If your law firm doesn't consider marketing to be one of its strong suits—and studies show that nearly half of small firm partners consider marketing to be the most difficult part of their business—you may be considering asking an outside firm to handle some or all of your legal marketing work.  In today's marketing climate, though, not all elements of your marketing campaigns can be handled equally well by someone from outside your firm.  In this guide, we'll look at four distinct aspects of your marketing that you might be considering outsourcing: social media, reputation management, blogging, and advertising. 

Facebook/Social Media Marketing

Why You Might Want to Outsource It:

Let's face it, not every law office has someone who thinks that Facebook is the best and highest use of your firm's people and time.  Outsourcing your social media has an appeal, especially for attorneys who think they're above marketing to some extent—if you're afraid that your marketing efforts could come off as fake or desperate, it may be time to hire an outside firm.

You'll definitely want to outsource your social media marketing if you've found that you're unable to keep up with it.  If you're not posting regular updates and keeping up your web presence on social networks, you're going to lose followers and connections fast.  If you really need help and the alternatie is not having any social media presence, by all means, find a great professional company with experience helping law firms like yours.

Use Caution If:

Keep in mind that you get what you pay for when it comes to social media marketing—and most other outsourcing solutions.  If your firm uses a marketing firm that is inexpensive but hires people who don't understand the legal field, you're not going to be happy with your results.  In some cases, hiring a bad social media marketing firm could actually be disastrous.  Unethical conduct or just seeming impersonal, or having a bad command of the English language, could lead to your marketing company sinking your firm's reputation.  Think long and hard before hiring a bargain basement firm to do your social media.

Reputation Management

Why You Might Want to Outsource It:

It's stressful to worry about your firm's online reputation on a day to day basis, but it's also something that needs to be done.  Your online reputation can change in a heartbeat, and not always for reasons that are even your fault.  In some cases, a rival firm or disgruntled client could spread misinformation about your firm.  In other situations, you might find that you're getting criticism because of a specific policy or an interview you did with the media.

Knowing what people are saying about you is great—but finding out can be hard.  Outsourcing gives you the psychological distance to be able to deal constructively with critiques, instead of finding them and taking them personally.  Having a neutral third party looking at the criticisms of your firm can also help you to determine how to work on those criticisms and how best to respond.  In many situations, an online reputation management firm can help you have negative search results removed or pushed so low into the search results that it's unlikely anyone will ever find them again.

Use Caution If:

Online reputation management firms are really only something that your firm needs if you're relatively large.  Solo practitioners and very small firms don't generally need a team of people managing their online reputation, unless they handle very high profile cases that get a lot of media attention.  If you're working for a small firm, you may want to put your outsourcing dollars into an area where they'll get you more immediate benefits for marketing purposes.

Blogging

Why You Might Want to Outsource It:

You're busy!  Blogging—especially good blogging—takes a huge amount of time and energy.  There's not just the writing, there's also the research, and keeping up with the comments, and maybe even commenting on the blogs of others to help you network.  With all these responsibilities, it's no wonder that many attorneys just want to foist off the job.

Use Caution If:

Unfortunately, this is one where the answer is that you should ALWAYS proceed with extreme caution.  There's almost never a good reason to outsource your blogging.  Think about it: clients and other attorneys come to your blog looking for your original thoughts.  If they're getting the thoughts of a flunky at a marketing firm, and not a well-educated, articulate attorney who's been trained in argumentation and legal writing, they're going to feel cheated—and rightfully so.

Blogs simply can't be outsourced well.  A blog that is generic enough to be outsourced is a blog that is unlikely to bring your website a great deal of traffic anyhow.  Many of the SEO tricks that used to make low-quality blogs shine in search engine results no longer work, so even if you're willing to use tricks and gimmicks it's now very hard to succeed with an outsourced blog.

Online Advertising

Why You Might Want to Outsource It:

Pay per click and targeting and ROI, oh my!  Not all people at law offices want to spend a lot of time figuring out exactly how many pennies to spend on every click of the mouse that leads a person to your website.  For many attorneys, this kind of work feels nitpicky and trivial, and it's hard for them to really feel excited about starting new online advertising campaigns.

Use Caution If:

This is one area where many law firms would do well to bring in outside people, at least for some time.  Getting a handle on advertising online—which search terms you should advertise with, demographics research, and so on—is much easier when you've hired someone who already knows what they're doing to help you out.  Online advertising can be fairly confusing, so hiring some outside consultants to help you get a handle on things can ensure that you don't flush money down the drain on a campaign that had little or no chance of succeeding.

When you're starting to develop your strategies for legal marketing, you'll find all kinds of opinions online that make it sound like there's only one way for your firm to be if you want to be successful.  Only one design aesthetic, only one right way to talk to clients, only one right way to divide your marketing budget.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  There's no one perfect legal website that you should model yours after.  There's no one way to get your marketing message out.  To understand what's actually best for your firmwide marketing plan, you need to ask real questions about your firm's priorities.  These tips are best for people who are just starting out with their law firm marketing plans and are in the brainstorming phase of strategic planning.

