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.

Everyone has moments in their past that they wish they could hide from the professional world. Unfortunately, Facebook friends have a way of bringing up those past indiscretions for everyone to see.

The whole objective behind Facebook is to exchange information with friends, family and colleagues. Yet if a friend posts a photo of you doing something you don’t want to be seen doing and tags you in that photo, the people in your network are going to see it. In fact, if your privacy settings aren’t set properly, you may find that even total strangers are able to see them too.

So here are some security and privacy considerations for Facebook that lawyers should put to good use.

It’s very possible to edit and customize your permissions for sharing information about yourself. Log into your Facebook account and you’ll see on the top right hand side a drop-down menu for “Account”. Inside this menu, you’ll see a selection for “Privacy Settings”.

Use this section to customize the level of privacy you want. Don’t simply click on the “Friends Only” option, unless you want people within your professional network to see photos of you or your kids as well. Instead, use the Custom option and select the level of privacy options you want to apply.

For example, you may choose to only allow people in your friend network to see photos of you or post on your wall. You may even choose to block anyone who isn’t in your friend list from seeing any of your information at all.

There is also the option to hide certain information from view to everyone except you. This is a handy feature if you don’t your contact information, your email address or your phone number visible to anyone online at all.

Tagged Photos and Videos

While you may have reset and reconfigured your sharing permissions, this won’t actually stop someone else from uploading a photo of you and then tagging you in it. Those third-party pictures of you can be seen by people in your network, as well as by the people in the network of the person who posted the photo.

If you’re not comfortable with people loading random photos of you for anyone to see, you can keep track of when anyone tags you in a post or in a photo. You can also choose to hide any externally uploaded photos and make them visible to only you.

To do this, select the drop down menu on the upper right hand side that says “Account” then select the option for “Account Settings”. This will take you to a page where you can control what information you choose to share.

You can also set your account to send you notifications when a person tags you in a post or in a photo. This is an important consideration, as you cede a large amount of reputation control by allowing others to post images of you at will.

Encrypt Your Facebook Sessions

While you’re in the “Account Settings” page, select the “Account Security” option. This allows you to conduct any of your Facebook sessions over a ‘https’ secure connection. You have the added security of knowing you’re not sharing your information with others, which can be very handy if you’re using the Wi-Fi at a Starbucks or at the airport, or other public location.

This section also allows you to monitor and receive notifications of any other activity within your Facebook account.

Across the top of the Account Settings page are several tabs. You can allocate various levels of notifications for different events and occurrences on Facebook.

This post was written by Lior Levin who is a social media consultant to an E2 Visa lawyer from New York who likes to engage in deep social media initiatives.

Photo by kchbrown http://www.flickr.com/photos/phillykevflicks/

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.

Like other small businesses, law firms can benefit greatly from both client, as well as, professional reviews online. In fact, as you can see from this short youtube search story, review sites are gaining much greater visibility in search engine results pages:

However, there are several considerations regarding online client reviews that are unique to legal professionals. Here are some things to think about your online client reviews.

Before we get into the specific how's and what's of online client reviews, it's worth saying a quick word about getting client reviews in a more general sense. And that discussion must begin with providing excellent client service and developing a strong professional relationship. If you can't provide great service to your clients, you may not want them reviewing you at all.

So, let's assume that you have provided excellent service and you believe that you have a satisfied client that might be willing to provide you with a positive testimonial. The next question is what do your state bar's ethics rules say about client testimonials?

Client Reviews & Ethics

The ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct - Information About Legal Services Rule 7.1 Communications Concerning A Lawyer's Services states:

A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement considered as a whole not materially misleading.

It goes without saying that testimonials that make false or misleading communications about a lawyer's services should not be used nor encouraged. In fact, some may make the argument that a lawyer has an obligation to use reasonable means remove false or misleading testimonials or reviews of which they become aware (while a noble principle, it seems unfair to require lawyers to scour the web for false testimonials).

Additionally, client testimonials may, in some instances, fall under the purview of Rule 7.2 Advertising, which states:

(a) Subject to the requirements of Rules 7.1 and 7.3, a lawyer may advertise services through written, recorded or electronic communication, including public media.

(b) A lawyer shall not give anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services except that a lawyer may

(1) pay the reasonable costs of advertisements or communications permitted by this Rule;

(2) pay the usual charges of a legal service plan or a not-for-profit or qualified lawyer referral service. A qualified lawyer referral service is a lawyer referral service that has been approved by an appropriate regulatory authority;

(3) pay for a law practice in accordance with Rule 1.17; and

(4) refer clients to another lawyer or a nonlawyer professional pursuant to an agreement not otherwise prohibited under these Rules that provides for the other person to refer clients or customers to the lawyer, if

(i) the reciprocal referral agreement is not exclusive, and

(ii) the client is informed of the existence and nature of the agreement.

