Best presentation on social media and social networking I have seen yet. Thank you Paul Adams. 224 slides that are worth your time.

This presentation is excellent on so many levels. I think Paul has done a particularly nice job of illustrating that social media and social networking online really isn’t as different as socializing offline. This is where so many businesses, including law firms, fail when using social networks.

The classic example is the cocktail party. You don’t walk into a cocktail party and play your television ad. Yet, so many legal professionals are doing just that on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Admittedly, the etiquette of online social networking is still taking shape. As a general rule, always remember that building relationships online is a lot like building relationships offline.

Always remember that there are people behind the profiles.

We are all victims of it. We have a million things we need to do and there isn’t time in the day to actually accomplish it all. Yet, we seem to have an uncanny knack of finding ways to be inefficient. We waste our own time without even realizing it’s happening.

Here are 5 tried and true methods to ensure you are being unproductive:

1. Procrastination – Everyone of us has unpleasant, mundane tasks that we need to complete. Unfortunately, when you are running a small business or law firm if you don’t get the task done, no one will. What ultimately winds up happening is blown deadlines, missed opportunities, increased stress, late nights, time away from family / friends, etc. Procrastination is a great way to be unproductive.
2. Poor Time Management – Have you ever started a project that was supposed to take an hour only to find yourself wrapping things up 5 hours later? Sure you got it done, but everything else scheduled for the day didn’t get touched. Go ahead and do this for 3-4 days in a row and see where it gets you. I admit I am one of the worst offenders when it comes to this one. Setting time allotments for activities and sticking to them is key.
3. Checking Email Too Often – Everyone knows if you don’t respond to that email within 30 seconds the whole ship is going to sink…..right? It’s important to be on top of the day’s emails and activity, but everything in moderation. Checking email obsessively leads to wasted time in your work day.
4. Reading Blogs and Articles Online – I know what you’re thinking. Hey, I’m not on Facebook or CNN….I’m reading about the latest legal updates and checking my favorite law firm marketing blogs. I’m doing “stuff for work”. 2 hours later you realize just how much time you wasted on “stuff for work” that probably should be done in your off-hours. I know I’m blowing your mind here, but it is amazing how quickly you can kill productivity in the name of “learning stuff online”.
5. Putting Out Fires – There are incidents that arise from time to time requiring immediate attention. However, there are lots of other situations that don’t have to be treated as such. If you spend all your time “putting out fires” you will quickly find that your firm owns you instead of the other way around. Fires should be prioritized and handled accordingly. Proper expectation setting with clients and vendors is a good place to start.

What are your biggest time wasters at the office?

Photo by bjornmeansbear

A prospective client recently posed the following 17 questions to us:

1. References?
2. Do you outsource any services abroad?
3. How long has AttorneySync been in business?
4. Do you specialize in SEO?
5. Do you do Google Adwords campaigns?
6. What kind of reporting does AttorneySync offer?
7. Is such reporting substantive or fluff and stuff?
8. Do you provide ranking and analytics reporting on a regular basis showing our ranking for various search terms and reporting on new inbound links?
9. How do you plan to increase inbound links to our website?
10. Do you use link farms?
11. What is your contract term?
12. Do you allow for month to month or terminable on will?
13. What does your monthly fee include?
14. What tools does AttorneySync utilize?
15. Do you offer exclusivity in my location?
16. Upon termination do we own all the work? Do all the links stay up? Are there ANY adverse consequences for termination?
17. Does AttorneySync have a “long tail” strategy?

I am posting these here not to share how we answer each, but rather to discuss how each of these questions is important to selecting a law firm internet marketing consultant.

References?

While getting references definitely has some value, I’ve always had a measured perspective on the reliability of references.  First, by asking a company for references, you have already put them on alert to provide you with their “best reference sources”.  Therefore, the reliability of a requested reference immediately loses some credibility.  If you can find another way to obtain a reference, the reliability goes up.  On balance, you should definitely consider not only looking at a reference’s website (with an eye toward the web marketing components), but also try to talk to a reference.  Just keep the reliability of the reference in mind.

Do you outsource any services abroad?

