There's no reason that you can't get creative when doing internet marketing.  While a large percentage of small firm attorneys list marketing responsibilities as among their least favorite job duties, marketing doesn't have to be a joyless slog.  Check out these nine tips that can help you shake off the marketing doldrums and get creative with your internet marketing strategies.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #1: Infographics

Infographics are exactly what they sound like: an image that combines information with relevant graphics.  These graphics are often statistical in nature if they're reporting on results of studies.  Some infographics contain both quantitative and qualitative data.

For example, if you're an attorney working in special education law, you can have infographics on the prevalence of 504 plans and IEP use in your area.  You can also use your infographic to convey information about potential accommodations that may be available for children with special needs.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #2: Foursquare

Most attorneys in the United States practice in urban areas.  That's the place that Foursquare, one of the newest and fastest growing social networking services, shines.  Foursquare allows you to virtually tag places with information pertaining to something relevant to people who might become your clients.  When people look for tags to find out more information about a location, they'll see what you've written.  This is a great place for creative internet marketing.  For instance, a disability attorney might have information on Foursquare about disability accessibility of transit stops, restaurants, and so on.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #3: Creative Emails

Today, if you want to keep sending emails out without people hitting the “unsubscribe” button, you're going to have to shake things up a bit.  It's no longer enough to just send out what amount to email advertisements.  People think of those as spam, not valuable information.

If you want to actually succeed in your creative internet marketing via email, you want people to look forward to getting your email.  That means don't send emails to people on your mailing list too frequently.  When you do send emails, consider making them funny or a little sarcastic—having a good sense of humor is a must if you want your email content to stand out!  In a land of boring emails, the man who tells really great jokes is the creative internet marketing king.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #4: Mobile Focus

More and more, people are using their smartphones as more than a very expensive way to play Angry Birds.  Creating a mobile internet marketing strategy is a great way to get creative internet marketing working for your law firm.  Make a mobile optimized website that mobile visitors are directed to, and make sure that yourmain page is at least visible with a zoom and scroll.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #5: Video Blogs

Even if you don't think you have what it takes to become a superstar, you can get creative with some video uploads.  Youtube and other easy video uploading services mean that you won't have to use your own internet bandwidth to use this creative internet marketing method.  Get as creative as you want!  Consider showing for clients a mini-sketch that shows how to act during an arrest process and how to request an attorney when being questioned, if you're a criminal defense attorney.  Lawyers who do a lot of divorce mediations may want to show a re-enacted mediation session so that divorcing spouses know what to expect from the mediation process.  Keep in mind that many people are intimidated by legal proceedings—anything you can do to demystify the law and the court system will be considered helpful.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #6: Viral Video

“But you're wrong!” you said when reading strategy #5.  “I do have what it takes to become a superstar!”  Oh yeah?  Prove it.  If you think you've got the right stuff, the next step is to take your video viral.  Maybe you made a parody video that also teaches important lessons about field sobriety tests and breathalyzers.  Maybe you developed a legal sketch comedy show that you're certain rivals the first season of Saturday Night Live for sheer comedic brilliance.

Whatever you've done, don't do it until you've already got some creative internet marketing for social media under your belt. You want your video to appear in the context of a law firm that already gets how to use the internet creatively, not as a one-off effort that amounts to nothing more than a flash in the pan.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #7: Answer Questions

When it comes to marketing on the internet, too many attorneys talk too much and don't listen enough.  One of the most helpful things you can do as part of a creative internet marketing strategy is to actually respond to people's legal questions when they start asking them or even before.  Having a FAQ on your website is great, and you can make it a part of your creative marketing strategy—don't be afraid to let your personality shine through!

If you're on social media, consider hosting weekly question and answer sessions.  Specific legal advice is obviously not kosher, but you can easily answer more general or hypothetical questions with the appropriate disclaimers.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #8: Build Relationships

Don't just think of your internet marketing as a way to get new clients right away.  Often, the most creative internet marketing strategies are all about building name recognition, a brand identity, and the kind of relationships that will bring in clients in the longer term.  When you build social networks full of connections, for example, you'll have an easier time finding people to show your new content to.

Creative Internet Marketing Strategy #9: Think Local

Don't neglect some of the older sources of marketing—sometimes things that are old can look new again when they're combined with internet marketing.  For example, sponsoring local events is not just a way to get name recognition in the community at those events.  If there's also a website for the event, it's a good way to get some links that help you rise in search engine rankings.  This kind of creative internet marketing strategy pairs well with any strategies for content generation.

