First up, Essential Do's and Don'ts for LinkedIn Users by Dan Pinnington. Dan writes:

With over 120 million users in more than 200 countries (including at least a million lawyers) and Web traffic that ranks it as the 13th most visited site on the planet, LinkedIn is the social networking tool of choice for professionals. It is far more than a glorified way for job hunters to put their CV online. LinkedIn profiles are optimized to perform well in search engines, specifically when someone looks for you by name. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a LinkedIn profile to rank above your firm’s website!

With the recent claim, of at least one lawyer, that LinkedIn is a waste of time, Dan's article provides some perspective, as well as, some actionable tips about how to, and how not to, use LinkedIn.

Dan is also right about LinkedIn's performance in search results. If you claim, complete, and optimized your LinkedIn profile, it's likely to be one of the most visible profiles for searches of your name or firm name. As Dan notes, it's even likely to outrank your firm website and blog for branded searches, depending of course on the authority of your other sites.

Next up, Law Firm Marketing: What's the ROI? by Christopher Petrini-Poli and Paul Grabowski. I'm always shocked by how little lawyers focus, measure, and analyze returns on marketing and advertising investments. To me, this article nails the keys: Defining Goals and Calculating ROI.

It's incredible how many law firms explore marketing and advertising campaigns without clear goals in mind. This quickly leads to "black holes", campaigns that run wildly without any identifiable measure of performance.

Further, those that do identify goals, either limit their marketing goals to straight dollars out dollars in and fail to recognize the "one-offs" that various marketing initiatives can have. These one-offs can include network and relationship development and professional reputation enhancement.

Finally, some of the firms that actually discuss goals, fail to put into place systems for measuring, tracking, and calculating whether these goals are being met. Admittedly, whether or not certain types of goals are met can be exceptionally difficult to measure. The authors suggest a 5-step process:

1. Track the number of pieces you are mailing or sending electronically. For advertising, use the number of impressions either in print or electronic form.
   
   
2. Determine the overall cost for production of the piece, including costs for graphics and staff time.
   
   
3. Divide your costs by the total number distributed or impressions. 
   
   
4. Track your responses from recipients. Divide this number by the total number distributed to provide you with a percentage of impact.
   
   
5. Depending on the response from the recipient, if it is a request for work to be performed (or if actual work is completed), estimate the revenue generated versus the cost to produce. This will give you an expected ROI.

Don't continue to spend money on marketing and advertising that isn't carrying it's own weight. Give campaigns enough time to get a representative data set. Constantly analyze each component of your marketing and advertising to decide whether it's "worth it."

Next is Nicholas Gaffney's The Lawyer Raters: In Their Own Words:

Ratings are proliferating across all the goods and services we buy, and the legal industry is no exception. Over the past several years legal rating services and lawyer ranking lists have grown tremendously. Gone are the days where one single institution determines the best lawyers or the top firms. Today, there are many different ways to evaluate legal services and it’s important that as practitioners you have a better handle on what’s happening both online and offline and understand how it impacts your reputation and your business.

Like most people, lawyers are uncomfortable being rated, reviewed, and judged. However, for better or worse, the way people judge professional service providers, like lawyers, has expanding rapidly.

In the past, when someone was referred to a lawyer, that person was likely to call the lawyer or meet with the lawyer directly. Today, that person is much more likely to perform some research about the lawyer online. So the questions become, what will they find, and what can a lawyer do to manage that experience?

When someone searches for a lawyer on Google, what will they find:

• The lawyer’s website, that has been +1′d by someone the guy knows on Google+.
• The lawyer’s Google Places listing with several reviews from clients and other lawyers.
• A .pdf file of the lawyer’s resume.
• The lawyer’s Avvo profile with reviews, answers, and license history.
• The lawyer’s LinkedIn profile that contains testimonials and answers the lawyer has provided on LinkedIn’s answers.
• A YouTube video of the lawyer discussing the anatomy of a car accident case.
• The lawyer’s Super Lawyer profile.
• A local Adwords Express Ad containing ratings, address, and phone.
• An article in which the lawyer is quoted on a local news site.
• The lawyer’s JD Supra profile containing guides for accident injury victims.

For those lawyers who embrace the fact that these rating and review platforms are out there, whether they like it or not, there is huge opportunity for competitive advantage.

In fact, as just one example, lawyers that have reviews on their Googl Places profile can steal clients from competitors that have higher search engine visibility.

Finally, Adam L. Stock discusses How Lawyers are Using Video:

Not only do the videos convey what services and expertise the attorneys can deliver, but they also show how they might deliver those services as well.

The web is rapidly evolving. Gone are the days of the read-only text web. Here are the days of the interactive multimedia web. Soon, your clients will begin to expect to be able to find video of you online.

Here are some of Adam's tips:

Understanding that video is an online social medium is critical to its marketing success. We have borrowed what we’ve learned from successful blogs.

Publish frequently: Volume matters in gaining followers and viewers. We publish approximately one new video per week, making them available to clients who access our videos through a subscription.

Keep videos short: Like blog entries, shorter is better. Based on our experience, online video is best at 1½ to 3 minutes. We may go up to five minutes for a very technical topic.

Tag and share: Like blog entries, tag content and share it through social networks and use syndicators to push out content.

