Follow these guidelines for search engine–optimized legal content

Geri L. Dreiling

When computer-assisted legal research was introduced, many law students learned the importance of search terms. If you understood how they worked and which ones to choose, your odds of quickly finding relevant, on-point case law improved.

Keywords are also search terms, but, instead of researching cases, prospective clients use them to find lawyers and get answers to their legal questions. For organic search engine results — those listings that appear on pages that are not ads — keyword usage is essential.

When it comes to legal content writing, follow these three keyword rules:

1. Research your keywords.
2. Use your keywords.
3. Assess the performance of your keywords.

1. Research your keywords.

Whether you’re trying on clothes or coming up with keywords, one size does not fit all. Practice area, geographic location and even your competition may help determine which keywords are best for your website’s legal content.

For example, the keyword “attorney” may be more often searched in Missouri, whereas “lawyer” is the preferred search term in New York. The word “attorney” may be used more often with some types of practice areas.

Keyword research can also reveal which term your competitors prefer. Legal Media Matters has sometimes found that law firms in a given region prefer using “attorney” on their websites but “lawyer” is the more frequently searched term. That means that favoring “lawyer” may give you a search engine boost.

In our recent blog post “Attorney Websites: Seven Tips for Legal Content Writing,” we highlighted three free keyword websites that will allow you to perform some basic research: Google Insights, Wordtracker and Google AdWords.

There are additional fee-based options. At Legal Media Matters, we provide a more comprehensive in-depth keyword research and competition analysis for our clients.

2. Use your keywords.

Keyword research will help you identify main keywords, main supporting keywords and long-tail keywords.

Your main keyword phrase is the one that should be most heavily emphasized on the page. The main keyword might be emphasized anywhere from four to 10 times in a 500-word text.

For example, if you’re writing a web page about boat accidents, the best main keyword phrase could be “boating accident attorney.”

The main supporting keyword phrase comprises words that also receive some search queries. Using them can help improve readability and present more search engine opportunities.

For the boating accident web page, a supporting main keyword phrase might be “boating accident lawsuits.”

A long-tail keyword phrase contains more than three keywords. Although searches involving the long-tail keywords are less frequently found, they still provide good search engine opportunities. And because the people using the long tail keyword phrase know what they’re looking for, they may be more likely to become clients.

One example of a long-tail phrase is “boating accident victim compensation.” A sentence including that phrase might read:  “For a boating accident victim, compensation and reimbursement for medical expenses may be a primary concern.”

Incorporating the main keywords, supporting keywords and long-tail keyword phrases into your legal content is important — just don’t forget that readability for your clients cannot be sacrificed. Balancing the twin aims of being found on the Internet and then converting those searches into inquiries is, admittedly, a challenge.  The fact that legal concepts are discussed can further complicate readability.

At Legal Media Matters we’ve found the best solution for balancing the sometimes competing interests is to subject the text to an independent copyedit before it is published.

3. Assess the performance of keywords.

You’ve done your keyword research and incorporated the terms into your legal content. Now you must determine whether they’re effective.

Most programs, including Google’s free analytics program, record the keywords that lead people to your website. Are the keywords people are using the ones you optimized your text for initially? Are some keywords performing better than others? Which keywords are better at keeping people on your site longer?

If you find some pages working better, you may be able to use that information to boost your underperforming pages.

Do you follow any special keyword rules when writing your legal content? If so, let us know.

To learn more about our keyword research or legal content writing services, contact Legal Media Matters via our online contact form or email geri@legalmediamatters.com.

If you're looking for more legal content writing, PR or marketing tips, subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

A Special Thanks

A special thanks to lawyer and tech blogger Nicole Black, who, in honor of International Women’s Day, highlighted women who blog about law and technology for Blawg Review. I’m excited to have been listed for my legal content writing tips.

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

If you are a legal blogger, you know that the writing process isn’t your first big challenge when it comes to posting an entry. Instead, it’s this:  What do I want to write about?