#1: How Personal Do You Want to Get?

One of the biggest questions you have to ask yourself when thinking about legal marketing is whether you want your content to have a personal, warm touch, or for it to be more formal and traditional?  Traditional approaches are the way that many law firms choose to communicate that they are staffed by serious professionals.  This kind of approach usually doesn't offer much in the way of new content, but if you're going to go with traditional approaches make sure you're doing them well—with professional photography, excellent writing, and fresh, informative content.  If you're dry, at least be dry with a lot of well-organized, easy to understand information.

On the personal side, make sure that if you're trying a personal strategy, you don't let it get unprofessional.  You can be funny, you can be authentic and earnest and folksy, you can do just about any style that fits with your personal style.  What you can't do is let that style get in the way of communicating clearly with people looking at your site.  Don't lose sight of the fact that you want to keep people informed, and tone down your style if it's interfering with your ability to be informative.

#2: What's the Role of Technology?

You need to decide right away whether you're actually committed to using new, online technologies in your marketing campaign.  With over 85 percent of consumers of legal services looking for attorneys online instead of using phone books, you can't afford to be a total Luddite—but how much tech do you want to get involved with?

You're the one who knows your people.  Will you be getting in over your head if you try to download social media dashboards and maintain 7 different social networking profiles?  What are the technologies that excite you?  What are the ones that scare you?  Just because you're using online marketing doesn't mean you have to latch onto everything—use the marketing ideas that call out to you, whether you're working online or off.

#3: Which Social Networking Sites Match Your Clientele?

Some law firms are dealing primarily with hipper, younger clientele who are more likely to have smartphones and use social networks like Twitter.  Other consumer oriented firms are much more likely to have a client base that uses Facebook as its only source of social networking.  Still other firms interact largely with businesses and prefer LinkedIn.

Pay attention to what kind of client you're trying to attract when deciding which social networks to join.  A consumer oriented firm in a small town is unlikely to get much, if any, new business from LinkedIn, for example.  Make sure you know what people are using not only in the demographics you're interested in, but also in your local area.

#4: Focus on Long or Short Term Returns?

If asked, the vast majority of people will say that they want to focus on their long term goals, whether those goals are related to marketing, their personal life, or anything else.  But that's not always really true.  Maybe in an ideal universe we'd always be able to focus on the long haul, but in today's intensely competitive legal world, that's not always what really needs to happen.

If you need short term gains because otherwise you're going to have a hard time keeping the lights on, you don't need to hear more platitudes about long term planning.  Instead, you need to work on the kinds of advertising and marketing that work right away.  Probably the best form of online marketing for those needing a quick fix of new clients is pay per click advertising.  This form of advertising allows you to target specific types of clients based on search terms or demographics.  Using this form of advertising allows you to get new clients within hours or days, not weeks or months.

PPC advertising is very short-sighted if you want to keep your eye on the long term goals, though.  As soon as you stop spending, it stops working.  Consider options with better long term payoffs, like social media and building on your social networks, when short term goals aren't enough.

#5: How Do You Know If It's Working?

Before you get started with your campaign, you need to think about how you'll determine if you've seen the results you wanted.  What criteria are actually important to you?  What do you want your online marketing to do for your law firm?  Only you can decide what results make a difference to you.  Don't listen to what marketing gurus have to say about calculating return on investment—figure out the metrics that make the most sense in your specific circumstances.

#6: Who Do You Trust For Critique?

Everyone—no matter who—could use a good editor and critic.  By having someone you trust to critique your work, you can make sure that you're only putting your best foot forward in your online marketing campaign.  Always make sure you have an extra set of eyes look at any marketing material—one of the fastest ways to a faux pas is to go too quickly and send out copy that isn't yet ready for prime time.

It's the biggest social media behemoth in the world, and no competitor even comes close: Facebook boasts over 1 billion active members in 2013, and 680 million of them take the site with them on their mobile phone.  Tapping into the potential of Facebook is something many law firms are trying to do, but many of them fail to stand out in the social media world.  Why?  Usually, it's because while they understand the basic uses of social media for consumers, they have a harder time applying that knowledge to their law firm's business model and brand.  In this article we'll look at 8 different ways to make Facebook work for you as a business tool, rather than just a way to connect with long-lost friends and distant family members.

#1: Make Your Pages Your Own

One of the worst mistakes you can make with your business Facebook page is to set up your page very quickly, without customizing much.  A generic tagline copied and pasted from your website copy, a couple of hasty photos, and presto, you have an account—right?  Well, sure—but is it really the kind of account you want people to see?

A Facebook page that is just a Facebook-branded version of the same information users could find on your website isn't useful.  You need to make your Facebook page stay with your brand, but with unique information and posts that people can't find elsewhere.  Having unique content on your Facebook page is the best way to attract subscribers and likes.

