The most popular Twitter hashtags can see traffic in truly insane amounts—sometimes hundreds or even thousands of posts per minute.  Getting a handle on the most popular hashtags is a good idea if you're planning to use Twitter as a law firm marketing tool.  In this guide, we'll show you how to find popular hashtags (including popular Twitter hashtags from your local area and those that are related to the legal field).  You'll also learn about the downsides of using the most popular hashtags possible, so that you're fully informed before you start using popular hashtags on your own.

How Do Popular Twitter Hashtags Happen?

The most interesting aspect of popular hashtags is that they tend to begin and develop organically.  While marketing efforts account for some of the most popular hashtags, it's more common for them to start with just one or a few users, then spread virally throughout the Twitter network (and sometimes beyond).

What this means is that popular Twitter hashtags can come literally from anywhere and anybody.  Even if you're a solo practitioner in a small town, if you say something that makes people talk, your hashtag could become one of the most popular hashtags in your area or all over the world.  As long as you have followers who are likely to re-post your popular Twitter hashtags, you'll be able to circulate your ideas to people near and far.

Should We Try to Create Popular Hashtags?

There's no reason not to try your hand at making popular Twitter hashtags.  Odds are that few, if any will become overnight viral sensations, but many of the most popular hashtags just start with a few users talking about them.

In order to start your own popular hashtags, first make sure that your tag isn't already being used by large numbers of other people.  If it's been used only a few times, mostly quite a while ago, you may be able to use a tag that's already been used by others—but if it's currently being used already, it won't really be your idea that is circulating.

If you find a really great concept and think that you'll be able to create popular Twitter hashtags from it, you may have to try several variations to get the one that sticks in people's heads best.  Don't be afraid to retry a very close variation of an idea you've already used.  Sometimes it's surprising how small a variation needs to be in order to change a hashtag from one with medium popularity to one of the most popular hashtags for a day.

Should We Use Other People's Popular Hashtags?

Just because your own tags could become popular Twitter hashtags someday doesn't mean that the process is necessarily quick or easy.  In the meantime, make sure that you're keeping track of some popular hashtags in order to understand which tags are most likely to help you get new followers and find people you want to follow.

Make sure that if you are using the most popular hashtags you can find, you're not just re-posting or talking about content that isn't really relevant to the rest of your Twitter feed.  As a law firm, you should mostly be looking for popular Twitter hashtags having to do with the law and legal issues.  If you find that you're often trying to repurpose popular hashtags to fit them into your mission, you may want to reconsider: after all, if people see your post when they intended to read about something quite different, they're more likely to regard you as a spammer than as a good person to follow.

When using other popular Twitter hashtags, make sure that you're not overusing them by putting several popular hashtags into a single tweet.  This kind of spamming happens with the most popular hashtags and can be a serious impediment for people trying to get information instead of seeing yet another piece of reposted spam.

How Do I Find the Most Popular Hashtags?

One of the best ways to learn about popular Twitter hashtags is to use the website Hashtags.org.  This site is completely devoted to hashtagging trends.  You can also find out more about trends on WhatTheTrend.com, which also provides a helpful list of the most popular hashtags both in realtime and tracked over a day.

If you aren't finding the exact popular hashtags you want when looking at lists on WhatTheTrend, you can also do searches for the exact terms you want.  Both Hashtags.org and WhatTheTrend offer graphing capabilities to look at the trends in popularity for a particular hashtag.

Caution: Popular Hashtags Can Backfire

In more than one way, it's possible for lawyers using one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter to see their plans fail.  Often, if you're using extremely popular hashtags, your tweet will go completely unnoticed, even by people searching for that tag.  Why?  Because the popularity can actually start to work against you—when hundreds of other people are using the most popular hashtags, you'll only appear in search results on the top page for a few seconds, if that.

Another way that popular hashtags can backfire is when you use them without being completely clear on their meanings.  Keep in mind that sometimes hashtags are used ironically or with some type of double meaning.  You should always check the definitions of popular hashtags at TagDef before you decide to use them in your tweets.