Searching for story ideas can consume as much time — or even more —than the writing process itself, and, as any busy lawyer knows, the more barriers that come between you and a blog post, the more likely it is that you’ll abandon the blawg effort completely.

To help overcome this hurdle, consider adopting a practice I learned in the newsroom:  Create an editorial calendar for your blog.

I use an editorial calendar for my own blog, I’ve created them for clients who hire me to supply legal content for their blogs, and I’ve helped clients create editorial calendars for the blogs they write themselves.

Legal Blog Editorial Calendars as Planning Tools

The mainstream and legal publications I worked for as a reporter all had mandatory weekly editorial meetings. The editorial staff would gather, provide status updates about our stories and pitch new story topics. From that meeting, a four- to eight-week editorial calendar, listing story deadlines and run dates, was developed.

If your law firm has a blog with several contributors, consider convening a weekly blog editorial meeting where attorneys can share blog post writing ideas. Assign topics, schedule deadlines and stick to them.

If your blog has only one contributor, schedule an editorial meeting with yourself and brainstorm possible future topics. To get started, review the keywords people are using to find your blog, then ask yourself who your blog audience is and what topics they will find most helpful.

For example, if you are a personal injury lawyer who has a blog focused on car accident claims you may want to have separate posts addressing questions often asked by injured clients, such as:

• What should I do after an accident?
• Should I let a claims adjuster record my statement?
• What can I do if the other driver doesn’t have insurance?

In addition, help your clients or others who have been injured in a car accident connect with resources outside the legal community. Seriously injured individuals who have suffered a traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury — or their caregivers — may want to turn to a nonprofit agency for help and advice on how to handle this challenging situation.

Using the editorial calendar, you can not only plan future posts but also note agencies that you may wish to highlight.

Another advantage of the editorial calendar is the ease with which you can incorporate breaking news. If a judicial decision is handed down that significantly affects auto accident litigation, you can write a blog post about the decision and simply push all of the other editorial items back.

Editorial Calendar Take-Away Tips

Here are a four take-away tips to help you put together an editorial calendar:

1. Use keywords as a way to identify what potential readers are most interested in learning.
2. Set aside time to brainstorm.
3. Commit the information to a calendar with firm deadlines.
4. Include links to outside resources on your calendar for easy access when it’s time to write.

Blawgs can be a great way to share information, and they’re also an important legal marketing tool. Unfortunately, an abandoned blog with content that is several months old can detract from your legal PR efforts and any search engine advantages your blog achieved will evaporate if you do not supply fresh content.

If you have a legal blog, what do you do to keep up with posting?

If you need help creating an editorial calendar or would like to learn more about our legal content writing services, contact Legal Media Matters via our online contact form or email geri@legalmediamatters.com.

If you're looking for more legal marketing, blogging or content writing tips, subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

How to start web page writing when you don’t know where to begin

Geri L. Dreiling

Writing pages for your law firm’s website can, at times, be daunting — especially when you’re staring at a blank computer screen and wishing that the legal content would just magically appear.

In writing countless numbers of web pages for attorney websites, though, I’ve found that following seven steps can make the process more manageable.

1.  Research your keywords.

Keywords are the string of words that people type into a search engine such as Google when they’re looking for information. Researching the keywords that are searched most often but have the least amount of competition will help improve your search engine performance.

For law firms, geographic locations can form the basis of many of your keyword phrases.

There are several free tools — among them Google Insights, Wordtracker and Google AdWords — you can use to conduct keyword research.

Although it can be time consuming, making the effort to understand how prospective clients might go about finding you and using that information to inform your writing is important. If you do not have time to conduct the research, outsource it to a legal content writer who can prepare the information for you.

2. Pay attention to keyword placement and page length.

Estimates vary when it comes to the optimal word count for a web page that provides the necessary legal content for prospective clients and search engine optimization, but generally it lies somewhere between 300 and 700 words.

