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Recent Blog Posts
How to Address a Negative Online Review While Managing Your Reputation
As a practicing attorney, protecting your professional reputation online amongst your peers and, most importantly, with clients should remain at the top of your daily priority list.
For the more than 30,000 Illinois attorneys who have voluntarily joined the Illinois State Bar Association, pride in profession and maintaining a solid online reputation remains at the forefront of any successful practice. But what if by putting yourself out there, a disgruntled client or, worse yet, a competitor initiates an online rift for all the world to see?
Take a deep breath and do not throw in the towel yet. If you have retained the services of an experienced online marketing firm, give the team a call. If you have been managing your online reputation successfully up to this point, try not to take the online “slam” personally. Any business is bound to take a hit now and again, especially in today’s electronic marketplace.
Global Marketing Leader Google Pulls the Plug on Authorship
Google Authorship once provided blog authors the ability to connect their published posts to their Google+ profile page. This connection was designed to provide a measurement of a blogger’s level of influence, ultimately increasing one’s search engine ranking. This social media experiment has now ended as Google has removed authorship markup as a tool websites and bloggers could utilize. If you are still skeptical, Google’s Webmaster Tools has officially posted the final verdict.
So how does this recent turn of events haunt social media marketing, especially for the legal community? When active, Google Authorship could easily monitor an attorney’s level of influence from content posted with Google markup by displaying search results weighted with strong influential content for the search originator. Another feature was that both the author’s influence, as well as the searcher’s inner social circle, could easily guide users to a specific profile page. As a result, Google would display search results and content from trusted sources, providing a high level of online visibility.
Website Analytics for Attorneys: Becoming Familiar with Website Data
Nielsen Holdings, N.V., the American global information and measurement leader, recently posted the results of a survey conducted with over 25,000 global internet consumers and found that although 90 percent of consumers trust a personal recommendation for consumer services, 70 percent also trusted consumer endorsements posted online.
As a practicing attorney, this information should provide credence to the time and effort you put forth in designing, building and maintaining your professional website, but are you relying solely on past accolades and missing an important key factor governing website effectiveness?
If you hesitated before answering this question, you may not be fully familiar with the benefits of website analytics or the collection and analysis of site data as an effective marketing tool. It is important to use website analytics to determine how hard your website is actually working to increase your online presence.
Online Marketing for Lawyers: Exposure Meets Ethics
It is absolutely critical in today’s competitive digital age to have a properly maintained website for your law firm. Many make the mistake of trying to establish a proper digital footprint without the help of marketing professionals, which can have many negative consequences.
A website alone is no longer sufficient to get the exposure you need; the increased inter-connectivity the Internet provides has significantly complicated the realm of digital marketing. This higher level of complexity has lead to a completely new set of ethical issues. It is critical to understand them when posting any web content.
Consider the following possible ethical issues when posting any web content for your law office:
Attorneys Need to Visualize the Versatility of Facebook
It engages over 1.11 billion monthly users, launched a movie, had its share of legal issues, and brought Mark Zuckerberg to the forefront of social media, but are attorneys visualizing the full benefits of Facebook as a branding tool? Probably not.
For most practicing attorneys, creating a Facebook page was part of the vision when developing a social media marketing plan, but once created, it may have only received a nonchalant second glance. There is more to Facebook than meets the eye.
If you only update your Facebook page with the occasional comment, you are losing sight of all Facebook has to offer. By focusing on Facebook’s full potential, you would be able to see an increase in connectivity and interaction with prospective clients all at a minimal cost of only your vision and your time.
Legal Websites 101: School is Back in Session
With the advancement of legal online marketing and all the new responsibilities the management of your firm’s online presence brings to the table, it is possible the basics of maintaining or even constructing a relevant legal website representative of your firm has not taken place.
The 2013 numbers from Statistic Brain reveal the number of Google searches per day has increased to 5,922,000,000. It is imperative that your firm's marketing specialist understand the importance of maintaining a website. With a refresher course below, Legal Websites 101, the relevance of a Grade A website as well as review of domain names, design, and content can help bring an understanding of important basic elements a strong law firm website contains.
First Day of Class
Review of website basics.
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Choosing a domain name - keeping it short and easy,
Social Media Marketing 101 for New Attorneys
Congratulations, you have arrived. After 12 years of school, four years undergrad and four years of law school, you are finally ready to join the ranks of practicing attorneys available for hire in the Chicago area.
With the Chicago Bar Association's Lawyer Referral Service listing over 300 qualified attorneys, how you plan on standing out in this impressive but competitive market may hinge on your understanding of the importance of social media marketing as a means of growing your practice in today's expansive legal industry.
Understanding how today's consumer narrows the field of competent attorneys to resolve their legal issue is just as important. At least 60 percent of prospective clients turn to the Internet to learn more about their options and choose the attorney that will best resolve their legal needs quickly and effectively.
Overlooking LinkedIn: Attorneys Could Be Missing Valuable Networking Opportunity
LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking service founded in December 2002 and launched early in May 2003, was designed to promote electronic professional networking opportunities. The brainchild of Reid Hoffman, who also recruited former key players of Yahoo!, Inc., PayPal, and SocialNet, boasts a valuation of approximately $1 billion but is still often viewed as the red-haired cousin of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media marketing platforms.
LinkedIn can become an integral and productive member of an attorney’s social media marketing campaign. Not only does it enhance online visibility, it also provides a solo practice attorney or legal firm with the ability to reach 225 million members as a means to cultivate new clients and increase referral rates. It is estimated that LinkedIn produces two new members per second daily within the global market.
Increasing Your Likeability Factor: Facebook Survival Tips for the Ages
Everyone wants to be liked. According to Psychology Today, it remains one of our basic primal instincts. We strive to attract, create and maintain a strong social network. Reaching as far back as the Stone Age, it was simple. Individuals hunted for food, water, shelter, and intimate relationships.
Essential to survival, groups were formed based on these four elements of these essential survival quests. As we continually evolve we still seek to fulfill these primitive but essential needs. Psychologically, this quest suggests the creation of groups who are now defining modern methods of survival in the Internet age.
Facebook appears to be our technological answer. So much so, that the Facebook Help Center provides us with a clear definition and instructions for increasing our professional and personal “likeability” factor.
Darwin and Digital Branding: Stepping into the Future of Electronic Marketing
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." -Charles Darwin
Remarkable. How could Darwin forecast our future? This quote can surely capture the essence of how we as a legal community are now conducting our business.
Gone are the days of branding via television and radio as a way to market our practice, symbol or design that will differentiate our services from all others. In today’s market, SEO or search engine optimization is the ultimate source of change in digital marketing.
It appears as the social media marketing evolution continues, digital branding has become just as important as creating and maintaining a relevant professional website for introducing your services to your target audience. It is now imperative for online marketers to focus on increasing their brand visibility by sourcing the most effective social media branding tools to capture consumers with bursts of significant and relevant material.