Account for a short shelf life. Videos have a limited shelf life, so don’t make one that will take too long to produce, otherwise the information will be outdated by the time you release it.

Integrate. Integrate online video into your other forms of marketing. For example, you may find that marketing both through email and video may yield a better result than each of these media alone.

Measure results. Like all online media, you can measure views, referrals and the number of times videos are shared. Monitor this information and learn what works for you.

You don't have to look very hard to find lawyer videos that are done well, not so well, and just plain badly. Just like everything else you do, both online and offline, you want your videos to put your best and most professional foot forward.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with this issue of Law Practice Magazine. And that's a pretty good endorsement considering I usually think most of the marketing/advertising information in the legal sector is either out-of-date, not very clear, or just downright poor.

Further, the articles highlighted here were certainly not the only good ones in the issue. They just happened to be the ones that I found most applicable to what I do. I recommend you check out the full issue yourself.

75% of all American adults are active in some kind of voluntary group or organization and internet users are more likely than others to be active: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. And social media users are even more likely to be active: 82% of social network users and 85% of Twitter users are group participants.

So what could this possibly mean? According to TechCrunch's John Biggs:

Well, it seems that the Internet, contrary to popular opinion, is making us closer and more connected. This is good news but is also ascribes to the Internet a power over political and group events that it may or may not have. After all, the Internet is a medium of communication that simply reduces the cost of reaching thousands, if not millions, of people. Hosting a party or a political rally is easy when you can reach a few million folks, whether it’s electronically or through the printed page. Less popular groups, say the “Grannies Who Love Headbanging” group on Yahoo, however, will still remain unpopular. The Internet does not guarantee popularity but it does augment it.

Is using social media going to completely change the way that you interact personally and professionally? Maybe. What seems certain is that there are a lot of people connecting and networking through these communication platforms. And they're people. So you can be sure that they will be discussing their hopes, needs, desires, and dreams. Will you be part of those conversations? The answer may greatly depend on whether you are willing to join the conversation.

As Jordan Furlong writes at the Stem Legal Strategy Blog:

I’ve spoken with a few law firms recently about ways in which Stem can help them promote their presence online, and on each occasion, I’ve brought up the critical importance of content. What I’ve often heard back is that lawyers are surprisingly (to me, anyway) reluctant to commit to content contribution. It might be that such efforts are unbillable and therefore unattractive to busy lawyers under pressure to produce revenue. It might be that the firm has failed to sufficiently motivate and prioritize lawyer content production. Or it might simply be that lawyers want to practise law and leave the content to non-lawyer staff.

But whatever the reason, this reluctance constitutes a major roadblock to firms’ chances of using the web to successfully promote themselves. I’ve read a lot lately about how law firms are poised to essentially become legal publishers, and it’s certainly true that the potential is there. But it seems to be the rare firm whose lawyers are both willing to regularly produce content and are able to ensure that content is readable, compelling and engaging. This is more than a minor annoyance; this is a fundamental challenge to the execution of a marketing strategy.

Whether we're talking about website content, blog content, or other social media content, communicating online plays an absolutely essential role in remaining relevant professionally.

Now please don't misunderstand me. You're not going to tweet, share, or like your way to success. Those that are using social media platforms as advertisements are failing to harness the true power of these communication tools.

On the other hand, if you're not willing to invest any time at all into online reputation development and networking, you're simply missing opportunities.

Think of it from this perspective. There are probably many offline professional development tasks in which you invest precious time that you may prefer billing hours or servicing clients. However, you do them, because you believe that they are helping you grow your practice. You don't completely ignore offline professional development simply because it takes time, do you?

The truth is that the Internet is just new, albeit amazing, method of communicating and connecting with a great number of people. Ironically, if you believe the conventional wisdom that spending time online is alienating you from the real world, in truth, just the opposite may happen.

This really should come as no surprise. As it has been since ancient times, people call upon advocates to help them solve their problems. Whether it be answering questions, counseling through difficult decisions, or litigating their matters at court, lawyers have always been called upon to solve our problems. And so, the first step to any online professional reputation development should be brainstorming your potential clients' problems.

What Is The Problem?

Unfortunately, many legal professionals conclude that the problem their prospective clients are facing is that they don't know enough about them. That is why they spend so much time and effort adding biographical information about themselves. They write about how hard they work and how much experience they have. They include images about professional awards that they have won and the number of years it has been since they first got their license. But is this truly the problem that prospective clients have? Are they out looking for this information? Perhaps eventually, but not at first.

Solving Their Problems

The first problems they are trying to solve have to do with them. How can I get out of this financial mess? How will I pay my bills now that I can't work because of an injury? What amount of jail time may I be facing for my drunk driving arrest? These are the problems that Internet using prospective clients are trying to solve. And these are the problems that legal professionals should be helping to solve online.

And so, your online professional reputation building should be invested in techniques that solve problem. Here are some excellent ways to help solve-problems online:

• Blogging - Blogging about the problems that your prospective clients are facing, and more important, how you can help them solve them, is one of the most effective ways to communicate the value of your services online.
• Q & A Sites - Sites that provide forums for questions and answers are another great opportunity to help prospectice clients solve problems online.
• Content Syndication - In addition to developing problem-solving content, it's important to get that content in front of those that have the problems that you're trying to answer. That is why content syndication is so important.
• Commenting on Blogs - You may be surprised as to how effective blog commenting can be in terms discussions and problem solving.
• Educational Materials - Whether in the form of guide downloads, e-books, traditional books, or videos, providing a variety of educational materials geared at solving problems is extremely effective online.