I am presuming that this question is asked to avoid having to deal with poor outsourced customer service or questionable foreign seo practices.  Either way, some better questions to deal with these issues are to make sure that you have complete transparency with what your web marketer intends to do on your behalf (make them obtain approval from you) and find out who you will be dealing with specifically on a day to day basis.  The truth is that there are some web marketing tasks that make a lot of sense to outsource and can keep web marketing costs down.  On the other hand, some tasks should be handled directly by your consultant, and some are best handled by people at the firm themselves.  Again, the keys here are transparency and accountability.

How long have you been in business?

Not terrible, but not terribly informative.  Better to get samples of work, talk to clients, and get an idea of how long the web marketer has been working with a particular client.  The truth is that there are many companies that have been around forever that are doing poor work.  On the other hand, there are many younger web marketing firms that are doing great work.  And vice versa.  While I’m guessing there is some comfort that the company has been established for a longer period of time, it’s not really a great gauge for your ultimate decision.

Do you specialize in SEO?

While at first glance this might seem like a redundant question if you’re looking for a law firm seo consultant, it’s actually a good question to ask.  There are many web marketing firms that will sell you paid search management in the guise of seo.  If you’re looking to increase your firm’s organic or natural search engine visibility, make sure you’re talking apples to apples with your prospective search marketer.  Also, some web marketing firms specialize in other areas (i.e. website development), and offer “seo on the side”.  Don’t touch that stuff.  If you want greater web visibility, make sure the firm spends the majority of it’s time performing those services.

Do you do Google Adwords campaigns?

Again, this is a good qualifying question.  If you want paid search management, you should make sure that you’re asking about it.  Additionally, experience with paid search campaigns can be a reflection of a firm’s seo strategy.  Paid search campaigns can offer a wealth of analytics data for law firm search engine optimization campaigns.  Therefore, companies that are experienced with both organic and paid search campaigns tend to have a “leg up” on those that do not.

What kind of reporting you offer? Is such reporting substantive or fluff and stuff? Do you provide ranking and analytics reporting on a regular basis showing our ranking for various search terms and reporting on new inbound links?

Absolutely critical questions! Reporting is the means by which you will measure your law firm web marketing efforts.  Find out what metrics will be reported, how often, and how.  If the prospect doesn’t have a comprehensive reporting plan in place, beware.  They may not be reporting because they are unable to produce results.  Look for reports on traffic, leads, rankings, and links.

How do you plan to increase inbound links to our website?

Great question.  This goes back to transparency.  As a law firm, your professional reputation is the most valuable asset you have.  Don’t let shady web marketing practices undermine the reputation that you have worked so hard to build.  Find out the details for all strategies.  Get approval for strategies in advance.  Finally, if they don’t have a plan for link building (or claim their plan is a secret), you are almost guaranteed not to see results.

Do you use link farms?

While I respect the intention of the question, it really doesn’t get to the real issue.  The definitions of what constitutes a link farm are all over the place.  Ultimately, the only the thing that matters is whether Google deems a site, or a group of sites a link farm.  Unfortunately, what Google determines is a link farm, and what others may determine is a link farm, don’t always coincide.  Again, you’re better off understanding exactly what the strategy is.  If the strategy involves acquiring links from many free for all sites that aren’t relevant to your practice, then they probably won’t produce results.  While such sites may or may not be link farms, they probably won’t do much for you anyway.

What is your contract term?  Do you allow for month to month or terminable on will?

Two more excellent questions.  While organic search marketing definitely requires patience (we typically suggest 6-8 months), locking into 2+ year deals is not necessary.  Hold your web marketer accountable for generating results in a reasonable amount of time.  While you should be weary of search marketers that guarantee results in 24 hours, 1 week, or even 30 days, you should also demand reporting so that you can measure progress.  If you don’t see improvements within 4-6 months, it’s probably time to begin shopping again.

What does your monthly fee include?

Another important question.  Find out specifically what you are paying for.  There should be no “secret sauce” or proprietary information when it comes to understanding what you are investing your money in.  Get a good idea of all the services that are being performed and how the effectiveness of those services will be measured.

