Legal Marketing Articles

Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

Reach more clients when you Tweet with Hashtags

Monday, March 15th, 2010
Iran's Election Crisis

Twitter is an great way to get your name in front of people on the web.  You don’t need a large following, as with traditional marketing efforts, just networking with the people you know can bring you leads or referrals.

But what if you  do want to reach a larger audience, or you are getting overwhelmed trying to stay in touch with everyone, or you have different topics for different groups? This is where hashtags (#)  come in.

A hashtag is just the pound symbol – # – followed by the name used to broadcast to a specific group.  For example, you can have #lawyer or #attorney.  Anyone that is set up to follow that tag will then receive your tweet.

Check out www.hashtags.org to see if a group exists by using their search box. And if there isn’t a group already, then create a new one by tweeting it.  Just use the #hashtag in your post.

Let’s say you have multiple areas of practice and want to send a tweet, but it is only meant for a specific group of people.  You can create a hashtag for #duilawyer and then a #drugcrimelawyer  to tweet each potential client group separately.  Although it is possible, you probably wouldn’t use #frensodrugcrimelawyer even if you are a Fresno Drug Crime Lawyer.  The number of people following this tag is probably small, if any at all.

Keep your tags short.  Sticking with our Frenso-CA-lawyer-theme, if you are a domestic violence attorney in Fresno and you have a tag like #fresnodomesticviolenceattorney, consider using abbreviations.  This tag is too long and takes up a lot of your characters.  You’re better off with #domesticviolence or even #domviolence.

There are some commands that you need to be familiar with some you can broadcast your message to the people who want to read it. Here are some of the key commands:

  • Follow #tag – lets you follow all updates tagged with #lawyer.
  • Follow username#tag – subscribe to all updates from a certain person that is sent to a group.
  • #tag message – Send a message or question to the group.
  • #tag !message – Send a message only to people who are subscribed to updates from #tag.
  • Leave #tag – Unsubscribe from the group. If your friends are subscribed to this group as well, you’ll still get messages from them that include updates for the group through your friends.
  • Remove #tag – Unsubscribe from the group and from friend messages that include this tag.

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Using Twitter at Your Law Firm

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Using twitter can be a frustrating task for anyone if you are unsure of the most effective way to ‘tweet’.  Twitter IS for everyone – and it’s super easy to use.  It doesn’t matter if you work for a small or large law firm – twitter can work in just about any situation for any company.  Making the most out of twitter is really where the difficult part comes in but it’s not really that hard to “MASTER TWITTER”.

In an article by CopyBlogger.com it mentions how Cindy King, an international sales specialist, saw a huge boost in business inquires by implementing a strategic Twitter plan.  “Following the right people on Twitter was key. There are some people very gifted at building relationships on Twitter. As I followed these online community builders, I realized that some of them are also excellent direct response copywriters. They get their Twitter followers to take action,” said King.

Here are some tips to get started:

1. Explore lots of twitter accounts that are from the folks who are really good at effectively using twitter.  One example is http://twitter.com/Alicia_at_Honda (Alicia at Honda).

2. Don’t be afraid to jump in.  No matter if you are a mesothelioma lawyer or disability attorney – you can effectively use twitter!

3. Buy a book.  When all else fails pick up Twitter for dummies!

Thankfully BusinessInsider.com reported “Twitter has produced a special guide for businesses to help them get started on Twitter, called Twitter 101. It’s clean and nicely designed, and full of case studies about how companies JetBlue, Etsy, American Apparel, and Pepsi use Twitter. It’s a good resource for companies and, frankly, anyone who wants a primer on Twitter.”

You can find that guide here.  You’ll find great tips like:

  • Tip: Twitter can be “ground-breaking” for businesses—a big claim. We truly believe it because we’ve seen lots of examples, many of which we share here. But if you’re new to Twitter and still wondering what all the fuss is about, hang around the site (or a good third-party client) for a week or two and give it a few minutes a day. Twitter almost always delivers “Aha!” moments for people, but it can take some getting used to before you have your moment of enlightenment.

A lot of other outside companies are starting to use twitter effectively.  Let’s just take big business as one example:

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. It’d be like asking how does providing a telephone number for customer service translate into new business when they are mostly non-sales-related calls. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of driving immediate sales.”

