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.

Ten years ago, there were only about half a dozen active social bookmarking websites.  Today, there are thousands, and you may be considering getting social bookmarking services to help you understand the strategies you'll need to use them correctly.  Before you hire any social bookmarking service, though, you need to know about social bookmark etiquette and how your service should behave online.  If your social bookmark service is doing a lot of the “don'ts” and isn't doing most of these “do's,” you need to look for other social bookmarking services as soon as possible.

DO Use More Than One Social Bookmarking Website

Any good social bookmarking service will include submissions on several different websites.  This is one of the best reasons to get a social bookmark service, because multiple submissions can be time-consuming and very boring—exactly the kind of work that your firm might be very comfortable with outsourcing.

Social bookmarking services may post to just a few, or up to several hundred, different websites.  The value added that you get from these additional websites, though, may be not as much as you expect.  After the most popular fifty or so social bookmarking sites, the remaining sites have little traffic or activity.  You may be better off hiring social bookmarking services that give you better links on fewer websites.

DON'T Use Social Bookmarking Websites You're Unfamiliar With

It's important for your social bookmark service to provide you with a list of the websites they plan to submit your links on.  It's very possible that a social bookmarking service would want to submit a link to a website that you might be uncomfortable having a presence on.  If this is the case, you always have a right to tell the social bookmark service to remove that website from the list of websites they're posting to.

Additionally, social bookmarking services should be able to demonstrate for you that they have a knowledge of how these websites differ.  If a social bookmarking service is using identical headlines on all websites or is otherwise treating them as a homogeneous group, you need to find a better social bookmark service.  The difference between websites can be huge, and social bookmarking services that don't recognize and compensate for differing web cultures will be unsuccessful in driving traffic to your site.

DO Set Up a Personal Social Bookmarking Website Account First

Before you even choose a social bookmark service to work with, consider setting up your own account on a few social bookmarking sites.  This will help you do a better job evaluating social bookmarking services, because you'll understand more of what social bookmarks are all about.

DON'T Post Too Often on Any Social Bookmarking Website

If you notice that a social bookmark service is posting very frequently and that your inbound link number is increasing rapidly, you might be ready to praise them.  However, the truth is, you're likely to be penalized by Google if your social bookmarking service posts too many links too quickly.  Google is getting very good at detecting when social bookmarking services are automating posts rather than making new headlines for every new post.

DO Post Relevant, Interesting Content to Social Bookmarking Websites

No matter how amazing your social bookmarking service is, it doesn't matter a bit if you're not making good content.  Bad content won't draw in new people, and even if your search engine rankings go up, your conversion rates will remain dismal.  Content is king, even for social bookmarking services, and if you're posting interesting entries to a blog regularly you'll have a head start on all the firms that are just posting to their company website or attorney biographies.

The more unusual your content, the more likely it is that a social bookmark service can make it go viral.  This is the ultimate goal for the best social bookmarking services, because virality will mean you get a huge number of additional views and inbound links.  A good social bookmarking service can help you develop a viral strategy based on what has worked for them in the past.

DON'T Post Ads—Well, Not Most Ads

If you have your social bookmarking service post links that direct to URLs containing direct advertisements, whether in video or text format, you won't see an increase in site traffic.  In fact, your social bookmark service probably won't be able to help you keep the link, because many websites will delete it right away.  Most social bookmarking websites are ad supported, and if you're trying to advertise blatantly for free, the sites have a good financial motivation to remove your posts.

The only time you should ever have social bookmarking services submit an ad is if you've made a very creative, funny, or informative advertisement.  A very funny lawyer ad could have the potential to go viral, even if it's submitted through a social bookmarking service.

DO Tailor Your Submissions to Each Social Bookmarking Website

Your social bookmark service should know enough about each of the websites you're using that there will be subtle differences in the headlines associated with each page.  This not only helps your social bookmarking service to get more positive attention from the users of each site (because it's demonstrating an understanding of their values), but also to evade Google's detection algorithms.

DON'T Keep Using Social Bookmarking Services That Automate

If you find out that the social bookmark service you're using is automating content submissions, find another service.  There are plenty of social bookmarking services that use manual submissions, and this type of social bookmarking service is much more likely to get good results.  

Automation through a social bookmark service shows that you don't seem to care very much about the communities you're posting to—it shows that you'd rather spam them than participate in a conversation with them.  Would you want to do business with a law firm like that?  You need a social bookmarking service that doesn't make potential clients feel like they're being ignored.
 