#2: Appoint Someone As the Face of Your Facebook

Some law firms make the mistake of having all of their posts come from on high, as if they were simply from no person in particular but some sort of firm mascot.  This is a huge mistake.  Instead, you need to have someone who is tasked with being the face of your law firm when it comes to social media.  This lets people ask questions of a real human being (who can always refer the questions to other people for answers) instead of feeling like they have to ask some kind of monolithic entity.

This also ensures that people feel like they're being personally addressed, which can help to soothe hurt feelings and ensure that people feel their critiques are being listened to.  Keep in mind that the person who is the face of your Facebook should be outgoing, personable, and steadfast in their approach to avoiding the kinds of conflict that could lead to embarrassing Facebook incidents.

#3: Bring Attorneys In For Comments

Because you have a face for your Facebook, your attorneys can comment as their own selves on questions and comments made on your Facebook pages.  Your attorneys can also post their own content using a Facebook page for your firm, including links to their blog entries or a list of frequently asked questions about a particular legal issue.

If your attorneys are part of your social media brand, people will be able to get a better feel for your firm and see easy demonstrations of their expertise.  Don't be afraid to let people's individual voices shine through.  You don't always all want to talk as one—it's fine if your attorneys have a discussion with points and counterpoints!

#4: Link to Video and Blog Content

You should try to make sure that your Facebook feed isn't all just simple posts.  Linking to articles (whether they're by people at your firm or just really interesting to the kinds of people you want reading your feed), blog entries, or videos can make sure that people keep paying attention.

When too many of your posts are in the same format or seem the same, people tune out.  Help them avoid this kind of fatigue by giving them content that shakes up the usual.  Sometimes, try posting something that's funny instead of strictly informative—people like to be entertained on their Facebook feeds.

#5: Respond to Commenters—and Critics

Make sure that you're keeping on top of comments made to your Facebook wall.  If you're not responding to at least the comments that ask questions or request clarification, you're not doing your job when it comes to social media marketing.  The point of social media is to socialize—to interact in a two-way fashion, not just to broadcast one-way information to advertise your law firm.

If you're not responsive, it will start looking like you're using social media not to communicate and provide services, but just to reel in clients.  Even if reeling in clients is exactly what you'd like to be doing, that's not the reputation you'd like to build online.

#6: Stay Knowledgeable About Changes to Facebook

Facebook has had its share of changes to how pages are displayed and how users interface with the social networking aspects of the site.  Privacy and account policies can also change significantly from year to year.  Don't get caught unaware of a change that will significantly affect how your Facebook pages look or behave for people reading your pages.

#7: Listen More Than You Talk

When in doubt, listen to what people are asking for.  Try to make sure that you're listening to people's comments and also reading other people's Facebook feeds to see what's making people react.  If you're talking all the time without listening, you may not have your finger on the pulse of social media.  Make sure you're reading social media sources outside of Facebook as well, so that you can see fresh content that your viewers may not have taken a look at yet.

#8: Keep It Up For the Long Haul

Understand that even if your primary goal with your Facebook page is attracting new clients, you're not going to do it overnight.  If you assume after a month without many new page views or friends that no results means you should pack it in, you're wrong.  Shake it up, reach out and network with other people in your area or field, and get involved in Facebook groups that are local and interesting to you.

On average, just 1-2 percent of the people who find your website using search results will actually contact your firm to set up an appointment.  While this number can seem very small, there's some good news in it, too—if you can push those numbers up just a couple of percentage points, you'll start to see a huge uptick in business to your firm.  In this guide, we'll look at how to give your website the best chance of converting clients and bringing you the new business you need to thrive in today's intensely competitive legal marketing climate.

#1: Use Video, Not Just Images

Studies show that websites using video are up to 50 percent more likely to convert clients.  Why is this?  For one thing, video allows people to see you the way that you would actually talk to them in the office.  This can help alleviate some of the anxieties that new legal clients, especially those who haven't needed legal services before, have before they schedule a consultation.

What's more, you can use video to talk about some of the most common issues in your practice areas.  When people watch your videos, they'll gain an understanding about the basic legal issues in cases like theirs, so that they'll come in with more informed questions and have a better idea of what they're looking for in an attorney.

#2: Select Your Images Carefully

Too many attorneys use old standby images, thinking that the typical pictures of gavels, courtrooms, and law books will give the impression that their firm is reliable and professional.  Unfortunately, that's not what most people will get out of these kinds of generic images.  Instead, they'll see a law firm that's literally just following the crowd.  Instead of conveying that you're a good law firm, you'll just be any random firm.

Instead, try to give your website a professional, but distinct look.  Instead of using stock imagery, make sure that you have real, professional photographs of your office, professional shots for your attorney bios, and so on.  These images, which convey real aspects of your office, won't be photos anyone else has.  Try to make your photographs professional, but perhaps a little unorthodox—standing out will make it more likely that people will call your law offices instead of the offices of your competitors.

