LawyerCasting

Sharing Compelling Email Content on Social Sites Makes Sense

Christopher Barnes — 2009-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

Rather than competing, seems email and social media are complementary tools. According to a recent Marketing Sherpa survey, about 80% of marketers agree that sharing email content on social media sites "extends the reach of email content to new markets," and "increases brand reputation and awareness." So it makes sense to embed social sharing tools within your email marketing campaigns (similar to how the "forward to a friend" option has long been included in emails).

See the chart below then click here to read more about the survey.

Do You Agree or Disagree That Social Sharing...

Why You Should Always TYPE the Subject Line for a Law Firm Email Alert or Newsletter (Instead of Copy and Paste)

Christopher Barnes — 2009-11-02T01:47:00-08:00

Let's face it. We are always looking for efficient and quick ways to assemble email marketing campaigns. One of the most common shortcuts is the copy & paste function (good 'ol "ctrl-c" then "ctrl-v"). However, if you create subject lines for campaigns in your email marketing software by copying and pasting content from programs like MS Word, you may end up distributing emails that display strange characters in the subject line when viewed by recipients. Why does this happen and what can you do about it?

As explained in this enlightening post from the Email Deliverability blog, the technical explanation for such gaffes is that many email applications only support the ASCII character set when rendering subject lines. However, MS Word and other word processing software employ characters that are non-ASCII (e.g., slanted double quote, apostrophe/single quote, em-dashes), and thus incapable of being rendered properly by recipients' email clients.

Thus, to make sure that your subject lines display properly across the greatest number of email clients, you should only use ASCII character sets in your subject lines. Which means typing your subject lines, rather than copying and pasting content from your word processing application, or even web pages.

For the intrepid, to learn more about the difference between ASCII and non-ASCII character sets,and encoding, you can download this short white paper from Pivotal Veracity.

Is Social Media the End of Email As We Know It?

Christopher Barnes — 2009-10-29T10:14:49-07:00

With each new collaborative technology adopted by the masses - yesterday it was RSS, today it is social media - the pundits have predicted the demise of email as a marketing and communication tool. However, once again, reports of email's demise are exaggerated. As per a chart recently released by MarketingSherpa summarizing the results of a survey on how people share information, email remains a key communication tool utilized in tandem with social media to "increase engagement, deliver relevant content and build contact databases."

As an example, the survey reports that when asked what methods they use to share something from the Internet with their friends or family, such as a video, link or article, 78% of consumers responded that they forward a link to the content via email. Only 22% cited social media as their "sharing" method of choice.

Click here to view a large, printable of the chart displaying the results of the survey.

Click here to read MarketingSherpa's complete analysis.

How Lawyers Can Use Podcasts to Publicize Their Expertise

Christopher Barnes — 2009-10-28T00:42:29-07:00

Lawyers are always looking for new channels to publicize their expertise, and thus catch the attention of prospective clients who require that expertise to address legal issues. In a recent post titled "7 Steps to Using Podcasts to Grow Your Practice," divorce lawyer Lee Rosen provides some helpful tips on how lawyers can use podcasts to develop new business.

Rosen observes that a growing segment of the population prefers to learn by listening rather than by reading, resulting in the growing popularity of podcasts. While attorneys can benefit from this trend by creating their own podcasts, such an approach can be time consuming and expensive.

Instead, Rosen suggests the easier path of becoming a guest on podcasts produced by others (which will often already have a solid audience base).

Rosen proceeds to identify seven "tricks" for becoming a guest on an existing podcast and making the most of these opportunities. We recommend it.

The SEO Value of Internal Website Links

emonlinemedia — 2009-10-27T00:43:00-07:00

In the world of SEO, there's always a heavy focus on developing inbound links from third party sites. This is good, but what marketers often forget is that internal links within a website can also help search engine rankings. In a recent article, MarketingSherpa spoke with Eric Ward, one of the search industry’s top linking experts, about how to use internal links to improve SEO.

