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.

As the school year comes to a close, more attorneys than ever are graduating out into the real world.  However, law firm hiring continues to be sluggish, and the class of 2013 is getting into the workforce any way it can.  For some young attorneys, that means that 2013 will be their year to go into practice for themselves.  If you're a new attorney or just new to having your own firm, this guide is for you.  Keep reading to learn how to start a successful firm marketing plan, step by step, using common sense rules that will give you a great reputation for a long time to come.

Step 1: Know the Value of Marketing

When attorneys are just getting started, they often forget to take their marketing costs into account when considering how much money they'll need to spend.  While a typical established law firm spends around 2.5 to 5 percent of gross receipts on marketing, that number won't work for a new law firm.  Why?  For one thing, when you're just starting out, your receipts will be significantly lower, which means that you could underspend on marketing, putting yourself out of business before you or anyone else had really given your firm a fair shake.

As long as you're spending your marketing dollars wisely, they're an investment more than an expense.  Understand that in an oversaturated legal market, you won't get anywhere unless people know you exist.  Smaller and newer firms tend to do better by using relatively new ways to market themselves.  You don't need to use television and radio and billboard/outdoor advertising right away—wait until you're more established.  Online marketing gives you the best bang for your buck on a tight budget in today's legal marketing game.

Step 2: Develop Your Niche and Brand

As a new firm, you're not going to become successful by simply marketing what everyone else is already doing.  You need to have a unique brand that lets you compete in a specific niche.  Consider taking on a new type of case that not many attorneys are taking on in your area.  For instance, rather than just going into bankruptcy law, you could notice that a lot of people in your area are having problems with student loans or foreclosures specifically, and dedicate a significant portion of your practice to specializing in that area of law.

Building a specialized niche allows you to become an expert in an area of law quickly, and if you do your market research beforehand, you can ensure that this niche is one that no other attorneys in your area are already pursuing.  You can also enhance your brand with policies that show that you are dedicated and client focused.

Step 3: Find Your Mentor

When you start a law firm, it's unlikely that you know everything there is to know about the field of law you're planning to practice.  That's why finding a mentor is incredibly important.  When you choose a mentor who is already an expert in your chosen area of law, you can get advice and learn new things in a way that will give you a leg up on your fellow new shingle hangers.

Finding a mentor doesn't have to be difficult.  You can often meet these mentors at continuing legal education classes, or even at law schools.  If there is a practitioner in your area who attracts your admiration, you may want to ask him or her to mentor you.  Mentors can also help you when you've gotten in too deep, giving you a way to soothe hurt feelings or help a client when you're in over your head.
Step 4: Market Your Services

Once you've got your mentor, it's time to actually put your marketing plan to work.  Typically, a new firm in 2013 will want to start online legal marketing by starting up social media profiles and buying targeted keyword advertisements with so-called “long tail” keywords consisting of several words and excluded words.

Include enough in your budget to be able to carry your marketing plans through.  Keep in mind that while the internet gives you a large number of ways to market that use more of your time than your money, you will probably still need to spend some cash on your marketing efforts on a consistent basis.  For example, even if you consider yourself pretty handy with a computer, it's probably best to have professionals put together your website.

Step 5: Know When To Turn Clients Down

One of the biggest things that veteran attorneys say they wish they'd known when they started out is that it's okay to turn clients down when they're asking more of you than you're able to provide.  It's generally better to underpromise and overdeliver than to overpromise and underdeliver, so make sure that your clients don't think you're a miracle worker—unless you actually are one.

If you're in doubt about your abilities, this is where your mentor comes in handy.  Talk to them about situations that are at the edge of what you're able to do.  Your mentor should be able to honestly discuss with you whether the clients are actually beyond your current abilities or whether taking the case would be the right kind of push for your legal career.

Step 6: Get Feedback and Reviews

Especially when you're just starting out, it's critical to learn from your real clients what you're doing right and what could use improvement.  Be ready to actually change based on feedback, even if that feedback leads to results that surprise you.  Have client surveys when you're finishing with someone's case, and request feedback and reviews on attorney review websites.

When you see a consistent comment in feedback or reviews that suggests an aspect of your practice needs significant changes, don't get defensive.  This isn't an insult, it's an opportunity to do better and to make things right.  Consider reaching out to the people who gave you negative feedback, asking them what they might have preferred and incorporating their ideas into the new customer service policies at your firm.  One of the best parts of having a new firm is that without longstanding habits, it's much easier to change course to make things better.