#3: Link Up With Social

Today, most Americans have some type of social media account, with the most popular website for these accounts being Facebook.  When you link your website up with your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, you make sure that people can see your social presence and understand how you interact with people in the social networking world.

Because Facebook is a comfortable internet environment for many consumers, they may be more likely to convert after reading your Facebook page.  Attorney websites can feel stressful to people who are not used to needing legal services, and having a social media presence helps you meet these consumers in a place that is more likely to feel safe to them.

#4: Get Specialized and Specific

Today, consumers of legal services are much more likely to prefer attorneys who specialize.  Specializing in very narrow legal fields, or having mini-sites designed to help people with very specific issues and emphasizing your firm's experience with those issues, can make it much more likely that you'll convert new clients.

When people see firms that do everything, they often worry that their case won't really be an area you specialize in.  For example, many people who have been arrested for driving under the influence will specifically want a DUI attorney, rather than a more general criminal defense attorney who sometimes handles DUI cases.

#5: Be Informative and Helpful

Today, people aren't just looking for you to advertise to them.  They also want real information about their legal options and what they can expect from the courts and the legal process.  People who have the information they need are ready to call attorneys, while people who still feel uninformed are more likely to continue their web search and call someone once they feel more comfortable.

It's fine to “give away” information.  Keep in mind that when you have information about common misconceptions and very detailed information about what people can expect at your law office, you'll be ensuring that people have their most commonly asked questions answered so that by the time they call, they're confident that they need an attorney and that you're a good fit for their needs.

#6: Design a Mobile Site

Mobile consumers are exactly the kinds of people who are most likely to become conversions right now.  They have their phones in hand, ready to book an appointment or even visit a law office immediately.  This means that you want to get this market—and the best way is by having a website version that works well with mobile operating systems like Android and iOS.

Your mobile site should be distinct from your desktop site but have much of the same feel so that it doesn't feel like it dilutes your brand or design aesthetic.  You should also make sure that you allow people using the mobile site to view your full desktop site, and should make sure that the desktop website doesn't display so badly on mobile devices that information becomes inaccessible to mobile users.

#7: Use Compelling Testimonials

Some of the best people to speak about your firm aren't your attorneys and other staff members, but former clients.  By having client testimonials on your website, you make it easier for people to feel good about calling your law office and scheduling a consultation.

The best testimonials are the kind that give a narrative of your firm, rather than just listing positive attributes.  Anyone can create a list of compliments, but having an honest, authentic story is worth much more than compliments can be.  That authenticity will make your website ready to convert even the most hesitant potential clients.

When you're looking for information on the specifics of today's online marketing, you'll want to have brand new information that keeps recent changes to social media and web searches in mind.  However, when it comes to strategizing for your online marketing plan and content, you might want to look to a different source: books on advertising and marketing.  Many of these books contain information and ideas that are timeless, and that too many online marketers forget.  In this guide, we'll take a look at seven of the best books about advertising and marketing that can help you develop content strategies for your online campaigns.

#1: Hey Whipple, Squeeze This! By Luke Sullivan

This book, by an advertising copywriter who worked on major campaigns for decades, is subtitled “a guide to creating great ads.”  Sullivan actually starts by talking about Mr. Whipple, the mascot for Charmin brand toilet paper, who was considered by most television audiences to be an annoyance—yet it seemed that having him as the company's mascot kept paying.

Sullivan isn't afraid in his book to talk not only about why some advertisements work better than others, he's also not afraid to talk about the kinds of advertising that he finds to be uninspiring, bland, and boring.  Sullivan's prose is light and entertaining, making this a great first book on copywriting for anyone who is just starting to create their own written content for a website or social media page.  Hand it to anyone who's considering writing copy for your website or advertisements, and you won't regret that you did.

#2: The Hero and the Outlaw, by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson

Legal marketing professionals today are always looking for a way to differentiate the brand of their law firm.  A great branding effort can make the difference between a firm that prospers, even in difficult times, and one that has to shut down.  In this book, Mark and Pearson look at some of the biggest brands in the country and find a common thread to their incredibly successful branding efforts: archetypes.

Archetypes are the basic personalities and stories that we've heard a million times since childhood.  If someone says “outlaw,” you probably already have a fairly large number of traits assigned in your head to what the outlaw is like and what is likely to happen to him or her.  The same goes for an explorer, or even just a regular guy or girl.  Our archetypes help us anticipate narratives and understand where a brand is coming from.

In The Hero and the Outlaw, Mark and Pearson give aspiring brand strategists tools to develop their own archetypal “personality” for their law firm.  If you're stuck when trying to come up with a good branding initiative, this is the right book for you.

#3: Fascinate, by Sally Hogshead

When you read advice about content on legal websites, you'll probably hear a lot about the need to captivate viewers with original content.  But how do you write content that actually gets people to click and read?  In this book, you'll learn seven different reasons that people become fascinated with content.  It includes ways to look at your fascination strengths and weaknesses, allowing your firm to get the most out of its content and draw in the most viewers.  