It's a sad truth of the search engine marketing world: most of the people trying to talk to you about the Next Big Thing are trying to sell you something.  Almost every review of social bookmarking software online is being produced by people who have a financial stake in making you believe that their program is the best social bookmarking software on the market.  If you want unbiased information about both paid and free social bookmarking software, you've come to the right place.  In this guide, we'll talk about several different types of social bookmarking software.  You'll also learn that in many cases, the best social bookmarking software for lawyers is no software at all—something that most other websites will never mention.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a new way of sharing content with other internet users. The lines between social bookmark websites and social network sites has become blurred in recent years, but in general, a social bookmarking site exists mostly for users to share links to content.  This means that before you use any social bookmarking software, you'll want to have content to link to.

The reason that law firms have recently taken an interest in finding the best social bookmarking software is that these websites can generate inbound links.  Inbound links created with paid or free social bookmarking software can then, in turn, make it so that your law firm is more likely to appear on the first page of Google search results (where over 90 percent of searchers find the answer they're looking for).

What is an Automated Submitter?

One of the most common types of social bookmarking software—and probably the most controversial—is the automated submission system.  Because there are so many websites dedicated to social bookmarking, an automated submitter gathers them all and allows for mass posting.  Often, this is not free social bookmarking software.  Some of the best social bookmarking software in this category, like Bookmarking Demon, can cost in excess of $100.

What Are the Advantages of Automated Submitters?

Using automated submission social bookmarking software can save you hundreds of man-hours versus doing your submissions manually.  What's more, the best social bookmarking software in this category will be very likely to include listings for many more social bookmarking websites than you even knew existed (and most allow you to add more sites when you want to).

Another advantage that automated submitter social bookmarking software gives you is being able to quickly review your submissions.  It can be much harder to do this without downloading any free social bookmarking software, so many marketers are glad to have this part of their jobs fully automated.

What Are the Disadvantages of Automated Submitters?

The biggest disadvantage of using even the best social bookmarking software in the automated submission category is that Google is getting wise to these auto-submitters.  Google considers this kind of automation through paid or free social bookmarking software to essentially be a form of cheating, and will penalize websites they believe are using social bookmarking software.

Some of the makers of the best social bookmarking software for automating submissions claim that they have managed to find workarounds so that Google doesn't notice.  However, whether you're using paid or free social bookmarking software, loopholes get closed.  Workarounds are figured out and cut off at the source.  More than once already in 2012, Google has found listings that are being created by free social bookmarking software and taken away their link juice.

Other Types of Social Bookmarking Software

If you want to use the best social bookmarking software for the long term, automated submissions may be the wrong way to go.  Instead, you may want to consider using a piece of free social bookmarking software that just assists you with creating manual submissions.

Other social bookmarking software can help you to keep track of whether people are repeatedly commenting on or sharing your links.  By using the best social bookmarking software in this category, you'll find who your brand ambassadors are online.  There are both paid and free social bookmarking software solutions for tracking friends.

Where Can I Try Out Free Social Bookmarking Software?

There is very little fully functional free social bookmarking software that does submission automation.  Even if you were to find some, it would be far from the best social bookmarking software available.  If you want to use good social bookmarking software for free, try using Onlywire.  This is one of the few pieces of free social bookmarking software that allows you to partially automate your links, while allowing you to maintain a great deal of control.

Keep in mind that the best social bookmarking software tends to cost money because the research into developing Google-proof algorithms takes a great deal of time and effort.  Most software producers simply aren't willing to put that kind of work into free social bookmarking software, so freeware is more likely to be identified by Google, especially if it's fully automated.

Alternatives to Social Bookmarking Software

While social bookmarking software has certainly made a big splash in the search engine marketing world, questions remain about its efficacy in driving traffic to websites.  As a law firm, you can't afford to have your reputation or your search rankings damaged by using free social bookmarking software that later turns out to have been a bad idea.  Use extreme caution when picking your best social bookmarking software solution.

For many law firms, the best social bookmarking software is none at all—manual submissions are more personalized, more interesting, and less “canned” sounding than spamming many different sites with automation tools.  If you become a real part of just a few online social bookmarking communities, the people in those communities can do more to promote your website than even the best social bookmarking software on the market today.  People won't make spam go viral, but fantastic content combined with real community participation is the ultimate recipe for a campaign that markets itself.

Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit: these four names are the biggest names in social bookmarking, and are used by a combined total of over 300 million unique users.  The biggest social bookmarking sites have become so successful that they've inspired thousands of imitators and a big new marketing industry.  In a quest for social bookmark submission, some law firm marketers have started to use automated social bookmarking submission service software.  But is this the right way to do social bookmarking submission, and are there alternatives that work better?  Keep reading to find out.

A Brief History of Social Bookmark Submission

Social bookmarking submission started with the first social bookmarking websites, like Digg.  Digg was the first truly open social bookmarking submission service, allowing anyone to submit a link of any type as long as it conformed to basic decency guidelines.

However, social bookmark submission has changed over the years.  As people began to use a social bookmarking submission service in order to get more inbound links for SEO purposes, rather than just to share something new and cool with their friends, users got more aware of spam and marketing materials.  Today, good social bookmarking submission is more difficult than it was in the past.

The sites that are most popular are changing as well.  While Digg still has the highest number of users of the “traditional” social bookmarking submission service websites (Twitter is excluded as being primarily a social networking site),

Do We Need Social Bookmark Submission?

Although some marketers considered social bookmark submission to be much less important than using social networks, social bookmarkers are among the best brand ambassadors on the internet.  They tend to be logged on more and have more connections to more people in more places—making social bookmarking submission much more valuable than it's often given credit for.

There's a reason that most of the time, viral content is started on these social bookmark submission websites and then picked up later by people using Facebook and Twitter.  The members of social bookmarking websites view themselves as content curators, and are actively working to create the newest big viral sensation on the web.  Facebook and Twitter users are more numerous, but they also tend to act like a herd, following viral trends that have already started and developed from a social bookmark submission.  While it can be relatively easy to automate social networks, a social bookmarking submission service can start to run into trouble.

The Automation Question and How it Affects Social Bookmarking Submission

The most common reason for a law firm to hire a social bookmarking submission service is that they want for their submissions to be fully automated.  However, there are some big problems with automating social bookmarking submission, and any law firm that is considering automation needs to take these issues into account.

If you're automating your content across many different social bookmark submission websites by using a social bookmarking submission service, what do the users of those websites think of you?  You can actually tell by looking at whether, on the bigger social bookmark submission websites, you're actually getting upvoted or upmodded.  If you're not—and if you're using automation, you won't be—you aren't actually getting links that people are following or even seeing.

Social bookmarking submission is tough to do effectively through automation because the people who use social bookmark submission websites are, for lack of a better term, internet nerds.  Many of them have grown up using the internet, and know the telltale signs that a link came from a social bookmarking submission service rather than being submitted organically.  They're very tough to fool, and getting tougher by the day.

Google Penguin Strikes Back at Automated Social Bookmark Submission

It's not just users of social bookmarking submission websites that are ticked off at automated social bookmarking submission services.  Google has made its displeasure with automatic social bookmark submission known by penalizing links made with these services (an algorithm called Google Penguin).  If you use a social bookmarking submission service, even if it works at first, it could stop producing any link juice with absolutely no warning.

One of the biggest ways that Google detects non-organic social bookmarking submission is by looking at your overall traffic and your number of inbound links.  A brand new website would never naturally have 1000 different people with accounts on different social bookmark submission websites suddenly recommend it.  This kind of unnatural behavior very clearly shows that you're using an automated social bookmarking submission service, and Google won't hesitate to “sandbox” your site (penalize its rankings so that it's no longer getting any benefit from the non-organic links).

Community Matters: Social Bookmarking Submission as Community Building

If automation isn't the answer for social bookmarking submission, what is?  Keep in mind that if your goal is content virality (which will drive the highest number of new links to your website, and can be 99% organic after your initial “push”), you should consider social bookmark submission websites to be your #1 priority.

After a particular social bookmarking submission site has been around for a while, they consider themselves to be much more than a social bookmarking submission service.  The members consider themselves part of a real community.  On some social bookmark submission websites, members have banded together to give very real financial help to people in hard times, or have used their connections to get interviews with some of the most powerful and famous people in our time.

When you use an automated social bookmarking submission service, you disrespect that community by telling it that it's not worth spending real time or effort on.  It's like sending a tape recorded message of your voice to a partners' meeting instead of coming on your own—unlikely to be received well, and likely to reflect very poorly on your level of commitment.  

Instead, participate actively.  Answer people's questions, build a real presence on several websites.  Not only will this be a great deal more fun than social bookmark submission through a computer program, it's also likely to lead to better networking opportunities and more chances for your content to go viral.