At Legal Media Matters, we aim for about 500 words, repeating a keyword phrase four to 10 times. Generally speaking, keyword phrases are often most effective in the title, in the lead paragraph and at the end of the page.

However, keyword usage must be natural. The main priority is making the text attractive and helpful for human readers rather than machines. As with any new endeavor, mastering these parameters takes some practice.  If you’re short on time, it may be easier to hire a legal content writer to handle the matter for you.

3. Write fresh legal content.

Don’t plagiarize. When you’re writing your web pages, it’s natural to look at how your competitors have handled a topic. It may be tempting to use those passages on your own website, especially if the competitor’s site is performing well in the search engine rankings.

Don’t.

The first reason is the moral and legal one: You’re taking someone else’s words and representing them as your own. Second, it can hurt your website’s performance. Search engines reward fresh content. If you simply duplicate what someone else has written, you’re going to do more harm than good when it comes to your search engine position.

4. Limit jargon and legalese.

Potential clients turn to the Internet in search of information.  If your reader needs a legal dictionary to interpret your prose, he or she is likely not going to continue reading. Instead, the prospective client will search for another website, one that he or she can understand.

That doesn’t mean you should avoid legal terms all together. In fact, some of those legal terms might be good keywords. For example, the terms “copyright” and “trademark infringement” should serve as keywords for an intellectual property law firm’s website.

Nina Totenberg, the legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio, is a master of explaining legal concepts. Listen to a few of her news segments for ideas on how to communicate complex topics in a comprehensible yet informative manner.

5.  Turn your draft over to a copy editor.

It is easy to miss grammar and spelling mistakes when you’re too close to your copy, and when you work with keywords and legal terms a draft can quickly become unreadable. You need to have someone else read it over before you publish it.

I would be lost without my copy editor, Kerry Bailey.  At Legal Media Matters, legal content for our clients’ websites is given a thorough copyedit before it is deemed publishable.

6. Provide contact information and a call to action.

Make it easy for prospective clients to contact you. Make sure to incorporate your contact information — be it a phone number or a link to an online intake form — and urge your reader to get in touch with you.

When you’ve finished writing your page, ask yourself: “What do I want my reader to do next?” The answer will be your call to action.

7.  Assess your performance.

After six months, evaluate the performance of your web pages. Which pages are generating hits? Are those visits coming from search engines? If so, which keywords are bringing readers to your site? You can use the insight gleaned from the pages that have performed well to boost your underperforming ones.

Do you have any tips of your own you'd like to share? Feel free to leave a comment in our response section. And if you have questions about our seven tips or simply want to outsource your legal content writing, contact Legal Media Matters via our online contact form or email geri@legalmediamatters.com.

If you're looking for  more legal content writing tips or attorney marketing ideas, subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

The social network’s focused groups can be a boon for professionals

By Geri L. Dreiling

An attorney I know who recently incorporated a blog into her website posted this question on her Facebook page: “Has anyone found a use for LinkedIn?”

It is a question that I frequently hear from my clients—and my answer often surprises them. When it comes to the return on the investment of time and effort associated with social media, it has been my experience that LinkedIn is the most effective. And if you have a blog or newsletter, membership in LinkedIn Groups is a good way to raise awareness.

LinkedIn Groups Legal PR Campaign

After launching a new website and blog in late December, I knew that it would take search engines a while to crawl and digest the information, no matter how well the content was search engine optimized.

Not being the type of person who likes to sit back and wait, I also launched a LinkedIn public relations campaign. I joined groups that were a good fit for legal public relations and attorney website content writing. I focused on a variety of topics such as legal marketing, public relations, law and media, alumni networks and business owners and entrepreneurs in my geographic area.

As I posted new articles on my blog, I also added them to the news section of the various LinkedIn Groups to which I belonged. I tracked my statistics in two straightforward ways:

• iGoogle’s free Analytics tool
• A spreadsheet listing the group submissions and number of times the LinkedIn group indicates that the article has been viewed

The spreadsheet is important because it allowed me to determine which groups were the most interested in the content and which groups could be dropped from the content submission list. The statistics also revealed some surprises. There were groups to which I submitted news articles that I did not think would be interested yet turned out to generate a number of views.

