Many law firms today are looking for places where they can expand their social media reach and attract more new clients.  Today's hyper-competitive market demands a hyper-competitive social media presence, but how do you go beyond Facebook and into fabulous?  This guide will give you seven great ways to get ahead of the competition and get the best social media presence you can—all without costing an arm and a leg!

#1: Get In With the Group

Many social media sites have “group” pages, including Facebook and LinkedIn.  If you're not already using groups, you need to be.  Consider making a group for attorneys at your firm, and joining groups of people who are already in groups that are relevant to your practice areas.  Groups are a great way to get to know people who may be able to help you make connections in your local area.  They can also help you learn about the latest events going on locally, nationally, and internationally when you have a specific interest area covered by the group.

Of course, just joining the group isn't enough.  You need to be active and participating a reasonable amount in the group in order to have it make any impact on your bottom line.  Don't just affirm what other people say, try to create new conversations and get dialogues started between people who have different viewpoints.

#2: Consider a Viral Promotion

If you're looking to promote based on free consultations with a freebie included, you need to be talking about it in social media.  When promotions go viral, it can get you a big batch of new clients in a hurry, all without spending tons of money on the initial advertising.

However, be very careful: if you're giving away physical objects, for instance, you'll want to either limit the number of freebies you're planning to give away, or simply get enough that you can cover the number of new consultations scheduled.

#3: Blog, Blog, Blog!

Blogging is one of the best ways to ensure that you've got a stream of content to link to in your other social media websites.  Blogging lets you write in longer form, which can often be very useful to attorneys.  Try not to make your blog entries too long—in fact, consider changing up the length, so that some of your entries are 1000 words while others are just 200-300.  If you're just reposting a link with something brief to say about it, feel free to write a short, 50-100 word blurb—but make sure you're posting original content most of the time.

When you do post content from other sources, always make sure it's appropriate.  People will judge you based on what you link—so be sure that you're linking things you can be proud to share with the public.

#4: Consider Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites like Reddit.com can help you to get your blog entries and other content into the world.  These websites generally allow anyone to post a link to whatever content they want, allowing the audiences on the website to decide which posts will succeed and which will fail.  If you're not already using social bookmarking sites, make sure to look around and get a feel first.  Many companies have been roundly mocked after having tried too hard too fast, without understanding what people on a particular social bookmarking website were looking for.

#5: Make Friends Online and Off

Today, since Facebook has over 1 billion users worldwide, the odds are very good that even people you meet in the offline world will be active users of social media.  This means that when you start introducing yourself to people, you should also be proactive about finding out whether you can connect to them on social media.  You may also want to adapt your business cards to include URLs for your main social media profiles.

Keep in mind that people who know you offline can often be your best online cheerleaders.  Making new acquaintances and work connections in the real world is one of the best ways to make sure your network keeps growing online instead of staying with the same core group of people for a long time.  While having a core is great, keeping your social media presence vibrant relies on always having some new people coming in.

#6: Participate in Events

Participating in networking events, or just participating in the events you're invited to from your friends' Facebook invitations, can be a good way to make sure you're getting some social media attention.  Often, these events will result in some photographs that you can put up on your social media pages, making sure to tag your staff.

Events are a good way to make sure that your firm is getting involved not only in work related networking, but with networking in the community as well.  Many event invitations are for community and charitable events, which can be a great place for you to find new social media connections that can talk about your brand with even more friends and acquaintances.  Make sure that all attorneys in your firm are thinking about the firm's social media presence at events and that they're sharing your social media contact information with friends and acquaintances.

#7: Answer LinkedIn Questions

If you're on LinkedIn, like nearly 90 percent of attorneys, you should consider going into the Questions segment of the website.  Answering LinkedIn questions is a great way to be able to interact with potential clients and show your skills in understanding legal problems and interfacing with the public.  Keep in mind the limitations on what advice you can offer someone online without meeting for an actual consultation.

Because LinkedIn gives your contact details, answering questions there makes it very easy for people who see your answer and like what they see to give you a call.  This increases conversion rates and makes LinkedIn Answers a great choice for getting clients quickly.