So the next time you find yourself tweaking your "about us" or "attorney profile" pages, spend some time thinking "about them". What are their problems? How do you help them solve those problems? How can you effectively communicate your ability to help them solve those problems.

Once you have addressed their problem and how you may be able to help them solve it, only then is it time to communicate your adeptness for solving those problems. Interestingly, it has a lot less to do with where you went to law school and how long you have practiced than it does about how you are able to communicate your ability to solve their specific problem.

From Bagel Tuesday: The Best Law Firm Holiday Card of 2010 - The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog calls the holiday eCard we created for Manatt the "the best law firm holiday card of 2010."

From Raising The Bar: Raising the Bar in Your Law Practice: Ten Ways to Change Your Results Right Now. - Free ebook.

From Discover Canadian Lawyers: Do it Yourself SEO - Evaluating Incoming Link Quality (Part 1) - It is no surprise that inbound links to your website is an important factor in determining your website's search engine positioning. But it is critical to note that "the more the merrier" is not the approach to take. Not all links are created equal. Some links can dramatically boost rankings, while others can actually get you a penalty and drag your rankings down.

From Zen & The Art Of Legal Networking: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - There have been a lot of "end of the year" posts lately, and I've been debating whether to throw my hat into the ring.

These posts are just a couple examples of why Lexblog legal blogs continue to be amongst the leaders and go-to source for legal information online.

The talk brought up some really fascinating points about the way we market our services and the changes that are happening as we speak.

The basis of the talk is that we are living through the biggest shift in media and business/client interaction in our history.  This has a significant impact on our businesses, an impact than many of us may be underestimating.

What is happening is the humanization of your law firm.  Potential clients can have relationships and interact with your firm in ways that never existed before.  It's important to ask yourself, do you actually care and try to interact with your clients or are you trying to sell them something?  The winners that emerge will be the firms that care and take the time to interact.  People want to interact with other people, not anonymous, faceless firms.

So what does this mean exactly?

For starters, it means that the old rules of marketing (generic messages meant for the masses) aren't going to be as effective as they once were.  Effective marketing is becoming more of a one on one proposition.  It's taking the time to listen, offer advice, show your expertise through blogging and participation on services such as LinkedIn and Twitter.  Answer questions, be generally helpful.  

Don't just throw self promotional garbage out there.  People's radar for filtering out the "noise" has gotten more sophisticated.  These tactics aren't going to work and could wind up hurting you in the long run.

As Stephen Martin says in this thoughtful piece:

Today, a person’s professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy. And they are the currencies that will lead us into the future.

Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.

In the time since the article, review sites, online social signals, and local signals have gained more and more importance for business owners, including legal professionals. This has happened primarily from the demand for trust online. Some social and local signals provide a trust element that just hasn't existed online in this form.

However, to me, the real insight from the article comes from Greg Sterling, a San Francisco-based Internet analyst who specializes in small business and local search:

“It’s all common sense — the best way to ensure that you have positive reviews is to offer good products, good service, have integrity and be diligent,” said Greg Sterling,. “It’s really just the rules of dealing with people in the real world, translated online.”

With all of the buzz surrounding social media, SEO tricks and secrets, and the various other forms of Internet snake oil, the truth is that effective online marketing, in many ways, parallels its offline predecessor.

Successful law firm web marketing really comes down to some simple ideas. Provide the best possible service for your clients. Develop a professional presence with informative content and get that content in front of people who are able to publicize it, link to it, and share it with your target audience of potential clients.

As of yesterday, both Bing and Google have confirmed (via an excellent interview by Danny Sullivan) that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings (in addition to the positive second-order effects they may have on the link graph). This has long been suspected by SEOs (in fact, many of us posited it was happening as of November of last year following Google + Bing's announcements of partnerships with Twitter), but getting this official confirmation is a substantive step forward.

Does this mean that you can "tweet" and "Like" your way to the top of Google's organic results? Unequivocally, no. However, this is yet one more reason that business owners, like legal professionals, shouldn't ignore social media and networking or dismiss it as kids' stuff.

Unfortunately, this revelation will probably mean an increase in phone calls, emails, and other forms of solicitation from "social seo experts" claiming to be able to get clients for attorneys by blasting out huge amounts of tweets and Likes. Fortunately (or at least hopefully), Google is much more sophisticated than that (although in light of recent Googbarrassment, one begins to wonder).

It also probably means that we are likely to see an influx of "spam tweets" and "spam Likes" flooding our social circles. 

Nevertheless, the real takeaway from this validation is that participation in the social web is playing an increasing role in search engine visibility. While some legal marketing professionals believe that Twitter is a complete waste of time for lawyers, others believe, "you'd have to be flat out nuts these days not to be monitoring real time conversation on Twitter mentioning your firm, clients, competition, and keywords & phrases related to the niche in which you practice."

Like everything else in life, finding the right balance for effective participation will present a challenge that each individual legal professional will have to address for themselves. Like it or not, the social and local web are here, probably to stay.

Even those that have been skeptical about the effectiveness of social media and social networking for their law practice are now forced to face the simple fact that social signals will impact their precious Google rankings.