Even the very biggest social bookmarking website, Twitter, is only being used by just over one in four law firms.  Making use of a social bookmarking tool can make your job easier when you've been assigned to create a social bookmark presence for your law firm.  As inbound links have become more important, social bookmarking tools have proliferated all over the web.  Before you decide to purchase any social bookmarking tool, read this guide.  You'll find out why not all social bookmarking tools do what they claim—and why some could actually be damaging to your law firm's marketing campaigns.

How Does Social Bookmarking Work?

When you create a traditional site bookmark in your web browser, you can come back and visit a website any time you like, even if you don't remember the URL. When you create a social bookmark, you're not just marking a website for your own later perusal, you're also showing it to other people who might be interested.  They, in turn, can share it with their friends, and can also comment on it to make their opinions on your link known.

Because so many links come into the biggest social bookmarking hubs every minute, the people using these websites need some way to sort through the links and determine which ones are most likely to be high quality.  The solution used by most social bookmarking websites is a voting system that allows people to vote on their favorite submissions.  Whoever gets the most votes (based on a weighted system that takes time since the submission into account) has their link displayed first.  It's very easy to put a link onto a website with a social bookmarking tool, but it can be very difficult to get a link on the front page of these sites.

Types of Social Bookmarking Tools: Buttons For Your Site

One of the most commonly used types of social bookmarking tool is the humble button.  You have probably seen these buttons on blogs and news websites, asking you to “digg it” or submit a link to Reddit or Twitter.  These buttons are very harmless social bookmarking tools, and can be useful for nearly any law blog.

If you already maintain a blog, it is very easy to find some code to put these buttons on your website.  Often, social bookmarking tools to create these buttons will also include code to help you track what is done with them and how often they're clicked.  Don't use too many buttons—choose just half a dozen or so of the buttons from your favorite social bookmarking tool for button creation, or you'll have the potential to overwhelm your visitors with too many distracting graphics.

Types of Social Bookmarking Tools: Automated Submitters

Now we'll go from the most harmless social bookmarking tools to the one that can cause potentially the most harm to your website.  An automated submission social bookmarking tool probably sounds like a great idea the first time you hear about it.  Many of these social bookmarking tools automate the entire process of posting your link, from creating an account to making the posts.

If you're considering using a social bookmarking tool that sounds like this, stop and reconsider what you're doing.  Keep in mind that these are social websites, where people will talk about your site.  Do you want people's impression of you to be “that lawyer who spams Reddit”?  Or would you rather have it be “that lawyer on Reddit who's always really helpful to people going through a hard situation?”  Now you begin to see why it's not always a good idea to use this kind of social bookmarking tool.

Google isn't fooled, either, and that's where the other part of the harm equation comes in.  Not only can automated social bookmarking tools hurt your reputation with individual people, it can also make your website stick out like a sore thumb when Google looks at it.  If you've got far more links to your website, from a huge range of social bookmarking accounts, than your traffic would indicate is possible, you'll be penalized.  Organic social bookmarking links made without the use of social bookmarking tools tend to generate traffic as well as links.

Types of Social Bookmarking Tools: Friend Tracking

Another kind of social bookmarking tool that is relatively safe to use is a friend tracking tool.  These tools can help you to identify who is taking notice of your posts.  Many social bookmarking websites allow for people to list you as a “friend” and follow your posts.  By using social bookmarking tools like these, you can identify who your most useful friends are (the people who are giving you additional links and comments the most) and try to cultivate more friends using similar techniques.

Beyond Social Bookmarking Tools: Rules To Avoid Getting Banned

The worst thing that can happen as a result of your social bookmarking tool use is that you could be banned from a website.  While it's sometimes trivially easy to make a new account, people who do this repeatedly (especially using automated social bookmarking tools) will end up being IP blocked, making it much more difficult to get new accounts in the future.

In order to avoid getting banned, commit to only using social bookmarking tools that are white-hat and help you make good links with quality content.  You should also work on comments, not just post creation, and put real effort into your comments.  It doesn't take much for someone to notice that your history is a string of “good article” and other generic comments that don't necessarily have much to do with the conversation.

The more that you put in to social bookmarking websites, the more you'll be able to get out of them.  That's the ultimate rule to keep in mind no matter what social bookmarking tool you decide is best for you.  Garbage in equals garbage out, every time—so make sure you're not just polluting the communities you're posting in.