#4: Buyology, by Martin Lindstrom

Maybe reading about branding and fascination isn't your thing.  You want quantitative results, statistics that help you understand exactly what will generate conversions and give you lasting business relationships.  If that's the case, you want Lindstrom's Buyology.  Instead of just looking at the psychology of advertising and marketing, Lindstrom's book actually examines the neurobiology at work behind human motivations.

By looking at MRI brain scans of people who are thinking about advertising and marketing content, the book is able to explain why some types of branding and content work better than others.  What's more, the book is written at a level suitable for a lay person, so you don't need to have any special knowledge of science, math, or statistics to get a lot out of it.

#5: Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite, by Paul Arden

Arden, the former creative director from advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, brings this book that can help you get out of a creative rut.  If you know that your content strategy is failing but you don't know why and don't know how to get back on track, this book can help you think about your problems in new ways so that you can create real change.

#6: The Book of Gossage, by Howard Luck Gossage

One of the strangest advertising men of the 1960s, Howard Luck Gossage's advertisements are like nothing you've ever seen before.  The Book of Gossage gathers not only many of these advertisements, but also writings by Gossage himself, and assembles them into a book that is as timely today as when it was written.

Gossage's advertisements are particularly relevant for online content creators, because they tend to be very wordy and informative while still being quite fascinating.  Unlike many of the creators of advertising in his time, Gossage favored text—and lots of it.  A master of making even an ad with hundreds of words of copy a breeze to read, Gossage is worth a look if you want to know how to make your website's content uniquely readable.

#7: Winning the Story Wars, by Jonah Sachs

This brand new book came out just last year, and is great at discussing why, exactly, story and narrative matter when it comes to advertising and marketing.  Sachs is talking about up to the minute trends in this book, and understands that in today's marketing world, the biggest advantage that winning the story wars gives you is virality.

If you've ever wanted to know how to make your content go viral, and how to make sure that your stories are outshining the ones being told by your biggest competitors, you should pick up Sachs' book.

In today's legal marketing world online, it can be easy to think that the only strategies that will work are the ones developed this minute, for specific problems like a new Google search algorithm.  What might surprise you is how much legal marketing wisdom you can find in older sources.  Maybe the writer from the longest time ago who'd have something valuable to say about legal marketing is Sun Tzu.  This Chinese general, who lived about 2500 years ago, wrote the strategy classic The Art of War, which detailed his own strategies for winning conflicts.  Sun Tzu's writing applies not only to war, but also to business and marketing.  In this guide, we'll take a look at some of the oldest advice in the world—as relevant today as it was millenia ago.

#1:  “Know Thyself, Know Thy Enemy.”

One of the biggest things that Sun Tzu focused on when discussing battle strategies is the idea of knowledge.  When Sun Tzu was a general, not all other generals worked on reconnaisance before a battle, and those who failed to know their enemy or themselves well tended to fail on the field.

According to Sun Tzu, when you know either your enemy or yourself very well, you'll win about half the time—the key is knowing both.  This is great advice for legal marketers.  You need to know both your own brand and the brands of your competitors if you want to be able to play to your unique brand strengths.  Doing competition research isn't cheating—it's the quickest path to victory.  Keep in mind that just because you learn what your competition is doing doesn't mean you have to imitate it.

#2:  “Strategy Without Tactics is the Slowest Route to Victory.”

When Sun Tzu differentiated strategy and tactics, he was referring to the bigger picture and the little, everyday details.  When you have a great long-term strategy, but your tactics are haphazard, you may be able to succeed through sheer tenacity—but why not get where you're going faster?  Make sure you have the everyday details taken care of, not just your big picture strategy concerns.

This means doing the little things right, like downloading social media dashboard tools so that you can juggle all of your different social media websites without letting any balls drop.  It also means planning out your days and making sure that your schedules are realistic for accomplishing your goals.

#3: “Tactics Without Strategy Is the Noise Before Defeat.”

If you're doing all the little things right, Sun Tzu says that you'll still fail if you don't have a big picture view.  He's right: when you're just posting randomly to social media accounts, doing online marketing based on whatever the most recent fad you read about is, and ignore any kind of overall branding initiative, you won't be able to differentiate yourself from the crowd.  In the hyper-competitive legal services market today, that's a death knell.

Follow Sun Tzu's advice here: know that you've already lost if you're not looking at where you're going.  Set real goals for yourself and plan long-term as well as short-term.

#4: “To Be Prepared for Any Contingency Is the Greatest of Virtues.”

Contingency planning is something that a lot of legal marketing professionals don't think about when it comes to their primary ways of marketing services online.  Consider for a few moments what you would do if any of your main ways to communicate with your audience went down.  Strange things can happen in the world of the internet.  What if Facebook went belly-up all of a sudden?  What if Google changed its ad policies so that you could no longer use their services in the ways you had been?