You may not have given much thought to managing your online reputation in years past.  Less than a quarter of law firms are currently engaging in active reputation management strategies online, and the numbers are even lower for small firms and solo practitioners.  However, with consumers using searches and online reputation rankings more and more frequently, the time is now to get into the reputation management game.  Here are 7 tips that will help get you started with managing your online reputation whether you're a large or small law firm:

#1: Start Right Away

You may think that your firm has a fairly good reputation online already, and that because of this, you don't need to do much reputation management, if any.  You may think that keeping your clients happy is all that you need to do to ensure the continued success of your online reputation.  However, when you coast in this way, you're ignoring the fact that disgruntled former clients—or even, in a worse case, disgruntled competitors or people with personal vendettas—could still badmouth your firm in a way you might not even notice for weeks or months, scaring off potential clients all the while.

Understanding reputation management and beginning to use monitoring tools is something every law firm should do, regardless of whether your online footprint is currently big or small.  In fact, small law firms can benefit more from monitoring if something ever goes wrong.  With a large firm, a single negative review or angry website posting will probably be lost among many positive reviews.  If you're a small firm that doesn't do much online, a single person could ruin what people see about you in Google.

#2: Get Reputation Management Software

Reputation management software can make it significantly easier and faster for you to monitor what people are saying about you online.  Some of this software can be free, but this may be more limited in functionality or user interface.  Reasonably priced reputation management software is a great investment for your law firm, because it lets you rest easy that you're seeing what people have to say about your firm on social media channels and all over the web.

#3: Pay for a Yelp Premium Account

Controversy has erupted over whether Yelp deliberately hides positive reviews and shows negative ones for businesses that won't pay a fee for a premium account.  While Yelp denies the accusation and courts have so far found in the website's favor, the accusation is still common and lawsuits are still ongoing.

You can take your chances, or you can pay the fee, which also gives you the ability to feature particular reviews and a much better shot at clearing out bad ones.  You'll also be able to show more about your business on your Yelp page if you pay the cost for an account.  With fees of around $300 a month, you have to ask whether you're getting any billable hours—any at all—because of Yelp.  If the answer is yes, odds are that being able to filter reviews and feature the ones you like best is worth your money.  Give them their pound of flesh so you can move on to more pressing matters without having to worry as much about negative Yelp reviews.

#4: Consider Outsourcing Reputation Management

If you're having a difficult time figuring out a reputation management strategy that works for your firm, especially if you're working for a large law firm, you may want to outsource your reputation management.  This can be a good alternative to having to hire another employee to take care of reputation management online, and these companies specialize in ensuring that your online reputation in web searches is clean and ready to be viewed by consumers and other businesses alike.

#5: Find Good Brand Ambassadors

One of the best ways to manage your reputation online is to make sure that you have people saying good things about you.  You know who some of your happiest and chattiest clients are.  By asking them if they'll leave you favorable reviews in the social media world and on review websites, you can ensure that you have a steady supply of good reviews coming in.  That's important, because if many months pass between reviews, people may be more reluctant to contact your firm, assuming that the attorneys or level of service may have changed in the time since the last review was written.  In general, consumers seem to convert more easily when at least one review is less than 3 months old.

#6: Be Calm When People Criticize

It's easy to be upset when you hear a negative critique of your law firm for the first time.  It's even more upsetting if you feel like you're being criticized for things that are either beyond your control or that are unfair.  Even if you think the criticisms leveled at your law firm are completely without merit, don't lose your cool.  The worst thing that you can do for your reputation is to attack critics.  It never looks good, even if you're really in the right.

When people criticize you, the best thing to do is acknowledge their feelings and keep talking up the positives of your firm.  If they act abusively, you should restrict them from posting to your social media, and notify any social media websites about abusive or defamatory posts.  Don't waste time arguing.  You know what they say: don't wrestle with a pig.  You both get dirty, but only the pig likes it.

#7: Move On From Negative Publicity

Everyone's going to have a PR negative happen from time to time.  If your public relations nightmares just became reality, take a deep breath.  This, too, shall pass, and on the internet, reputations can change faster than ever.  Sometimes it's a good idea to hire a reputation management firm in the wake of PR problems, so that you can get your reputation monitoring and management back into good shape before taking the reins back over.

If you're a law firm marketing professional—or the person at your small law firm who is responsible for heading up web marketing efforts—you probably already know something about increasing your link popularity.  However, many of the methods for improving link popularity have actually stopped working as recently as 2012, because Google and other search engines have implemented big crackdowns on websites using “black hat” techniques for link building.  In this guide, you'll learn why white hat link popularity matters for your website, and five ways that you can start using the internet to generate more links.

