If you want to get ahead in the social media game—and, with over half of legal referrals now coming from online sources, who doesn't?—you need to understand the right and wrong ways to engage with the internet community at large.  If you don't seem internet savvy, it's easy to make rookie mistakes that can actually affect people's perception of your law firm for months or even years to come.  In this guide, we'll explore some basic do's and don'ts of the social media world, so that you know some best practices for online marketing while also learning some of the biggest pitfalls to avoid in legal marketing.

DO: Use Your Personal Connections

Some attorneys, especially those who are new to legal marketing efforts, feel like they shouldn't make too much use of their personal connections.  Because social media can sometimes seem to blur the line between purely social relationships and business or networking connections, it can sometimes be confusing to know what side of the line to walk on while marketing your business.

In general, its a good idea to have a personal social media account that is locked and only visible to your close personal friends—if for no other reason than to make sure that you have a place to put your personal observations that just don't belong on a news feed used for marketing purposes.  However, your business social networking accounts should also connect to people you know personally.

Why?  Because these personal connections can actually be one of your best sources of referrals.  When someone already on your friends or connections list refers a new client to you, they'll already be able to see the connection when they message you.

DON'T: Get Fake Followers

One way that many businesses have used to get a higher search ranking for their social media accounts is to purchase followers.  Many businesses online allow people to buy followers, often by the hundred or thousand.  However, these “followers” are really anything but—most or all of them tend to be accounts run by spambots, rather than by real people.

While these kinds of services can sometimes grant a temporary jolt to your search rankings, at the end of the day they don't really help you build quality social media backlinks.  They're the empty calories of the social media world—they seem like they're doing something, but there's nothing in them that will give you any kind of lasting nutrition.  If you're found using services to purchase fake followers, depending on the service you're using, you may also find your account suspended.

DO: Make Content To Attract Social Media Attention

You'll be able to market your content online better when you make it ready to go viral.  Don't make articles too long, and don't make them so short that people are left feeling like they wasted the click.  Design social media friendly content, including easy to read lists and quick analysis of current cases in your field of expertise.

DON'T: Make Up Identities to Post Content Online

While it may be tempting to use false identities to try to propagate your content, including by posting fake comments to blogs or by posting submissions to social bookmarking sites, this strategy is actually incredibly risky.  Called “astroturfing,” this fake grassroots lobbying for your firm is actually more likely to lead to people finding you out and thinking that you're being unethical.

If you want to post your content, do it ethically: be clear about who is posting the content.  You might try doing a question and answer session, or talking to people about common issues in your legal field.  Use your expertise to your advantage, rather than trying to hide it in the name of having “buzz.”

DO: Post Content Regularly

You should only join as many social networks and online groups as you have time to actively participate in.  While you may want to belong to some of these groups only to read, if you're making posts in a location, do so consistently.  Usually, blogs should be updated at least once or twice a week, and Facebook updates can be done one to two times per day without giving your audience pause—as long as the content is of sufficient quality.

DON'T: Repeat Content or Spam Followers

On the flip side, even having a few Facebook posts a week can seem like too much, if your content is boring and repetitive.  If you're just spamming people with what amount to ads, you're not using social media correctly.  Social networks are designed for two-way interaction—to talk with people, not at them.  You'll lose followers and friends by posting advertising instead of entering into dialogues, asking questions, and giving tips.  Follow other law firms so that you can see what other people are doing to talk to their clients without being perceived as spammers.

DO: Make It Easy For Site Visitors to Connect

When people connect to your website, they should be able to connect to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ accounts with just a single click.  If they can't, you may be losing out on valuable business opportunities.  Make sure that your website includes easy to use buttons that connect users to the individual and firm-wide social media profiles you're using to market your services.  Internet users today, especially younger ones, often see social media as the natural first place to check to make sure that someone's personality will mesh with theirs.  By projecting a confident brand persona in your social media accounts, you'll make it easier to get business from these web users.

DON'T: Require Social Media Connections For Content

While some companies think that it's a good idea to get followers by having contests or other content that requires “friending” to access, this is not overall a winning strategy for attorneys.  People who are looking for lawyers don't want to have to jump through additional hoops, and these strategies can seem manipulative and even petty.  You may find that forcing people to follow you leads to few new followers and a significantly increased bounce rate away from your website at the point where friending is required.