(c) Any communication made pursuant to this rule shall include the name and office address of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content.

While there are many client testimonial instances in which Rule 7.2 is not triggered, it's important for legal professionals to be aware of how the rules of their state may regulate their use.

Collecting Client Reviews

Once the ethics issues have been addressed, the next step is to develop a system by which to collect the review. I have seen many different methods of client review collection, some good, others largely ineffective.

I was once told that, "you don't get anything in this world unless you ask". While I'm not sure that this is always true, it certainly seems applicable to obtaining client reviews.

Sure, there are those clients that are extremely eager to sing your praises. However, more times than not, you will probably need to initiate the discussion of whether or not the client is willing to provide a positive testimonial.

Now that you have a client that is ready and willing to provide a testimonial, you have to decide how best to collect it. In my opinion, one of the best ways to collect a client testimonial is through an exit interview.

Effective exit interviews or surveys should feel less like testimonial collection and more like an experience survey. You may want to consider scanning various online review sites for questions and rating systems that you can incorporate into your exit interview process.

If you have a client who is willing to provide a testimonial and is fairly savvy with computers and the Internet, in addition to documenting the review for the file, you may also consider providing access to online review sites right at your office. You may be surprised how many clients will leave reviews right there on the spot. Then again, you may not.

Many clients won't feel comfortable with you standing over your shoulder while they write something about you online. That is why assigning exit interviews to a secretary or paralegal might make the most sense. Alternatively, you could have the client simply fill-out an exit interview form, take a form with them, or provide a testimonial over the phone.

Getting Your Client Reviews Online

Now that you have collected the interview, it's time to decide how and where to use it. If it complies with your state's ethics rules, you might want to consider syndicating the review online. Obviously, you will want to make sure you have permission first. Next, the question becomes, where do you want your clients to provide online reviews?

The first place you will want to consider are local search data providers. These sites are beneficial due to their own online visibility, as well as, their impact on local search visibility. In addition to the more general local search data providers, you should also consider legal specific review websites and data providers.

Here are just a couple to consider:

Martindale-Hubbell Client Review:

Avvo:

While there are several other lawyer review sites to consider, these two are especially important in terms of increasing your firm's Google Places visibility:

As you can see, Google is currently pulling data into Google Places listings from Avvo and Lawyers.com. This data plays a role in your firm's local prominence.

When it comes to increasing your reputation and visibility online, there is no question that the importance of online client reviews will greatly increase in 2011. As social signals continue to merge with seo factors, don't be surprised to see tweets, likes, and status updates playing a larger role in your visibility too.

Social Media Signals Merge with traditional SEO factors: Google undertook some radical changes in 2010, including Google Instant and the merging of Google Places listings within the organic search results. Both changes were incredibly significant in my view, and only a sampling of what Google has prepared for us in 2011. Danny Sullivan’s recap on the increased weight being given to social media endorsements is the starting point for my 2011 SEO prediction. As Sullivan notes, neither Google or Bing are using “ReTweets” or “Likes” as a major factor in their organic search rankings, yet. By the end of 2011, I expect one of the two major search engines (my guess: Bing) will turn SEO on its head significantly by increasing the ranking impact of social media endorsements within their ranking algorithm.

What does this mean? First, if you haven't done so already, I recommended adding the Big Steve Feed, to your reader app. Next, you need to begin thinking about your law firm web marketing in terms of both social, as well as, local signals.

While traditional seo shall still remain an important component to successful law firm Internet marketing, it's essential that legal professionals don't omit social and local strategy from their web presence strategy.

Back in October, when Google made its Place Search update, everyone started to freak out. Lawyers that hadn't considered local signals in their seo campaigns found themselves losing out to firms that may have had weaker traditional seo profiles, but had focused on local seo.

I think it is likely that we see a similar (albeit less severe) trend with social signals. Ignore them at your own peril. However, keep in mind that trying to "tweet" or "like" yourself to the top of google results pages is an effort in futility and may even do harm to your professional reputation and relationships.

Instead of chasing followers and friends, focus on building credibility within small social networks and social circles. "Socialize" with those that share similar interests or that you know personally offline. Don't hyper-focus on the time you spend, number of tweets you post, or articles that you like. While being mindful of your social media metrics is good advice, you're better-off engaging in real participation and just seeing where it takes you. You just might be surprised to learn that social media isn't just for the kids.

