Social Media Marketing for your Lawfirm

Some law firms today already are engaging with social media and marketing in innovative, fresh ways.  However, many law firms are still left asking the question: “What is social media marketing?”  Over 90 percent of small law firms already use social media in some way—like having Facebook or LinkedIn profiles—but social media and marketing are currently only being combined by about half of firms.  

Social media marketing can project your firm's brand into people's homes in an authentic, participatory way.  This guide will show you how social media marketing can put your firm ahead of your competitors and answer your question of “what is social media marketing?” by familiarizing you with some of the basic social media plaforms available today.

What is Social Media Marketing on Facebook?

What do your 90 year old great aunt, your first crush from high school, your ex-colleague and his cat have in common?  Probably nothing—except that they all have Facebook profiles.  If you've hesitated to get a Facebook account for yourself or your law firm, it's time to realize that resistance is futile: you will be assimilated into the Facebook universe if you want to combine social media and marketing.  So what is social media marketing on Facebook?  What does it look like?

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer.  The presence you build using Facebook will depend completely on the kind of image that you want to project with your social media marketing.  “What is social media marketing?” can be answered for some firms with a steady stream of Facebook posts and occasional comments.  Others use their Facebook walls to link blog content, run polls, and interact with potential clients.

While 83 percent of lawyers today are using blogging, only 57 percent are using Facebook for their social media and marketing efforts.  If you have a blog already, adding a Facebook presence is one of the fastest ways to get people to read the social media marketing content on your blog.

One of the key answers to “what is social media on Facebook?” is this: it's incorporating yourself into a community.  What the nature of that community is depends entirely on your firm, but your social media marketing efforts on Facebook should always focus on participating and listening, not just spewing out content.

What is Social Media Marketing on Twitter?

140 characters may not sound like it's enough to communicate something useful, but maximizing your social media and marketing presence means starting to economize your words.  Short and to the point is the name of the game, and Twitter posts are confined to just a few characters more than a typical text message.

When lawyers ask what is a social media marketing strategy on Twitter that works, they are often surprised to find that the most effective tweets aren't the longest ones.  In order to have the best social media marketing, you'll want to try to keep your tweets under 100 characters.  Think of this aspect of social media and marketing as helping to hone your writing skills—after all, brevity and clarity are great qualities in writing offline as well.

Try to confine your Twitter posts to four or fewer per day.  Lawyers who start by asking “what is social media marketing?” often overextend themselves with social media marketing efforts once they get started.  Too many Twitter posts a day, though, will lead to your firm being followed by fewer people, and your social media and marketing efforts may go unnoticed.

What is Social Media Marketing on Blogs?

To have the best results from social media marketing, you'll need to strategize first.  This requires thinking hard about what your social media and marketing strengths are.  For example, let's say you're a solo practitioner, and also a great writer who can concisely explain legal topics for your clients.  A blog may be one of the best things you can do to drive your web traffic.

If you want to know what is a social media marketing strategy that works, you'll need to know one thing above all: the internet hates a fake.  If your content is perceived as being phony or too sales-oriented, it doesn't matter how great your other social media and marketing efforts are—they'll be doomed to fail.  It's important to make sure that your blog entries seem genuine, and that they're not too dry.  Giving your blog a real voice, a real character, can ensure that you seem different from your competition (a key part of social media marketing).

What is Social Media Marketing Analytics?

Once you've moved beyond asking “what is social media marketing?” you can start asking “how can I make sure my social media and marketing goals are being met?”  Because social media marketing has exploded in recent years, new analytics tools are being developed constantly to help you interpret the new web traffic you receive as a result of your marketing efforts.

A lot of small firms are not well equipped to analyze their social media and marketing results.  If you need help with figuring out what your data means, a number of social media marketing services today specialize in crunching numbers for law firms.

What is Social Media Marketing Reputation Management?

When your firm combines social media and marketing, you'll need to keep an eye on how you're perceived online.  Social media marketing can help you identify potential issues with client satisfaction.  For example, you can maintain consistent monitoring of client review websites, including Yelp, so that you know about any negative reviews you have received.

Many social media marketing firms sell full reputation management services that can help you build a great reputation online and minimize the consequences of negative reviews.  These services are a great alternative if you don't have the ability to hire someone to work full-time at your firm handling social media and marketing issues like reputation management.