When marketers first realized that they could influence where their website appeared in search engine results, people clamored to figure out the best methods.  Unfortunately, many of those methods created the kind of search engine optimization that users hate: off topic, generic, low information pages that use keyword spam or other tricks to get into the top page of results.  Google changed how it ranked search results in 2012, which made a lot of search engine marketers unhappy.  However, even today, search engine marketing isn't just possible—it's better than ever.  In this guide, we'll look at how to create search engine optimization strategies that work by making your content more tailored to your audience, rather than by trying to outguess Google's spam detectors.

#1: Know Your Audience

One of the biggest things that attorneys need to know when they do law firm search engine optimization is that no firm needs to be at the top of the heap for very generic search terms.  You're never going to crack the top fifty for “lawyer” on Google—and that's okay.  Do you really want everyone in the country who wants a lawyer looking for you if you're a plaintiff's employment law specialist in Knoxville, Tennessee?  Probably not—you want people to come to your website who would actually be interested in your services, not just clicks that won't ever amount to anything.

By knowing what your ideal client is like, you can make sure that you're putting search engine marketing efforts toward getting those kinds of clients.  Knowing your audience ensures that you'll be getting the kinds of clicks you want, without getting those that you don't.  When you do have search engine keywords, make sure that they're specific and clear enough that you're sure to get the people you want to reach.

#2: Make Your Title And Descriptions Clear

If you're trying to get very clever with the title or description of your website, odds are it will just result in confusion for people trying to search for your legal specialty.  If your descriptions are not clear or don't use at least some search keywords that you'd like people to find your site using, you're not going to get the web traffic you've been hoping for.

Why?  Because Google places a great deal of weight on your title, descriptions, and even your URL.  Google assumes that these are the places where you will summarize what's on a page using language that will both attract people to click and draw in the right keyword audiences.

#3: Focus on Local Websites For Backlinks

Many people don't realize that Google actually weights search results higher that have backlinks from other local websites, when people search for local terms.  Why does the search engine work this way?  Showing that you can get backlinks from legitimate local websites in your area shows search engines that you're not just spamming—you're an actual part of your community apart from your keyword marketing.  They reward websites accordingly that are clearly doing things in their local area.

Consider seeing if your local Chamber of Commerce or even your municipality offers a listing service for local businesses.  This can help you get an easy local backlink or two.  You may also want to see if you could partner with other community businesses to build backlinks to each other, forming your own ad hoc affiliation of local businesses—even those as local as your block or street.

#4: Get Rid of Keyword Spam and Bad Backlinks

Keyword spam is so SEO 1.0—you can do so much better with quality content and legitimate backlinking strategies.  If any parts of your website still look like they were written by a machine that sprinkles in keywords, get rid of them.  If you don't, Google may decide that you have a low quality spam website and de-list you or rank you significantly lower than other similar websites.

The same kind of spam detectors are triggered by bad backlinks.  You might know the kind—ones that you pay for, ones that come from comment spam on blogs, or ones that were created through automatic reciprocal backlinking.  These kinds of links are no longer valuable, and can even hurt your website if Google decides to sandbox you.

#5: Add Fresh Content Frequently

If you're letting your website today look exactly the same as it did a year ago, congratulations—you're losing potential clients every single day.  In order for you to stay high in search results for relatively popular terms, even niche terms, you'll want to update your website on a relatively frequent basis.  Even if you're only putting together an update every month or so, it's still much better than letting a website become stale.

Google weights search results on websites that have been recently updated with new, fresh, original content.  If you're only reposting other people's content, search engines notice, and you won't get the same level of boost.  For optimum performance, you should make sure that you're updating on some kind of regular schedule.  Having an onsite blog can make this easier—by creating new blog topics every so often, you'll be updating your site and providing new content for people to search for with every new entry.

#6: Keep Search Pages Updated

When people start searching for you online, they might look at review websites like Yelp or mapping websites like Google Local.  If you want to get business, you need to make sure that you're actually keeping your information on these websites up to date.  If your offices change location, update your location in as many places as possible.  Make sure that you have a description of your business and what you do.  You may even want to try adding some photographs or video to make it easier for people to see what your office looks like and what they can expect if they sign up for a consultation.  All it takes is one piece of out of date information to send potential clients into the offices of your competition.