Trying to think about what you'd do if any of your marketing tricks just stopped working one day.  Remember, it's happened before—some search updates for Google significantly changed the SEO landscape and put some search engine optimizers out of business promptly.

#5: “Do Not Repeat The Tactics Which Have Gained You One Victory.”

It can be tempting, once you find something that works, to just keep going with that idea until you hit a brick wall.  But keep in mind that the best way to stay in front of your competition is not to keep doing the same thing until it gets stale—you need to innovate and keep one move ahead.

At the same time, Sun Tzu obviously doesn't mean you should ignore what works.  Just don't become too reliant on something that you've only seen work for sure once or twice.  Shifting your marketing strategy significantly in response to a single good week of responses to a new tactic, for instance, is probably hasty.  Make sure it's not a fluke before you start investing too heavily in the next new thing.

#6: “We Cannot Enter Into Alliances Until We Are Acquainted With the Designs of Our Neighbors.”

When you start using any website to host or share content for you, from Facebook to Google Local, it's a good idea to first learn about the business models of these sites.  Knowing how these websites work can help you decide whether you actually want to do business with them.  In some cases, you may decide that a particular website is not likely to still be in business within the year—so why keep sinking marketing dollars into their site?  In others, you may decide that the current rate of growth makes marketing on a particular site a real bargain.

#7: “No Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy.”

People will never do quite what you'd expect with your content.  There's no sense in blaming your audience for not responding according to your plan.  Instead, you need to revise your plan with the new data.  Keep in mind that revising your plan isn't an indicator that you failed in your original planning—knowing what doesn't work is just as important as knowing what does.

From the Madison Avenue “Mad Men” of the 1960s to contemporary thinkers on advertising, copywriting and design gurus can teach legal marketing departments a lot.  Often, legal marketing is—in a field known for how good it is at persuasion—rather disappointing and bland.  In this guide, we'll explore some lessons from the masters.  Each of these quotes comes from an advertising professional who succeeded by having a unique understanding of why and how humans are persuaded to do the things they do.  By incorporating their ideas into your legal marketing strategies for 2013, you'll be going beyond your competition and helping yourself to stand out in a crowded market.

#1: “What makes all the hysteria so silly and unwarranted is how quickly consumers digest and adjust to 'the future'–and how seamlessly it arrives.”  Bob Hoffman

Hoffman, in his book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising, writes that marketers are always overly concerned with the idea that the future will represent a huge seismic shift, and that nothing will ever be the same.  Instead, he says, the truth is far more prosaic: generally, consumers accept the future much more easily than the marketers do, and in spite of all the conferences proclaiming huge changes to how business is done, not much actually changes.

Most of the same strategies—listening to your clients, keeping up with technological developments, monitoring your competition, and so on—work today in the same basic ways that they did a century ago.  The only real difference is that cultural changes have changed the ways in which you need to implement those strategies.

#2: “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.” Howard Gossage

This is one of the most important maxims for online marketers to remember.  People don't read corporate Twitter posts, or Facebook status updates, or blog entries, or attorney biographies.  They read what interests them, and sometimes those are corporate Twitter posts, Facebook updates, blogs, or attorney bio pages.  The trick is to make sure that for every single piece of content you create—no matter how large or how small—there's a reason for your audience to listen to what you're saying.  Always give people a reason to be interested.  If you can't come up with one, keep working on your content until you've got one.  You're better off posting only a few interesting Facebook updates a week than five boring ones every day.

#3: “Never Write an Advertisement Which You Wouldn't Want Your Own Family To Read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.” David Ogilvy

Perhaps the single most famous ad man of all time, Ogilvy's campaigns didn't work by insulting or lying to audiences.  Ogilvy believed advertising should go beyond slogans and into consumers' motivations for buying products.  This is great advice to keep in mind when you're thinking about your website content.  Don't use puffery and don't say anything that you'd be embarrassed to have even your closest friends or family members read.

#4: “Your ad begins as an interruption.  Make paying attention to it feel like a reward.” Lee Clow

This wisdom comes from a book of tweets by famous contemporary advertising guru Lee Clow.  Whenever you put up a pay per click advertisement for your law firm, you're interrupting someone's browsing space.  Give them something for that interruption.  Make sure that your website has good legal information and helps legal consumers understand your firm's practice areas and personality.

#5: “The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.” Leo Burnett

There's no reason for you to try to create whole new ways of thinking about the law in your content.  In fact, because consumers can be somewhat uncomfortable when they're looking for legal services, you should probably try to make sure that they're seeing content that doesn't add to their stress.  Keep your language relatively plain, and don't use too much legal jargon.

At the same time, try to use some of the more familiar language you're using to talk about seeing legal problems differently.  Giving people a new way to understand their issues will make them more comfortable with calling your firm and scheduling a consultation.