While two out of every three law firms has a Facebook page today, one third are still left behind in the social media game.  Some attorneys seem to think that because Facebook, unlike LinkedIn, is more about personal social connections than business; it isn't really a serious business tool.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Facebook is the runaway leader in the social networking world, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  In this guide, we'll take a look at seven different benefits your law firm can get out of your Facebook account.

#1: Building Your Backlink Presence

If you're trying to optimize your website for search engines, today the best move isn't to pack it full of keywords.  You're much better off trying to build backlinks from websites with good reputations.  Google takes backlinks into account as a major component of assessing a website's reputation.  Because Facebook posts are on a very high traffic website, getting backlinks from Facebook pages is a great way to ensure that your law firm's profile on search engines like Google and Bing will be as prominent as possible.

If you're not building backlinks strategically already, you're missing out on significant potential gains to your web presence.  By posting on Facebook consistently and making your posts viral-ready, you will quickly generate the kinds of backlinks that affect search engine rankings most.

#2: Networking With Friends, Colleagues, and Clients

Of course, Facebook is a social network, and it’s most well-known use is as a tool for facilitating networking with a large group of members.  As soon as you create a Facebook account and start creating connections to people you know already, you'll be appearing on other people's feeds—namely, the feeds belonging to your connections' connections.  This gives you a great opportunity to be heard, but not every firm is taking advantage of it.

You should pursue new Facebook connections at every opportunity, which means including easy ways for people to get from your website to your Facebook page and vice versa.  By using Facebook to connect with all the people who are in some way connected with your firm, you can give rise to a vibrant mini-community if you curate your content well enough.

#3: Promoting Your Website Content

For law firms, like for most businesses, one of the best ways to use Facebook is to promote content on your website.  You can get people to look at images, articles, or video on your site by sharing it on Facebook and promoting it to your connections.  However, you should take care with the content that you post on Facebook: if it's not interesting, it may just be ignored and make you seem like dead weight on people's feeds.  This leads to people stopping “liking” your page and a lower number of connections overall.  Offensive content can be an even more direct route to losing subscribers.

Your law firm should post content to Facebook that is fresh, and you should maintain a fairly consistent but not too frequent output.  More than a post a day will get irritating, but less than two posts per week and people might forget you're even part of their subscriptions.

#4: Tuning In To the Zeitgeist

Another advantage that Facebook offers law firms is one that is often overlooked.  It's easy for law firms to get out of touch with what's going on online, and most attorneys don't have time to spend hours every week looking at the latest meme and finding the most relevant news content.  If you use Facebook correctly, you can also use it to keep an eye on the state of the internet.  You'll see the content that people are sharing; the kinds of things they care about and think are worth promoting to their friends and loved ones.

This, in turn, gives you a great head start on figuring out exactly how to tailor your content to what people are interested in now.  People who don't know what good viral content looks like won't be able to create content that goes massively viral—they just won't be tuned in enough to know what works for everyone else, as opposed to what just works for them.

#5: Showing Your Brand Identity

Another aspect of Facebook that some law firms neglect is the branding capability.  By posting content with a conversational, direct brand “voice,” you can implement your branding initiatives in a way that will be seen by more people.  This will make it so that your law firm's brand reputation is better understood, leading to more referrals from current and former clients and other people that you are connected through on Facebook.

#6: Responding Positively To Critics

No business is immune from criticism, and law firms are certainly no exception to this rule.  If you're criticized online and don't have a Facebook presence, you've lost an avenue for discussing the issue that is far more likely to be read than a press release or an interview with a magazine or newspaper.  Facebook is critical for damage control, and allows you to present a polite, calm face even in times of turmoil.

The biggest mistake you can make when responding to critics on Facebook is being negative or defensive.  By presenting yourself as open and honest, you'll be much more likely to get the reactions that you're looking for.

#7: Researching the Competition

When you're on Facebook, you can see how other law firms in your area are handling their social media presence.  If you're clever about competitor research, you can find out a great deal about how your rivals are presenting their brand and where you might be able to be more competitive with them or find a niche different from what they're doing.

Doing research on your competitors doesn't mean you should do as they do.  While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it's also the worst at differentiating your brand identity.