Anticipating Popular Twitter Hashtags

By searching for words relating to events that have just begun to be on the radar of news sources (for instance, after blogs like Huffington Post have just released a new piece of information on a legal case), you can often start to see what will become the most popular hashtags.

Getting a feel for this can be tricky, so you may want to just search for these kinds of posts for a while until you feel comfortable identifying the trends.  You can then search for what may be a trending keyword on a website like Hashtags.org, which will let you know if the trend you're observing is real or just confirmation bias at work.

If (like most law firms using Twitter) you've just gotten started in the last 18 months with your Twitter account, you may not have paid much attention to hashtag trends.  However, trending hashtags represent a significant marketing resource for your law firm if you know how to use them correctly.  In this guide, you'll learn how hashtag trends get started and go viral, and how to leverage those viral hashtags for your own marketing purposes.

How Do Hashtag Trends Get Started?

Most advertising and marketing trends get started when an agency creates a tagline or slogan.  However, Twitter is a bit different.  On Twitter, anyone can create a hashtag just by putting a pound sign (#) in front of a word or other string of characters.  The only way for trending hashtags to start is for people to start using a hashtag.

Keep in mind that because of the nature of viral media, like Twitter, even the smallest account with just a few followers can be the creator of new hashtag trends.  However, because it's more likely for trending hashtags to “infect” more people when the person who starts using it has more followers, viral tags do tend to start on accounts with high numbers of followers.

Just because your numbers are high doesn't mean that you'll be able to create trending hashtags.  If the content you're making isn't interesting or memorable, it'll never develop into hashtag trends that matter.  You also need not just a high quantity of followers, but high quality followers that are likely to re-tweet what you say to an influential, large audience.

When Should We Use Hashtag Trends?

Generally, you shouldn't try to use trending hashtags right away when you start using Twitter.  That's because you may not be able to use them correctly, and it's quite possible for you to actually hurt your company's reputation (see “Misuse of Trending Hashtags” below for more information).

Instead, get a feel for Twitter—and at least a few dozen followers—before you try to hop onboard any hashtag trends.  This will make it much more likely that when you use trending hashtags, your use of them will be noticed and help get you even more followers.

How Do I Find Trending Hashtags?

One of the biggest websites for hashtag trends is WhatTheTrend.com.  Just like the website name implies, this site can help you find what trending hashtags are most popular today.  Because hashtag trends can change literally from day to day or even hour to hour, the site gives the option to look at trending hashtags on a range of time scales.

Keep in mind that if you use the biggest, trendiest hash tags of the moment, it's very likely that your post will be seen by a few eyes—but that's all, because before you know it, it will have disappeared from the top page of the feed.  When hundreds of posts per minute are being made on a topic, you'll have no way to keep your tweet visible.  

Because of this, it's often a good idea to look for trending hashtags that are slightly lower ranked.  With luck, you can get into the “sweet spot” in which many people are searching for a tag, but few enough people are posting with it that you can get several new followers from each tweet.

Misuse of Trending Hashtags

There are several ways that hashtag trends can lead to a diminished reputation and a great deal of corporate embarrassment.  For example, several companies have made the mistake of identifying trending hashtags, then trying to use them without fully understanding their meaning.  When bakery Entennman's saw that the hashtag #notguilty was trending, they assumed it was about food and made a tweet: “Who's #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?”

The problem was, #notguilty wasn't trending because of people who loved delicious baked goods.  It was coming from people outraged by the verdict in the Casey Anthony criminal trial.  Entenmann's got a lot of negative publicity for what members of the public perceived as callousness toward a murder case.

The Entenmann's debacle can teach lawyers (who could have easily gotten away with the #notguilty tag) a thing or two.  First of all, know what you're actually talking about before you just try to use hashtag trends to your advantage.  Not everything is obvious, and your own biases might be leading you to an incorrect conclusion.  Second, make sure that you're always using contextual trending hashtags.  Using hashtag trends won't really help you if they're so wildly out of context that they just don't make sense.