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.

Bankruptcy filings for consumers and businesses alike are down in 2013, and they were down in 2012 as well.  Since these trends are expected to continue for the foreseeable future, you need to have a marketing plan that will keep you competitive in a market where every lawyer is getting hungrier.  In this guide, you'll learn tips that any bankruptcy firm can start using right away—whether you're a new firm or an already established practice trying to hold on in tough times.

#1: Make Yourself Available As Much As Possible

When you're just starting out, it's critical to make yourself available to clients whenever possible.  This might mean sleeping next to your cell phone so that you can be available even if someone wants to call you at 3 AM.  Keep in mind that it's usually rare for clients to call at the wee hours, but that this little bit of extra customer service can sometimes be the difference between getting a referral and not.  Going above and beyond is critical at a time when bankruptcy filings are down and only the strongest bankruptcy firms will survive.

#2: Give Talks In Your Community

One of the ways to help dissipate the stigma surrounding bankruptcy is to have public information sessions at community centers, libraries, and so on that talk about what bankruptcy is, what the filing process is like, and what exemptions look like in your state.  Because many people are apprehensive about filing because of a lack of information, these informational sessions can be a good way to get new clients who might have otherwise avoided seeing a lawyer for weeks or months more.

#3: Learn How To Leverage Google

If you're not trying to get ahead in search rankings, you're missing out on up to 80 percent of people who are looking for lawyers today.  You need to make sure that you have up to date profiles on Google Local, Yelp, and other ratings services, as well as making sure that your website is effectively search engine optimized without using keyword spam.  Google today weights sites higher that have backlinks from other local websites, so you should work at getting your website linked by other people who have local businesses.

#4: Consider Taking Pro Bono Work

If you're unable to get the kinds of cases that you want right now, you may be able to develop business by starting with pro bono work.  By taking simple bankruptcy cases for people who don't have enough money to file otherwise, you'll be doing good work for your community and building a base of experience and referrals that can help you develop a client base later.

In some cases, you may also be able to work out payments with some clients involving barter.  For example, some clients may be willing to give you in kind payments with goods or services.  This can be an especially valuable way to be flexible if you work in an area with many low income residents, or people who have seasonal incomes.

#5: Know the Bankruptcy Code Inside and Out

One of the most critical aspects of being part of a bankruptcy practice is having a great understanding of the law.  If you're taking complex cases, you need to have the bankruptcy code down cold, including all exemptions for your state.  Even if your cases tend toward simple consumer bankruptcies, having an extensive knowledge of the code will make sure that you are able to handle cases efficiently and with the highest degree of competence.

#6: Maintain a Blog

Blogging about the latest developments in bankruptcy law and strategies for declaring bankruptcy while keeping as many assets as possible can be a great way to get new clients.  You may also be able to get referrals from other attorneys who read your blog.

Unlike in many areas of law, bankruptcy law still has plenty of room for attorneys who blog.  You can still find areas of bankruptcy law that haven't been covered extensively by other bloggers.  By making your tone conversational and keeping your vocabulary to something that people can understand even without legal training, you'll be sure to get the maximum number of visitors who go straight from your blog to your website and to scheduling consultations.

#7: Make Yourself Available For Phone Consultations

One of the things that many bankruptcy attorneys don't realize when they start out is how embarrassed clients can be to file.  This embarrassment actually presents an opportunity for attorneys who are willing to make themselves available.  While many lawyers will only provide clients with in person consultation visits, consider making yourself available for a phone consult and even be willing to provide a cost estimate for clients seeking your services.

Often, having all of this information handy can help clients to decide whether to file right away.  Having to come to your office before clients know what they can expect may result in cold feet and a missed opportunity for new business and possible referrals.

#8: Target Clients Effectively

If you're online marketing based on very generic search terms, you may have a harder time finding clients.  That's because you're putting yourself into competition with a huge number of other law firms.  If you want to get clients using online searches, you'll want to work with advertising and marketing methods that allow you to target specific types of clients.

For example, Facebook allows you to target people who live in a particular geographic area.  It also allows businesses to target people who are friends of their existing social networking connections.  Google has targeted advertising options allowing law firms to pursue their preferred geographic and social demographics without marketing to people who are unlikely to be interested in their services and products.