On the internet, trends come and go with a relentless pace.  What works one year will sink your marketing efforts the next, and keeping up can be tough.  What strategies are still working in 2013?  What should your law firm focus on, and what should it give up to adapt to new focus areas?  In this guide, we'll explore seven different trends that have been played out.  If you're still on board with one of these trends, it's time to transition out and find new ways of marketing your firm.

#1: Traditional SEO

Not too long ago, the best way by far to get your law firm ahead in search rankings was to very carefully monitor keyword counts and do traditional search engine optimization.  However, keyword density has become almost irrelevant to the new search engine marketing.  If you're still focused on it, you're not just wasting your time.  If Google detects that you're using any of the old SEO tricks, from links that come from spam comments on blogs to keyword spam website content, you can expect to have your website “sandboxed.”  

What does that mean for you?  It means that searches will no longer direct to your page, or that it will be significantly reduced in the results.  Since huge majorities of people don't look past page 1 of their search results, this means you'll lose out on almost all of your potential online business with even relatively minor penalties.

#2: Broad Spectrum Pay Per Click Ads

Many attorneys like to use pay per click ads online for a few different reasons—they're easy to start up and they can deliver immediate returns, unlike some types of online marketing.  However, if you're still using pay per click ads, you've probably also noticed some disadvantages.  High bounce rates, low conversions, and the worst part—as soon as you stop paying, the new business dries up immediately.

Generally, the reason that attorneys have bad luck with pay per click advertisements is that they're not taking enough care to target their ideal clients and the types of clients they most commonly get.  There's no need to waste your time advertising to people who are a long way from your office, or who are outside of the age ranges where you tend to do almost all of your business.

What's more, even if you want to target several different groups, you should be targeting them with specific pay per click ads for their target market.  These ads can take them to a microsite that specifically addresses the concerns of their demographic.

#3: Fake Followers

If you have blogs or business social media accounts, you've almost certainly gotten emails from people who say that they could get you new followers and friends.  While these offers may sound tempting—like an immediate big internet presence on the biggest social media networks—the truth is actually a lot more disappointing.  When you pay for followers, you're not paying for the kind of quality following that actually generates discussion and buzz.

The reason that people with a lot of followers are influential isn't because of a number on their screen.  It's because people like what they have to say, and find them interesting.  You won't gain influence with fake friends.

#4: Tagging Websites

Foursquare and other “tagging” sites seemed like one of the fastest growing trends in social media for a few years.  The problem that made these a trend on their way out is that they had relatively limited appeal.  Most of the web audience simply never made room in their browsing day to tag where they were.  Others had privacy concerns, which would have only magnified if any of these tagging services had ever caught on in a bigger way.

#5: Generalized Websites

If your website has something for everybody, that may be great for an overall firm site, but you need to understand that your main firm website may not be your best marketing tool site.  Instead, the big trend now is to create a large number of targeted microsites.  Microsites should be relatively conversational and informal compared to your main law firm site, and some firms have dozens of these websites.  You can often get very descriptive, long URLs for this kind of microsite.

#6: Flash Intros

A few years ago, many websites had big introductions made with Flash, which had functionalities that made websites more multimedia-oriented.  With the multimedia focus in today's marketing, you may think that a Flash intro would be a good idea for a contemporary law firm website.  However, Flash intros are cumbersome, take a long time for users to download, and runs into incompatibility problems on older computers and on smartphones.

Keep your website HTML, rather than Flash, based and you'll have much better luck getting people from mobile operating systems to use your website and become your clients.

#7: Parody Videos

It's one of the quickest and easiest ways to write something funny for the internet about just about any topic.  Themed parody videos might seem like a fun way to have your law firm do something different with its marketing, but at this point you have to ask: is whatever you're doing really that different?  At this point, so many legal parody videos exist—many created by law school students for an annual contest—that in order to stand out in a good way, you'll need to have polish, production values, and lyrics that aren't terrible and sound great with the original rhythms of the song.

If you're dead set on making a parody video, get professional production and make sure that you have people look at it before you make it live.  More often than not, parody videos today are perceived as more embarrassing than awesome.  You'll be more likely to go viral with something that is both funny and unique.