Some key points:

Establish benchmarks for testing: First and foremost, Ward stresses the importance of developing traffic baselines showing, for example, the amount of traffic coming to various pages on your website that you deem important. The baseline numbers will help you measure the impact of changes you may later wish to make.

Tweak anchor text: The hyperlinked text of a link -- its anchor text -- helps signal to search engines what type of content is on the destination page. Using your target keywords in the anchor text of on-site links can boost the destination pages’ performance in searches for those keywords. In particular, focus on the anchor text being used on your homepage to direct visitors to important internal pages.

Boost traffic to lagging pages: you may find there are pages on your website that you want visitors to browse, but which are lagging in performance. Internal links from more popular pages on your website can help boost traffic on lagging content that is nevertheless important to you from a marketing standpoint.

Click here to read the full article (subscription required).

Email Design Tips for Blackberries (With Bonus: Jerry Seinfeld Blackberry Routine)

emonlinemedia — 2009-10-19T23:16:00-07:00

More and more business professionals are consuming emails on mobile devices such as Blackberries. I'm a Blackberry devotee myself, and regular use has reinforced the importance of "best practices" in email design to ensure that alerts and newsletters are readable on Blackberries.

We've blog before about email design best practices. In the case of Blackberries, it's very important that you:

1. Design banner graphics that are short. Otherwise, Blackberry users have to scroll down too much to get to your main message. Good design can deliver short, but visually appealing banners for regular email users that can still work well with Blackberries.

2. You use ALT tags to describe your images so at least Blackberry users will know the nature of the images they are not seeing.

3. Position key body copy (e.g., alert headlines, calls-to-action) in the lefthand column so Blackberry users will see them immediately at the top of their screen after they start scrolling to read the message (that is, Blackberries won't respect your multi-column layouts - instead, lefthand column is displayed first, then columns to the right).

And on the lighter side, here's a very funny critique of Blackberry users from Jerry Seinfeld.

10 Key Style Guidelines for Law Firm Websites, Blogs and Email Communications

emonlinemedia — 2009-10-18T23:00:00-07:00

Marketers often mistakenly assume that font, color, layout and other style guidelines applicable in the print world can also be used for online media. The problem is that online media is typically viewed on a monitor where the resolution is far lower than in print. As such, to deliver optimum readability to clients, prospects and other users, marketers need to follow different style guidelines on the Web (as an aside, we sometimes find that attorneys protest when marketers deviate from the styles the attorneys are accustomed to (e.g., full justification vs. left justify); what needs to be pointed out politely is that styles that work in briefs and other print communications that attorneys are familiar with don't necessarily work well in online media).

Reproduced below is a short list of 10 legibility guidelines published by Tim Ash, a landing page expert, in an article on SearchEngineWatch, that legal marketers should follow when designing and publishing web pages, blog posts and email communications (our additional comments are in italics in brackets):