Everything About Cell Phone Advertising

One of the biggest changes to the internet in recent years has come from the explosive growth in mobile browsing.  Even five years ago, it was difficult and inconvenient to use the internet on a cell phone, but today's smartphones make web browsing so easy that recent statistics indicate that the amount of mobile web traffic will overtake web traffic from computers by 2014.  This is a market you can't afford to ignore—but how can you get the most out of cell phone advertisements?  Keep reading to find out strategies, terminology, and more about this new frontier of advertising for your law firm.

SMS Cell Phone Advertising: Benefits and Basics

When you start considering using cell phone advertisements, one three-letter acronym will come up again and again.  SMS, short for “short message service,” is the dominant way that people communicate using mobile phones.  Typically, the maximum size of one of these messages will be 160 characters, so if your law firm wants to consider SMS cell phone advertising, you should be prepared to be brief and to the point.

Using cell phone advertisements through SMS can be a great deal more effective than email advertising.  This is because spam filters catch a great deal of bulk email, and people tend not to even open email that isn't from people they know personally.  In fact, while SMS use has been booming, email has taken a nosedive—usage is down by 59 percent in just the last year.  Research shows that people do open their text messages, even when they don't open emails: up to 97 percent of texts are read.

SMS Cell Phone Advertising: A Word of Caution

Using cell phone advertisements well can generate great leads for your business, but use caution.  Statistics show that at over half of mobile users have unsubscribed to a SMS list after opting in to receiving communications.  There are two good principles to keep in mind if you want to keep your SMS subscribers: don't send messages too often, and when you do, make them worthwhile.

If you send cell phone advertisements too frequently, it won't matter how great your cell phone advertising is.  Even if you're offering to just give your services away for free, people ignore any single number that keeps sending repetitive advertisements.

It's also important that you make it worthwhile for someone to open one of your SMS messages.  If your cell phone advertisements are nothing more than a rehash of things that your subscribers already know, it's unlikely that you'll have much success.  Try to tell people something new or unusual, or link to a mobile-friendly webpage that contains additional engaging content.

Customer Relationship Marketing With Cell Phone Advertising

When you're a small law firm, it's critical to keep the clients that you have.  If your firm collects cell phone numbers of clients, you may want to ask them to opt in to newsletters with content that might be interesting to them.  Cell phone advertising that is designed for customer relationship marketing targets people who are already your clients, rather than new leads.  These cell phone advertisements shouldn't look as much like ads—instead, you should focus on leading clients to social media sites, blog entries, or newsletter articles.

Here, again, it's absolutely critical that you don't alienate your clients by inundating them with information.  Just one piece of cell phone advertising per week can be enough to keep your firm's name on a client's mind, without making them think that you're a spammer.  If you haven't used cell phone advertisements for existing clients before, you may want to offer some kind of promotion to get previous clients back into your offices.

Microtargeting Your Clients With Cell Phone Advertising

When you send cell phone advertisements to your clients, you can target your ads more narrowly with this type of advertising than almost any other.  Cell phone advertising is a lot like direct mail advertising, in that you can choose exactly which people see which message.  If your law firm practices in several different legal fields, you can target different types of cell phone advertisements to different clients.

While a certain degree of microtargeting is usually considered acceptable by customers, 86 percent of Americans see some microtargeting and profiled advertising as an invasion of privacy.  You should always monitor the results of your cell phone advertising campaigns, so that you can be certain that your cell phone advertisements aren't hurting more than they're helping.

You should also avoid sending microtargeted cell phone advertising to customers if it might contain information that could be sensitive if it was seen by the wrong person.  If someone consulted with a divorce attorney to see whether divorce was feasible, receiving a SMS about divorce law could be disastrous if seen by a spouse.  Be aware of how your cell phone advertisements could be seen, and make sure that you're sensitive to the needs of all of your clients and potential clients.

Cell Phone Advertising Integration

Cell phone advertising is best when it's combined with other forms of advertising.  The opportunities for integration are endless—did you know that over 85 percent of mobile users use their cell phones while watching television?  Make sure that when you broadcast television ads, you include a web address for a mobile friendly version of your website for the people at home who might have a smartphone in their hands.  Print advertising can also include not only web addresses, but also quick response (QR) codes that can be photographed by a mobile device to send a potential client to your site.