Social bookmarking websites are some of the fastest growing and most exciting places on the web today, with over 300 million unique viewers going to the five top social bookmarking sites every month.  However, less than a third of law firms are using social bookmarking sites as part of their link building strategy—and if you're not, you're making a big mistake.  If you're hesitant to jump into using social bookmarking websites because you're not sure how to use them, keep reading.  You'll find out how to interact with users of the top social bookmarking sites in a way that will lead to good publicity and better link building opportunities.

#1: Get More Readers For Your Law Blog

If you're already keeping a blog, social bookmarking websites are perhaps the best way to get new readers and more links.  Most of the top social bookmarking sites are divided into many different subcategories, so that people can more easily look for links that pertain to their interests.  By posting your links in relevant subcategories of social bookmarking sites, you'll be able to put your blog in front of the readers most likely to be interested in the topics you're covering.

Make sure not to just post and run—sticking around to answer questions about your law blog can make you much more well-liked on social bookmarking websites.  Some social bookmarking sites will even allow you to do an interview (for example, Reddit calls this an “IamA,” as in “I am a lawyer who specializes in tax fraud and evasion defense, AMA [ask me anything]”).

#2: Attract People to Your Youtube Videos

Video is much more likely to lead to conversions than text, so if your law firm is primarily consumer focused, you may want to use top social bookmarking sites to promote your videos.  Social bookmarking websites often promote videos and images much higher than blog entries, so consider this as an alternative if you can't seem to make any headway by posting blog entries on social bookmarking sites.

In order to get the most views from top social bookmarking sites, you'll need to put your video link into a subcategory that gets a large amount of traffic and that would be interested in what you have to say.  However, if you use smaller subcategories, you may rise higher in these categories even if you get fewer page views, making your reputation on social bookmarking sites grow.

#3: Answer Legal Questions and Start Dialogues

Social bookmarking websites have also become a place where people ask questions about anything in their lives, from relationships to career opportunities to legal problems.  If you're good at conversing with people about legal issues, take that talent to the top social bookmarking sites so you can use them for link building.

Make sure that you don't include links to your website in every comment you make on social bookmarking websites.  If you do, you're going to be called out as a spammer and may be banned from most social bookmarking sites.  However, even on the top social bookmarking sites, an occasional relevant link is welcome and can help you bring in traffic and even convert clients in addition to improving your SEO.

#4: Find Like-Minded Colleagues For Networking

By sticking to subcategories of social bookmarking websites with large numbers of other lawyers or other types of professionals you work with on a regular basis, you give yourself many networking opportunities.  The really interesting advantage that social bookmarking sites give you is the ability to check out what else someone has said, learning a lot about them, even if they haven't yet added you as a friend or connection.

By finding like minded colleagues on top social bookmarking sites, you'll be able to generate more opportunities for link exchange.  This is also a great way to use social bookmarking sites if you get most of your business through referrals from other attorneys.

#5: Debunk Legal Misconceptions

Is there something about your field of law that everybody seems to just get wrong?  Social bookmarking websites can be a great way to help them get it right.  By posting on top social bookmarking sites about common legal misconceptions, you'll be giving people content that they are very interested in, and proving your subject matter expertise.  Social bookmarking websites have audiences who are hungry for more and better information, so if you can explain these misconceptions well, you'll get a lot more connections on top social bookmarking sites.

While this kind of activity on social bookmarking sites won't always generate client leads (remember, people visit top social bookmarking sites from all over the world, not just your geographic area), the leads they do generate are likely to be excellent.

#6: Talk to Law Students

Once upon a time (perhaps not that long ago!), you were a nervous law student unsure about where you'd be working after graduation.  Today, many law students spend time both in and out of class keeping up with social bookmarking sites.  Top social bookmarking sites often have a specific category for law school students.

These students may be very interested in your work, and what's more, putting a link to your firm's homepage is pretty much always acceptable when you're talking to law students—they'll want to know where you work and what you do!  Inbound links like this won't get you banned or chastised, but instead will be considered value added for that part of the website.

#7: Create Inbound Links for SEO

Why is this the last tip, even though many of the other techniques in this guide can help you build links through social bookmarking websites?  Because you should always keep in mind that building inbound links should never be your only goal when using social bookmarking sites.  Top social bookmarking sites have little patience with businesses that only use their sites as free advertising without participating in the community.  You should therefore consider building inbound links with social bookmarking sites to be a secondary priority, and focus mostly on putting your content in front of interested eyes.