Popularity Contest: Why Link Popularity Matters to Law Firms

Your link popularity is just a number that reflects how many inbound links come to your law firm's website.  Why do inbound links matter so much?  Because they're the easiest proxy by which Google and other search engines can detect your site's value to other websites and its perceived level of authority.

Because of this, when Google decides where your search results should rank, one of the top criteria it's using is your link popularity.  However, link popularity today is a bit more complicated than it used to be.  While pure quantity of links used to be enough to enhance your link popularity and get you on Page 1, today at least some of your links need to come from other websites that have high link popularity.  If you're only getting links from unpopular websites, Google tends to assume that you have artificially inflated your link count.

That's why the five methods we're going to look at in this guide are all completely “white hat,” which is to say, they help you build links by actually creating appealing content and putting it in front of the right audiences.  By using these tips, you'll greatly enhance your link popularity without using any techniques that Google might penalize now or in the future as search algorithms become more sophisticated

#1: Get a Law Blog, and Post Regularly

Over half of attorneys who have started a blog report that they've converted clients directly because of their blog entries.  That's a statistic that no lawyer in 2012 can afford to ignore.  If you want to, you can start a blog to increase your link popularity by just having it exist as one page on your website.  Another way to increase your link popularity is to host your blog offsite (at its own URL), then link back to your website on a regular basis.

Having a blog won't help you to increase link popularity unless you're updating it fairly frequently.  While too many posts (more than 2 a day) can actually make your blog harder to read and decrease your link popularity, having a few blog entries a week will really make a positive difference.

#2: Join Social Networks and Become Part of the Conversation

When you're working on increasing your link popularity, social networks need to become a part of your daily routine.  These websites can increase link popularity rapidly, and what's more, they have a high PageRank—which means that Google will give them more link juice that they can then contribute to your website.

Make sure that if you're trying to increase your link popularity through social networking,

#3: Ask Personal Connections for Links

This is one of the easiest ways to build link popularity, but surprisingly, not many law firms are doing it.  Your in person connections are an invaluable source for links.  If you know other link firms who have blogs, they can help you to increase your link popularity.  By arranging for a link exchange, in which you also link to their blog to help them increase their link popularity, you can be of mutual assistance to one another.

However, it's important that you don't build too much link popularity with link exchange.  If you use this tactic too much, Google will start to suspect that you've automated link exchanges to increase your link popularity.  Instead, build link popularity with a combination of reciprocal (two way) and one way links.

#4: Use Social Bookmarking Websites

One of the newer techniques that is great at increasing link popularity is called social bookmarking.  While this kind of bookmarking was once the province of a few communities of geeks, big communities like Digg and StumbleUpon now have tens of millions of users and are adding more every day.  The best part about building your link popularity with these websites is that they are generally free to join and allow you to make links whenever you want.

When using social bookmarking sites to boost link popularity, be careful not to violate website rules or do anything that could get you banned.  Your link popularity won't see any positive effects from your efforts on social bookmarking websites unless you're actually contributing and making a positive impact on the sites you're using.

#5: Seek Out Press Coverage For Your Firm

If your firm isn't getting the link popularity you want, consider trying press releases.  Don't just release your press releases to websites that publish any release that comes their way.  As a law firm, your link popularity can improve immensely from news coverage, and you should be working to get your press releases in front of reporters and news editors all over the area.

Keep in mind that the most successful press releases, and the ones most likely to boost link popularity for your firm, are the ones that already give journalists a hook or angle that they can use to attract readers.  The more generic your press release is, the less likely it is to be picked up by media sources and used to increase your link popularity.

Final Comments: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Whether you use one of these methods or several, you need to build link popularity somewhat slowly.  Google may sandbox your website if you are seen to be building links too quickly in a way that seems artificial.  You can avoid this by making sure that you're only posting links in a slow, steady stream rather than all at once in a big blitz.

Over two thirds of businesses using Twitter aren't doing analysis of their hashtags or their Twitter reach.  Whether you're starting to use Twitter by creating your own hashtags or by using other people's pre-existing tags, you may wonder how much of an effect your tweets are really having.  Hashtag tracking is a great way to monitor your Twitter marketing progress and is relatively simple to set up and use.  In this guide, we'll take a look at how to find a hashtag tracker that works for your business, and how to make hashtag tracking work smoothly no matter what tags you're using.