The best way to make sure cell phone users can use your website effectively is to optimize one version of your site for mobile users, and then base which version of the site customers see on what device they're using to access it.  Even if you don't have a full mobile version of your website, you should at least make sure that your regular website displays properly on Android phones and iPhones.

Everything About Twitter Viral Marketing

If your law firm doesn't have a Twitter presence yet, you need one: statistics show that the percentage of online adults who use Twitter every day has doubled for each of the last two years.  Twitter users aren't just typical web users—they tend to use mobile phones (especially smartphones) more often, and they are often linked to a large number of social media networks and websites.  This guide will teach you how to use Twitter viral marketing to maximize the return on investment you get from having a Twitter account.

What Not to Do: Everything About Our Company in 140 Characters!

When law firms first start out on Twitter, they often try to use the kinds of marketing tactics that worked before.  However, Twitter's 140 character limit makes it hard to express the same kinds of ideas that might have seemed fairly easy to talk about on other social media sites.

No matter how tempting it is, you should never try to start a Twitter viral marketing campaign based on information-heavy tweets with a lot of abbreviations.  You may think that you're packing in as much content as possible, but when people see your tweets, they won't think about sharing—they'll just skim over them and skip right to something that's written more clearly and concisely.

Try This Instead: Make the Message Fit the Medium

Don't fight with the 140 character limit in your Twitter viral marketing—make it part of your strategy.  Studies show that people are most likely to retweet posts that are 100 characters long or less.  Avoid using any kind of abbreviations in your Twitter post.  These can take longer to read and are more likely to be skimmed over.

What Not to Do: Flooding the Stream

If a little bit of Twitter viral marketing makes a little positive change for your firm's website and bottom line, a lot should do even more, right?  Not so fast!  When people see too many tweets from a single person or company, they tend to disengage rather than becoming more interested.  Too much of a good thing will make your law firm seem like spammers, rather than helpful professionals.

If you're feeling like you have to send a huge number of tweets to get your message across, consider whether the message you're trying to send is really well designed for Twitter viral marketing.  You may want to use other venues to try to communicate more long-form thoughts, with just a very quick headline and link to the content as a tweet instead.

Try This Instead: Posting in a Steady Trickle

Tweets a few times a day will be much better received by your followers, and won't result in people no longer following you due to concerns about being spammed.  Try to make sure that you're tweeting at many different times of day, rather than consistently posting your tweets at specific times.  People have wildly different Twitter habits, and in order to get the most out of your Twitter viral marketing, you'll want to make sure people are seeing your posts in the stream no matter when they go online.

What Not to Do: Our Corporate Logo in Chief

If you've looked around at your competitors' Twitter accounts, some of them may have a corporate logo as their icon.  Think about it: does that really make you feel like a person is running the account, or like it's being run as an advertisement?  People don't want to be blatantly advertised to on Twitter, and having your company's logo instead of a real person sends a clear message: this is a corporate account designed to feed a corporate bottom line.

Try This Instead: Human Voices for Your Company

More successful Twitter viral marketing can be done when a Twitter account is authored by one person, with a unique point of view.  You should be transparent about who is running your firm's Twitter account, and make that person someone with enough enthusiasm, insight, and intelligence that they can develop great content consistently.  This may be a professional Twitter viral marketing guru hired by your firm, or it may be someone already on your staff.

Don't have someone substitute for your usual Twitter contributor unless they say they're doing so.  Transparency is absolutely necessary for successful Twitter viral marketing.  If you're seen as a company that likes to hide things or that lies about its web presence, your reputation will suffer.  Having a legal secretary post under a lawyer's name may seem like a cost savings, but it's likely to reflect badly on your firm if it gets found out.

What Not to Do: Hog the Spotlight

No one likes a Twitter user who just exists to broadcast his or her thoughts without responding to other people's.  If your idea of Twitter viral marketing just involves making tweets and getting followers, you haven't really done your homework about what the platform is typically used for.  One of the most common mistakes companies make when trying to advertise on Twitter is trying to make it into a bullhorn, rather than a round table for discussion.

Try This Instead: Share Your Light With Others

Getting the most out of Twitter viral marketing means getting involved in conversations, even the ones that aren't directly about your firm.  Try answering other people's questions, re-tweeting the things other people have said, or even talking about another law firm (especially if the law firm isn't in competition with you directly due to geography or having different specialties).