It's not difficult to find a list of social bookmarking sites on the internet, but with hundreds of millions of users every day on these sites, you don't just need any social bookmarking list.  You need a social bookmarking sites list that can actually get you the inbound link traffic you're hoping for.  Unlike other guides, which are pushing a particular list of social bookmarking sites or want you to purchase a program with a social bookmarking sites list already programmed in, this guide will teach you how to build your own, custom list.
 

Why Should We Have a List of Social Bookmarking Sites?

Today, it's really not enough to just post on a single social bookmarking site.  If you're just talking to one audience, you're missing out on millions of people, any of whom could become a client or the source of a referral or inbound link.

However, not all social bookmarking sites are equally useful for law firms.  For example, the current #5 most popular site in this category is on almost every social bookmarking list: Pinterest.  Pull up pinterest.com in your web browser, though, and you'll see what it is: a place for people (mostly women) to share interesting photos about fashion, style, food, travel, parenting, and so on.  Unless you have a very niche law practice (fashion law?), you shouldn't have Pinterest on your social bookmarking list.

That's why any list of social bookmarking sites you get that isn't specifically tailored for attorneys—and, more specifically, attorneys in your specialty practice area—won't necessarily be very useful to you.
 

Which Websites Should Be Part of Our Social Bookmarking List?

Any social bookmarking website that you include in your list of social bookmarking sites should have at least some areas that are highly relevant to your practice area.  You should also make sure that every site on your social bookmarking list is being used by Americans—there are some sites that are used much more by people in other countries.

In some legal specialties, you'll actually have a lot more relevant websites than in some others.  For example, if you're in tech or IP law, Slashdot and other similar techie-oriented websites should be on your list of social bookmarking sites.  Someone specializing in divorce law for fathers, on the other hand, may have better luck posting links in the “men's rights” sections of Reddit, which often covers these stories.  You may have to do a fairly large amount of research to get your social bookmarking list just right.

You should also make, as part of your list, sub-lists that include subcategories from each website you've chosen.  These subcategories should be carefully curated for maximum relevance, so that you don't have to look around for the right place to post your new link every time you want to get more inbound links from your list of social bookmarking sites.
 

Should We Automate Posts To Our Social Bookmarking Sites List?

The automation question is a big one for people using social bookmarking sites in 2012.  Automated link building can, in some cases, be an adequate short term link building solution, but in the long term it can actually make your website less easy to find.

Let's say you start using a list of social bookmarking sites that comes from a computer program you've purchased to automate your links. Usually, this social bookmarking sites list will include a wide variety of websites, from the most popular to some more obscure ones.  What you may notice about this type of social bookmarking list is that it's so wide-ranging that most of the websites don't even have a tenuous connection to the area of law you're practicing.

Even if you edit the list of social bookmarking sites so that the program is only automating submissions to your curated social bookmarking list, you can still run into trouble.  Automating submissions to your social bookmarking sites list could lead to your submissions being seen as spam when websites realize you've posted the same content everywhere.  Even if websites don't notice that you've been using a big list of social bookmarking sites and spamming them, Google will.  Google can sandbox, or penalize, your website for automating submissions to a social bookmarking sites list.
 

How Should We Use Our Social Bookmarking Sites List?

Once you have your social bookmarking list, you should start to learn about the websites on the list before posting anything.  Each website is its own community with its own rules—which can be written or unwritten.  Since it can sometimes be difficult to recover your reputation on these websites, try using a personal login first before starting to submit links to your website that could potentially reflect on your entire firm.

Every social bookmarking list will have some websites that work better, and some that don't work as well.  Feel free to update it so that any website that seems to delete all of your posts is no longer part of your list of social bookmarking sites.
 

Keeping Your Social Bookmarking Sites List Up to Date

It's important to always make sure that any list of social bookmarking sites that your firm maintains is kept up to date.  Periodically, you should check subscriber numbers for every site on your social bookmarking list.  If you're seeing subscriber numbers taper off and you notice that the amount of traffic per link is going down, you may want to replace that entry on your social bookmarking sites list with a website that is still in a growth phase.
You should also keep up with some blogs about search engine marketing and social bookmarking.  If you're doing this, you'll be among the first to hear about new sites, and can add them to your social bookmarking sites list before most other law firms have even heard the name of the website.  Pay special attention to any websites that are explicitly law-related, because these need to be toward the top of your social bookmarking list.