Font styles: "Use sans serif fonts, such as Arial, Helvetica, or Geneva. Don't use serif fonts (with small lines at the end of characters) such as Times Roman, Courier, or Palatino. At typical monitor resolutions (which are a lot lower than printed materials), serif fonts are harder to read." [We find 10 point Verdana or Arial is best for body copy, and 12 point Arial for headlines and other "call out" text].
Font sizes: "Use 10-12 point fonts for most body text. Larger and smaller fonts reduce reading speed. Consider increasing your font size by a couple of points if you're targeting an older audience, and make sure that you allow sufficient spacing between lines as well." [We find 10 point Verdana or Arial is best for body copy, and 12 point Arial for headlines or other "call out" text]
Font consistency: "Don't use a wide range of font styles, colors, or sizes."
Underlines: "Don't use underlines in regular text. Underlines are expected only on hyperlinks. If you must emphasize text, consider other methods (e.g., different size, bolding, italics, text color, or background color)." [bulleting can also be used for emphasis/highlighting and is easily scanned; also be sure not to overdo a highlighting technique - e.g., bolding every line in a bulleted list - or you defeat the whole purpose of emphasis, which is to be discrete]
Justification: "Don't justify paragraphs of text to create equal-length lines. The jagged ends of unjustified lines have been shown to help people position themselves in the text and increase reading speed and comprehension. Always use left-justified text. Don't center body text, especially bullet lists of varying line lengths."
All-caps: "Avoid using text in all capital letters. It has been shown to be harder to read." [ALL CAPS is also interpreted as shouting]
Line length: "Blocks of text over 50 characters wide are harder to read. Consider putting in forced carriage returns (also called "hard breaks") in your paragraphs to make sure that your lines don't become too long when displayed on wider computer screens."
Contrast: "High contrast between text and background increases legibility. Black text on white background is best. Stay away from low-contrast text/background combinations unless you're intentionally trying to deemphasize something. Don't use reverse font treatments (lighter text against a darker background)."
Link text: "Blue underlined links are a de facto standard (as is the purple color for previously visited links). Don't change these defaults unless you have a compelling reason." [also a good idea to use a distinct behavior for "hovering" - that is, when someone moves their mouse over a link - example: hyperlinked text is underlined, but then underline disappears on hover.]
Text background colors and images: "White backgrounds for body text are a strong convention. Navigation and header background colors should also be relatively light to enhance legibility. Don't use high-contrast graphical images as background for text."

Read the full article (addressing other landing page best practices) on SearchEngineWatch.

Marketers See Social Media Emerging as a Complement to Email and Search Marketing

emonlinemedia — 2009-09-15T09:00:22-07:00

MarketingSherpa recently published an interesting chart displaying the results of a study exploring how highly marketers ranked social media as a marketing tactic versus email and search marketing, which have been around much longer.

The chart shows that almost all marketers (97%) agreed that social media will complement other marketing tactics like email and search, while a large percentage (88%) of marketers also agreed that social media will become a standard tactic for most companies (with 74% predicting social media will eventually have its own budget line item and staff).

Only a small percentage (24%) predicted that social media will displace email marketing in targeting prospective customers, and an even smaller number (12%) predicted that social will displace email marketing when communicating with existing customers.

Here's a link to a large version of the chart.

At the end of the day, what's needed is a holistic strategy of the kind we preach here at eLawMarketing that utilizes each online marketing tactic in a manner that follows "best practices" and maximizes ROI. In general, for law firms, we find that email marketing is most suited to marketing to existing clients and referral sources (simply because these subscribers are accustomed to receiving emails from attorneys at your firm on a regular basis), while blogs and social media are more effective at marketing to prospective clients, the media and other unknown parties.

With Email Alert Deliverability, You Get What You Pay For

emonlinemedia — 2009-08-31T00:23:00-07:00

Prospective law firm clients often ask us why they should pay a bit more for our email marketing service than they might pay for, say, a standard blast service like Constant Contact or Campaigner. I respond that email marketing is not just about sending emails, but about getting them delivered, and that (among other benefits) they'll get better deliverability with our service using tools such as private IP addresses, and authentication. Plus we can monitor a firm's "email reputation" for any red flags that might affect deliverability, such as blacklists.

To illustrate the point, compare the deliverability and reputation reports for three email alert campaigns distributed recently by three leading law firms.

Screenshot #1: The first campaign was sent using a well known blast email service. The deliverability report shows numerous red flags that could affect deliverability. Here's a link to download a screenshot of the relevant report; see the analysis below.

First, the reputation report shows that the emails are not authenticated, which could cause deliverability problems at clients using authentication as a filtering tool. As observed in the past, use of authentication as a spam filtering tool is becoming more common.

Second, there is no Abuse.net address. Since many spam reporting tools use the abuse.net database to determine where to send "spam" complaints, if you don't have an entry in the database, you leave parties with no choice but to complain to the blacklists and anti-spam organizations. Much better if they knew where to write to you directly so you could address any misunderstandings BEFORE they contact the blacklists and anti-spam organizations.