Showing people that you care about more than just talking about yourself makes your law firm look like a better internet citizen.  You'll maximize the return on your Twitter viral marketing when people don't just expect it to look like a rundown of your corporate slogans or a record of your successes in court.  Name-dropping other firms can be useful in the future when they decide to use the same technique to drop your firm's name in their tweets.  This kind of reciprocity is common in Twitter viral marketing, and you should build goodwill with other firms in your area and beyond to encourage it.

According to Alexa.com, Youtube has now become the fourth most popular website in the entire world.  With over 70 percent of web viewers using Youtube at least occasionally, advertising on Youtube has now become a great way for attorneys to get their names heard by the people most likely to give them a call.  In this brief guide, you'll find out why Youtube advertising is still being underutilized by attorneys, and how to create the best Youtube advertisements possible for your firm.

Advertising on Youtube: The Best Tool You're Not Using

Studies show that videos are one of the best tools that you can use for your marketing strategies.  Youtube advertising can put your ad in front of the right people at the right time.  Advertising on Youtube has been made very easy since Google bought the website, and you can now use the Google AdWords interface to help you distribute Youtube advertisements.

When you use Youtube advertising, you're up to three times more likely to get conversions.  Why?  Several reasons.  First of all, it's been proven that consumers like video ads like Youtube advertisements better than text ads.  Youtube advertising lets you put yourself front and center, showing clients how you interact and what kind of personality you have.

Second, when you start advertising with Youtube, it's easy to target exactly the type of clients that your law firm is best at talking to.  You can run dozens of different targeted ad campaigns if you wish, so that your Youtube advertising is seen by all of the different groups you're trying to attract.

Different Types of Youtube Advertisements

If you're not sure that you want to start producing actual video Youtube advertisements right away, you can also have text advertisements displayed in searches or while people are browsing for videos.  Text Youtube advertising also appears underneath videos and before the comments.  In addition to being easier to set up, text ads are also substantially cheaper on a per-click basis than other types of advertising on Youtube.

If you already have someone in your office who can design print ads, you can create display Youtube advertisements that will be broadcast before someone watches their video.  These display ads are a nice way to dip your toes into the water of advertising on Youtube without feeling the need to dive in right away.

Of course, some of the best advertising on Youtube is in video form.  You can create thirty second Youtube advertisements that will appear before the other videos your desired clients are watching.  This type of Youtube advertising is harder to produce—you should always make sure you're using professionally produced video, not something you've made yourself—but can definitely be worth it.

Depending on what kind of Youtube advertisements you're producing, you can choose to either pay for your ad per thousand impressions, or per click.

Targeting With Youtube Advertisements

Internet advertising has been great for smaller law firms with low budgets, because it is substantially less expensive to advertise when you can target your potential clients.  The days of using television ads and billboards to reach huge audiences (most of whom have absolutely no need for the services you're offering) are gone for many small firms.  Instead, today's solo practitioners and small firms like to use advertising on Youtube, Facebook, and Google to find most of their new business.

When you target your Youtube advertisements, you can base your targeting on keywords just like you would with Google AdWords.  You can also limit your advertising budget, and make sure that your advertising on Youtube is only seen by people who are in particular demographic categories or geographic regions.

It's a good idea to test your targeting by doing split tests.  Keep track of all of your different campaigns and who they see the best results with.  By building targeting data over a long period of time, you'll slowly improve your ability to target the right customers without wasting money on people who are unlikely to convert.

Mistakes to Avoid When Advertising on Youtube

If your Youtube advertisements will take site visitors to another Youtube video, make sure that video has relevant information and isn't just advertising.  If someone follows a piece of advertising on Youtube only to find even more Youtube advertising, they're not going to be happy and you'll have wasted money on their click.

Trying to be clever in your Youtube advertising may work, but it can also backfire.  If your ads are too cleverly written, they may seem confusing or difficult to interpret for clients.  Instead, if you have a text-based ad, try using your text to ask a question that a potential client may have, so that they'll click for the answer.

Ad fatigue sets in quickly for internet ads, so if you're leaving up the same Youtube advertisements for a long time, you're probably wasting money.  Consider changing the content of your advertising on Youtube at least once a week, and possibly twice a week.  Youtube advertising will work better for you if it's constantly updated and fresh.

The Future of Youtube Advertising

More and more Youtube viewers today are accessing the website from their mobile phone's internet browser or by using a mobile app.  This increase in mobile traffic suggests that no matter what kind of Youtube advertisements you're placing, you should make sure that you're directing web traffic to a mobile friendly website.