What tools do you utilize?

This question is not really necessary unless you know some pretty advanced search marketing concepts.  I could name off a bunch of important tools, but for most legal professionals, they probably won’t mean much.  However, if you are looking to learn a little law firm seo yourself, then perhaps you are interested in what tools are being used to perform keyword discovery, track phone numbers, monitor links, and to perform competitive analysis.  This one is really up to you.

Do you offer exclusivity in my location?

Great question! Many web marketing firms (especially the larger ones), will take on several law firms as clients, even competitors.  This creates a conflict of interest.  Let’s face it, legal web marketing is competitive.  If you’re marketing firm is helping you and 30 of your competitors, how can they possibly serve everyone’s best interests?  Answer, they can’t.  Usually, they have some system for producing better results for some firms over others (usually it’s the firms that pay them more money).  Look for search firms that limit the number of clients they take on in a given area for a given practice.

Upon termination do we own all the work? Do all the links stay up? Are there ANY adverse consequences for termination?

More great questions.  Watch out for companies who claim a proprietary right to your domain, content, etc.  Also, look out for companies that will set up links on their properties, but remove all the links should you decide to quit.  This is a very common scheme.  Unfortunately, there will always be some adverse consequence to leaving a search firm.  The biggest is that they are no longer performing search engine optimization services.  Quality web marketing is a continuously ongoing and evolving process.  The search engines are constantly re-assessing how they rank websites.  If you think you can get a “dose” of web marketing and have success over time, you don’t quite understand the full picture quite yet.  However, you shouldn’t be captive to a web marketing firm that threatens to destroy your visibility if you decide to fire them.  Own the domain.  Own the content.  Own as many profiles or accounts upon which they are building links.  Ultimately, in many situations, there will be lost links upon termination.  You just want to be sure that it won’t be so many as to significantly damage your visibility.

Do you have a “long tail” strategy?

Without getting into too much detail about the long tail here, there are two things that are critical to taking advantage of the long tail, content and domain authority.  Make sure you have a content strategy in place that will produce relevant pages, posts, articles, etc. to your site on a frequent basis.  Be sure that the content is well-written and relevant to your practice.  With regard to domain authority, links are the cornerstone.  Again, be sure you know the source of where links are going to be generated.  Do these two things, and you will see good longer tail results.

Free Guide: Hiring A Law Firm SEO Consultant Are you looking to increase your visibility online but are feeling overwhelmed by the number of service professionals promising the world to you? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Hiring A Law Firm SEO Consultant.

From time to time, we like to share a true story from the law firm marketing world.  Sometimes, they’re inspirational.  Sometimes, they are comical.  And sometimes, they are tough to hear.  Here’s a real-world law firm marketing Yellow Pages story.

I was recently asked to review the performance of a law firm Yellow Pages ad over the course of a year.  The firm had done a “better than most” job of monitoring the performance of the campaign.  They were on an annual contract for a large two page color spread and 4 color in line ads.  The price was around $4,500 per month.  Here were the results:

$4500 per month x 12 months = $54,000 annual investment.   109 inquiries  = $495 per inquiry.

Number of clients: 2

Now this post is not intended to be a broad condemnation of using yellow pages or similar directories. In fact, even the poor performance from this story may have generated a positive return (assuming that the combined revenue of the two cases exceeded $54K).

Instead, the point is that you must measure all of your marketing and advertising investments and determine whether they are meeting the goals that you set for them.

If you’re investing in offline marketing, use dedicated phone numbers. Test different ad copy. Try different sources. Don’t think you can put up an ad and wait for the phone to ring. Even if it works, which it probably won’t, it is very likely you can do better.

If you’re investing in online marketing, use web analytics. Test different calls to action on your website. Monitor your top content. Use dedicated phone tracking numbers.

Sometimes a blog post has to just be about fun. I found this over on Legal Blog Watch:



You really have to hand it to the folks at Old Spice. You want to see viral marketing in action? Their video is #1 on YouTube this week and the #3 most viewed sponsored video of all time.