If your law firm, like nearly half of firms today, has a Twitter account, you want to get as many followers as you can.  While there is no sure way to get many Twitter followers all at once, there are some ways to increase the chances that your follower count will be on a steady upswing.  In this guide, we'll look at how to make yourself more visible on Twitter without damaging the reputation of your law firm's brand.

Step 1: Be Yourself—And Don't Let Anyone Else Be You

One of the biggest mistakes that some law firms make when they start a Twitter account is putting it all into someone else's hands.  While it can seem tempting to let an outside firm do all the hard work of your social media postings, the truth is that only you will really be able to sound like you.  When you look at many of the social media accounts generated by legal marketing firms, you'll find that many of these posts go out all at the same time, every day, and are more oriented toward spam keywords than they are toward the brand messages that your firm wants to project.

The best way to make sure that you're putting your best foot forward is to have a Twitter account that is run in-house.  Use your common sense when deciding who to put onto the Twitter account—pick someone who's at the office consistently, who is loyal to your firm, and who can be trusted not to say anything rash or unreasonable.  You should also make sure that you're using secure passwords and accounts, so that no one can imitate you and cause a major faux pas for your firm through their impersonation.

Step 2: Don't Fake Your Followers

While it can be tempting to simply purchase Twitter followers, the truth is that this method is ultimately futile for Twitter users who do it in an attempt to gain real followers and clicks on their links.  Why?  Because all the accounts whose friendship you're purchasing don't really belong to real people with real connections—they're all spambots whose biggest contribution to your firm will be a single digit in your Twitter follower numbers.

Organically developing your audience is, in the end, a more constructive use of your time than seeing how many accounts you can get to follow yours.  Having spam followers doesn't make your firm look like it's full of popular people, it makes it look like you're desperate and taking desperate measures.

Step 3: Make Content of Your Own…

It's important not to just use links from other people when you're posting to your Twitter account.  If all you're doing is posting links about topics relating to the law, and you're just keeping the headline from the original news story, you're just doing the same thing as many other accounts.  There's no particular reason for someone to subscribe to your Twitter account if you're not making anything new.  Even if all that is new is a great, eye-catching headline, you can often snag followers.

You should also make sure that you're posting some content from your own website, generating needed backlinks that will help your search engine performance over time.  You may want to link to blog entries or a repost of press that your law firm has recently received.

Step 4: …But Post Content From Others, Too

While it's good to have your own content, it's rude to have a Twitter account just to toot your own horn.  If you really want to maintain good relationships with the people who follow you on Twitter, you should be reposting their content from time to time and engaging with them by posting their links with a little blurb of your own.

By showing others that you're willing to repost their content, you'll ensure that they become more willing to repost what you have to say.  It's critical to maintain this kind of give and take in social media environments, because otherwise people will think that your social networking is done exclusively for personal gain without any thought for other people—even those closely connected to you through social networks.

Step 5: Respond and Engage in Dialogue

In addition to retweeting content that is created by people whose Twitter accounts you follow, you should also consider commenting on their tweets from time to time, allowing yourself to engage in real dialogues with friends, acquaintances, and professional networking connections.  Don't be stilted when you respond to tweets—maintain a pleasant and conversational tone.  If you decide to use humor, make sure that it's the kind of humor that transmits well over the internet.  Keep in mind that sarcasm may be easy to misinterpret, so you may want to stay away if you want to avoid misunderstandings.

Step 6: Create Viral-Friendly Content

When you create content for your blog or website, once you've got Twitter followers, you should be making that content with virality in mind.  Viral friendly content should inspire people to share—whether it's by being educational, funny, or just by being different from anything that anybody has ever seen.

Ideally, viral content won't take much more than just a quick initial push.  If you're having to re-introduce the content several times and it doesn't seem to be taking off, don't keep trying the same thing over and over again.  Admit to yourself that the content isn't turning out as planned, and create new content instead of engaging in futile attempts to force the old content into virality.

Step 7: Keep Track of Your Twitter Trends

If you want to be building your number of real Twitter followers, you should be keeping track not only of what's trending on Twitter, but why those trends are happening.  By understanding what media Twitter users are viewing and talking about, for instance, you can have a pop culture tie-in post that uses common trending keywords and brings people to your blog or website.

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.