Mobile advertising on Youtube is a booming industry.  Because it's so much easier to call attorneys after finding their website using a smartphone, law firms that have used mobile advertising campaigns have seen drastic upswings in their conversion ratios.  While a mobile advertising click may cost you more, it's a click that is more likely to make you money in the long run.

Youtube advertising, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, will probably start to require better resolution video and images.  That may not be an issue for your firm right now, but you should consider either obtaining this kind of video equipment or hiring a company that has professional video recording and editing equipment.  You don't want to come off like an amateur in your Youtube advertisements.

A June 2012 survey showed that the average American with an internet connection is now spending 29 hours a week using the internet.  That's almost as much time as people spend working at full-time jobs!  Because usage of the internet has doubled in just the last couple of years, it's now more important than ever to develop an internet niche marketing plan that puts your firm ahead of your competition.  Keep reading to find 6 tips for helping you make money from your new niche marketing campaign.

#1: Know Your Audience

A huge number of Americans, both young and old and from all backgrounds, use internet services every day.  However, that doesn't mean that every audience uses the internet in the same way.  You'll need to know how your chosen audience interacts with the internet—which websites they use, which ones they stay away from.

For example, let's say that you are trying hard to impress with your new internet niche marketing campaign that advertises help after a truck accident.  While internet forums for accident victims and Facebook might be a great idea for this niche marketing campaign, you might not have an easy time advertising with LinkedIn.  Conversely, if your new niche is defending people from criminal tax allegations, you'll probably have much better luck using LinkedIn for your internet niche marketing than any other social media website.

#2: Know Your Competition and Industry

Internet niche marketing puts you in a position where it's possible to advertise to exactly the right people—if you know where to look.  Let's say your firm has developed a profitable niche suing manufacturers of faulty valves for sewage treatment equipment.  To develop successful internet niche marketing, you may want to start offline—by going to a trade show for wastewater plant operators.

At trade shows and other networking events, you can find out where the people in the industry you want to market to are hanging out online.  Often, people who are in certain job sectors have internet forums completely dedicated to talking about issues arising from their jobs.  These forums are a prime place for you to place your advertising.

You should also make sure that you identify your main competitors and take a look at what they're doing with their internet niche marketing.  It's not usually a good idea to do exactly the same thing as your competition (unless you know you can outspend them and have a much better campaign), but competitors can give you ideas for new places to put your ads that you hadn't yet thought of.

#3: Seek Continuous Feedback

One of the biggest advantages of internet niche marketing is that it lends itself very easily to generating a great deal of feedback.  If you're not getting the results that you want, try asking your niche market what you're doing wrong.  Focus groups made up of the type of people you're trying to solicit as clients will be able to give you some great tips on making your advertising more relevant to their lives.

Facebook and Twitter give you a great way to tell instantly what's working and what isn't in your internet niche marketing campaign.  After making several different Facebook posts or tweets with different content, you'll be able to see which ones got the most attention, were shared most often, and so on.  This makes it easier to decide where to focus your internet niche marketing in the future, and may even allow you to narrow your niche even more.

#4: Keep Your Niche As Narrow as Possible

Keeping a narrow niche is important because it's much easier to get your eyes in front of the right customers when you're marketing to a very small segment of the total audience.  “Long tail” keywords tend to be significantly cheaper per click when using Google AdWords or any other keyword based pay per click advertising platform.  This means that you can not only make sure that you're advertising to the right people, you also won't be overpaying for the privilege.

Even if you think you're already operating in some kind of legal niche market, consider whether you may be able to develop a more narrow niche for your internet niche marketing.  Many larger law firms have begun to use internet niche marketing, even if they have many practice areas, just by advertising to dozens or even hundreds of different niches.

#5: Optimize Your Web Presence

If you're using internet niche marketing for more than one niche, which can be a good idea, you'll want to make sure your website is designed for this kind of advertising.  Every different niche will need a completely different landing page, or even a whole new website designed around the concerns and questions of people seeking help with that particular legal problem.

Many websites for law firms use technical sounding words and jargon rather than explaining the law in terms that clients can understand.  You'll have better luck with your internet niche marketing if you keep the copy on your website understandable even for someone who lacks a lot of experience with the law or hiring lawyers.

#6: Get Help With Software

If you can't figure out how to find a niche market on your own, there are programs that can help you find the niche market you're looking for.  This software can be very helpful, almost like a computer assisted brainstorming session.  You may also want to look into using software to help you manage your bids and advertising budget, as well as programs that can analyze the effectiveness of each ad campaign.