I was recently contacted by a fellow law firm web visibility consultant who had a client with a problem. She, an attorney, had represented a woman in a divorce proceeding. For whatever reason (presumably sour grapes), her client's husband decided to launch an online attack. He set up a free google site and opened an adwords account. He targeted her name and ran an ad saying something to the effect of before you hire so and so, read my story. On his site he explained why this attorney was so terrible.

Now you might be thinking, hey this is great publicity for her. If her client's adversary despises her so much, she must be doing something right. In any case, the site said some less than flattering things about this attorney and so she went to her web strategist to talk about some ways that she could diminish the impact of the ad. Here were a couple ideas:

• Run a counter ad pushing his ad down.
• Complain to Google to remove the ad.

Needless to say, each of these methods isn't without limitation. In fact, in my experience, getting Google to remove an ad is a painstaking process that takes a long time, if you they are willing to do it at all.

But Adwords ads aren't the only reputation defense problem that legal professionals may face online. As attorney Lee Rosen points out in Can You Get a Bad Review Removed from Google?, review sites, including Google Places, can present reputational issues for attorneys as well:

Let’s say a former client trashes you on your Google Places page. The client rips you a new one and tears you from limb to limb. Can you get Google to remove the review? What if it isn’t your client, but instead it’s your client’s spouse? Can you get Google to remove that review? Google says it “reserves the right to remove reviews that include any of the following:

 

Inappropriate content

We want to provide a clean and positive user experience for all users. We may remove reviews that contain or link to unlawful content, or content that violates our Google Places content policy. We may also remove reviews that include plagiarism or are copied from other sites.

Advertising and spam

Nobody likes spam and it can only make its author look bad. Don’t use reviews for advertising or post the same or similar reviews across multiple places. Obviously, don’t post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings.

Off-topic Reviews

Reviews should describe your personal, first hand experience with a specific place. Please do not post reviews based on someone else’s experience, or that are not about the specific place you are reviewing. Reviews are not a forum for personal attacks, rants or crusades. Please also do not use reviews to report incorrect information about a place — use the Report a problem link for that place instead.

Conflict of interest

Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. Even if well-intentioned, a conflict of interest can undermine the trust in a review. In addition, we do not accept reviews written for money or other incentives. Please also do not post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing.

From these guidelines, I would agree with Mr. Rosen that it seems that you may be able to get adversarial reviews removed. On the other hand, guidelines don't always equate to action.

For example, we recently had a client who had received spam reviews that had been posted on several other attorney place pages as well. We submitted our request to have the spam removed. After several weeks, the review was finally taken down.

As these issues become more an more prevalent, I have no doubt that review sites will become more active in addressing them.

In the beginning, fear was a basic, simple emotion for the human animal. We confronted something overwhelming -- the imminent threat of death in form of wars, plagues and natural disasters -- and we felt fear...Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious...

Over time, however, something strange began to happen. The actual terrors that we faced began to lessen in intensity as we gained increasing control over our environment. But instead of our fears lessening as well, they began to multiply in number. We started to worry about our status in society -- whether people liked us, or how we fit into the group. We became anxious for our livelihoods, the future of our families and children, our personal heatlh, and the aging process. Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. It was as if the thousand of years of feeling fear in the face of nature could not go away- we had to find something at which to direct our anxiety, no matter how small or improbable.

Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels further, on and on. If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode.

I thought this was not only interesting, but relevant to the way a law firm might approach their marketing.

Instead of controlling the fear and making marketing decisions based on past success, measurement of results, testing new programs, trying new platforms, return on investment, etc. people tend to make emotional decisions with their marketing.  As explained earlier, people who view marketing through the lens of fear of failure lose energy and momentum. A lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels further. The end result is that you tend to stay in retreat mode.  As is the case with most things in life....you can't keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. 

Understanding that sometimes you have to fail with a marketing program in order to learn can help ease some anxiety.  In the blog post, the author mentions:

Sometimes you may just have to plug your way through something to gain the requisite experience. Then, that experience can cause a change in mindset that ripples through the environment and changes what is actually possible. You are literally seeing through different eyes.

This new perspective can help open new doors and give you the ability to see opportunities that you may have missed before.

So, how do you go about finding who/what is worth reading? Ask your sources.

It starts by identifying one writer who makes sense to you. Maybe it's a colleague or someone you know offline. Maybe it's someone you met through online networking or blog reading. Perhaps someone frequently appears in your reader that makes sense to you. Once you have this Archimedean point source, find out who they read, reference, and link to. Then check out those folks. More often than not, you are likely to find them a valuable source of information too.

Here are some folks I find informative:

• Brian Halligan (web marketing)
• Bill Slawski (seo)
• Steve Matthews (web strategy)
• Kevin O'Keefe (legal blogging)
• Carolyn Elefant (small firm practice management)
• Randall Ryder (technology, practice management, marketing)
• Josh King (various online legal issues)
• Rand Fishkin (seo)
• Danny Sullivan (seo)
• Robert Ambrogi (various online legal)
• Tom Kane (legal marketing)
• Seth Godin (marketing)

These are just a few of the folks that I have on my reader radar. So who are you reading?

As the video articulates, emotional intelligence is a very important skill set for attorneys and one I think is often overlooked when evaluating what makes a successful attorney tick.  