It's become a much trickier world in just the last year for lawyers who want to build link popularity.  When 2012 started, it was still very possible to do link popularity building through automated services, which could get thousands of inbound links for your site in a matter of hours or days.  Now, Google has penalized over ten percent of websites for using these link popularity building techniques.  Today, if you want to build link popularity, you need a new strategy.  Here are seven strategies for building link popularity that are proven to get positive results without the risk of being sandboxed.

Building Link Popularity Tip #1: Networking Isn't Just For Computers

There's no reason that you shouldn't use your in person connections to help in your link popularity building efforts.  Your friends, neighbors, and relatives may be some of the best resources in helping you build link popularity when you have a brand new firm website.  

It tends to look suspicious to Google and other search engines when small, new, unknown websites suddenly start building link popularity at an incredibly fast rate.  If you work on link popularity building on this small, personal scale first, you'll learn a lot about building effective links and you won't tip Google off to the fact that you're using any artificial techniques.

Keep in mind that Google will penalize you if you build link popularity with too many reciprocal links, in which someone links to you and you link back.  However, as long as you're making sure at least some of your link popularity building is coming from one way links, you should be fine at this scale.  Usually, Google only punishes people who are found to be building link popularity through automated reciprocal linking schemes that generate many links every day.

Building Link Popularity Tip #2: Use Your Social Networks

Today, there are the friends you have in person and then there are the friends you have on Facebook and LinkedIn.  If you're already part of social networking websites, you need to use them as part of your strategy for link popularity building.  Because social networking websites tend to have a high Google PageRank, they are among the best ways to build link popularity.

Social networks can make building link popularity easier in several ways.  For one thing, you can use your social networks to do link popularity building of the same type that you'd do with in-person friends and relatives.  For another, you can actually create your own links back to your website using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Try not to build link popularity too quickly using these sites, because if Google notices that all your links come from the same sites it is likely to penalize you.

Building Link Popularity Tip #3: Branch Into New Websites

If your current link popularity building efforts aren't working as well as you had expected or hoped, it may be because you're using websites that aren't as popular as they once were.  You should continuously strive to branch into different sites as part of your effort to build link popularity.

Try checking out a list of the most popular websites in order to see which ones you should establish an account with next.  If you're not building link popularity on at least some high PageRank websites, Google tends to view this as a sign of artificial link building and may decide that your website is breaking the rules, leading to penalties.  

Building Link Popularity Tip #4: Check Out the Blogs

The blogosphere is a great place to find new websites to post on and to build link popularity for your site.  Don't just use your own blog for building link popularity.  Your link popularity building will go much more smoothly if you start building a list of blogs that you enjoy so that you can comment on them frequently.

Don't include a link back to your website on every comment you make.  Doing this is a surefire way to be identified as a spammer.  Instead, only build link popularity by posting links in comments when the link is actually relevant and can help the person find more needed information.

Building Link Popularity Tip #5: Answer Legal Questions

A common method of link popularity building for lawyers is to use websites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Reddit's AskReddit forums, or some other question and answer website to link their website through.  If you post an answer to a question and a link to your website would genuinely help, this is a great and beneficial way to build link popularity for your site.

Make sure if you're doing this type of link popularity building that you're not giving actual legal advice for specific cases.  You should keep your answers framed as a matter of law, rather than trying to advise someone about a decision they're making.

Building Link Popularity Tip #6: Make a New App

One of the best ways to get people to pay attention to your website and build link popularity is to make an app.  Several app builders now exist that can help you make a new app and put it into app stores as quickly as possible.  By making a useful app, you can attract reviews that will help you in link popularity building.

Building Link Popularity Tip #7: Design Links for Virality

Ideally, you want the link popularity building efforts you're engaging in to combine with a viral spread of your content all over the web by other people.  In order to make sure that your links have viral appeal, you may want to consult with a marketing firm that has experience with this type of marketing.  Overall, viral sensations tend to be unusual and relatively short—no one has time to read or watch and then circulate content that just takes too long to view.  You should also consider using humor in your videos and text content, which can be a key way to spread your message virally.

One aspect of law firm marketing that your firm may not have given much thought to is information security.  However, according to recent studies, hacking and other breaches of information security are actually costing companies over $1 billion every year.  You can't afford to be the next victim of information security leaks.  In this guide, we'll look at how you can implement an online marketing plan without risking an embarrassing or costly hacking incident.

