LinkedIn For Lawyers: The Publishing Tool

Jaffe

There is no question that LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool that can potentially turn online connections into real-world clients. That won’t happen overnight, however, and those efforts will only thrive with proper care, maintenance and pruning.

Writing Your LinkedIn Profile

Most likely you already have a basic profile, but one of the biggest obstacles lawyers face is distinguishing themselves online. Bios sound the same from one attorney to the next, and, while they might showcase a long list of achievements, they often don’t say much about the person and how he or she is a problem solver. It’s important to remember that your profile is your front door to the world. Spruce it up, and lay out the welcome mat.

Need some tips when writing your LinkedIn profile? To reach influencers, gain a following and develop a reputation as someone “in the know,” use actionable language, and try to be more lively and specific. Identifying clearly how you provide a solution will make it infinitely easier for potential clients to understand what you do and why you are the perfect fit for their job. If you think revising your online profile will easily drop to the bottom of your “to do” list, schedule it on your calendar.

Blogging on LinkedIn

With a progressive profile in place, you’re now ready to harness the power of LinkedIn. In addition to providing opportunities for connecting with colleagues, friends, and potential prospects; joining groups; and posting, LinkedIn has recently unveiled a new publishing platform. It was designed to provide users with a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, blogging tool. For those who work at law firms that do not have blogging resources, or if you want to prove the viability of a blog before adding it to your law firm website, using LinkedIn publishing is a good option.

To help you use the blogging platform, LinkedIn provides a built-in template that comes up when you click on the orange “Publish a post” icon at your home screen. From there, it is easy to add a photo, draft an engaging headline, drop in the text and click Publish.

Blog posting through LinkedIn allows you to share quality content on a regular basis with a built-in audience and group of followers. You can share posts with specific groups or individual connections. Another bonus of the LinkedIn blogging tool is that the pages encourage two-way conversation and discussion. Each post is equipped with social-sharing buttons, so it’s easy for other users to share, like, repost and retweet across all social networking platforms. Unlike cumbersome email campaigns or formal alerts, you can easily point and click your way to becoming a thought-leader on specific topic. And, the tool catalogs all your posts in one area for easy reference.

LinkedIn Blogging Best Practices

Successful bloggers publish at least twice a month, and more frequently to accommodate new developments or interesting news. Content should be relevant, entertaining, engaging and brief. It should include a call to action. If at all possible, it should tell a story. But most importantly, you should write about topics that affect your clients and help to position you as a valuable resource.

In fact, according to Bloomberg’s Big Law Business Report, there seems to be a sea change among in-house counsel about how to handle client development. Fancy dinners and tickets to sporting events might be nice, but it’s also important to show that you have your finger on the pulse of the market and are watching (and can report on) trends. Blogging ticks this box.

It is also important to note that, as lawyers become more and more proficient on LinkedIn, they also need to be aware of the various state bar rules. While the ABA has not yet published comprehensive guidelines on social media usage, some state bars have, including New York.

In fact, in March 2015, the New York County Lawyers Association Professional Ethics Committee released an opinion recommending that attorneys in New York with LinkedIn profiles that include information about their practice areas, skills, endorsements or recommendations – essentially, anything more than the straightforward biographical information in their profiles – should now include attorney advertising statements at the end of the “Summary” section of their LinkedIn profiles, similar to “Attorney Advertising – Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.”

While this doesn’t mean that LinkedIn should be abandoned as a powerful networking tool, it just will require that attorneys periodically monitor and review the content of their LinkedIn profiles for accuracy and compliance with bar guidelines.

The Confluence of Content and Social Media

Lawyers and legal marketers seem to have an ever-growing number of marketing tools and tactics at their disposal. Technology has provided us with a number of new avenues to reach our desired audiences, but just using these channels is not enough. They have to be leveraged strategically.

Lawyers should take the time to populate their LinkedIn profiles with quality information that positively reflects their personal brands. They should also make it a habit to continually update their profiles to capture recent successes, promotions, organizational affiliations, pro bono activities and published articles. Finally, with the LinkedIn publishing tool, lawyers can maximize the benefits of the social network by crafting and distributing relevant thought leadership materials to a targeted audience of engaged professionals.

ARTICLE BY

How Attorneys Are Using Social Media in 2015 [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Rainmaker Institute

According to the ABA’s 2014 Legal Technology Survey Report, attorneys are using social media marketing more than ever before, with solos and small firms leading the way in engaging on social media networks, blogging and website development.