To me, emotional intelligence is the art of understanding people.  It's the ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes".  It includes all the skills necessary for managing employees, convincing prospects, leading others, listening, relationship building, engendering trust, etc.  Some argue emotional intelligence is a skill that can be learned and nurtured while others believe it is something you are born with.  I believe that while there are individuals that are gifted with a high level of emotional intelligence, it certainly is a skill that you can work to improve.

Why Emotional Intelligence Is Important For Your Online Marketing

I don't think I need to go into a lengthy explanation about why interpersonal skills, listening, and relationship building are important to lawyers.  However, it's helpful think about emotional intelligence and how it relates to law firm marketing online.  

Most lawyers look to outside sources for answers to their online marketing problems.  For instance, they seek higher rankings on Google, they set up profiles on social media sites, or they pay a company to run paid search ads for the firm.

What often gets skipped over is a thoughtful consideration of where their target client is and how they are interacting with each medium.  There is too little emphasis on how to transfer valuable interpersonal skills for use online.  The thought is that simply being there is enough.  If you show up in Google or on Facebook you will get hired.  This is no more true than the idea that simply being an attorney, talking to a prospect, or hiring an employee will lead to success.

The real work takes time.  It's using these online mediums to foster new relationships and connections.  It's tapping your interpersonal skills and putting the time in so that your online persona reflects the knowledge, expertise, and trust that you have built for yourself offline. 

Small firms and solo practitioners should specialize, even if by exclusion.

***

Solos and small firms also have to learn to say "no" to clients who are either unwilling or unable to pay their fees. Early qualification of clients should occur by virtue of fee counseling, engagement letters, and fee memos clearly spelling out the client’s obligations.

Your initial reaction during a difficult time might be to "take on all comers." To the contrary, client qualification and selection is more important now than ever. While there are certainly many unique challenges to practicing law and managing a law firm, too many legal professionals fail to recognize the business aspects to their practices.

If your law firm is not profitable, it will eventually cease to exist. Maximizing your time on your best clients and minimizing, or eliminating, time on your worst, is an important step to securing your prosperity.

#2: Take a Lawyer to Lunch

"Small firms that specialize in only certain practice areas should develop a network of other firms specializing in different practice areas, for purposes of referral of work by specialty. Inbound and outbound referrals should be monitored and tracked to assure that the implicit quid pro quo actually develops, and to maximize the asset value of outbound referrals for business development purposes."

Referral business remains one of the very best sources of new business. With the advent of social media and social networking, developing referral relationships is that much more efficient and effective. Follow online social etiquette, but don't be afraid to reach out to others. Relationship-built businesses always prevail.

#3: Show the Old School Ties

College friendships and acquaintances should be maintained as a potential source of clients. Just as importantly, law school ties should be maintained, particularly with lawyers specializing in other areas of practice and who practice are outside of your jurisdiction.

Nurturing and maintaining existing professional relationships is even more important than building new ones.  These "old" relationships should be your strongest.  Don't be afraid to leverage them for new business.  Remember to reciprocate.  Relationship maintenance is a two-way street.

#4: Become Famous

Solos and small firms should get to know reporters in local newspapers and other publications that cover legal and business fields. It is entirely appropriate to volunteer to provide expert background on legal topics within the ambit of one’s practice specialty.

While more easily said than done, developing relationships with journalists and other publishers can be the most powerful strategy in terms of building your professional brand.

In addition to positioning yourself as a trusted authority in your field, building relationships with online publishers can have significant benefits to your search engine visibility.  If your local newspapers consider you an expert, chances are that Google, and more importantly, potential clients will too.

#5: Give Back to the Community

each lawyer should select one or two activities or organizations to join and contribute actively, preferably achieving leadership status. Furthermore, the commitment to the community organization should be genuine—overt selling is never necessary.

With high-paced schedules, legal professionals often puch time investments to the back burner.  However, time spent on community participation and sponsorship, can be one of the most effiecient and effective reputation building investments.  And who knows, it might just make you feel good too.

#6: Get Your Money’s Worth from the Bar Association

Bar associations can be exploited as excellent referral sources.

While I'm all for getting your money's worth from your Bar Association, in my experiences, Bar Association networking has been generally more expensive than valuable.  Obviously, it stands to reason that the effectiveness of networking varies greatly from on Association to another, as well as, one practice area to another.

In my opinion, if you're going to invest in Bar Association networking, stick with local associations.

#7: Mine Your Clients

80% of the business development potential of a law firm comes from existing clients; conversely, only 20% of the potential rests in the remainder of the marketplace. Clients are potential sources of repeat business, plus potential selling of other specialties in a firm, and referrals.

Yes.  A satisfied, well-serviced client is absolutely your strongest marketing agent.  Nurture these relationships.

#8: Don’t Hang Around Lawyers

Although law school classmates and bar associations might be developed as referral sources, other local lawyers are potentially poor sources of significant referral business, unless one’s practice is highly specialized, or lawyers/friends are corporate counsel who cede their client’s work to outside law firms. In most instances, social circles should concentrate on business people and other prospective clients.

I have seen too many lawyers who spend a great deal of time building professional relationships with other lawyers, and wonder why they're not receiving a great deal of new clients.  Look, building referral relationships is very important.  However, you have to "go where your clients are."  While becoming the best friend of many other lawyers in your community can lead to professional recognition and leaderships positions, don't over do it at the risk of not building new potential client relationships.