If you're using any kind of targeted search string keyword advertising, you should make sure to include negative keywords as well.  For example, you may want to exclude people who are looking for creditor side bankruptcy attorney if you're working for consumers.

Today, the vast majority of people go online to shop for their lawyer before deciding on an office to visit for a consultation.  The majority of those online searchers now use a relatively new tool to help them make their decisions: rating and review websites.  These websites can now make or break attorneys, as people seek out attorneys who have higher numbers of five star ratings.  In this guide, we'll explore how to build your ratings using ethical, effective techniques.

#1: It's Not All About the Lawyers

One of the biggest mistakes that attorneys make when they first hear about ratings services is thinking that as long as they're giving great client service, they won't be vulnerable to low ratings.  However, many attorneys have reported receiving low ratings not because of their consultations, but because of things outside the closed door of their office.

For example, if you're a fantastic, client-focused attorney, but your secretary is rude to a potential client who walks in off the street, or if the people at your answering service have thick, impenetrable accents, or your office building is dingy and in a high-crime area, you may end up losing ratings points just because a client has a bad experience with one of these aspects.  You may think that this is unfair, but fair or not, it is what it is—you need to be thinking about all parts of a client's experience, from the moment they pick up a phone to schedule an appointment until their case is finished.

#2: The Client is (Almost) Always Right

A lot of times, you can avoid getting a negative review or rating just by talking to your clients and making sure that their needs are being met.  Try to return all phone calls on either the same business day as you receive them or, at latest, the next business day.  When you see that you've disappointed a client, try to really take stock of what has happened.  Were their expectations unclear or unreasonable?  Did you overpromise and underdeliver?
In some circumstances, you may actually be better off refunding a client's money rather than continuing an attorney/client relationship that is tense or difficult.  If one of these clients leaves a negative rating or review on a website, you could be faced with a significant problem that affects you for months to come.  Consider apologizing and refunding a client's money if they're unhappy, even if you believe that you were in the right.

#3: Know When to Turn Down Work

You can avoid a large number of potentially angry clients by simply not accepting their cases in the first place.  While it's important to keep the lights on, and while many attorneys today are trying to take as many cases as possible, you need to know when a case is beyond your ability or experience level.  Today, too many younger attorneys who hang a shingle don't know when they've gotten in over their heads.

If you turn down a fairly low amount of work, you should also make sure that you have a mentor with a greater amount of experience who can guide you if you become stuck or are unsure of your next move.  A good mentor can get you out of a jam and help you grow professionally, ensuring that your reviews and ratings are positive.

#4: Know When To Ask for Reviews

Sometimes, you'll want to ask the clients you know are satisfied for a review.  Happy clients give positive reviews, and clients are at their happiest when their cases have just been resolved.  Plaintiffs in personal injury suits tend to be happiest on the day when they pick up the check, while recently divorced spouses tend to be at their happiest after the divorce is finalized and the experience of negotiating a divorce settlement is finally over.

If you ask your clients to create a review for you on a ratings website when they're at their happiest, they'll have a good recollection of your services and will be able to provide up to the minute information for other people.  These kinds of reviews are much more trusted by consumers than advertisements and other kinds of marketing materials, so don't be shy about asking your happy clients for some ratings love.

#5: Monitor Ratings and Reviews Consistently

Some attorneys feel anxiety over their ratings and reviews, and respond like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.  Don't be afraid to look—it's not looking that will hurt your business much more.  By keeping a close eye on your ratings and reviews, you can be sure that you know what's going on and when you need to solicit additional reviews from satisfied clients.

#6: Don't Lose Hope Over a Bad Review

Everyone gets a bad review once in a while.  While a bad review can seem devastating initially, it's important not to lose hope or decide that reviews are garbage just because of one or two unfair negative comments.  Keep in mind that every client's experience is different, and make an effort to get your clients who have had good experiences to post to these same websites where the offending review appears.

In general, most ratings websites won't let you take a review down just because it's negative.  However, in some limited circumstances, you may be able to have a review taken down and deleted permanently if you can show that the person was not your client—for instance, if they were a business rival from another firm who was simply attempting to defame and discredit you.  If you want to claim this, though, be prepared to go in with some kind of evidence.  Your word won't usually be enough—if it was, every business in town would claim sabotage as soon as they saw a negative review.