According to the ABA report, LinkedIn is by far the most popular social media destination for attorneys, with 99% of large firms (100+ attorneys), 97% of mid-size firms (10-49 attorneys), 94% of small firms (2-9 attorneys) and 93% of solos having a LinkedIn profile.

Solos dominate Facebook, with 45% reporting participation compared with 38% of small firms and just 21% of large firms. Larger firms appear to favor Twitter, with 36% saying their firms maintain a Twitter presence compared with 16% of mid-size firms, 13% of solos and 12% of small firms.

When it comes to blogging, 24% of law firms overall report having a blog and 39% of attorneys say they have obtained clients from blogging. In comparison, 35% of attorneys say they have obtained clients from their social networks.

So according to the data, blogging delivers more clients than social media but fewer lawyers are engage in blogging than social media. (Opportunity!)

This infographic from MyCase.com details how attorneys are using social media in 2015:

How Attorneys Are Using Social Media in 2015

ARTICLE BY

OF

Social Media Marketing for Lawyers: What It Can Do for You, How to Do It Right

The Rainmaker Institute

Many attorneys I talk with want to know if social media will deliver real value for the investment in time and effort that it takes to develop and implement a social media marketing program.

Social Media Marketing

Here is what I tell them:

Social media will help you build trust, but it will not make a “bad” reputation better. Social media is a meritocracy – if you’re good, people will know it. Conversely, a bad experience will also get talked about. Building trust is crucial for attorneys, and social media helps you build trust by providing a robust platform for sharing your particular insights and knowledge. Once people trust that, they will use you and recommend you to others.

Social media will get you leads, but it will not turn them into paying clients. People who follow you on Twitter, are a fan of you on Facebook or interact with you in any way on a social network have indicated an interest in what you have to say. These are leads. To capitalize on them and turn them into paying clients, however, requires effort on your part in following up.

Social media will give you visibility, but it will not replace a good client experience. Social media is a 365/24/7 world, allowing you to engage with prospects at any time, and they with you. You must be vigilant about responding to posts and questions the same way you would in responding to a prospect that calls or emails you. Every point of contact is an opportunity to make a great impression.

Social media is the fastest way to build your sphere of influence, but it won’t happen overnight. Your sphere of influence is defined as how many people know (1) who you are, (2) who you help, and (3) why you are different.  If you only have 20 people who know enough about you to send you the right referrals, then you are severely limited in how much you will be able to grow your practice.   Social media is a long-term play, and you need to commit to spending the time and money (either yours or hiring someone else) to achieve success.

ARTICLE BY

OF

Common Social Media Profile Picture Mistakes

Consultsweb Logo

How you present yourself on social media can either draw clients to you, or send them packing.

What’s the first thing you notice about someone’s social media account? Their profile picture. There are over 645 million active Twitter users, 829 active daily users on Facebook, and over 200 million users on Instagram. Profile pictures are the first thing any of these users will see when your account is searched or suggested on social platforms, so it is vital that your picture send the right message.

Do’s and Don’ts of social media profile pictures:

DON’T make yourself so far away that the person has to play a strategic game of “Where’s Waldo” just to identify you.

Where's Waldo

DON’T filter your picture so heavily so that the viewer can’t even imagine what the original looked like.

Filter 2

DON’T pose like you’re on the cover of a magazine. There is a time and a place for glamour shots, but your professional profile is not it.

Model

DON’T set your profile image as a picture of you and your spouse. Marriage is a beautiful thing, but this is your profile, not yours and your significant other’s.

Spouse

DON’T make your profile picture your firm’s logo. While it is important to gain exposure for your firm, your profile picture isn’t the ideal place to do so. A profile picture should personalize you as an attorney. You can, however, put something like a logo as your cover photo so that it is the background to your profile image.

Logo

DON’T leave your image as the default, such as the signature Twitter egg. Doing this will not only look impersonal, but also come off like you didn’t care enough to put in the effort to change the photo.

Twitter egg

DO follow these guidelines for profile pictures:

Profile Picture

  • Crop the picture so it is an up-close, professional shot of your face.

  • Make sure it is well-lit and that you’re looking directly at the camera.
  • Smile! This can showcase how personable you are and also be inviting to the people who see it.
  • Don’t have anything directly behind you; it is ideal to have professional head shots in front of a green screen.
  • Your profile picture needs to be large enough that it can be recognized without actually having to click on the image. Be mindful of general size requirements across social media networks.