#9: Reinvest in Your Practice

Solo practitioners and small firms probably should spend up to 5% of revenues in marketing, advertising, business development, and promotion to achieve a profile and brand-name recognition to influence clients.

***

Investment in technology is a competitive requirement in today’s marketplace.

Ding ding ding ding!  Law firms are businesses.  They require investments in order to grow.  If you rely solely on your existing recognition and relationships, you probably won't have the kind of success that you want.

Like it is in business, complacency in the marketing and management of your law firm is usually a death sentence.

#10: Manage Your Economics

Fundamental to financial management of any business is knowing your costs.

Failing to measure, manage, and analyze the economics of the firm is a widespread problem among legal professionals.  Many managing attorneys simply don't make understanding the economics of their businesses a priority.

This problem is especially true when it comes to marketing and advertising costs.  One of the first things we do for our clients is to take an audit of their existing marketing efforts.  It is shocking how few marketing programs are held accountable through performance metric measuring.

We have seen law firms pouring thousands per month into unmeasured programs.  Holding marketing accountable is one of the first places to improve upon the efficiency of business costs.

Despite being four years old (ages in online time), Bower's keys to small law success seem to be more important now than ever.

To further elaborate on why the riches are not equivalent to happiness, I adopt the approach used by Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, of looking at happiness as moment-to-moment experience instead of general well-being or flourishing. When we break down happiness into moment-to-moment experience, riches do not necessarily make people happier.

Ed Diener and others argue that happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. Psychologist Jeff Larsen and Amie McKibban ran experiments to test this concept. People who had more of what they wanted tended to be happier than those who had less, but this effect was mediated by appreciation and gratitude. Simply possessing something is not the key. Happiness comes from appreciating what you have.

Seems to me that happiness is an appreciation of the journey we take as opposed to simply the end result.  I believe that finding happiness in your marketing is a key to having success with it.

The Myth Of The Magic Bullet

Too many lawyers are looking for the marketing magic bullet.  The one marketing campaign or strategy that will solve all the problems of finding a new client.  In essence, they want to win the equivalent of the marketing lottery.  The myth is that a) this even exists and b) this will actually bring long-term success to the firm.  

Enjoyable Marketing Equals Long-Term Success

True, long-term, successful marketing comes from years of hard work building a reputation, developing relationships, trying new marketing avenues, successfully networking, generating referrals, successfully handing cases and clients, etc.  A firm that has had success in marketing over time has done so because they found happiness and satisfaction in the journey they took discovering what worked for them.  In fact, they might have actually enjoyed aspects of their marketing and relationship building!  If they hated every minute of it they never would have broken through to find what works.  Stop searching for the magic marketing bullet and get involved in marketing activities you can find satisfaction in.

Photo by emdot

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

What struck me about the quote was the relevancy it has for lawyers and the various attitudes towards online marketing.

The attorney that has an open mind about the possibilities and strategies available tends to see the best results.  There is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing a firm online.  There are strategies that work well for a particular firm, individual, and practice area but not so much for another.  

Those lawyers that are open to new ideas, new tools, new communities, and new platforms will thrive.  Online marketing should be an extension of your offline reputation and persona.  In the end, the best online marketing is about relationship building and growing out your network and connections.  In our own consulting business, the lawyers that come to us wanting to try new ideas and are open to learning different approaches to generating clients online are the ones who have the most success.

but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

The biggest roadblock to success are attorneys with a minimal understanding of online marketing but complete confidence about what they need to do for success.  

I speak with attorneys that assure me they don't need to blog.  Others that tell me they don't need to add content to their website.  They don't need to cultivate relationships and put the time into developing their online reputation.  What they need is for me to get them ranked #1 for a random keyword phrase they pulled out of their hat.

As the quote above so eloquently points out, it's difficult to convince someone with a closed mind of the possibilities that lay before them. 

• Darren Rowse's Problogger
• Brian Clark's Copyblogger

While those two are probably be enough, if you're already subscribed, or looking for more, check out Daily Blog Tip's Top 25 Blogs About Blogging (ranks blogs according to their Google Pagerank, Alexa rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority).

If you're a legal professional looking to start blogging or other ways of growing your reputation online, check out Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Lawyerist, and our Lawyer Marketing Blog.

The above resources will provide you with an overwhelming amount of information on blogging.  So, for those that are just getting started, here are some fundamentals to remember:

1.  Unless you do something to make it private, EVERYONE can see your blog.

2.  Your professional reputation is your most valuable asset.

3.  Blogging WILL increase your exposure online, for better or for worse.

4.  Blogging takes time.  It takes time to author posts, and it takes time to reap the fruits.

5.  Research your posts, cite your authorities, engage your readers.

While there is more to think about to successful blogging than just those 5 points, omitting any of the above fundamentals will significantly handicap your success.

Any blogging resources or fundamentals I missed?  Commenting is now open.

These are some common complaints we hear from legal professionals about social media and social networking.  While I have little doubt that these statements are true for the attorneys that have made them, the very nature of the statements indicates a lack of understanding of the very nature of social media and social networking.

This is a very common, as well as, legitimate complaint.  Your professional time is probably the second most valuable asset you have.  Can you guess the first?