Using Trending Hashtags Effectively

Okay, so you've found the perfect hashtag trends to follow—they're at a great spot for getting followers and are absolutely contextual for what your law firm does.  Now what do you do?

Don't try to use the same tweet over and over throughout the day.  While some marketers suggest this, especially when using trending hashtags, it's a much better idea to vary up the content of your tweets even if they're using the same tag.  This prevents your Twitter followers from seeing the same tweet pop up over and over in their feed and seeing you as a spammer.

It's usually a good idea to use trending hashtags several times in a day, just not several times in an hour.  You might think you're catching more eyeballs by capitalizing on hashtag trends with repeated posts, but you're more likely to be alienating your followers.

Tracking Hashtag Trends

If you want to see which hashtags are trending right now, you have a lot of options.  But what if you want to see how a hashtag has performed over time?  Hashtags.org can help you to see whether a tag is becoming more or less popular, and whether it seems to go in cycles (for example, the hashtag #tgif is much more likely to be used on a Friday).  This can help you time your posts for optimum marketing potential.

With 400 million tweets being sent every day in 2012, Twitter and its “hashtag” system are becoming more important to law firm marketers all the time.  Among the tools in your Twitter marketing arsenal should be at least one good Twitter hashtag directory.  Learning to use a hashtag directory can be a little tricky at first, especially if you haven't used many hashtags yet, but with a little guidance you'll get the hang of it quickly.  This guide starts with the very basics of how a Twitter hashtag directory works, then looks at how law firm marketing professionals can make use of several online hashtag directory resources.

How a Twitter Hashtag Directory Works

On Twitter, anyone with an account can create whatever hashtag they want.  This amounts to millions of different hashtags being used in any given day, and can make it very hard to identify what hashtags you want to use.  Using a Twitter hashtag directory can help you to narrow down your choices for hashtags so that you're only using tags that will be effective and relatively popular.

Most of the time, a hashtag directory won't be compiled by one person.  Considering the number of new hashtags developed every day, it would be impossible for one person to create all the new entries in a Twitter hashtag directory.  Instead, a hashtag directory will usually depend on submissions from users.

Types of Twitter Hashtag Directory

Because there are different things that you might want to know about your hashtag, different hashtag directory systems have been developed on different websites.  One of the most basic of these websites is Hashtags.org, which is a Twitter hashtag directory providing users with basic information on the popularity of any hashtags of their choice.

By using Hashtags.org, you can check up on a graph of a hashtag's long and short term popularity.  But what if popularity isn't what you're looking for?  You may know that you've seen a particular hashtag a lot lately—let's say you've seen five different people you follow use #yolo—but you don't know what it means.  Before deciding to use it on your own Twitter feed, you should definitely check up with another Twitter hashtag directory, TagDef.  

Tagdef is a hashtag directory that keeps a listing of as many hashtags as have been submitted by users, and the definitions of those hashtags.  By using this Twitter hashtag directory, you look up the hashtag #yolo and find out that it means “you only live once”—not necessarily the sentiment you want your law firm to be expressing in an official tweet.  Using a hashtag directory for definitions can prevent unneeded embarrassment.

A third kind of Twitter hashtag directory involves geolocational cross referencing of Twitter hashtags.  If you want to see what a hashtag directory shows as being the most popular tags in your area, head over to TrendsMap.  This Twitter hashtag directory can display popular tags on a map, so that you can zoom in as much as you want and find out what's trending locally.

Finding the Right Twitter Hashtag Directory

If you're not happy with the results you're getting from a hashtag directory, keep in mind that there are dozens of competing websites out there.  As trends on Twitter change, it's very possible that some Twitter hashtag directory tools will fall out of favor or become less useful.  When you stop getting the kinds of results from a hashtag directory that you need, check some other directories out, and monitor blogs about Twitter marketing to find out what new directories have recently come on the scene.  Often, the newest tools offer the most sophisticated and up to date functionality.