In approximately seven weeks, the LinkedIn campaign has:

• Generated almost half of the traffic to the Legal Media Matters website
• Resulted in reprint requests for Legal Media Matters articles
• Triggered new connections with lawyers around the world
• Produced business leads and inquiries about the legal public relations and content writing services provided by Legal Media Matters

By way of comparison, the Legal Media Matters Facebook page has generated approximately 5 percent of traffic to the website and blog and Twitter just over 3 percent.

Ultimately the capacity to reach a targeted audience of individuals using social media who are likely to be interested in the professional expertise or services my company offers seems to be the greatest with LinkedIn.

Attorneys and LinkedIn Groups

So, what does this mean for attorneys? In the article “Use Legal PR to Reach Your Referral Base,” I discussed the fact that, for attorneys, referrals continue to be a primary source of new clients.

The referral base could include attorneys who have the same type of legal practice but are located in different geographic areas; attorneys who are in your geographic area but practice a different type of law; professionals such as engineers, accountants and therapists with whom you regularly come in contact; or former classmates from college, law school or even high school.

Here are just a few examples of LinkedIn Groups an attorney might be interested in joining:

• An insurance defense attorney might join the Risk and Insurance Management Society.
• An employment attorney might join the Human Resources Professionals group
• A family law attorney might be interested in the Child-Centered Divorce group.
• A personal injury attorney might be interested in joining the Brain Injury Litigation Network or Personal Injury Attorney Network.
• As a means of connecting with attorneys from a variety  of practice areas, lawyers might consider Law and Social Networking, ABA Friends, Happy Lawyers, Rain-Making Lawyers Law Firm Marketing or Legal Blogging, just to name a few.

Don’t have blog articles to post? Consider joining one discussion as a way to share your expertise, network and expand your referral base.

Take-Away Tips

To make the most of LinkedIn, follow these steps:

• Join groups that complement your legal practice, your hobbies and your educational background.
• Participate on a regular basis by commenting on articles, joining in discussions or posting your own information.
• Measure your efforts by tracking statistics, whether it’s through your own website analytics, iGoogle or a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Now it’s your turn. Have you found LinkedIn Groups to be a worthwhile use of your time? And if you do decide to try them out, tell us about your experience.

Want more legal PR, attorney marketing and legal website content ideas? Subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

In the win-some, lose-some world of trial work, claim your successes more often than others point out your defeats

By Geri L. Dreiling

There’s a saying among trial lawyers:  Show me a lawyer who has never lost a case and I’ll show you a lawyer who has never tried one.

Let’s put it another way: In 2009, even superb St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, with a batting average of .327, didn’t get a hit about 67 percent of the time.

The message is clear. Whether you try cases or play major league baseball, there are going to be days when you strike out. The more prominent the lawyer, the higher the stakes are and the more visible the success -- and the more stinging the stumble.

You only have to look at the annual roundups of top verdicts and settlements that are published this time of year to pick up a pattern: a core group of attorneys on both sides of the aisle who have soared to great heights and suffered setbacks.

The trick is to come out ahead more often than you wind up behind, not only on the personal win/loss chart in your head but also in the legal media spotlight.

Don’t Neglect Your Wins

Hearing a jury return a verdict on your client’s behalf is an exhilarating moment when time is suspended and you bask in the glow of victory.

Unfortunately, the time in which you can relish the win is fleeting. That’s because all of the other client matters, cases and problems that you’ve pushed to the side now flood to the forefront. Now it’s your good intention of writing a verdict or settlement report that’s been pushed aside. Days turn into weeks, then months. Eventually your plan to report the results is abandoned.

But another case may come along in which the results are not favorable. Your winning opponent may not neglect to report that win—and so, even if you’ve won or settled several good cases in a row, your loss could be the only matter that ends up getting publicized.