Third, the report is showing that the shared IP address used to send this email appears on a blacklist (albeit, fortunately, not a widely used blacklist). This highlights a common issue. The reason so many blast services can charge so little for their service is because they allow many accounts to share the same IP address. As a result, even if you follow email marketing best practices in terms of your list hygiene (e.g., no unsolicited addresses), if other accounts are engaging in spam or other questionable tactics, then those activities will affect the integrity of the shared IP address being used to send your emails, and your own reputation will suffer. Indeed, as we observed in the past, using a shared IP address is analogous to sharing your social security number with other people. You can have stellar credit, but if those sharing your social security number don't pay their bills, the bank will still deny you credit.

Fourth, the report shows that the blast service's domain name appears on a domain blacklist. This is bad news.

We wonder if the law firm using this blast service is even aware of these issues. Probably not.

Screenshot #2: The second campaign was sent using the InterAction Tikit product running on the firm's own mail servers. The reputation report shows several issues. Click here to view the screenshot of the report; then see the analysis below.

The main issue here is that because the mail server used for email marketing is operated by the firm, the firm's IT department must take responsibility for managing issues like authentication and Abuse.net entries. Given how overworked IT departments typically are, they haven't given any attention to these issues. As a result, there are deliverability red flags.

In contrast, when a firm outsources email marketing to an email service provider like eLawMarketing, we'll assume the burden of making sure these deliverability issues are addressed.

Fortunately, in this second campaign, there are no blacklist problems. But what if one arises? Will the firm's IT department become aware of it? Without ongoing monitoring, no one will know and deliverability of the firm's email alerts and newsletters will suffer silently without anyone knowing there is a problem.

Screenshot #3: The third campaign was sent by a firm using our mail servers and with a private IP, abuse.net entry and authentication in place. Here's a link to the screenshot - as readers will see, deliverability is maximized.

To learn more about our deliverability solutions, here's a brochure you can download.

How Lawyers Can Use the Groups Feature on LinkedIn for Lead Generation

emonlinemedia — 2009-08-17T08:57:00-07:00

Came across a case study on MarketingSherpa that offered some useful tips on using LinkedIn for lead generation. While the case study was based on the experience of a marketer at a software company, several of the insights would be applicable to lawyers seeking to use LinkedIn to develop more business.

In a nutshell:

1. Join groups related to your area of expertise (e.g., private equity group for a private equity lawyer), but focus on groups with a highly engaged audience, rather than simply the largest audience. This means looking for groups where the discussions elicit multiple comments from members, rather than just one or two (or none). You can perform this research by reading through recent group discussion posts of groups you have joined both to assess group members’ interest areas, and how much activity new posts tend to generate.

2. Freely share white papers and other resources with your group, but not in a "salesy" manner. For example, in the case study, when promoting a new white paper, the marketer would write a message to the group announcing the new title, sharing a link, and asking group members to provide feedback on the white paper itself.

3. Monitor ongoing conversations to find opportunities to comment on other people’s topics. You may include a link to marketing collateral when appropriate, but often consider just sharing an opinion or giving feedback on other group members’ comments.

4. When providing links to materials on LinkedIn consider creating custom landing pages that specifically address the LinkedIn audience for a more seamless transition.

Access the full case study (subscription required).

Registration Open for Webinar Series on "Best Practices" in Internet Marketing for Law Firms and Lawyers

emonlinemedia — 2009-08-03T10:41:14-07:00

We are pleased to announce a complimentary webinar series focused on Internet marketing "best practices" for law firms and lawyers. The webinars will be held on Tuesdays at 12:30 PM EST throughout the summer and fall on the dates set forth below. There is no charge to attend!

Don't worry if you can't make a particular presentation. All will be recorded and available for download after the webinar.

Browse the list of topics below, then click a "register" link to sign up for one or more webinars.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009: Boosting Event Registrations With Online RSVP Forms

Learn how online RSVP forms can be used to (i) increase event registrations through features such as pre-populated forms, and (ii) automate event management tasks using online databases for registration capture.