Using software to help you identify your best internet niche marketing opportunities isn't cheating.  It's a great way to get the edge you need to out-market your competition.  Keeping an eye on new software packages and offerings from major players like Google can help you identify the newest internet niche marketing trends and how to take advantage of them.

When you're trying to differentiate yourself in the legal market today, one of the best ways is to have truly stellar customer service.  Giving clients a uniquely good customer experience will ensure that you'll have plenty of good reviews and will build new business through word of mouth and referrals.  In this guide, we'll explore seven contemporary best practices for building a consumer oriented law firm.  While implementing these practices may not always be easy—especially if you're deeply entrenched in a law firm culture that feels toxic to clients or staff—they will pay off over the long term.

#1: Friendly Service At Every Desk

One of the mistakes that attorneys can sometimes make about customer service has to do with who needs customer service skills.  It's not just your attorneys who need to understand how to interact professionally and courteously with clients.  Every secretary and paralegal in your firm needs to have a positive, customer focused attitude that matches the overall client orientation that your law firm is trying to project.

All too often, even if an attorney's customer service is great, a bad customer service experience with other people in your firm's office can sour a client's experience.  Attorneys should make sure that they're not trying to save money by paying less and hiring inexperienced people or those with less than stellar customer service skills.  If an inexperienced person causes a client to walk away, you'll have lost a lot more money than if you'd hired someone who was skilled with clients to begin with.

#2: Keep Staff Morale High

Part of making sure that your clients are getting the best possible service is making sure that your staff is kept happy.  An overworked staff is not going to be as competent at handling clients as one that is well rested and maintains a good work life balance.

While staff morale won't always be perfect, it's also important to foster an environment that encourages good communication.  This ensures that small issues in office politics won't become large issues that threaten the overall morale or cohesion of your law firm.  Keep communication channels open from partners to staff members so that there are no big surprises.  When people feel they are informed and kept in the loop, they'll be more likely to present the kind of customer service attitudes you want your clients to see.

#3: Don't Play Hard to Get

There's never an excuse to get far behind on your calls and emails.  Clients can easily become alienated by attorneys who take forever to get back to them, and you're unlikely to receive positive reviews from clients who felt like it was an uphill battle just to get you to take their calls.  The best way to make sure that you're customer focused, more than any other single piece of advice, is to take calls as often as possible and return emails within a reasonable timeframe.

Typically, you should aim to respond to most calls and emails on the same day that you receive them.  While some responses—especially to questions asked toward the end of the day—may take until the next business day, there's no reason that you should ever wait longer than one extra day to respond.  If the question is going to require research that may take some time, you still need to respond to inform the client that you are doing the research, that they have not been forgotten, and that you will get back to them as soon as you have an answer to their query.

#4: Get Involved In Community Events

Another way to help yourself build a reputation in the community—a reputation that will help cement your brand as a client focused law firm—is to make yourself visible as a community leader.  Involve yourself in some charitable causes and sponsor community events and teams.  You may also want to make yourself available to give talks on areas of the law you're an expert in.

By becoming a visible presence around your town or neighborhood, you give yourself added name recognition.  In some situations, it can be substantially less expensive to get your name into the public consciousness this way than through traditional forms of advertising.  What's more, this kind of community involvement gives you clearer name recognition than just putting your name and face on public transit or in the Yellow Pages.

This is a particularly good way to get clients if you're working in a rural area or have a practice that depends on large numbers of older clients.  This can mean that many online marketing ideas won't really bring in the clients you're depending on, and offline measures become critically important.

#5: Work Pro Bono Cases

While you can't do everything for free or take cases without regard for a client's ability to pay, you should always be thinking about whether a case may be worth taking on a pro bono basis.  Pro bono cases should usually be the kinds of case that will stretch and push you without pushing so far that they're beyond your ability level.  You should consider taking cases pro bono if you believe that they may help you make a name for yourself in the local legal community.

Keep in mind that just because a case will attract a lot of publicity doesn't mean you're obligated to take it on a pro bono basis.  Ask a trusted mentor for advice about taking a case if you're worried it's too far outside your wheelhouse.

#6: Responsive Social Media Channels

When you're using social networking websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, you should make sure that you're keeping an eye on your firm's name and any relevant hashtags to make sure that if you're being talked about, you know what's being said.  You shouldn't always interfere—for example, if people are giving you compliments, it's often better to just stay out of it—but you should make sure that you're always listening.  If someone has a complaint or a question, feel free to respond to it in a positive, constructive manner.  This will give you a better online reputation and make it more likely that people seeing your social media presence will want to hire you.