For a decade, the pinnacle of search engine optimization was keyword loading, which depended on using a certain search term as a particular percentage of your overall content.  However, as search algorithms have become more sophisticated and search engines have begun using humans to curate search results, especially for popular search terms, keyword loading has become a worse and worse strategy.  In some situations, keyword loading can actually lead to your website being reduced in ranking by Google.  That's why you need this list of alternative methods—in this guide, you'll learn how to have good search engine optimization even without counting instances of keyword phrases in your content.

#1: Getting Social

The internet has moved in a very social direction over the last few years.  While just several years ago, Myspace was really the only main contender in social networking, today's web is actively, almost dizzyingly interconnected along lines that involve an array of friends, relatives, co-workers, and others.  In order to effectively do search engine optimization today, you'll need to get involved in social media.  Social networking websites have become some of the highest-value sites for gaining traction in the search engine optimization world, and social sites can also help you more effectively target people in your local area or those who are more likely to hear about you through word of mouth.

In order to go social, you'll want to sign up for several different social networking sites—not only for your own personal account, but also to give your law firm its own social networking presence.  You can begin building your brand personality on these websites, giving you a leg up on your competition that hasn't yet figured out how to use the newly social web.

#2: Going Viral

Viral content is content that essentially starts to distribute itself, via people who are so engaged and mesmerized by it that they choose to share it with other people that they know or are connected to on social media.  When your content goes viral, you'll share it initially with as many people as possible, but they will then do the bulk of the work—think about it this way.  If you share your content with 100 people, and 50 of those people share it with 100 more each, and 50 of those people from each connection share it again, you're soon talking about tens of thousands of people who have seen what you're producing.  Every time someone shares the link, it's likely that you're getting “link juice” through backlinking, which increases your chances of getting onto the first page of search results.

There's no secret formula for building viral content, no matter what scammy marketers might try to tell you.  Virality is unpredictable, and largely relies on having content that people don't just want to see—they want to share it as well.  This means that humor is often good for viral content, as is telling people important information in a new or unorthodox way.

#3: Old-School Press Releases

While many law firms have gotten so invested in the idea of online marketing that they've diverted huge amounts of resources toward it, you shouldn't neglect older forms of marketing as well.  For example, the humble press release is not to be ignored.  For some time, press releases were used as “article spinning” SEO spam on various websites that would accept simply any press release content.  However, these websites are often regarded as negative rather than positive by search engines today, and you are no longer likely to gain significant traction for search keywords by spamming these sites with poorly designed press releases.

Instead, you should work on real, genuine press releases that tell a part of your law firm's brand story, discuss someone at your law firm, or include information about a recent case or change to the law.  These kinds of press releases are more likely to be picked up by legitimate news sources, which will add significant amounts of link juice to your law firm's website.

#4: Microtargeted Advertising

Traditional forms of advertising for lawyers leave a lot to be desired.  For one thing, the vast majority of people aren't looking for a lawyer, and even if they are, odds are that you know a lot about the kinds of clients who walk into your door.  Estate attorneys see different demographics than divorce lawyers, who in turn see different demographics than lawyers who are focused primarily on criminal defense or dog bite cases.

If you're working on search engine optimization, microtargeted advertising can help to stop the gap while you work your way up the search rankings.  With microtargeting, you can niche market to the exact people in the geographic area and demographics you think are most likely to respond to your ads.  You can also target different advertisements at different audiences or A/B test your advertising better.  Of course, these ads—like any ads—won't work after you stop paying for them, but they are better than nothing while you work out how to get your firm's website at the top of Google's results for common search terms.

#5: Guest Blogging

Consider guest blogging on other websites in order to build your search rankings.  By guest blogging on a website where you have expertise and the website has link juice to spare, you'll be making sure that your law firm website climbs the rankings without resorting to spam techniques or keyword loading.

#6: Reviews and Ratings

In order to get the best search results today, you'll also need to cultivate positive reviews and ratings on websites designed to help people sort lawyers by client satisfaction.  Reviews on these sites count a great deal toward your overall search engine optimization and search rankings, and are often some of the first things that potential clients will look at when they're considering several different attorneys and deciding who to call.