Register

Tuesday, August 18, 2009: Maximizing Email Deliverability: Private IP & Authentication

Email marketing is NOT just about sending emails; it's about getting your emails delivered! Learn what tools are available to maximize deliverability of firm email alerts and newsletter past filters and into client inboxes.

Register

Tuesday, August 25, 2009: How to Generate New Business From Podcasts

Learn how to use professionally produced podcasts and landing pages to generate new business. The presentation will explore a case study of one company that used a simple podcast to generate millions of dollars in new revenue.

Register

Tuesday, September 8, 2009: The Marketing Value of Niche Practice Microsites

Microsites are mini-websites focused on a niche practice area offering targeted resources such as articles and directories to visitors. Learn how to use microsites to more effectively promote niche practice areas to prospective clients.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009: The Top 10 SEO Best Practices for a Law Firm Website

Search engines drive a sizeable percentage of traffic to law firm websites. Accordingly, in order to maximize the number of leads and other business development opportunities generated by your firm's website, it's critical that the website comply with search engine optimization "best practices."

Tuesday, September 22, 2009: The Top 10 Law Firm Email Marketing Best Practices

From layout to banner sizes to subject lines, learn about the "best practices" that will help maximize readership of your firm's email alerts and newsletter, and facilitate conversion of readership into leads.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009: The Top 10 Law Firm Website Design Best Practices

Is your firm's website easy to navigate? Does it speak to your target audience? Learn about key design principles that can help maximize the ROI from your firm's website.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009: The Top 10 Law Firm Webcast Best Practices

Due to tough economic conditions, corporate travel budgets have been slashed. Which makes remote webcasts the ideal tool for cost-effectively promoting your expertise to a captive audience of potential clients. Learn the "best practices" for successful webcasts.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009: The Top 10 Social Media Best Practices for Lawyers

LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media tools have become increasingly popular within the legal community. Learn the "best practices" for using these tools for legal marketing and business development.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009: The Top 10 White Paper Marketing Best Practices

White papers on a niche legal topic are a powerful tool for promoting a lawyer's expertise. Learn the "best practices" for writing, designing and promoting white papers.

Making the Case for a Law Firm Email Marketing Program

emonlinemedia — 2009-08-03T10:22:22-07:00

When we pitch the value of an email marketing program for a law firm, we explain that it's all about staying in touch with clients, referral sources and other established contacts. Specifically, if you proactively reach out to these contacts on a regular basis with valuable content that reinforces your expertise, they'll remember you more readily when an opportunity to refer new business arises.

This point is well made in a recent post by Stephen Seckler on his Counsel to Counsel blog entitled "Don't Be a Stranger." Stephen's basic point is that it is important for service providers, including lawyers, to remain visible to past and prospective clients and referral sources. Because while doing a good job and delivering good value are obviously prerequisites for getting more work, they are not enough to insure that satisfied clients will call you the next time they have a need (or that referral sources will continue to refer work your way). Instead, maintaining visibility through ongoing marketing to clients and other contacts is the key.

Email marketing does that for you.

Marketers Believe Social Media Is an Effective Branding Tool

emonlinemedia — 2009-07-31T02:43:00-07:00

A recent survey of social media marketers released by MarketingSherpa found that a significant percentage rated social media as "very effective" or "effective" at influencing brand reputation (92%); increasing brand awareness (91%); increasing site traffic (88%); and improving search rankings (87%). A substantially smaller percentage felt social media was effective at generating leads (65%).

In terms of social media tactics, the most effective cited were user reviews, relationships with bloggers, discussion groups, and online news release distributions. Albeit marketers found the impact of these tactics sometimes difficult to measure.

Read a more detailed discussion of the survey results on eMarketer.com.

Download our online press release brochure.