#6: “Radio gave birth to impertinent advertising. Never before the advent of radio did advertising have such a golden opportunity to make an ass out of itself.”  William J. Cameron

If Cameron's quote is right, then surely the internet has brought impertinent advertising into its full-fledged adulthood.  When you make mistakes in your marketing today, your faux pas can immediately be broadcast to the internet.  For many reasons, people have a greater tendency to share things with friends that are embarrassing or negative than they are to share positive things they hear about a company.  It's not fair, but that's life, and eventually it will probably catch up with your law firm—no one can be perfect all the time.

The only thing you can do if you make a mistake is to apologize for it and move on.  While it's a good idea to delete anything that was embarrassing you, this doesn't mean you should deny it was there or try to pretend it didn't happen.  Own up to anything embarrassing and keep going—people will forget as time goes by.

#7: “There is no such thing as too long. Only too boring.” Dan Kennedy

When trying to decide how long a particular piece of content should be, let the medium, the audience, and how interesting the writing is guide you.  A single sentence can be incredibly boring if it's poorly constructed, while a great writer can keep an audience captivated for pages and pages about topics that wouldn't usually be considered interesting at all.

Being boring is the biggest sin you can commit on the internet if you want to be a marketing success.  Make sure someone's taking a look at your marketing content to establish whether it will hold your readers' attention./

As Facebook tries to effectively monetize its social media platform and become sustainably profitable, it has tried several new tactics.  One of those tactics is allowing businesses and individuals to “promote” posts on Facebook so that everyone who is connected to you will see the post.  Another is graph search, which tries to pull business away from other search engines like Google, keeping people looking at Facebook's ads longer.  Is Facebook Graph Search actually being used, and what should you do to get good rankings in Graph Search?  This guide will give you the basics so that you can go in with all the information.

What Is Facebook Graph Search?

Facebook's Graph Search allows users to search based on information that Facebook knows about their friends, photos, and about locations near the user.  For example, if you indicated to Facebook that you wanted to find restaurants near a specific location, you could narrow the parameters further by telling it what kind of restaurant you were interested in and exactly where you wanted it to be located.

Facebook also lets people look through their friends for people who work for specific places, live in secific towns, or are friends with other friends.  This search functionality makes it easier for people to access the data that is being made public by people and businesses.

Getting Good Rankings in Graph Search

It's not yet clear exactly how Facebook's Graph Search decides which results to display first, when it comes to businesses.  It does, however, appear that there are at least a few things you can do to increase the chance that your result will show before your competitors.  First of all, you should make sure that all parts of your Facebook page are filled out, and that you haven't left any blank information sections.  You should ensure that your address is correct and that all the other contact information Facebook has for you is right.

It's also true that Facebook will tend to rank pages higher in the Graph Search if they are updated on a regular basis.  If you barely post to your Facebook page and don't comment or engage with your users often, you will likely see significantly lower results as part of Graph Search.  Of course, these kinds of interactions are also useful from an overall social media marketing perspective, so you should work on interacting more with your audience no matter what.

Are People Using Graph Search?

So far, this is one of the most difficult questions to answer, and also one that many marketers would love to know the answer to.  Graph Search is certainly not going to overtake Google, Yahoo, or Bing any time soon.  But for certain types of businesses, especially those that use a large number of word of mouth referrals, Graph Search is already being used and will probably be used more in the future once Facebook promotes the feature more.

The lack of overall promotion for Graph Search has hurt how many people use it.  Not all Facebook users are aware that Facebook has changed how its search algorithm and sorting works, and not everyone has felt that the changes are a net positive.  Some users feel that the Graph Search's reliance on information voluntarily given to Facebook can seem like an invasion of privacy.

Hiring Outside Help

If you want to make your Facebook page Graph Search ready but don't know how or don't want to risk doing it wrong, you might consider outsourcing this aspect of your social media marketing to an agency.  Some agencies will help a law firm develop their Facebook page for as little as a few hundred dollars, making it well worth it if it spares your firm frustration and several hours of work.

However, it's important not to have all of your social media content created by outside providers.  At the end of the day, you're the one who knows your specialty areas best.  Having outsiders try to talk with authority about your specialty topics could result in misinformation being distributed on your website.

Identifying Target Demographics With Graph Search

Graph Seach doesn't just have to be a way that people look for you.  By using Graph Search, you can successfully identify groups of your fans and friends, learning what demographics are most likely to add you to their friends and who is most likely to give you a call after becoming your Facebook friend.

Try looking at Graph Search to see how many of the people who have friended you are, for example, men versus women.  Do you have a fairly even ratio, or is it imbalanced in one direction or another?  Understanding this can help you target your Facebook posts, sponsored content, and pay per click advertisements to be most effective with the eyes that are actually reading your pages.

Keep An Eye On the Future

It's important to understand that Facebook Graph Search is new enough that nobody really knows yet whether it's going to work or not.  It may be that Facebook Graph Search will soon be abandoned, or that many users will find it more creepy and invasive than useful.  Make sure that you don't do anything that could compromise the privacy of your own clients in order to get ahead with Facebook graph search.