ARTICLE BY

OF

What's Ahead for Legal Marketing in 2014?

The Rainmaker Institute mini logo (1)

 

WebDAM, a web-based digital asset management company, took the time to gather data from industry experts and leading sources on digital marketing to create the infographic below, which illustrates the trends and statistics they believe will drive marketing in 2014.

Of primary interest to attorneys looking to strengthen their marketing program next year:

  • 78% of marketing executives think custom content is the future of marketing(Google agrees!)
  • B2B companies say blogs generate 67% more leads than those that don’t blog
  • Marketers are finding actual, money-paying clients on LinkedIn and Facebook
  • Customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing (89%)
  • Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing

Captivating marketing strategies

 

Article by:

Stephen Fairley

Of:

The Rainmaker Institute

5 Ways to Boost Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Right Now

The Rainmaker Institute mini logo (1)

On October 21, I posted an interview that originally appeared on LawMarketing.com about the latest Google Penguin update andwhat it may or may not have done to affect legal websites.

John Jantsch over at the Duct Tape Marketing blog had a good post last week about the 5 ways you can boost your SEO right away, taking into consideration the latest Google search engine update:

1. Boost your social share. Google is giving a lot more juice to social share signals, so add the Google +1 and Facebook Like or Share buttons at the top of each page of your website or blog.

2. Use larger embedded images. This can help your blog posts you put on Facebook get shared more, and sharing is the name of the game right now. Facebook recently redesigned their posts to make images a lot more prominent; the new standard for images is 600 x 1200 pixels.

3. Zero in on long tail keywords. In a competitive category like law, going after the long tail keywords that people use to search for your services will help your SEO. Jantsch recommends using Long Tail Pro, a keyword research tool that is easy to use and inexpensive.

4. Use micro data with rich snippets. If you use WordPress for your blog or website, be sure to add the micro data plugin. Micro data is HTML code used by search engines to identify categories of text and Google uses it to understand website pages better. You can learn more about this on Google’s Webmaster blog.

5. Build relationships with authorities for your category. Just like it is important to build a good referral network offline, it has become increasingly important for you to do it online – it’s just known as building authority relationships. Find authors in your practice area that rank high in search and find ways to connect with them to foster a value-added relationship.

Article By:

of

10 Free Keyword Research Tools + How to Use Them [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Rainmaker Institute mini logo (1)

An old friend – Google’s free Adwords Keyword tool – has gone off the grid for good, leaving in its place the new Keyword Planner. The Planner is a little more detailed, but still fairly easy to use and still free.

A recent post at the GroTraffic.com blog had a list of 10 free keyword research tools you will find useful, as well as a good infographic that provides step-by-step instructions on how to conduct keyword research:

Mergewords – especially useful for creating long tail keyword phrases which are critical to your SEO efforts.

Wordstream – will give you up to 30 free keyword results; after that, you have to subscribe.

SEMRush – the first 10 results are free; a subscription is required for more. Data analysis and keyword performance info is also offered on the site.

SEOBook – this site has a free keyword tool that requires free registration to access.

Keyword Eye – if you are more visually oriented, this site is for you.

KGen – if you use Firefox as your browser, this tool is available as an add-on and will rank keywords on any given website.

Bing Keyword Research Tool – part of the Bing Webmaster Tools.

Keyword Spy – lets you evaluate competitive websites for keywords they use.

Thesaurus.com – this website gives you synonyms for your keywords.

Ubersuggest – suggestion tool for more keyword ideas.

Article By:

 of

What Social Media Users Like to Share

The Rainmaker Institute mini logo (1)

new study out from market research firm Ipsos reveals that 70% of Internet users have shared content on social media sites in the past month.

So why is this important?

One of the main reasons attorneys participate in social media is for lead generation, and having your posts shared with others boosts the popularity of that post and gives an implied endorsement to what you have to say.

So it would behoove you to be aware of the type of content that is more likely to be shared. Here it is:

The next time you find yourself stuck on what to post on your social media sites, refer to this list – and include a picture!

Article By:

 of

7 Steps to Create a Lead-Generating Website [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Rainmaker Institute mini logo (1)

It is estimated that 95% of law firms already have a website (I’m not sure what the other five percent are holding out for…perhaps they still think the internet is a fad), but too few attorneys are consistently generating quality leads from their online presence because they lack great content.

