Social bookmarking sites are useful resources for Internet users.  While social bookmarking is mostly user friendly and simple, it is important to understand the other components of your legal marketing goals.  Other steps need to be taken in order to be successful when using social bookmarking sites.

Creating a solid website for your law firm with great content and geographically-specific keywords is important.  However, it may not be a good idea to bookmark a firm’s areas of practice page if it is simply a placeholder page with “Lorem ipsum” content.  If you do not plan on putting up good content on these placeholder pages within a reasonable amount of time, you may be better off bookmarking these pages later on.  So, please do your best to maintain your website.  And be sure to carefully select which pages you want to bookmark as well.  For instance, it may be pointless to bookmark your page’s sitemap.

With more and more ways to search online, users can utilize social bookmarking sites to find what they are looking for.  You can look up a law firm whose website has been bookmarked and specifically target this law firm’s geographic location and area of practice.

Because of this, it is important to write good content for your firm’s social bookmarks.  It shouldn’t be too time consuming.  Come up with a title, write an informative description for the page you are bookmarking, and do NOT forget to list keywords tags!  Keywords tags are very important, because most social bookmarking sites organize bookmarks using these tags.  These tags help make your bookmark searchable.  (Note: Not all of the sites use keyword tags, but when it is an option, you should ALWAYS include tags.)

Here is an example of keyword tags for a law firm:

new york city personal injury law firm, new york city injury attorneys, personal injuries lawyer in new york city, accident litigation, nyc accidents, legal representation, lawsuit, lawyers, attorneys

Lastly, be sure to be an active social bookmarker.  Do not just bookmark your own website.  You must bookmark content from a variety of sites.  Only submitting your law firm’s pages may cause you to be flagged as a marketer.  You do not want to appear to be on these social bookmarking sites JUST to promote your own efforts.  Browse through them and check out other users’ bookmarks.  Take the time to rate, vote, comment, and provide feedback on their bookmarks, in the hopes of them discovering the pages you have bookmarked.  You may even build a social bookmarking network by adding friends and actively participating in the social bookmarking world.