Make sure that you keep reading recent articles regarding Facebook Graph Search to make sure that the numbers keep showing steady growth in use.  If users simply refuse to adopt the new feature, you should stop sinking your time and money into making the feature work for you.  Don't throw good money after bad—if it starts to look like Graph Search will simply never be competitive, there's nothing wrong with trying new strategies instead.

With over 1 billion users, Facebook is clearly a social media site that's here to stay for the foreseeable future.  However, if you've got a limited law firm marketing budget (and who doesn't?), you need to know which other new online marketing methods are going to be around in the future and which ones have a short shelf life.  In this guide, we'll take a look at the bandwagons that your law firm should consider jumping on.  These methods all have tremendous applicability for most or all law firms, and can be expected to still be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Bandwagon #1: Quantitative Testing

For a long time, most law firm marketing and advertising depended not on quantitative A/B testing of different possibilities, but of what amounted to guessing with a good helping of talent and intuition.  While the old way of doing marketing could work passably well, today, you can augment any talent with quantitative testing that will help you identify exactly when your marketing is bringing in clients.

Internet technology has made it easier than ever for businesses to learn what clients are responding to.  Only a few decades ago, when advertisers wanted to see if consumers were reading, they'd have to include cut-out coupons to mail in.  These were somewhat inconvenient and couldn't be used effectively by many types of businesses.  Today, you can see exactly what ad made someone click on your website, and whether anyone clicking from that ad is actually calling pr emailing your firm to set up an appointment.

Bandwagon #2: Mobile Marketing

For the first time, in 2013 smartphone connections to the internet in the United States will actually exceed internet connections from desktop and laptop computers.  This means that even if your firm hasn't been great about interacting with mobile clients in the past, today is the day to start changing that.  As more and more people access the internet from their smartphones, it will become more difficult to stay competitive as a firm that is steadfastly against mobile marketing.

Begin your mobile marketing ventures by starting to make your content mobile friendly.  Having smartphones redirect to a mobile website is a good idea.  You should also make sure that any emails you plan to send are viewable not only on dekstop and laptop computers, but also smartphones with Android or iOS.

Bandwagon #3: Client-Responsive Websites

If your firm has several practice areas but someone came to your firm's website because of an advertisement for DUI defense services, you will be wasting your time telling them about all of your firm's other services.  Having websites that actually are based on how your clients got there, and that change based on how your clients interact with them, are the wave of the future when it comes to legal marketing on the web.

This kind of website specialization might not yet be feasible for some smaller firms, but keep an eye out.  As technology for creating client responsive sites improves, prices will drop, and you may be able to get the kind of site that will start converting 100-200% more viewers than the site you have today.

Bandwagon #4: The Rise of Agencies

Because online advertising and marketing is becoming increasingly important and, in some critical ways, increasingly complicated, more and more firms are considering having some or all of their marketing services outsourced to agencies.  In fact, the number of online marketing and branding agencies has doubled in the last year alone.

If you're having a difficult time understanding how to position your brand in your local market, or you're just not seeing a way to find enough time to maintain your website and create new content marketing materials on a regular basis, you should consult with one of these agencies.  They can help you to find a plan that will suit your firm's needs and budget, and that will provide the marketing assistance you need.  Whether you need someone to update your Facebook wall from time to time or just want someone to manage your PPC advertising budget, agencies can help you with whatever you're having the most difficulty with.

Bandwagon #5: Locally Based Marketing

Because it's very likely that the vast majority of your law firm's clients come from a 20 mile radius, what good does it do your firm to advertise to many, many people who will never be able to come to your office for a consultation?  Locally based marketing is a great way to save money over national marketing, all while making sure that you're targeting the potential clients who are most likely to convert.

Not all locally based marketing is actually online.  For example, sponsoring local events or teams can seriously improve your reputation in your community.  However, you should make sure that when you do locally based marketing in your community, you're also discussing it in your online marketing materials.  You can also make sure that you're being listed in local directories, including any online listings offered by your local chamber of commerce or bar association.

While locally based marketing with tagging services like Foursquare and Gowalla seemed promising in 2011 and 2012, today it appears that these services have actually become significantly less popular in recent months.  You should consider discontinuing your use of these services unless you're still seeing results from them.  It's possible that in your city or neighborhood, Foursquare could be going strong.  If so, keep up your use of it as long as it's still benefiting your firm.

Bandwagon #6: Relationship Building

Keep in mind that the real purpose of social media platforms isn't for you to use them as a bullhorn.  It's to build longer-term relationships with clients in a way that isn't inconvenient in the same way that continuous phone or email contact can be.  A brief post on Facebook linking to something and giving enough information about whether it will be interesting to click on won't offend anyone, as long as you're not making that kind of post more than once or twice a day and the content will genuinely interest a significant number of your friends or subscribers.