Don’t be scared – Twitter is easy and you can’t mess up.  All you have to do is actively engage in conversation with other folks who are talking about what you are talking about.  Use the search functionality and find people who are talking about the same subject matter as you.  Twitter gives a great tip for this:

  • Tip: To listen in on the conversations happening right now, search Twitter for the name of your company, product or brand. If you have a Twitter account already, your home page has a handy search box on the right side.

Most importantly – have fun and be genuine.  People will like you for that.

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Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

Microblogging Tips and Tricks for Lawyers – Best Legal Marketing

Friday, August 14th, 2009
Metal type spelling blog

Networking is an important practice for those in the legal profession, so it is no surprise that many lawyers find social networking and social media sites very useful. Microblogging is a fairly new concept and may be a little confusing at first, but once you learn a few tricks you’ll be able to get out there and make new and valuable contacts with ease.

We’ve included a list of tips below for you to follow which serve as an introduction to microblogging; and if you’re already a seasoned pro, you might find something new and useful here as well.

“Hashtags”

These are keywords established for specific groups of information. Simply use the # sign before a key word or phrase in your post, and that post will show up for other users searching for information on the same subject. For example, you can use the #law tag for any general law-related posts. A quick search online can reveal already established hashtags that you can utilize in your posts.

These tags can be likened to the keywords you enter into the “tags” section of your law blog posts.

Following and Followers

When following other posters and considering your own followers, include people you already know and try to facilitate new, geographically local relationships. While it is nice to have a group of international professional contacts, concentrating on more local interactions can yield more positive results in terms of client leads and professionally beneficial communication.

Avoid Spamming

The purpose of blogging and microblogging is not to directly sell – this will damage your community credibility with many contacts. Attempting to sell your legal services in this manner will turn off many of your peers and potential clients. You can, however, provide a link to your firm’s website in your profile information, for example.

Use your microblog posts to share pertinent legal news and information, details of useful professional conferences, and encourage discussion by asking questions and sharing concerns with your peers. It is also acceptable etiquette to provide a link to a new and relevant blog post you have written in your microblog feed.

A Learning Opportunity

While you may be tempted to just focus on putting out your own content, there are many useful resources available through popular microblogging sites that allow you to keep up with various topics relevant to your interests. Engage in conversation with the other professionals you follow, and use the many features available to stay up-to-date with government and court sources. You might learn something!

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Posted in Blogging, Microblogging | 4 Comments »

Reputation Management

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
black and white portrait of a business executives working on a laptop

Managing your Law Firm’s Online Reputation

One of the greatest things about Web 2.0 technology is its accessibility – the ease with which someone with little technical knowledge can set up a social networking profile or blog and start sharing information and interacting with a worldwide or local community, depending on their preference. With this ease comes a problem, though, which is why it’s important to preserve your professional integrity with online reputation management.

What is Reputation Management?

Online reputation management, or ORM, is the practice of monitoring your online presence. There are many avenues that anonymous and identified users can utilize to provide information about you and your firm, or you on a personal basis, to the internet community.

Websites that review businesses and rank individuals are one area you should keep an eye on. Although everyone is entitled to have an opinion about you or your work, someone posting untrue or slanderous comments online can have a negative impact on your status. You may also be able to gain valuable insight into what your clients are happy or unhappy about regarding the services your practice is providing via review-style sites.

Guarding Against Social Media Identity Theft

As mentioned in the first paragraph of this blog, it’s easy to set up a social media persona. It’s also easy to impersonate someone else if you are so inclined; and many social media sites do not check the identity of their users or regulate this aspect of their communities. Basically, users are on the honor system as far as their identity is concerned, and you are at the mercy of the site administrators if someone happens to steal your good name.

Luckily, there are a few great services out there that your marketing guru can utilize to safeguard your reputation online. One site charges a one-off fee to register your chosen name on over 120 popular social media sites. Whether or not you choose to make use of the accounts is up to you, but you’ve taken a great step towards preventing others from impersonating you online and damaging your status.

There are many other services available to help protect you and your firm’s interests in the world of Web 2.0 and social media. Some offer to establish one login ID for all of your accounts and others offer identity verification for your logins. You can also be proactive on the review/ranking front and sign up for a site that allows you to invite clients to provide reviews and feedback about your firm.

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