It would be like a highlight reel after a Cardinals game that only showed Pujols’ strikeouts and omitted his home runs.

Publicize Your Successes

To avoid that outcome, make preparing and submitting verdict and settlement reports a priority. Here are some tips to help you enforce your resolve:

• The day after a win or big settlement, make a one-hour appointment with yourself to write up a rough draft of the trial report while it’s still fresh in your head. Choose a coffeehouse, the law library, your study at home. Treat the exercise as a celebration rather than a chore.

• Ask an associate or paralegal to prepare a rough draft of the trial report, using the standard form provided by many verdict reporting services. Missouri Lawyers Weekly, The Civil Litigator, VerdictSearch and Verdict Reporter all supply forms that identify the key information needed. Getting a rough draft prepared will you take you 80 percent of the way to completing the project.

• Outsource the reporting to a legal publicist. Most experienced legal PR writers can quickly prepare a trial report from the petition and answer, the expert witness disclosure and trial briefs, if any.

Ultimately it is crucial to recognize that reporting a favorable verdict or settlement is not about ego—it is about presenting an accurate track record. By not reporting your successes, you are editing out of your highlight reel the wins you’d like referring lawyers and prospective clients to see.

Want more marketing, legal PR and attorney website content ideas? Subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

Seven easy ways to promote your legal practice in February

By Geri L. Dreiling

For many attorneys, each new year brings with it a fresh resolve to do more to promote their legal practice, whether through marketing, legal public relations, networking or some combination of the three.

The year may start off strong, but, as with most resolutions, reality throws up roadblocks. The client who took a holiday from legal problems now urgently wants a solution. That trial date that once seemed so far off is much closer, and the need to schedule depositions and finish up discovery has become more pressing.

In the face of tight deadlines and worried clients, legal promotional efforts often get pushed to the side.

But you can still get back on course—and you may find that instead of wearing you down, your legal PR, marketing and networking efforts reinvigorate your enthusiasm for the practice of law.

To help you get back on track with your law firm’s marketing good intentions, here are seven things that you can do  in February to boost your visibility, strengthen your networks and promote your legal practice.

1. Send a handwritten thank-you note. If you’ve recently picked up a good client through a referral source, send a note of thanks. A token of sincere gratitude is always well received—and we like to help those who appreciate our gestures.
2. Take an old classmate to lunch. Is there someone from college or law school whom you haven’t seen in a long time, or with whom your interaction is limited to Facebook? Reconnect in person by getting together for lunch.
3. Seize a volunteer opportunity. Does your children’s school need volunteers to work the concession stand during basketball games? Is your neighborhood organization hosting a Valentine’s Day party? Volunteer a few hours of your time to help set up. Volunteering is a great way to meet people who share interests with you.
4. Catch up over coffee. Meet a client, former client, expert or other professional— psychiatrist, social worker, accountant or engineer—for coffee. Find out how your acquaintance is doing and use the time to learn about new developments in that person’s field or business. An expert may also be able to offer insight into what is and isn’t working when it comes to pretrial and trial strategy.
5. Send a note of congratulations to a colleague you know and admire who has recently been showcased in the media. Whether it’s a good settlement, a hard-won verdict, a guest article or a quote in the media as a legal expert, everyone likes to be acknowledged. Even if the lawyer practices the same type of law, there are always cases involving conflicts, and your genuine gesture could pay dividends later. For an extra boost, send a copy of the clip.
6. Report a verdict or settlement. Perhaps you’ve tried or settled a case in the past several months but haven’t gotten around to submitting it for publication. Make February the month when you finally write the case up and getting it published. For a lawyer, real results are the best form of promotion.
7. Inform the public about new hires, honors, awards and speeches. Send a press release to the legal, business and general media announcing your news. Include alumni magazines in your release. Growth, whether in the personnel department or professional development, is positive news indeed.

You know the old adage: Every journey, even the longest, begins with a single step. These are seven small steps for you to use as you begin your journey to boost your visibility and promote your legal practice.