#1: Have Longer, More Secure Passwords

This seems very easy, but when vast password leaks happen, it invariably turns out that the most common passwords are incredibly insecure—things like “12345,” “password,” and “Password.”  If you're not yet using very secure passwords, consider that even adding a few additional characters to the end of your password can make it substantially more difficult to break.

Many services today will actually limit your password choices, trying to ensure that you choose a password with enough special characters and numbers that it will be difficult for a hacker to guess.  However, you should also make sure that your longer password is something you can remember easily.  One of the best ways to make a password that is both secure and easy to remember is to abbreviate a sentence that you'll remember for a long time.  It can be a saying, a favorite movie quote, anything—just use the first initials of each word, perhaps substituting an occasional number or special character where you feel they'll be memorable (like 1 for I, and so on).  For example, “Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all,” becomes “l1f1jftdta.”

#2: Use Secure Software

How do you know if the software you're using is secure?  It's not always easy to tell.  In general, the more commonly used a piece of software is, the more likely it is to be secure—but the more likely it is that hackers are trying to find their way around its security systems.  The two ways that you can choose to deal with this issue are to use programs that are less common (a solution commonly called “security through obscurity”) or to only use programs from companies that have good track records of keeping data safe.

#3: Avoid “Social Engineering” Hacking

Even if you have fantastic passwords and great software, they might not be enough to save you from a breach if a social engineer comes to your workplace.  These are hackers who specialize in charming others and in some way misrepresenting themselves in order to gain access to your data.  The best way to avoid social engineering hackers is simply to be aware of their existence.  Make sure that any staff who have been given your social media passwords are aware of the existence of these hackers, and that they understand no passwords are to be given to anyone without authorization of specific people in your law firm.

A common guise for a social engineering hacker is as a tech support person from a company whose software you use.  The hacker comes in, says they need to do some software updates or fix a computer problem, and simply asks for the password you took so much time coming up with.

#4: Keep Hardware and Software Updated

Even the most secure software can have occasional vulnerabilities that are exposed by either hackers or people working internally at the company to fix bugs.  When breaches and vulnerabilities are discovered, companies develop software patches and driver fixes that can make them run better while being less vulnerable to hackers.

If you're not routinely updating your hardware and software, including both software applications and your operating system, you could be setting yourself up for a serious information security breach.  The higher the profile of your law firm, the more likely it is that a hacker could try to use a backdoor into your computer systems to try to obtain your data.

#5: Read Up on Information Security News

In order to know which software packages are most likely to remain secure and what the biggest topics in keeping your information safe are, you'll need to start looking into information security news.  It may not seem like the most exciting topic, but having this understanding will mean that you're able to plug security holes faster and get through major security weaknesses involving widely used programs without having your data compromised.

For example, let's say that you find out that a new critical security flaw has been found in Java.  You may choose to disable Java runtime environments on your computers until the breach has been fixed and Java can be updated on your machines.  While this kind of thing may seem like it takes time and hurts efficiency, the amount of productivity and money lost to a single information security breach is massive—keep in mind that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

#6: Own Up to Mistakes and Leaks Right Away

Uh oh.  The worst thing happened, in spite of all your efforts: you've been hacked.  Your website's a graffiti-covered mess and you're not sure how much of your clients' data was obtained by the hackers.  When something like this happens, there's a tendency in some companies to want to sweep it under the rug.  However, things like this tend to come out—and when they do, you'll want to have been transparent the entire time.  If you're seen as lying or trying to cover up the truth, you're going to risk losing a great deal of face and sacrificing a reputation for honesty and forthrightness.

#7: Use Different Passwords For Different Services

Too many people, once they have a password that “works” for most services, use that password over and over.  The problem with this way of thinking is that when you operate with just one password, it only takes people knowing one of your passwords to learn all the others.

Make sure that each of the social networks you're using, as well as your website, have different passwords.  This will help ensure that even if someone manages to get hold of a password for your social media accounts, they won't have passwords for your automated emailing program.

Not all material on Twitter has to be original.  In fact, of the over 100 million tweets sent on Twitter daily, a majority of them are actually re-tweets—copying something that someone else already said.  When you're new to Twitter, getting used to the etiquette and norms of re-tweeting can seem a bit daunting.  That's what this guide is for: helping marketing professionals understand when, how, and why to re-tweet and how to get the most out of copying and sharing the content of others.

