return phone calls would be one way to distribute your message to those who might otherwise call you in the middle of a deposition.  Connecting with the people who may need your help in a quick and informal way helps get your message out without being threatening and scary.

This Is No Secret – And It’s Not A Fairy Tale

These online legal marketing trends aren’t wishes for the future.  They’re trends we’re seeing in the marketing of consumer as well as business-to-business products and services.  You can ignore them for only so long before some other law firm begins marketing with these channels and others that will come along.

The platforms will undoubtedly change or, at the very least, evolve with time.  Your legal marketing efforts will likewise need to keep up with the times.  But by looking to what the rest of the world is doing you can get a better sense of where you need to be.

Related posts:

1. Online Legal Marketing Secret Revealed – Why No Web Content?
2. Online Legal Marketing Tip – Google Places
3. Blogs As Online Legal Marketing Tools

There’s an old cartoon about a guy who finds a frog in a box.  The frog can sing and dance, top hat and all.  Elated, the guy begins taking the frog around to theatrical producers in an effort to get the little green guy to put on a show.

Each time, Michigan J. Frog would utter a lone ribbit and nothing more.  Seems as if he wasn’t so into the public spectacle, and preferred to perform in private.

Of course, we all know the end of the episode. The guy realizes that his buddy isn’t going to be the ticket to wealth and throws him and the suitcase he came in into the time capsule for a skyscraper. Froggy is found in 2056 and repeats the story.

The frog was valuable only if someone else knew about him. But without widespread knowledge of his abilities, he was … just a frog.

So, too, your legal marketing must be promoted and syndicated across multiple channels in order for your content to be more widely seen.  Here are 6 reasons to syndicate your legal marketing content in order to maximize your results:

1. Not everyone is everywhere. Some people with an interest in your services are on Twitter.  Others, Facebook.  A few are on LinkedIn but nowhere else.  Your content, by reaching those people allows you to gain the attention of a far wider potential audience.
2. Your blog is puny. Even the most robust legal blogs and websites are far smaller than the firepower represented by site such as JDSupra, Ezinearticles, HubPages and other content-sharing sites.  With tens of millions of users, these sites have more PageRank, more SEO value and greater weight in the search engine algorithms than your presence.
3. Different platforms have different personalities. When people visit Facebook they’re in a certain mindset.  So, too, with LinkedIn and Twitter and Martindale-Hubbell Connected and one and on.  Allowing people to consume your content when and where they are willing to do so is a critical part of your legal marketing.
4. Suck with a straw. Your content is the driving force in your online legal marketing efforts.  When a prospective client reads it, they are exposed to your expertise and your point of view.  From there, they follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to your hub – your site or your blog.  This lets you begin the relationship and continue the process of education and trust-building.  It’s pure inbound marketing nirvana.
5. Create once, not repeatedly. You’ve taken a significant amount of time to produce remarkable content.  You can either duplicate your legal marketing efforts by saying the same things in a million different ways in a bunch of different places, or you can create content once and send it out to the world.  Which is a better use of your time and resources?
6. Charlie Brown couldn’t kick the football. Peanuts was an awesome comic strip – my dad had a bunch of books as a kid, and every Halloween I (half) jokingly wait for The Great Pumpkin.  Syndication of the comic strip by United Feature Syndicate was what made those books and television specials possible.  If it hadn’t been for syndication, nobody outside of St. Paul, MN would have known about the little kid who couldn’t kick the football.

Your legal marketing efforts take time, and content is precious – your words, your point of view, and your thoughts require effort to be crystalized.  Why wouldn’t you want to spread your message as widely as possible?

Related posts:

1. Online Legal Marketing – 11 Reasons Why Content Is King
2. Online Legal Marketing Secret Revealed – Why No Web Content?
3. What Content To Use In Your Legal Marketing Efforts

The beauty of online legal marketing with a blog or website is that you can create valuable content once and let it act as your mouthpiece for months – if not years – to come without any additional investment of time.

So again, the question becomes one of quantity. Especially when your blog is so young it’s wet behind the ears, you need to generate as much traffic as possible.

Why?  Because writing great content is useless if you’re not getting anyone to read it.  The more people who read your pearls of wisdom, the more likely it is to get passed around.  And even if it isn’t getting passed from person to person, more readers yields a greater number of blog subscribers or opt-ins to your email list.

We’re not talking about long-term online legal marketing tactics, these are hacks – quick hits to get a little leverage.  Some cost a few bucks, and others are free.  But they’re all effective.

1. Tell your clients. Yes, your clients are already sold on your expertise – but how about their friends and family members who aren’t quite ready to talk with a lawyer?  Send a letter to your clients asking them to let people know you’ve got a great online resource for legal information and to tell them to visit it.  Totally old school offline referral marketing, but absolutely effective.
2. Ask a question and post to your social networks. You’re probably on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – perhaps all of them.  Post a link to your blog post with a question, asking people to comment directly on the blog.  This social media traffic registers with the search engines – in fact, Google uses social media traffic as one of over 200 “signals” in ranking sites.  More social traffic translates into better long-term rankings for your site.  Better rankings translates into online legal marketing success.
3. Give away an ebook or special report. There’s value to putting an ebook behind an opt-in form and requiring people to give up their email address in exchange for your item of value.  But if you’re looking to create awareness of your website or blog, you’re looking to garner as much traffic as possible in the short run.  Consider removing the barriers by ditching the opt-in form and giving away the ebook or special report to all visitors.  Not only will more people come to your site, but that giveaway will get passed around and turn into a long-term client generation magnet.
4. Hitch your wagon to a star. Something going on locally that you can somehow tie into your practice area?  Sports hero busted for DWI?  Local business going belly-up?  If so, there’s a good chance people in your area are going to the search engines to read the news – and typing in the name of that sports hero or local business.  Creating content around that person or business and fitting it into your practice area will yield huge traffic spikes, which is exactly what this online legal marketing hack is all about.
5. Coffee shop postcards work – really, they do. If you’re a lawyer, you’re a local business.  So you’ve got an edge over the multi-national companies marketing online – you can go grassroots without breaking a sweat.  Go to your local printer or click over to VistaPrint and get a bunch of postcards printed up with a headline like, “Where Can You Find Answers To All Your Questions About Getting Out Of Debt?” (if you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, that is – if you do divorce work, this headline probably won’t work for you) and the URL for your website or blog.  Grab a stack and start putting them in every coffee shop in town.  Tack them up on community bulletin boards.  Anywhere you can go guerilla, go for it.

As you can see, online legal marketing need not start online – that’s just the platform.  Your information is online, so the goal is to drive traffic there.  But you need to take off the blinders and realize that people still live offline – they eat, sleep, meet, and communicate in the real world before going online for their information.

Your online legal marketing efforts will get a shot in the arm by looking to the technological edge as well as going old school (just not in the Will Ferrell way).

But remember – this is not a long-term fix for your efforts. It will not serve as a substitute for creating valuable content that keeps people coming back again and again.  It won’t fix poorly-converting copy, a bad user experience, or lack of optimization.

What it will do is provide a jolt of energy to your blog or website, exposing more people to the intelligence and information you provide.

Photo courtesy of grewlike.

Related posts:

1. Online Legal Marketing Secret Revealed – Why No Web Content?
2. Blogs As Online Legal Marketing Tools
3. How Vulnerable Are Your Online Legal Marketing Efforts?