Using a Hashtag Directory Correctly

If you're using a Twitter hashtag directory, make sure that you're using the right one for the right purpose.  You'll have much better luck getting geographic information from a hashtag directory that specializes in this information, for example.

It's also important not to use a Twitter hashtag directory of popular hashtags as a list of tags for your own Twitter feed to use.  Often, these extremely popular hashtags are so popular that your post will quickly “disappear” from being visible to people watching the hashtag for new posts.  If you're going to use a popular hashtag, try to do so at a time when you'll actually be seen by large numbers of people—you can often use a Twitter hashtag directory to find out when those times will be.

Beyond the Hashtag Directory: Making Your Own Tags

After you've watched Twitter hashtag directory listings for a while, you might want to try your hand at making a unique hashtag that no one else has used.  If you're doing this, you should check a hashtag directory or two first just to make sure that your tag hasn't been used before.  You may have to try several tag variants before finding one that will be exclusively yours.

If you're using a tag that is exclusively yours, you can then use some tracking tools to see where it spreads to and how its popularity changes.  Hashtags.org is a great tracking tool to see whether your hashtag ever catches on beyond your immediate circle of followers and friends.

Submitting Your Hashtags to a Twitter Hashtag Directory

Of course, once you make your own hashtags, you should also try to submit them to any hashtag directory that you think might be useful.  Some hashtag directories actually allow you to categorize hashtags so that you can put them into a useful category (for instance, law and legal issues).  If you're not submitting your hashtags to a Twitter hashtag directory, it will be harder for other people to find out the definition of your hashtag and how it has been used.

Some hashtag directories do keep track of hashtags automatically.  You won't need to submit a hashtag to these.  However, places like TagDef only list hashtags that have been submitted by users, so you'll need to write out a tag definition and post it there if you want the definition to be easily accessible by others.

One of the newest ways to interact with the rest of the web is with social bookmarking.  But what is social bookmarking, and how is it affecting the way people use the internet and find new websites?  Can your law firm actually make use of social bookmarking, or is it a fad that will fade away quickly?  What is social bookmarking going to look like in the future, and how can you plan for it?  This guide will answer all of your questions about social bookmarking so that you can start planning out which websites to post your social bookmarks on.

What is Social Bookmarking: History and Definitions

When web browsers started appearing in the mid-1990s, one of the first features they added was bookmarking.  Bookmarks allowed people to come back to a favorite URL again and again without needing to write down or memorize the web address of a particular website.  These bookmarks were stored in a file on your computer that was kept with the browser application you were using.  That bookmarking functionality stayed basically the same for about a decade.

In the mid-2000s, a new type of bookmarking appeared: social bookmarking.  Now, instead of just storing bookmarks on your own computer, you can actually store them on websites.  What's more, instead of keeping your bookmarks to yourself, these websites allow you to share them with other users.  Social bookmarking sites also often let users determine whether a submission is good or bad, and promote it or demote it accordingly.

What is Social Bookmarking Used For?

If you're going to start to use social bookmarks as part of your marketing strategy, you should know what is social bookmarking being used for by marketers.  One of the best parts about social bookmarking is that it can generate high quality, high PageRank inbound links that will make your search engine optimization efforts more successful.  Google and other search engines base your search rankings in part on the quality of your inbound links, so it's very important to have links coming from websites that are popular and authoritative—which many social bookmarking sites are.

Another answer to the question of “what is social bookmarking used for?” is that you can actually draw in new clients and business with social bookmarks.  If you're using the right websites and making contextual links to quality content, your linking could actually help you to score a new case.

Keep in mind that if you're not creating quality original content, it may not be very beneficial for you to use social bookmarking websites.  What is social bookmarking if not a way to show good content to others?  If your content could use improvement, work on that before starting to post your links to it.