#1: Use Retweets Sparingly

Keep in mind that as a business, you shouldn't be spending all of your Twitter time re-tweeting.  People do want original content, and that means that you should make sure that at least half the posts you tweet are actually completely original.

Overusing re-tweets can often be a sign of a law firm marketing professional who is feeling too overworked to create their own content consistently.  If you are unable to make new content, consider devoting more time to your Twitter account.  In general, you should only consider a few posts a day to be worth re-tweeting.  If you re-tweet too often, it's one of the fastest ways to watch your number of followers decline day after day.  Very few people want to read a Twitter account that is just a list of re-tweets related more or less to the law.

#2: Watch Whose Tweets You're Re-Posting

If you see a great idea in a tweet, you may want to immediately retweet it.  However, this would be ignoring some vital aspects of business and reputation management today.  Before you decide you're going to re-post someone else's tweet, make sure you know who that someone else is.  Even a seemingly innocuous tweet can turn into a big scandal if it turns out that it was originally from someone who was, in some way, media poison.

If your re-tweets are coming from sources that could potentially be offensive, you may wonder what to do.  The right idea?  Forget that tweet and come up with something new.  There's no reason to offend people with your law firm Twitter account.  It's just not worth it—the risk vastly outweighs the reward.  Stick to re-tweeting from safe sources when you decide to re-post the content of others.

#3: Do a Reality Check

One of the most embarrassing things you can do on Twitter as a company is to re-tweet a post with factual information, only to find out that the facts were wrong and the tweet was a hoax or prank.  This kind of thing happens in the online world all the time today—Twitter rumors have started about topics from celebrity deaths to presidential conspiracies.  In order to avoid being caught up in a rumor that turns out to be false, make sure that you're verifying the facts before you press “enter” and re-tweet the information.

One of the best websites for doing a quick fact check online is snopes.com.  If something you see being tweeted sounds like it could be an urban legend or hoax, Snopes is one of the best places you can go on the web to see whether it's true or false.  The site includes thousands of popular hoaxes, and can give you reassurance before you re-tweet factual information.  Snopes will tell you nbot only whether your content is true or false, but also where it comes from.

#4: Check Existing Responses

Even if a tweet sounds like a great idea initially, there may be some flaws you hadn't thought of.  To avoid looking silly, consider that you may want to check on whether people have already been responding to a tweet in both its original and re-tweeted forms.  If it seems like the responses are limited to agreement and re-tweets, you're probably good to re-tweet the content yourself.  On the other hand, if you're seeing a lot of disagreement and controversy, you have to consider whether it's the kind of disagreement you want to foster on your own Twitter feed.

#5: Re-Tweeting Up and Re-Tweeting Down

You'll have two types of connections on Twitter: people who have more connections and more social clout than you, and people who have less.  When you retweet, you should consider making your re-tweets a combination of re-tweeting up (repeating content said by someone with less social clout, so that more people can see what they have said) or re-tweeting down (repeating content by an already popular content producer for people with fewer connections and less social clout to see).

Giving yourself a mix of these kinds of re-tweets ensures that you keep the loyalty of your followers who aren't as well socially connected, while also giving you ways to re-tweet some of the biggest names in your field.

#6: Posting Re-Tweets on Other Social Media Sites

If you want to post a tweet to another social media website, like Facebook or LinkedIn, that's a great idea—ideas propagate across these networks today, and what starts on Twitter can easily end up on Youtube, LinkedIn, or anywhere else on the entire internet.  However, make sure that if you're posting re-tweets to another site, you're not doing it too often.  Once in a while is cross-pollination, but if people wanted to read re-tweet after re-tweet every day, they'd get their own Twitter account rather than reading your content on other social media sites instead.

#7: Follow Re-Tweeters

When you notice that your own original content is being picked up and re-tweeted, you should consider starting to follow the people who are re-tweeting your content.  Often, re-tweeters who find your content interesting enough to share are exactly the kinds of people who make the best brand ambassadors.

By following re-tweeters and making some kind of direct Twitter contact with them, you can make sure that they continue to read your Twitter feed and interact with other members of Twitter in a way that makes your tweets get more exposure.