Free social bookmarking has created a new landscape for web marketers hoping to increase the number of inbound links coming to their websites.  With so many spammers trying to post links on free social bookmarking sites, though, it can be difficult to market good links effectively without being seen as just part of the spam problem.  In this guide, you'll learn how to do free social bookmarking in a way that enhances your firm's reputation, rather than diminishing it.

#1: Be a Lurker First

One of the easiest mistakes to make when using free social bookmarking sites is finding out about a new site, signing up for an account, and then posting your first link right away.  Before you do this, stop!  Think about what you're doing.  This would be a lot like coming to a party where you didn't know anybody at all, and then immediately trying to make yourself the center of attention.  It's a lot more likely that you'll get kicked out than that you'll find yourself making friends.

Instead, do what the free social bookmarking community calls “lurking.”  Read some free social bookmarking sites that strike you as interesting and potentially useful, so that you can see how people interact there. You may want to write notes down about each of the free social bookmarking sites you're interested in so that you can more easily keep track of them in your head.

#2: Know Your Audience

Audiences for different types of free social bookmarking content can be very different from one another.  For example, it's fairly rare for attorneys to post on free social bookmarking sites like Pinterest, not because these websites are bad or have too small an audience, but rather because their audience is simply interested in different things.

Free social bookmarking will come much more easily if you take stock honestly of the audience you have, not the audience that you want to have.  On many free social bookmarking websites, you can actually post to a much smaller sub-audience by putting posts into particular categories.  In the same way that you lurked on free social bookmarking sites to begin with, you need to lurk in these sub-groups to find out their individual etiquette and what could lead to a ban.

#3: Don't Just Post—Comment!

If your free social bookmarking account just posts links that are related directly to your law firm, it won't be long before you're caught out as a spammer.  Depending on which free social bookmarking websites you're using, the penalty for spamming could be as mild as deletion of your posts, or as severe as an IP ban (which will prevent you from registering or posting under any new account names).

In order to show that you really understand the concept of free social bookmarking and aren't just a spammer, you need to contribute to conversations.  Making comments about other people's posts is an absolute necessity on most free social bookmarking sites if you don't want to be seen as a spam linker.  What's more, your comments need to actually contribute and show an understanding of the discussion going on.  If you just make generic comments, this is an immediate red flag to other free social bookmarking users and you could find yourself banned.

#4: Build Connections and Track Friends

If you've followed the first three rules in this article about joining free social bookmarking websites, you should at some point start to connect with other users.  Perhaps someone often comments on your posts, or responds to your comments.  These people can be some of your biggest allies when it comes time for linking new posts to free social bookmarking sites.

You can get free social bookmarking tools that will help you to find out who your friends are and who is following you on any particular free social bookmarking websites.  Once you find these people, try sending them a private message (called a PM for short) that introduces yourself and attempts to make a more personal connection.  If you're successful in building these connections using free social bookmarking websites, you'll have even more sources to post your new inbound links.

#5: Handle Criticism Professionally

Not every link you put up on free social bookmarking sites will be a winner.  In fact, it's quite likely that at least once or twice you'll receive harsh critical comments.  Some of these comments may come from “trolls” who intentionally try to make people upset.  However, some are likely to be genuine criticism.  You need to be able to separate the two and understand that criticisms aren't meant personally.  Don't attack your critics, even if they are trolls—remember the old saying: don't wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

#6: Don't Astroturf

Some companies that start using free social bookmarking tools try to artificially inflate their presence on free social bookmarking websites using a technique known as “astroturfing.”  Usually, this involves getting several different free accounts, using one to post, and using more to comment (usually with effusive praise).

The problem with astroturfing is that it is all too obvious to longtime users of free social bookmarking websites.  Astroturfers leave behind several telltale clues, like when the poster and commenters all signed up for their accounts within a week of each other.  If you're found to be astroturfing on free social bookmarking sites, expect a ban—and possible public humiliation as the story comes to light.

#7: Keep Up With Internet Memes and Trends

In order to have the best chance of succeeding with your account on free social bookmarking websites, you'll need to keep up with the things that are being talked about there.  “Memes,” which happen when a piece of content spreads virally and becomes used as a catchphrase or inside joke, can be a great way to connect with your free social bookmarking site audiences.  By knowing their inside jokes, you'll be showing that you're one of them, not just a business person who is only interested in using their website and vanishing.