As extra incentive for you to stay on track with your promotional efforts, Legal Media Matters is offering a 10 percent discount on the flat fee price of legal press releases and trial reports to new clients.

The new-client discount is good for one press release or trial report booked on or before Feb. 14. Simply fill out the online contact form and include “Promote Your Practice Offer” in the body of the comment section.

Want more legal PR , marketing and attorney website content ideas? Subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

Get more from yours by leveraging legal PR as fresh content

By Geri L. Dreiling

In the not-so-distant past, a lawyer’s promotional efforts might have been focused on the phone book.  Once a year, the art for an ad layout might have been pulled from a carefully filed manila folder, reviewed, tweaked, submitted for publication and then forgotten -- frozen on a yellow page for all time.

The attorney website is not a monument revisited annually. It is a tool. As versatile as the Swiss Army knife, the attorney website can serve as a marketing vehicle, a newsletter, a bulletin board and the point of entry for a prospective new client.

Like any tool, though, if it can’t be found it won’t be used.

Fresh Legal Content is King

Many factors go into a well-performing website that people can find easily—navigation structure, the use of keywords, search engine optimization, inbound links—but content is still king.

According to Enrique Serrano Valle, a telecommunications engineer who specializes in website and corporate identity development, fresh, unique content, updated on a regular basis, is crucial for peak performance.

“Create unique, good-quality content,” Serrano advises. “If it is original and meaningful, it will receive visits and be linked.”

Updating your content will also improve performance, but Serrano warns that frequency is more important than quantity: “Publishing a new article once a day during a year will work better than publishing 365 new pages at the same time once a year.”

Finally, incorporating search terms into your content will give your rankings a boost. “If you talk about what interests people in a way that a search engine reads,” Serrano says, “you will get good results.”

Legal PR as Fresh Content

Though feeding your website with content might sound time consuming, it doesn’t have to be. Leverage your legal PR.  Your law firm press releases, announcements, guest articles and verdict and settlement reports should also be put to work as fresh content for your website.

Your legal PR campaigns should already be providing you with unique, high-quality attorney website content.

Think about it: No two cases are exactly alike. Each firm’s achievements, honors and awards are different. Announcements highlighting upcoming speaking engagements and continuing legal education efforts vary by lawyer and law firm. Guest and expert articles differ by practice area.

Combine all of the ways a firm uses legal PR, and you will see the opportunities for frequent updates multiply.

When it comes to keywords, the combination of two or three words that will help people find your firm by describing your practice area and geographic location, your public relations material likely already includes the information. With a little bit of effort, the copy can be enhanced to maximize keyword placement on the page.

Take-Away Tips

To make the most of your attorney website, remember:

• Recognize that your law firm website is a tool.
• Add fresh content, unique and enriched with keywords, on a regular basis.
• Leverage your legal PR efforts by integrating them into your attorney website.

If you want your attorney website to serve as a resource and a tool, put your legal PR content to work.

Want more attorney website and legal PR ideas? Subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

Raise your visibility among those who refer clients

By Geri L. Dreiling

The primary goal of every legal public relations campaign is to attract new clients—but more than one path can bring clients to your law firm’s front door.

The direct route—a prospective client discovers your name and then gives you a call—is often the first route lawyers think of when launching a legal PR campaign, yet it is often the trail that winds through your referral base that ultimately draws new clients.

When you begin working on a legal PR plan, include an outreach effort that reaches your referral base.

Trusted Advisor

Your referral network is often one of the most effective client development methods. It makes sense: A prospective client who needs to hire a lawyer is going to turn to a trusted advisor for a recommendation. Though you may not be on the listed of trusted advisors yet, some of your contacts may be. The hope is that your name is the one that first comes to mind when a recommendation is sought from the client’s advisor.

It is also true that even if someone has referred clients in the past there’s no guarantee that you’ll be at the top of the list in the future.

How many times have you come across a colleague’s name or run into a colleague on the street and thought: “Oh, I forgot about him! There was a case I could have referred to him.”