Back in my college days at the University of Michigan, I was in a fraternity. At the start of each semester, we would have a rush period where prospective students would stop by the house and talk with the brothers. We would take everyone’s picture, write a short description about them, and then after the rush period we would have an Animal House style Hash. During Hash, pictures of the prospective pledges were projected on a wall and all the brothers in the house would debate whether or not to grant a bid to the individual. Since there were limited bids to give out each period, we had to “Nuke” anyone we didn’t think would be a good fit for the house.

Things aren’t much different for the “fraternity” of law firm internet marketing strategies. With limited time and fierce competition, messing around with ineffective online marketing strategies is unacceptable. With experience and trial and error on my side, I present to you 5 online marketing strategies for law firms that I’m officially nuking.

1. Flash Only Websites – I know, I know. Flash websites look so cool. They move and animate, the buttons light up, music plays when I get to the home page, etc. The problem is that flash is a killer when it comes to search engines. Search engines don’t read flash well. This means your beautiful, flash website will not come up in search results when people are looking for your services. That’s just too big a market to cut yourself out of. Incorporating some flash elements on certain parts of your website can be ok (I’d advise having a professional SEO look over the flash implementation to make sure), but don’t build the entire site in flash.

2. Comment Spamming – If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s good because this isn’t something you should do. Comment spamming involves building links back to your website by leaving worthless comments on other websites, blogs, and articles. From a technical perspective, this is a waste of your time. Most comments will be moderated by the author and never posted. Those spam comments that do make it through will most likely be “nofollowed” meaning the search engines won’t give you credit for the links. If you leave a worthless, general comment, it isn’t likely people will bother to head back to your site rendering your efforts a waste of time. Worst of all, your reputation is at stake if you, or a marketer you hire, is leaving comment spam that leads back to your website. If you comment, make sure it’s relevant and done for the purposes of adding the conversation, not to spam links back to your site.

3. Not Monitoring Your Firm’s Name – With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and real-time information sharing, failing to monitor your firm’s name online is a big mistake. I don’t have to tell you that your reputation is one of, if not the most, important assets you have as an attorney. It’s critical that you setup alerts so that you know when you are mentioned and can respond appropriately. Using a free service such as Google Alerts allows you to setup automated emails that are delivered whenever something is published online about you or your firm.

4. Failing To Review Your State Bar Advertising Rules – I don’t need to tell you that lawyers are held to a different standard with regards to ethical advertising. Since every state bar establishes it’s own ethics rules, it’s important that you take the time to learn what is permissible and what isn’t. Don’t leave this critical task in the hands of a marketing company, it isn’t their bar license at stake if something goes wrong.

5. Not Using Analytics – If you aren’t measuring the performance of your website with a free, robust analytics program such as Google Analytics, than you aren’t going to be able to play with the big boys. In order to evolve, grow, and make necessary changes to your strategy you will need to understand what has happened, what has worked, and what hasn’t. You can’t do this without an analytics program. There is no excuse not to use one since one of the best ones out there, Google Analytics, is free. Get this setup today and take 20 minutes to learn how to use it.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

As you have probably heard by now, JD Supra has released its Legal Updates LinkedIn App. It has been covered pretty extensively. I did, however, want to draw your attention to a post I wrote on Lawyerist about JD Supra, Legal Updates, and LinkedIn, that spurred some healthy discussion.

As you can see, the comments on that post got moderately heated with regard to whether JD Supra and LinkedIn are worth spending time using. If you have experience with these tools, positive or negative, I encourage you to head over to Lawyerist to share your thoughts.

In a nutshell, if you haven’t had success building relationships with JD Supra and/or LinkedIn, without knowing anything about how you’re using them, my guess is that you’re not participating like you would offline (or maybe you are and are not having much luck there either).

Just like “working a room” at a cocktail party, using social media tools to build relationships takes practice, work, and of course, a little charisma.

Accurate comparison by Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk, on Lawyerist that investing in marketing is a lot like investing in working out:

I like to compare it to going to the gym. Come January 1, you are at the gym at 6am, running on the treadmill, working out with weights, and you may even hire a trainer. You religiously go three times a week, but the results are slow to come. You only lose one pound in the first week, and none in the second week. Your determination starts to wane. By the third week, you only get to the gym one time, and only run on the treadmill on that visit. You drop your trainer because he’s not doing any good anyway. You gain a pound in your fourth week. Your drive falls even farther, and you don’t make it at all during the 5th week. And so on.