General Social Bookmarking Websites

Some types of social bookmark websites are made to accept just about any type of link there is, and just about any legal practice can post links that would be relevant to their viewers.  For example, right now, there's no trendier site for social bookmarks than Reddit.com.  What is social bookmarking with Reddit?  After making an account on the website (a process that takes only a minute), you can start posting links to your content immediately to a wide variety of “subreddits,” each of which is related to a different topic.  You might want to use a subreddit like “law” for your post, or you might post it in a more general subreddit like “news” or “politics.”

Other general social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.  These websites are all different in their approach and interface, but serve the same purpose.  You can feel free to post the same content to several different social bookmark sites rather than just using a piece of content on a single website.

Specialized Social Bookmarking Websites

What is social bookmarking that is specialized, and what is it useful for?  Let's say that you work in the field of intellectual property litigation.  Instead of posting something to a general social bookmarking website like Reddit or StumbleUpon, you might want to try your hand at getting a story onto one of the most popular technology oriented social bookmarking websites: Slashdot.

Now, keep in mind, if you're able to get a story posted to one of these websites and it makes it to the front page, your website may get hammered—an effect originally known as the “Slashdot effect.”  Be sure that your web hosting provider is capable of providing the hosting you need before  you start making posts to social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking Etiquette

What is social bookmarking etiquette?  In brief, every website that you use for social bookmarking will have its own way of doing things—and those ways can be very, very different.  Don't jump right in and post content onto a site that you've barely read or have never participated in before.  Get a personal account first, post a few comments, get comfortable with the website and the people on it.  Only then will you be properly equipped and knowledgeable about the etiquette that guides members of that website.  This will give you a much better chance of being listened to and having your link accepted as part of the community.

Why Social Bookmarking Is Here To Stay

One of the things many people don't seem to understand is what is social bookmarking's appeal?  Well, part of that appeal—and part of why social bookmarking sites have staying power—is that they become communities all of their own, with their own personalities, quirks, and moral codes.  This gives people a very strong sense of identity and belonging with the website.

This is why it's a good idea to choose a few social bookmarking sites and really get acquainted with how they do things.  It's better to post only to a few websites but to post with quality, relevant posts than it is to spam every social bookmark site that you can find with the exact same content, whether it's relevant or not.

Social bookmarks are such a new tool for most marketers that there haven't even been studies done on how many law firms use them.  Getting in on the ground floor of this new marketing technique is incredibly important for both your search engine optimization and just to improve brand awareness.  If you don't know a social bookmark from a social network, this is the guide to get you started.  We'll explore the world of social bookmarks, including how law firms can take advantage of this new tool to expand their inbound link presence and overall reach.

What is a Social Bookmark?

If you've ever clicked the star icon to bookmark a website, you know how convenient traditional bookmarking can be.  Social bookmarks put your bookmarks out into the public, on the web where anybody can see them.  Unlike traditional bookmarks, which are held in the configuration files of your browser software on your computer, social bookmarks are located on websites designed to be communities of bookmarkers.

Many, but not all, of these social bookmark communities allow users to not only submit bookmarks, but also to vote on submitted content.  If content is judged by a large number of people to be good, it will become more visible for more users.  If people think it's spam, it can be removed by a moderator or will just become basically invisible to users.

Most places with social bookmarks also allow for commenting.  Submitting your social bookmark to a website can be a great way to get feedback for a particular piece of content that you've worked on before you link it from your Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.

How Do Social Bookmarks Affect My Blog/Site Traffic?

By having a social bookmark that links to your website's URL or that goes to your blog, you can get more readers to your pages.  Depending on which site or sites you post social bookmarks to, you could see a very small increase to your traffic or—if it ends up on the front page of one of the bigger social bookmark aggregators—a tremendous increase.