Referral Base

Who is your referral base? Every attorney’s is different, varying with the practice area.

Think about the clients who have walked through your door over the past few years. How did they find you? More important, how did the good clients find you? Here are some examples:

• For a plaintiff’s attorney known for obtaining multimillion-dollar verdicts, the referral base may consist of personal injury and general practice attorneys who do not have the resources needed to handle complex PI or catastrophic cases.
• Therapists and social workers might be an important part of the family attorney’s referral base.
• An estate planner may obtain clients through the recommendation of an accountant or insurance agent.

Legal PR Outreach

Once you’ve determined who might be part of your referral base, the next step is figuring out how to reach that base. Talk to the people who send you clients: What do they read? Where do they go for information?

Members of the referral base for trial attorneys who handle catastrophic cases may subscribe to legal media outlets and verdict reporting services. Publicize your good results by submitting verdict and settlement reports, and referring lawyers will remember you.

For family lawyers and estate planners, it might make sense to target trade publications outside the subject of the law. Could you contribute an article that would be helpful to family lawyers, accountants or insurance agents? Is a professional organization geared to your referral base seeking guest speakers?

Once you’ve identified your referral base, keep in mind another tenet of good legal public relations:  frequency. Your name needs to appear on a regular basis if you are to remain at the top of the recall list.

Frequent contact will do more than just help the people in your referral base recall your name; it will also help you build or strengthen your relationships.

Take-Away Tips

To make the most of your legal public relations plan, follow these three steps:

• Identify your referral base.
• Devise a plan for reaching your base.
• Promote your practice to your referral base on a regular, consistent basis.

Use this legal PR roadmap, and new clients will find their way to your firm.

Do you want to receive more legal PR ideas and tips? Subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

By Geri L. Dreiling

Regularly searching your name on the Internet might seem almost as vain as spending hours admiring yourself in the mirror—but lawyers who don’t tend to their virtual images do so at their peril.

Monitoring your online reputation isn’t just for lawyers, as the readers of O, The Oprah Magazine know. In her article “New Year, New Virtual You” in the January 2010 issue, Farah Miller dispels the myth that typing your name into Google is merely an act of vanity and urges readers to take control of their online profiles.

Searching your name on the Internet might unearth that long-forgotten op-ed piece you had published in the student newspaper, Miller writes— something you might rather have appear way down in the search results. She also recommends visiting peekyou.com or snitch.name to discover what online information about you exists. If it involves sensitive data, you can contact the Web site that contains the information or visit google.com/webmasters/tools/removals.

Social Media for Lawyers

In addition to revealing less-than-flattering much-too-revealing information, however, the Internet can be a great tool for promoting a positive virtual image.

Create a personal business profile on LinkedIn. The free business social networking site allows you to post information on your current and previous jobs and your education background. There’s plenty of room to summarize your experience and accomplishments. As I suggested in my recent article “Making the Most of Word-of-Mouth Referrals,” it is also a great place to highlight the recommendations of others, such as attorneys, experts or clients you’ve worked with previously.

Keep your profile on your law firm’s Web site up to date. A lawyer can accomplish a lot in three or four years. Have you updated your profile lately to include the lectures you’ve delivered at continuing legal education seminars, your published articles or your noteworthy cases? Has your practice area changed, and does your profile reflect this?

Submit your firm announcements—honors, awards, hirings, promotions and speaking engagements—to media outlets for publication. Many bar association newsletters, alumni magazines, business-oriented newspapers and legal trade publications are carried online and in print. In my efforts to monitor the online reputation of each Legal Media Matters attorney marketing client, I often pull up the positive information that we have submitted to a variety of publications in the form of firm announcement news releases.

Purchase a personal URL. The cost is nominal, but the peace of mind you’ll gain from knowing that no one else can create a site using your name is priceless. You don’t have to create a Web site for the URL; you’re simply keeping that URL out of circulation. In addition to protecting your online reputation, it can keep your future options open. Many attorneys have ambitions of starting their own firms, and reserving a URL is wise planning.