The majority of lawyers don't use Twitter yet.  Many lawyers wonder, what is a hashtag on Twitter or a 140 word post going to do that blog posts or Facebook posts don't do?  However, hashtags on Twitter are actually a very sophisticated and interesting system that can be used in a huge variety of ways.  If you haven't yet tried to make your own hashtag on Twitter, or if you're brand new and don't even know the answers to the basics, like “what is a hashtag on Twitter?”, you've come to the right place.  This guide starts with the basics of what a hashtag on Twitter does, and then works to teach legal marketing professionals how to create great hashtags on Twitter for law firm marketing purposes.

What is a Hashtag on Twitter?

There can be a huge number of new terms you've never heard of when you start using a website like Twitter.  What is a hashtag on Twitter?  It's basically the way that people do searches by topic, and how you can “tag” what a post is about so that other people can find it.  For example, if someone wanted a post about a policy at Wal-Mart to get the attention of other people, they would use a hashtag on Twitter like #walmart (if they were being neutral) or #walmartfail (if they were being negative).

Hashtags on Twitter don't always mean exactly what you think they do.  Sometimes, a hashtag on Twitter will be used ironically or sarcastically.  In fact, when companies with bad public relations problems have tried to create their own hashtags on Twitter, they often find them co-opted by people who will subvert them.

What is a hashtag on Twitter that went wrong?  When Newsweek created a story called “Muslim Rage” for one of their recent 2012 editions, they didn't anticipate that Muslims all over the USA and around the world would co-opt their article title as a hashtag on Twitter.  Far from being used to show “raging” Muslims, the hashtag on Twitter instead was used playfully and ironically, with people using it and other associated hashtags on Twitter to link to images of Muslims playing on playgrounds, petting cats, and dancing in the streets.

Because of this potential for people to use hashtags on Twitter in any way they choose, it's important to have a good grasp of what is a hashtag on Twitter before you ever start to use them.

What is a Hashtag on Twitter Used For?

Hashtags on Twitter can be used for a very wide range of purposes.  In some cases, people use a hashtag on Twitter not really so that they'll be found, but so that they can express the overall feeling or topic of their post.

At other times, hashtags on Twitter can be used as a form of instant communication and conversation.  What is a hashtag on Twitter that did that?  During Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, people involved in the protest used hashtags on Twitter to communicate movements of police and protesters to each other, even among protesters who didn't know each other personally.

How Can Hashtags on Twitter Work for Law Firms?

Even if you understand now the answer to the question “what is a hashtag on Twitter?”, how does that translate into the real world of law firms?  Well, law firms can actually use hashtags on Twitter in many of the same ways that other businesses and groups do.  If you want to connect with other lawyers, you can start using a hashtag on Twitter that would primarily be used by other attorneys—usually something that's “inside baseball” to your field of law.

If you're looking to get clients from your Twitter presence, you can start making tweets that are about legal issues in the news.  Try finding which hashtags are already being used for a particular event.  How do you find out what is a hashtag on Twitter that is being used already for a topic?  Try searching on Tagalus, which will suggest things based on what you type in.

You can also use hashtags on Twitter to help you communicate brand messages.  Just be sure that your hashtag on Twitter isn't exclusively used for advertising, or it will quickly become known as a spam hashtag and won't get much further attention.

Do We Need Our Own Hashtags on Twitter?

Now that you know not just what is a hashtag on Twitter but also how hashtags on Twitter can work for you, you should probably consider creating a tag or two of your own.  Often, the easiest way to make your own hashtag on Twitter (one that nobody has ever used but you) is to include some reference to your brand in your hashtag.  For instance, any abbreviation of your firm's name can become part of the tag that you use.

If you're still not comfortable with using a hashtag on Twitter (or you are still having trouble understanding exactly what is a hashtag on Twitter), you don't really need to make any new ones.  Instead, you can pick other people's hashtags that appeal to you and are relevant to your post.

Should We Use Other People's Hashtags on Twitter?

Whether or not you decide to create a hashtag on Twitter (or more than one) just for your firm, keep in mind that the best way to have a discussion over Twitter is to make use of other people's established hashtags.  You can keep track of which hashtags are popular by looking at Hashtags.org or any other website devoted to analyzing trending topics.

Each hashtag on Twitter that you use should be one that you are comfortable with using, understand the definition of, and won't misuse.  If you're not quite sure what a particular hashtag on Twitter means, don't be afraid to look it up using Urban Dictionary or TagDef, which are both resources that can help you understand any unintended meanings before you start using a particular tag.