If you suspect that your content has the possibility of “going viral” after you include it among your social bookmark submissions, check with your web hosting provider before putting links on social bookmarking sites.  If you don't, there is a chance that a huge increase in traffic will be too much for the servers to handle, leading your website to go down in what amounts to a non-malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.  People who try to click on your website while it's down will just receive errors and won't be able to view your content until fewer people are trying to access it simultaneously.

How Do Social Bookmarks Affect My SEO?

The biggest reason that marketing professionals want in on the social bookmarking game is that social bookmarks have the potential to vastly improve your search engine ranking potential.  How?  Every time you create a new social bookmark, you're also making a brand new inbound link to your website.  What's more, since posting social bookmarks often requires only a very minimal sign-up process, it can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to make new links from high PageRank websites.

Keep in mind that you'll always need to have diverse links in order not to trip Google's over optimization detection algorithms.  If you're bringing in all your links through social bookmarks, you may actually end up being penalized.  If you use a social bookmark strategy as just one element of a larger SEO campaign, though, you'll have much better luck maintaining a rankings rise.

Where Can I Submit My First Social Bookmark?

One of the easiest places to start making social bookmarks is Reddit.  Part of the reason this is so easy is that the sign-up process can literally take as little as fifteen seconds—create a name, give your email address, and you can make a social bookmark right away.

When you create an account, though, don't try posting social bookmarks immediately unless you're already very familiar with the process.  Get a feel for the different communities within the overall website (they're called subreddits, and odds are there's one for your specialty practice area).  See how people are interacting, what they respond well to, and what seems to irritate them.  By doing this, you're getting valuable intelligence about what kind of social bookmarks are most likely to interest your target audience.

How Can Social Bookmarks Go Wrong?

When marketers first learn how to use social bookmark applications, they often start by posting some sort of advertising material.  If you haven't already learned this from social network websites like Facebook and Twitter, you need to learn it now: people don't want to see an advertisement unless it's very, very unusual and interesting.  Unless you have an ad that you know for a fact makes people talk, it's probably not good material for a social bookmark.  Some websites will actually delete your links if they think you are creating social bookmarks to benefit your own business.

It's also a bad idea to lie about who you are or who you represent if someone asks you about your connection to your social bookmark.  People who use these websites are very internet savvy, and if you're caught in the lie, it's unlikely you'll be able to create successful social bookmarks on that website for a long time to come.

How Can I Get the Most From My Social Bookmarks?

Making a good social bookmark is a lot like making a good blog post.  You want to have interesting content and a title that makes people want to read “below the fold”—or, in the case of social bookmarks, below the title.

You should also get a feel for the differences in each place where you put social bookmarks.  Check out the comments and community, rather than just using these tools to place your own social bookmarks.  If you're actively participating as a member of the community who's doing more than just advertising yourself, every social bookmark you make will have higher value and be read by more people.

The humble hashtag on Twitter has become one of the quickest and easiest ways for people on the internet to know what's going on right now in the world.  Only about a third of law firms are using Twitter at all, but the ones that are aren't always using hashtags on Twitter appropriately.  In this guide, we'll explore some of the best practices for creating a new hashtag on Twitter, or for piggybacking on an already-existing hashtag that someone else made.  

Tip #1: Don't Overstuff Hashtags on Twitter

One of the biggest mistakes that some law firms make when they first learn how to create a hashtag on Twitter is creating too many, all at once.  If you overuse hashtags on Twitter, you'll possibly alienate your audience and your posts may be viewed by many people as spam.

Instead, try to keep your posts to a single hashtag on Twitter.  In some cases, it could be useful to use two different hashtags on Twitter—for example, if you want to use one hashtag on Twitter that is trending right now and one that is unique to your brand—but never, ever more than two.  If you feel like this just isn't enough, make two or three separate tweets instead of using multiple hashtags.