While not having enough time is certainly a legitimate complaint, it's not a legitimate excuse for not participating online.  To me, saying that you don't have enough time for social media and social networking is like saying you don't have enough time to respond to emails, answer the phone, or participate in offline professional networking activities.

I set up a profile and am getting zero results.

You set up a profile and aren't getting results?  Weird.  Again, expecting results from setting up a social media profile is like hooking up your office phone and waiting for it to ring.  While you need a phone to talk to prospects, clients, and other professional contacts, simply having a phone won't make it ring.  Despite the fact that they contain your firm's contact information, your social media profiles are not advertisements!

I haven't seen social media produce a single client for my firm.

And how did you draw this conclusion?  Haven't received a client intake form from a twitter direct message?  No one has posted a request for a consultation on your facebook wall?  Your readers aren't leaving "call me I want to hire you" as comments on your blog?

I'm a big believer in return on investment.  "Believer" is probably the wrong word.  It's axiomatic that marketing and advertising investments should produce a return.  However, how you measure the return for any particular investment, can vary greatly.

For example, if you pay for online advertising, you should measure impressions, clicks, conversions, phone calls, and new clients.  If, over time, your advertisement does not generate more in terms of new business than it costs, then you should drop it.

On the other hand, there are many marketing investments that require more sophisticated measurement.  For example, how do you attach a dollar amount to a conversation that leads to a speaking engagement that leads to a new client.  How do you measure the value of being quoted in an industry journal?

Abandoning social media and social networking because clients aren't checking the "found you on twitter" box of your intake form is unwise.

A Social Networking Participation Plan

Once you understand that social media is a tool and not an advertising opportunity, it's time to understand how to use the tools at your disposal.  The only thing worse than not having the right tools, is using tools the wrong way.  This can be especially problematic when you're talking about tools that may impact your professional reputation, your most valuable asset.

There is a lot of information out there about using social media for your law firm.  Some great, some ok, some just wrong.  Before you buy books, webinars, or pay huge consulting fees for social media expertise, check out the free stuff first.

Even more importantly, create an online social networking plan.  Here's a very basic 3 hour per week plan.  Start with smaller and informed social media investments.  Here are some additional guidelines:

- Avoid the "auto" stuff.  Your law firm doesn't have an auto-dialer (at least I hope not), neither should your profiles.

- Focus on "with" or "at".  Don't "participate" at people online, participate with them.

- Listen.

- Be responsive.

- Be patient.

- Measure your efforts in conversations.  Don't even think about how many "friends", "followers", and "connections" you have.  Focus on the number of times you "converse".  Start by trying to have one online conversation per day.

- Take your relationships offline.

- If you do absolutely nothing else, understand how to, and then start blogging.

In Lawyer Marketing: You Have to Get Away from Your Computer to Make Rain, experienced law consulting professional Cordell Parvin shares an important point made by attorney Angie Davis:

You absolutely must get out of your office to become a rainmaker.

While the Internet provides an extraordinary vehicle for the "virtual you" to get out of the office, your strongest relationships are still those that are nurtured through real-life interaction.  

Despite the fact that more and more legal professionals are embracing online relationship building, fewer are successfully bridging the online/offline relationship gap.  Fortunately, the web even provides tools for us to turn our web relationships into old-fashion face to face interactions.

The world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.

Their stated mission is to

Revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

In this short interview, Meetup Co-founder Scott Heiferman discusses the dangers of spending too much time staring at screens and using the internet to get off the internet:

Many organizations and social network leaders schedule offline meetups directly through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  Turning more online friends, connections, and followers into offline colleagues, referral sources, and clients is just smart professional reputation building.

My questions for you are: 

• What's your end goal with your efforts?  
• Are you attempting to build relationships through these outlets or are you trying to get the small number on your various profiles to tick upwards? 
• Do you want to generate increased business for your firm? 
• Are you looking for more referrals and connections?

Likes, friendlies and hits are all fast-growing numbers that require little commitment. And commitment is the essence of conversion. The problem with commitment is that it's frightening (for both sides). And so it's easy to avoid. We just click and move on.

I think there's a transparent wall, an ever bigger one, between digital spectators and direct interaction or transaction. The faster the train is moving, the harder it is to pay attention, open the window and do business. If all you're doing is increasing the number of digital spectators to your work, you're unlikely to earn the conversion you deserve.

 

There Are No Short Cuts

When we participate in social media, on a professional level, we do so to form relationships.  I would think that most of us are forming these professional relationships to generate more clients for our respective businesses in some way or another.  The problem is that it's easy to get lost in a bunch of metrics that don't really matter.  It's easy to fool yourself that you are putting the effort into participating and connecting when you really aren't.  

There is so much noise and so little commitment needed to click a link, become a fan, or follow someone that earning and working at the relationships you form digitally becomes that much harder. Just like offline relationships, it takes time, nurturing, and commitment to bear fruit from your efforts.  Don't kid yourself that it's as easy as amassing large numbers and the business will flow.  Don't be fooled that authoring a blog for a month will generate untold readers and new business.  These things take time and effort.  The lawyers that are making these outlets work will attest that there is no magic bullett, no short-cuts to making these things work.  However, if you establish goals and measure results you can build a network of relationships that will deliver over time.