Clever Inbound Linking Strategy for Law Firms

emonlinemedia — 2009-07-29T02:30:00-07:00

A recent article on Search Engine Watch suggested a clever strategy for adding inbound links to a website (which, as is well-known, helps boost search engine visibility). The article recommended identifying the websites of local business groups, such as a Chamber of Commerce or regional business council, and tapping them as a source of inbound links. Since only a few high-quality inbound links can make an appreciable difference when it comes to SEO, law firms should reach out to local business organizations for opportunities to obtain inbound links. Read the full article for further details.

United Airlines YouTube Fiasco Highlights Issue of Online Reputation Management

emonlinemedia — 2009-07-28T01:27:00-07:00

The blogosphere was abuzz last week about a YouTube video (called "United Breaks Guitars") complaining about a bad customer service experience with United Airlines that allegedly caused United Airlines' stock price to drop 10% costing shareholders a reported $180 million!

The PR fiasco suffered by United Airlines as a result of the video raises the question of how law firms should deal with negative references that show up online. As an example, we are aware of one firm that, when you plug their name into Google, some of top references in the search results include news about a major malpractice lawsuit against the firm, associate layoffs, and other negative items.

How does a law firm deal with negative references in Google search results? As explained by SEOMoz (a leading SEO resource), an online reputation management program has 3 components:

1. Identify which search queries (keywords) produce prominently listed, undesirable results (typically, we only care about the top 10 results or so on Page 1).

2. Create positive content on multiple sites with the intention of outranking the negative content (remember that, in general, Google will only list a maximum of two pages from a single domain on a given results page).

3. Optimize the positive pages with content and links to achieve rankings higher than the negative content, thus "pushing it down" to the 2nd page of results (or further).

However, as SEOMoz concedes, this is easier said than done due to certain algorithmic biases in Google's search engine tending to show a variety of different search results in response to a query.

How might a law firm implement such an online reputation repair campaign? Taking the case of the law firm with a negative reference problem discussed at the beginning of this post, here are a couple of strategies that can be followed:

1. Provide “link” support to existing “positive” references (since the number of links pointing to a particular site (known as “inbound” links) is one of the criteria that Google uses to rank a website. Additionally, the hyperlinks to existing websites with postive content should include the name of the firm, which tells Google that the destination websites are relevant to a search for that firm.

In other words, one effective online reputation strategy is to nudge up existing “positive” references on other websites by pointing links at them with optimized anchor text. Ideally, those other sites would be “trusted” domains such as a Wikipedia entry, LinkedIn profiles, a directory of jobs on Monster.com, and any other well known sites where the firm has a presence.

2. Add new firm-related content on authoritative domains favored by Google such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, JD Supra, FindLaw and other widely used content portals. In this way, a firm leverages the pre-existing strength of these domains for getting their content crawled and indexed by Google on a priority basis, and leans on the "authoritative domain" bias that Google shows in their rankings.

3. Distribute “positive” online press releases targeted at sites currently displaying “negative” content. The firm can issue online press releases concerning “buzzworthy” accomplishments, events and other firm news that will get picked up by major media and wire services. The goal is to trigger news coverage on sites now displaying “negative” content. Generally, the most recent news item that matches the firm's name will replace the existing negative item in the search results since Google favors content currency.

4. Launch one or more “niche” blogs. Search engines love blogs because blogs deliver what search engines want: regularly updated and targeted content that is rich with keywords and attracts many inbound links. Launching one or more blogs focusing on specialized practice areas at custom domain names, and then referencing the firm's name in key content areas (e.g., title and description tags), provides Google with yet additional positive references to display.

5. Develop a recruiting website under the firm's name on a separate domain name.

6. Deploy video content that can potentially get listed in vertical results. Creating video content relevant to the firm and publishing to YouTube and other video sharing sites should get picked up by Google, which often mixes in video results with text results.

These are just some of the key strategies to addresss negative references to a firm in Google.

To learn more, download our online reputation management for law firms brochure.

Click here to read further online reputation management strategies on SEOMoz.