Analytics: The Key to Twitter Marketing Success

One of the biggest developments in marketing over the last decade or so has been a vast improvement in our ability to track and analyze people's behavior on their computers.  For example, most companies that are using search engine optimization techniques will periodically use Google Analytics or some other analysis software to help them understand which keywords are working best.

Twitter analytics are equally important, but perhaps because not enough companies are taking Twitter seriously yet, they tend to be disregarded.  Hashtag tracking is one of the easiest ways to start doing real analytics on your Twitter posts and the responses you're getting.  While a hashtag tracker can initially seem quite complicated, the purpose is simple: by tracking where your hashtags are spreading to, you can find new target markets and new places to get followers from.

How Does Hashtag Tracking Work?

Depending on what hashtag tracker you're using, tracking can happen in one of several ways.  The most basic type of hashtag tracking involves looking at the relative popularity of a hashtag over a long or short period of time.  A hashtag tracker like Hashtags.org can help you check this.  While you can always use this kind of hashtag tracking after you use a new hashtag (to track whether it has attained viral popularity), it's also a good idea to check out popularity trends before using an existing hashtag.

Another, more advanced, type of hashtag tracking happens when you look at who else started using the hashtags you produced.  In order to do this, you'll usually need a hashtag tracker tool specifically designed for the purpose of analyzing re-tweets and how hashtags spread.  These hashtag tracking tools work by searching for your hashtag and seeing how it spread virally.  When you want to see which of your experiments with hashtagging has been most successful, you need this type of hashtag tracker, not just a way to see popularity over time.

Is Using a Hashtag Tracker Expensive?

The cost of doing hashtag tracking largely depends on what kind of tracker software you're using.  If you're using a hashtag tracker on a publicly available website, like Hashtags.org, you can track hashtag popularity for free.  Many other sites that do simple hashtag tracking similarly come completely free of charge.

However, if you want to use a more complicated hashtag tracker, you might have a harder time finding free tools to use.  Hashtag tracking and analytics that looks at how your tags spread and how your hashtags are working can cost money, and some of them may cost more than others.  You should always be able to ask for a free trial of any software that you are curious about, so that you can try it before you buy and make sure the functionality and interface work for you.

Keep in mind that even if you have to pay some money for hashtag tracking, the benefits can more than make up for what you paid.  If you're able to find some hashtag solutions that seem to really work for generating new followers or even new clients, spending small amounts of money on software will have been a very good investment.

Is Using a Hashtag Tracker Difficult?

Most of the time, people making hashtag tracking software know very well that their target audience isn't made up of professional programmers.  As long as you have a basic understanding of how the hashtag system works, using a hashtag tracker should be fairly easy for anyone with basic computer competence.

Most paid hashtag tracking tools are designed with tutorials and help documentation to make sure that if you get stuck, you can figure out how to do what you're trying to do.  If you're using a free tool, there may not be as much support, but you can usually Google for any information about how to use a particular aspect of your hashtag tracker.

Can I Track Anything Else With a Hashtag Tracker?

In addition to letting you do hashtag tracking, some hashtag tracker software also lets you track the spread of URLs that you use in your tweets.  This can help you to identify which of your URLs was most effective at bringing new traffic to your website or blog.

Twitter actually makes it easier to track these, because your links will be made shorter automatically and assigned their own unique shortened Twitter URL.  This unique URL is much easier to track all over the web than if you had used the original URL from the blog or website you're linking to.

What Can I Do With Hashtag Tracking Results?

Using a hashtag tracker will generate a great deal of data, but of course that means very little unless you know how to use it.  One of the first things that you might notice about hashtag tracking results is that some of your hashtags are vastly outperforming others.  Do you notice a trend in the ones that work versus the ones that don't?  Perhaps a topic you're discussing just isn't of interest to your followers.  If you still want to talk about that topic, you may need to find new followers who might be more likely to re-tweet about it.

You may also see in your hashtag tracker that you get diminishing returns from a particular tag after using it several times.  If you notice a big dropoff after you've used hashtags ten times or more, for example, you now know a good place to cut off using a new tag.

It's really easy to start using hashtags on Twitter: just put any string of characters after a pound sign.  However, using hashtags effectively can be much more difficult.  Not all hashtags will ever become popular, and there is no guarantee that following a list of tips will give you the next major viral sensation hashtag.  By keeping these rules in mind, though, you give yourself the best chance possible of using hashtags on Twitter that will eventually make it big.