This is how many law firm marketing efforts go too. You start with a plan (though many don’t even do that) and are excited to see the results. You may create a customer newsletter, hold a seminar, update your website, or even start using Twitter. Everyone is excited and ready to handle the work that is going to start rolling in. But the results aren’t what you expected. So, over time, you pull back, decrease your marketing efforts and see even fewer results. Eventually you are firmly convinced that marketing is a complete waste of money and time because it doesn’t work.

Other aspects of marketing that are like working out:

• Results take work.
• Results need to be tracked.
• Don’t set unrealistic expectations.
• Set attainable goals.
• Spend more time on what works.

We’ve had so many new readers join us in the last couple of months that I thought it would be good to dig through the archives and share some of the best posts from the past. Without further ado, here are the top 10, in no particular order, as voted on by me:

1. Add Value To Your Legal Services By Changing The Perception, Not The Service
2. Why The Contact Form On Your Website Shouldn’t Be An Intake Interview
   
3. Why You Need a Blog to Succeed With Lawyer Marketing on Twitter & LinkedIn
4. Don’t Mess With Texas (at least not its lawyers): Is there no such thing as bad publicity?
   
5. 5 Ways to Attract More Readers to Your Legal Blog
6. 6 Things Braveheart Taught Me About Lawyer Marketing
7. 9 Lessons From Rock Climbing on How to Run Your Law Firm
8. Spaghetti Sauce and Discovering Your Legal Niche: Why Specialization is More Important In Today’s World
9. 5 Lawyer Internet Marketing Must-Do’s (only 3 hours per week)
10. Kentucky Fried Chicken and Lawyer Marketing: Are you telling a good story?

It seems like almost every day, another law firm fires up the blog rockets and launches into the blogosphere.

For some it serves as a virtual soap box.  For others, it’s just another form of expression.  And for yet others, it’s an instrumental tool in building new professional relationships.

No matter what the purpose, writing effective posts is a large part of having success with your legal blog.  However, growing your blog audience goes far beyond posting alone.

Elizabeth Ferris, of Authentic Law Markeing, reminds us that writing is only one part of the equation:

Effective blogging requires awareness, engagement and conversation. The basics of blogging include:

1. Reading

2. Commenting

3. Writing

As you will see, reading, commenting, participating, citing, and of course, writing are all important ingredients to successful law blogging.

Reading

Reading other relevant blogs is a big piece of the blogging puzzle.  Reading helps you listen.  It’s how we consume ideas online.  If you don’t read, you’re likely just “talking at”, which is a recipe for a blogging fail.

Listen more than you talk, read more than you write.

Commenting

Commenting is to posting as crawling is to walking.  Commenting on other blogs demonstrates your willingness to participate and shows that you’re not just online to tell.  Commenting shows that you have listened.

Participating

While both reading and commenting are ways of participating, I include participating here because participating includes more.  There are so many ways to participate and interact with others online.  Don’t be myopic about your activities online.  Contribute to discussions.  Anwswer questions.  Participate.

Citing

Citing and/or linking to other authritative sources on a subject is suboridnate in importance only to reading and writing.  Citing ties your blog to other blogs.  It’ the very fabric of the web.  If you’re not citing and linking to others, you’re missing a lot of opportunity.

Writing

Ok, there’s not denying it.  Writing is very important.  But without these other ingredients, even the best writing goes unnoticed.  I always try to describe blogging as part public email thread, part editorial column, and part news article.  Blogging is a hybrid.  It’s flexible, conversational, powerful, and, in my humble opinion, should be the cornerstone or headquarters of your professional reputation on the web.

Side note:  Don’t be afraid to put your own personal voice into your posts.  Figure out what kind of blogger you are.

Free Guide: Guest Blogging For Lawyers Want to learn how guest blogging can help build relationships and bring more business for your firm? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide: Guest Blogging For Lawyers.