According to the firm, the results from the local campaign hadn't been very impressive.  Since the firm's contract with the local search agency was expiring at the end of the year, we advised them to finish out the term and then we would take over the local optimization.  However, when Google made a change towards the end of October to how they displayed local search results, the importance of the firm's Google Places listing took on a more prominent role.  We advised the firm to let us take control of the local campaign in November and we would perform the additional work as a component of our service.

This is when the trouble began.

Needless to say, the firm now has a mess on their hands.  While there are outlets they can pursue to help resolve the issue, it's an annoying situation to have to deal with.

What Steps Can You Take To Protect Yourself?

As always, you should perform due diligence before you hire a service to perform marketing on your behalf.  Speak to references.  Ask more in depth questions than did you get higher rankings.  Ask about the customer service and how the agency is to deal with.  Do they respond quickly?  Are they responsive when asked to do something?

In addition, make sure accounts are being setup under your email and logins or that you are supplied with the login information right upfront.  In the case of Google Places accounts, once you give up the pin number, the agency will be able to connect your Google Places account with any account of their choosing.  This needs to be an account you own or at the very least an account you have access to.  

Photo by Paul Bence

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.

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.

"No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and so ridiculous."

It's interesting how relevant this quote, nearly two centuries old, is for lawyers marketing on the internet.

Learn The Language

The internet has introduced a slew of shiny, new communication tools and platforms.  However, many firms are traveling to the distant land that is the internet before they bother to learn how conversations there are taking place.

Each community has it’s own conversation, it’s own voice.  Writing content for a blog post is different than interacting on LinkedIn.  You need to do your research as you adopt each of these tools.  Follow the flow of conversations on Twitter and blogs.  Listen and learn how people interact on LinkedIn and Facebook.  Once you gain an understanding of the community and the conversation (ie: learning the language of the land), spend some time contributing.  Keep in mind that the conversation and language in one community, may not be right for another.

Photo by Shawn Econo

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. 

After a week of back and forth between Chris Pearson, the creator of Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, things finally concluded with the Thesis Theme adopting a split GPL (General Public License) for the Theme.

According to the GPL, software can be sold commercially but the user must be free to share the software, free to modify it, free to redistribute it to the community and free to share copies of his modified versions. In the words of the license, “If you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received.”

The split GPL will allow the parts of Thesis that use WordPress code to be freely shared. All the PHP code is GPL, while CSS and JavaScript code sections remain proprietary.

I find it all a bit confusing to be perfectly honest with you.  

Can the software now be purchased, modified, and freely distributed?

Chris Pearson tweeted this in response to what the adoption of a split GPL means to Thesis customers:

@tomoswyn It has no practical implications for 99.9% of people. It just means the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.

Seems to me this pretty much nullifies what the GPL states.

I'd love to read some comments from our readers (especially ones with legal expertise in this field) letting me know your thoughts on this one.

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

What Facebook Does Well

Facebook is a networking tool, perhaps the greatest "connecting" technology we have seen.  As the number of Facebook users continue to grow, it only provides more opportunity to forge new relationships.  Sharing your blog content, being active in groups, connecting to other professionals, setting up a firm business page, and providing relevant status updates can all lead to increased visibility, referrals, etc.  Facebook provides a platform where you can form new relationships and share your expertise.  It allows you to connect with people.

Why I Believe Their Ad Network Isn't Going To Be A Goldmine For You

The benefits of Facebook as a social connection tool do not necessarily translate into success with their ad network.

The success your firm will have with any ad network has everything to do with audience, intent, mind set, and how a user is interacting with a medium.  My problem with Facebook is that users lack the intent or receptiveness that have made other mediums so successful.

Take for instance, advertising on a search engine.  It works so well because people are actively looking for a product or service when using the search engine.  The intent exists.  Advertsing on television can be effective because people are in a passive mode.  They are consuming the medium but are not actively engaging with it.  Because of this, the interruption advertising can work because it fits in with their passive viewing.

Facebook lies somewhere in between.  The intent doesn't exist as it does with a search engine.  Most people are on Facebook to socialize with their friends and to network, not look for legal services.  They aren't in "business mode" as they might be on a search engine or a network like LinkedIn.  In addition, Facebook users are not passively consuming the content as a television viewer does.  Facebook users are actively engaged, clicking around, adding status updates, sharing content, etc.  They are not as likely to accept interruption style advertising, impeding on the activities they came to Facebook to accomplish.

Facebook advertising provides the ability to get your ad seen many times by a specific demographic.  This is great for big brand advertising (think Coke or McDonalds).  However, for a local firm looking to generate clients, you should be less concerned with advertising that builds "brand awareness" and spend more time looking for avenues that generate clients.  I just don't see how Facebook advertising, in it's current form, can accomplish this on a consistent basis.

I'd love to read some comments of instances where Facebook ads provided a profitable, consistent return for your law firm.