Every year, there are new marketing trends advertised to attorneys from a huge number of online marketing firms.  However, some of these marketing firms will push just about any next big new thing, without much regard for whether the specific advice they're giving applies very well to attorneys.  While lawyers can in some ways do online marketing like anyone else, there are things they should be careful to avoid as well.  This guide will explore some of the bandwagons that you'd be wise not to jump on as you make your marketing plans for the remainder of 2013.

#1: Parallax Design

Recently, some websites have begun playing with a kind of design called parallax design, in which background elements move at a slower rate than foreground text.  While this design can look quite elegant in some contexts, law firm websites should avoid parallax design at all costs.

Why?  Because when people are looking for an attorney, they generally don't care as much about the design of your website as they do about the content that's on it.  Typically, parallax websites are best for sites with infographics and a great deal of visual content that isn't text, while most law firm websites rely primarily on text and video based content that won't work well with a parallax design.  Additionally, because so many designers have started to use it at once, it's very likely that the slightly distracting parallax design fad is destined to be just that—a short term fad.  You don't want your site to look dated in a year because you hopped on the bandwagon too early.

#2: Auto-Playing Videos

With the proliferation of cheap hosting and cheap video editing software, many law firms have begun to rely on video for some portions of their website.  Video's a great idea, and many studies have shown that conversion rates can as much as double or triple when video is added to a law firm website.  However, this doesn't mean that all videos are created equal.

One of the worst forms of video you can use is the auto-playing video.  These videos are annoying, often starting loud audio tracks right when someone clicks onto your website.  It's doubly bad for attorneys, because lawyers are often dealing with relatively sensitive topics.  You're not likely to get someone's business if you're a divorce attorney whose website suddenly starts blaring about divorce when a husband or wife is quietly trying to research the divorce process.  Make your website viewable even for people who need it to be discreet and quiet—that means keeping the videos opt-in, rather than playing them for every passerby.

#3: Cloud Based Storage

More and more storage is moving off hard drives and into the “cloud.”  What this means in practice is that your data is somewhere that you aren't.  While this may not be terrible for many businesses, it's probably not a good idea for attorneys to keep a great deal of their information cloud-based.  That's because cloud systems present issues with both downtime and security that can't be fully mitigated yet.  If you're working on a website for your law firm and do choose to upload things into the cloud, make sure you're using secure services and that you have backup copies of everything on physical hard drives in your physical location.

#4: Retargeting and Remarketing

One of the biggest trends in marketing for 2013 is retargeting and remarketing—advertising to people who've already left your website.  While many retailers have had good luck with retargeting, which targets ads at people who've recently visited your site, and remarketing, which emails reminders to people who didn't complete a form or transaction on a website, these services are more likely to seem invasive and intrusive when they come from an attorney.  Because legal services are often so deeply personal, these strategies can seem like a good idea and be perfectly well meaning, but result in dissatisfaction from potential clients or even people telling those they know to stay away.

#5: Zombie Twitter Accounts

While having a Twitter account is a great idea, too many attorneys today have Twitter feeds that are clearly run by third-party sources rather than being written by the lawyers themselves.  These third party tweets often look almost nonsensical and are clearly designed more for Google's search robots than they are for human eyes.

While getting search rankings through zombie Twitter accounts may sound like a good idea initially and may even give you a brief boost to your rank, but Google is starting to catch on.  Given the ways that Google has diminished the search rank of websites engaging in other types of shortcuts to search rank, it seems likely that the search engine will soon sandbox websites that are seen to be using fake Twitter accounts and fake Twitter followers as a primary means of gaining link juice.

#6: QR Codes

These codes, which appear as a black and white pixellated box, were all the rage for a brief time in 2010 and 2011, but if you're still considering QR codes in 2013, you need to figure out something different to use instead.  Mobile content is developing fast, but the QR code never really caught on because it's nearly as easy to simply enter in a web address instead of having it encoded in the black and white box.

Instead of QR codes, make sure that you have a mobile friendly website or version of your website for people who are using smartphones.  QR codes are, at this point, unlikely to generate significant conversion rates for your law firm and will just be a time-consuming boondoggle for most attorneys who attempt to use them.