Photo by Marc Smith

The art of marketing is creating a message that allows people to connect to your service on an emotional level.  No one does this better than Apple. 

The iPhone 4 Commercials

What Apple taps into is the experience you'll have with their product.  The commercial expresses how you'll feel when you use the iPhone.  This is a far cry from simply gloating about the phone's specs or even just addressing what the phone does.  It paints real life scenarios and uses for the technology that anyone can relate to.  The phone is there, almost like a friend, during important times in these people's lives.  It touches us on an emotional level.  It will also help sell a ton of iPhones.

Looks Like Apple Knows What They're Doing....How Does This Help Me Again?

I know what you're thinking....great story Jeff.  That's very touching but I'm not Apple and neither is my law firm.  While that's true, the point of the story is to show how effective marketing can be when it's personal to people and when they can develop a relationship with a product or service.  Which brings me to my point.  

When you are marketing your legal services, you really are marketing yourself.  People want to purchase products and services from other people, not faceless firms.  It all comes down to relationship building and allowing a potential client to connect with you on a level beyond just a monetary transaction.  

A Few Examples Of How To Do This

Blogging - The great thing about blogging is that it allows you to express yourself, in your own voice, in ways that a static website would never allow.  You can pour out your thoughts, feelings, and ideas.  This gives you a vehicle to connect with people on a deeper level than an about us page.

Talk to the client about their issues, not about what you do - Too often, I read content on a firm's site that goes on and on about what they do and how many awards they have won.  This is the equivalent of Apple scrolling a list of features of their new phone on the screen for 30 seconds.  Legal issues are often times emotionally charged issues.  Speak to the client about their issues.  Talk about how your services can help them achieve their goals, solve their legal problems, etc.  Don't simply discuss what it is that you do.

Be a person, not a faceless firm - As I mentioned above, people want to connect with and ultimately buy from other people, not a faceless firm.  Express how you will be able to help with a client's legal issues, not just what the firm can do for them.  The long-term value will be in the relationship you personally build.

Marketers fall into one of two categories:

A few benefit when they make their customers smarter. The more the people they sell to know, the more informed, inquisitive, free-thinking and alert they are, the better they do.

And most benefit when they work to make their customers dumber. The less they know about options, the easier they are to manipulate, the more helpless they are, the better they do.

Seth's post really struck a chord with me.  It allowed me to reflect on the philosophy and methods I use to market my business as well as the law firms I work for.  I can actually point to the specific experience I had that changed my marketing philosophy; the process of purchasing an engagement ring.  Let me explain.

The Biggest Purchase Of My Life

The stars had aligned and I finally made the decision to pop the question.  The last hurdle was purchasing the engagement ring.  I had a general idea of what I wanted to spend and that was the extent of my jewelry/engagement ring knowledge.

I asked friends in the area for a couple of references and set off to meet with a few jewelers.  The first two jewelers basically took me through the same process.  They asked me what I was looking for, asked what my budget was, showed me a couple of diamonds, flipped through a book of settings, and both asked for a deposit.  I declined to put anything down until meeting with the third guy.

The final jeweler (Jim Harris, highly recommended if you are living outside the Detroit area) handled the process a little bit differently.  He requested that I meet him at his office for a 45 minute consultation.  When we sat down, rather than asking how much I wanted to spend and what I was looking for, he explained that the goal of this meeting was to educate me on diamonds and engagement rings.  He took the time to explain the 4 C's (cut, clarity, color, carat).  He showed me how certain diamond grading companies inflated their grades.  He talked to me about not obsessing over the carats as this was only one element of a diamond's quality.  I walked away from the consultation an educated, appreciative consumer.  The process shed light on problems with the diamonds the previous jewelers had shown me.  In addition, the level of trust and respect I had afterwards made the decision to purchase from Jim a no-brainer.

Jim Harris practices education based marketing.  I believe in this powerful marketing philosophy and have seen the positive results with both AttorneySync as well as the law firms we market online.

The Benefits of Education Based Marketing

Education based marketing is the art of educating your prospective client so that they are able to make an informed decision.   There are a number of benefits:

• It helps to build value in your service
• You no longer have to sell on price
• It positions you as an expert in your field
• It builds trust in the beginning of the relationship
• It provides transparency into your thoughts, process, and business
• It makes the competition that is hard-selling, using manipulative tactics, and telling half-truths less relevant

How Your Firm Can Accomplish This Online

• Blogging: Blogging is a perfect example of relationship building and education based marketing.  You are giving of your time and expertise, sharing your knowledge to educate your potential client.
• Guides or Whitepapers:  We offer free guides to people that want to learn more about internet marketing for lawyers.  An educated client will appreciate the services we perform on a whole different level than someone who doesn't understand the basics of online marketing.
• Webinars: Offering an online seminar or course is a powerful tool to educate clients and generate leads for your firm.  
• Video Marketing: Use an online video as an opportunity to help educate someone as opposed to just advertising your firm.  Anyone can talk into the camera telling everyone "how hard they will fight for you".  Take the opportunity to teach them something about the law that actually helps inform the consumer.

Law firms need to take advantage of this type of marketing.  The law is a very foreign, difficult to understand subject for most people.  The firms that have the ability to explain it in plain English and educate their potential clients will reap the benefits.

Photo by GeekMom Heather