Ultimately attorney marketing isn’t just about crafting telephone books ads, radio spots or TV commercials. It’s about monitoring your image and ensuring that it is a fair, accurate representation of you. Even lawyers who don’t use traditional advertising methods have an interest in protecting their reputations.

Google yourself … and see what you find!

Receive new articles discussing legal PR and attorney website content writing ideas by subscribing to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

By Geri L. Dreiling

Word of mouth. The good opinion of previous clients and colleagues still account for a large percentage of a law firm’s new business. In a 2009 Missouri Bar survey, attorneys reported that a majority of new clients were obtained through personal referrals.

But could your online legal marketing efforts, or lack thereof, be undermining your valuable word-of-mouth recommendations?

Personal Referrals

That was the problem encountered by a respected attorney recently. The lawyer had firmly established herself as a go-to person for family law matters, earning the respect of colleagues, judges, former clients, mental health professionals and a variety of experts with whom she often worked.

Because of her stature, she’d grown accustomed to landing new clients through word-of-mouth—but when a prospective client who had been referred to her through a trusted source called her, what he said took her by surprise.

Yes, she had come very highly recommended, he told her, but he had some reservations. When he entered her name into a search engine, her law firm’s website did not appear in the first few pages of the search. Was her legal work a full-time pursuit, he wondered, or merely a hobby?

He was glad to see that the lawyer had created a profile on the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn, but he was troubled by the fact that no one had recommended her work. Although some clients are reluctant to broadcast over the Internet their relationship with a lawyer, surely there were others who had seen her at work:  social workers, family counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists, accountants, real estate agents or business valuations experts.

After a lengthy conversation, the lawyer convinced the potential client that she was the right person for the job, and he hired her—but the near-failure served as a wakeup call for the attorney: Her lackluster online legal marketing efforts had almost sabotaged her personal referral pipeline.

Online Presence

Admittedly, bypassing a lawyer because of a hard-to-find website or a barren LinkedIn profile seems superficial. Hiring an attorney on the basis of the appearance of a law firm’s office, its location, the weight of the stationery’s letterhead or the type of suit the lawyer wears is also superficial—but these are also factors that some clients consider.

As people continue turning to the Internet as a source of information, it is reasonable to expect that potential clients will be researching their lawyers online.

After all, patients looking for more information about their illnesses look to the Internet to locate specialists, educate themselves on treatment options and research drug side effects. Before booking a hotel, many vacationers check out online reviews to see what other guests have said about their stays. Homeowners searching for plumbers, electricians and even architects often go online to determine whether the service professional will be a good fit for the project.

So, then, when people who have little contact with the legal profession find themselves in need of an attorney, it is logical to conclude that they will look to the Internet as a means of vetting potential choices, even those who have already been recommended by trusted sources. For many, entering into an attorney-client relationship is not something to be taken lightly. A prudent client will naturally gather as much information about a lawyer as possible before signing a contract.

The family lawyer who almost wasn’t hired took a good hard look at her attorney marketing plan. Her Web site, which had been neglected for a long time, contained little in the way of fresh legal content. She opted to change to a new Web site host and vowed to begin adding regular fresh legal content as a means of improving her search engine results and showcase her considerable expertise.

She also looked at how LinkedIn fit into her attorney marketing plan. Updating her profile required minimal time and effort. She reached out to her LinkedIn network, experts with whom she had worked with for years, and asked whether they would consider recommending her work. They were more than happy to oblige. She took her effort a step further and joined a few LinkedIn groups related to her practice areas and now willingly shares her expertise with others.

When was the last time you examined your attorney marketing plan? Doing a good job for your clients and obtaining favorable results are still the most important means of getting valuable word-of-mouth referrals—so don’t let neglected online legal marketing undo your hard work.

Subscribe to Legal Media Matters and receive new articles automatically in your e-mail inbox: Get articles via e-mail