#7: Outsourcing Content

Don't outsource your blogs or other legal content to third parties.  No one knows your firm or your practice area like you do, and odds are that outsourcers aren't paying enough to land people with J.D.s and extensive experience.  It takes a little time to write your own content, and you may want someone else to edit it, but there's simply no excuse for having someone else develop your content from whole cloth.  If you don't want to sound like somebody else, be yourself.

Today, there are more hungry young attorneys than ever competing for just about the same number of clients as there have always been.  What's more, cut-rate legal service offerings have made it so that many firms that used to be able to skate by are now hurting badly.  You need to mix it up and offer something different from your competition in order to make people come to your firm instead of someone else's.  In this guide, we'll explore 6 ways to make sure that people see your firm as the best of the bunch when they do their online research.

#1: Start Posting Prices

One of the things that makes people anxious and afraid to contact an attorney is the idea that lawyers charge so much that only rich people can afford their services.  Some potential clients—who might very well be able to pay your fee, especially with a payment plan—may avoid calling because they don't want to be embarrassed by hearing a quoted price in person that far exceeds their ability to pay.  Many people are hesitant to “waste your time” by going in for a consultation unless they're sure that they will be able to afford legal services from your law firm.

That's why one easy way to make sure that you're staying competitive is to get real with your clients before they even call—by using your website to post flat fees.  If your firm does flat fee structures, you can post how much typical flat fees are for different types of cases.  If you charge by the hour, you can give a range of hourly charges and a range of usual billable hours for different types of cases.  By posting prices, you ensure that people aren't coming in who have no ability to pay your fees, while also making other people realize that competent legal help is more affordable and in reach than they may have anticipated.

#2: Go After Ratings and Rankings

The majority of potential legal clients who use online searches to find an attorney check out rating and review websites before they decide on a lawyer to call for a consultation.  That means that ratings and rankings can make or break law firms, especially newer firms or struggling ones.  Great ratings and rankings can give you a significant edge on your competitors, while lackluster rankings and poor reviews will mean a precipitous decline in the amount of new business you see walking in your door.

Getting the best rankings and reviews means taking charge of your own publicity to some extent.  You should ask clients to assess you on these websites when their cases are complete, and keep an eye on whether those reviews are coming in.  If you see a review come in that is obviously not from a client of yours, or is a negative review that you suspect was actually posted by a rival pretending to be a legal client, you can present the evidence for this to the website and, with a bit of luck, get the offending review taken down.

#3: Respond to Leads Sooner, Not Later

When clients start contacting attorneys and trying to set up consultations, it doesn't really matter very much who the best attorney is of the contacted group: very often, the first person to get back in touch with the client will be the lawyer they choose.  This is why it's absolutely critical to respond to leads with all due haste.  It should never take you more than a single business day to get back in touch with a potential client, and calling back within hours will put you ahead of most of your competition easily.

The reason that clients tend to choose the first lawyer to respond is simple.  It's not just that the lawyer gets to give them their first big dose of legal information about their case.  It's also because clients make the assumption that an attorney who takes a long time to respond to their initial call will also be slow in contacting them once they take the case.  Once you have a client, take care not to disappoint them—return their calls quickly, so that they can let their friends know about your dedication to customer service.

#4: Optimize for Local Searches

Many firms are slow to adapt to the newer types of search engine optimization.  For the vast majority of law firms, most of your clients will actually come from people doing searches for locally based search terms.  For example, if you're a family lawyer in Peoria, trying to optimize a web page to show up in the first results for “family lawyer” will be incredibly hard—but trying to optimize both for the “family lawyer” keywords and “Peoria” will be significantly easier.  Keep your search engine optimization local, and you'll be well equipped to get onto Google's first page of search results.

#5: Rethink Your Print and Traditional Ads

While many law firms are still using print media, radio, television, and outdoor (billboard) advertising to market their services, you may want to rethink whether your print and traditional advertising is actually working for you.  The internet is a great way to find attorneys, and studies have shown that the majority of legal clients know this and do their lawyer finding online.  If you're not seeing any clients come in because of your other types of advertising, you may want to consider making the vast majority of your marketing efforts happen in the online rather than the offline world.

#6: Understand the Mobile Web

This is the year that will see, for the first time, more web pages accessed through smartphones and other mobile devices than laptop or desktop PCs.  That means your old website—which looks like garbage when displayed on a smartphone—is no longer going to cut it.  To stay competitive, you need a redesign that incorporates a site either designed expressly for mobile or a site that is responsive to the device it is being viewed on.