Google has made it increasingly difficult to rank high without putting a lot of quality content on your website. One of the best ways to do so is via a blog, which allows you to add unique, high quality content every day to your website.

The infographic below from ReachLocal.com provides 7 essential ingredients you must have in your website to help you land more leads:

Moving Parts of a Successful Law Firm Social Media Campaign

Correct Consults Logo

Social Media seems pretty straightforward on the surface. Everyone is doing it! It seems simple enough to create a profile, upload a profile picture and start posting. And for the average Internet user, it is. However, if you want to achieve marketing goals, Social Media becomes a much more intricate process.

social media facebook twitter google plus

Because it sends a message to potential clients that your firm is transparent, professional, approachable and connected, choosing to use Social Media is important. Sharing a good blend of content will enhance these qualities and showcase your law firm’s expertise.

Identify Your Goals

A successful Social Media marketing strategy begins well before the accounts are created. Start by identifying your goals.

Is your primary goal branding, conversions, social proof, traffic to your Website or simply creating a network around your brand where people can approach you, leave reviews, or even refer your law firm to their social network?

You must identify these goals early. They will even affect many choices you will make, including which social platforms you will be active on.

Choose Your Social Media Platforms

Once you know your goals and have set aside a budget, it’s time to look at the various social networks – namely Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Avvo. Each of these platforms functions differently. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. And each one will accomplish different goals.

For example, if you are looking to enhance your SEO campaign with Social Media, create personal and firm Google+ profiles. On the other hand, if you are looking to share your content and connect with more people, create a Facebook business page.

Choose as many social networking sites as necessary to meet your demands. No one says you can only choose one.

To help you with creating an initial Social Media strategy, here is a brief look at each platform’s strengths and weaknesses:

  • Facebook – This is the most popular social network. It makes it much easier to connect with people and drive traffic to your website. Facebook Insights are in-depth and informative, while paid ads are cheap and effective. Facebook is also the most successful for converting followers into clients.
  • Google+ – This platform is closely tied to Google search, Local, and authorship / publisher mark-up. Google+ Communities are also a great place to target users who will likely find your content interesting or helpful. For SEO, Google+ is essential. However, its network isn’t as copious as Facebook.
  • LinkedIn – This is the place to connect with professionals. It is a great place to feature B2B businesses, start a referral network, create Groups to showcase your expertise, get endorsements or find clients who may be in need of your particular field of law (such as estate planning, immigration or business law).
  • Avvo – This is best for showcasing your expertise and connecting with people in your geographical area who currently need a lawyer. It requires vigilant maintenance to earn a good rating. We don’t suggest starting Avvo unless you plan to participate regularly.
  • Twitter – This platform’s use for law firms has been dwindling lately. It has a large network of users and doesn’t differentiate between people and businesses, which makes for easier networking. However, nearly everyone on Twitter has an agenda and is therefore deaf to everyone else’s agenda. There is much more spam to wade through.

Build Your Social Media Network

Once you have chosen platforms and created profiles, the next step is arguably the most important part of Social Media marketing – building your network.

There are many ways to do this on various platforms. However, one maxim remains constant: Build an organic network.

Paying for followers, +1s and likes looks impressive. However, it will hurt your campaign in the long run. Posting to a page with no followers is like speaking to an empty room, and posting to a page with bought followers is like speaking to a room full of mannequins. The result is the same: No one is seeing your content.

Here are a few effective ways to grow your network:

  • Use charity or community initiatives, donations and scholarships – These initiatives showcase your law firm’s passions and attract loyal like-minded followers.
  • Use paid ads – These ads keep your law firm in front of new users and target the right people. This is also a fantastic way (via Facebook) to promote your content and drive traffic to your Website.
  • Use outreach – This is a great way to foster mutually beneficial relationships. If done properly, outreach efforts can enhance your Social Media and SEO campaigns.

Post Quality Content

Posting quality content is essential. After all, what use is a large, loyal network if you never engage them? Post a variety of content that is interesting and shareable, such as:

  • Pictures
  • Blogs
  • Local and national news
  • Firm news.

Never try your hard call to action on Social Media. At best, it will be ignored. At worst, it will drive your followers away.

Social Media is about making your law firm approachable and connecting with people. You can achieve this by posting interesting, quality content that your followers will want to read and interact with.

It’s arguable which is more important to a successful Social Media campaign – content or networking. We believe it’s safe to say that one relies on the other. Both are crucial.

Article By:

 of