Rule #1: Keep Hashtags Short and Sweet

When using hashtags, the shorter you keep them, the easier they'll be for your audience to remember.  Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should strip out letters until it's as short as possible—a hashtag like #election2012 is much more readable than one that says #elctn12.  Don't over abbreviate when using hashtags on Twitter, or you'll find that you're completely alone in using hashtags that you create.

Rule #2: Use Hashtags More Than Once

Whether you're using hashtags of your own devising or using hashtags on Twitter that have already become popular, you need to make use of any hashtag more than once.  If you aren't using hashtags more than once while using popular tags, this is what will happen: you'll use a tag once, and then, within minutes or even seconds, it will fall off the first page of people looking for that tag.

If you're using your own unique hashtags, it's even more vital that you use them more than once.  If you're not using hashtags on Twitter more than once and you're making your hashtags up yourself, the ones you make are very unlikely to ever catch on.

Rule #3: Don't Use Too Many Hashtags in One Tweet

If you're #considering #typing #every #word #of #your #tweet #like #this in order to get the highest number of hashtags, forget it.  Using hashtags on Twitter is like using spices: you need to do it sparingly to get the best effect.  If all you're using is the “spice” of hashtags, people won't be able to get to the message underneath very easily.

While using hashtags two at a time can sometimes be effective (especially if they're related hashtags and people haven't been able to settle on one to use for an event yet), it's usually more effective to just use one.  Using hashtags on Twitter at a rate of more than two per tweet is generally frowned upon by readers, and might get your account listed as spam among some directories.

Rule #4: Search For Hashtags Before Using Them

You should never start using hashtags that are new to you before doing some preliminary searching for them.  Understanding the popularity level of hashtags before you use them will give you a better idea of when to post them and how often to use the same tag.

Hashtags.org is a good resource to check before using hashtags on Twitter.  Hashtags.org lets you know before using hashtags whether a tag is gaining popularity or seems to be on the decline, so you can strategize appropriately.  You may opt not to start using hashtags you've researched after you see that their popularity has already peaked and is now in steep decline.

Rule #5: Know Your Hashtag Definitions

Using hashtags on Twitter incorrectly can be not just embarrassing—in some cases, it can cripple your business.  The internet is full of “hashtag fails” that resulted when a company started using hashtags it didn't fully understand the meaning of.  For example, several companies have used hashtags that, without their knowledge, were being used to communicate information about natural disasters.  When that happens, people tend to get outraged—and they tend to vent their outrage right on Twitter, creating the kind of public relations nightmare that can haunt your company for months or even years to come.

In order to avoid the embarrassment, check definitions before using hashtags on Twitter. TagDef.com is a great resource to check before using hashtags, because it presents comprehensive definitions for many thousands of popular tags.

Rule #6: Don't Overuse a Hashtag

While you should be using hashtags on Twitter more than once, don't take this as license to post the same hashtag on different posts dozens of times a day.  While this strategy for using hashtags will certainly keep your hashtags visible, it'll also be obnoxious to anyone who is foolish enough to follow your Twitter feed.  No one wants to be flooded by messages—especially not from a business.

If you're using hashtags on Twitter multiple times in a day, keep it to just 3 or 4 times.  Remember, there's no rush—you can always do it again the next day.  This is a small enough number that your audience may not even notice you're using hashtags repeatedly in a day.

Rule #7: Invent Some Unique Hashtags

While it's great to start by using hashtags on Twitter that were created by other people, at some point you need to make your own branded hashtags as well.  Try using hashtags that are related to your firm's name or some aspect of the specialty area of law you focus on.  Generally, when anyone else starts using hashtags on Twitter that were originally yours, it's because they somehow got them from your feed.  This allows you to keep track of who's really looking and interacting with the content you're posting on Twitter.

Rule #8: Keep an Eye on Trending Hashtags

Checking some websites regularly to monitor popular hashtags is a great way to know what the Twitterverse is tuned into now.  By seeing what's popular today, you can sometimes even anticipate what will be trending soon.  For example, if you notice that a large number of people are tweeting about a particular court case, you can keep track of what's going on in that case and be ready with a link to a blog entry about the verdict (even better: have two blog entries already written once the jury goes to deliberate—that way, whatever the verdict is, you're ready with an analysis).