Tip #2: Keep Your Hashtags on Twitter Short and Sweet

When you make a new hashtag on Twitter, it's obviously easier to find one that hasn't been taken if you're willing to make a “long tail” hashtag with a lot of characters.  The problem is that long hashtags on Twitter aren't as popular, in part because of the character limit of the website and in part because they're harder for users to remember.

Try to keep your hashtag on Twitter at ten characters or less whenever possible.  Also keep in mind that the more memorable your hashtags on Twitter are, the more likely it is that other people will pick up on them and start using them.  You will have better luck with a slightly longer, easier to remember hashtag on Twitter than one that is shorter but involves a long, tough to remember acronym.

Tip #3: Use Searches to Find Unique Hashtags on Twitter

By searching for a hashtag on Twitter before you use it, you can make sure that no one else is using that hashtag to market a different product or service.  This is critical, because you don't want your brand's message being diluted by the messages of other brands trying to use the same exact hashtags on Twitter.

If you find that the hashtag on Twitter you wanted to use has already been taken, then what?  Consider adding a few characters to it—like the abbreviation of your law firm, for instance, or just “law.”  Obviously, the exact characters you'll want to add to a particular hashtag on Twitter will depend on what your hashtag is.  Make sure that it's easy to remember, and it will be much easier for people to follow.

Tip #4: Find Hashtags on Twitter That Are Trending Now

You don't always want to use a unique hashtag on Twitter.  In some cases, you may want to use trending hashtags on Twitter to build up more business and make sure that you're bringing in a steady supply of new followers to your feed.  By doing some searches, you can find a hashtag on Twitter that is currently trending and would be likely to bring in new followers.

Pay special attention to hashtags on Twitter that include any kind of local term.  You're more likely to be able to build local Twitter followers (who will, in turn, be more easily able to refer new business your way) by using this type of hashtag on Twitter.  Similarly, hashtags that involve law or the legal industry are more likely to help you gain industry contacts on Twitter.  

Tip #5: Limit How Many Posts You Use Each Hashtag On

You don't want to overwhelm people who are looking for a particular hashtag on Twitter.  Whenever you develop new hashtags on Twitter, you should keep track of how many posts you're using a particular hashtag on.  If you use the same hashtag on Twitter more than four or five times in a day, you risk oversaturating your target market and being seen as spam.  No one wants to follow a Twitter user who routinely re-posts the same content or very close variants of the same content every hour.  Have respect for your customers and for the Twitter medium when you use a hashtag on Twitter.

Tip #6: Talk to People About Your Hashtags on Twitter

If you're really lucky, you might be able to get a totally memorable, totally self-explanatory hashtag on Twitter all to yourself.  However, those days are rapidly becoming a thing of the past—with so many users creating new hashtags on Twitter every day, it's harder and harder to find dictionary words and relevant, easy to remember topics that haven't been used.

Consider explaining your new hashtag on Twitter with a longer post (for instance, on your blog or in a publicly accessible Facebook post) that you also post a Twitter link to.

Tip #8: Don't Reinvent the Wheel

If you used a hashtag on Twitter a month ago that had a great track record of success, consider creating a variant of that hashtag or using the ideas that generated it to make a new one.  There's no reason to continually think of completely new hashtags when you can get quite a bit of mileage out of varying the old ones.  Always monitor the performance of these variants, and stop using them if they turn out to be ineffective.

You should also monitor blogs and other websites about Twitter marketing, so that you can find out what has been working for other firms like yours.  This will also help you stay up to date with the latest trends in searches so that you can maximize the return your Twitter account generates for your law firm.

Backlinking strategy wasn't always part of the web.  When Venable created the first law firm website in 1994, there was no way that they could have known the worldwide web would become so vital to lawyers.  What was a curiosity in 1994 and an example of real progressive thinking in 1998 has become absolutely vital, and now lawyers have to think not only of how to design their websites, but also how to get traffic.  With so many more lawyers online, you need a backlinking strategy to get to the top of search results.  In this guide, you'll find out the best backlinking strategy basics, and can use these as the foundation of your 2013 backlink building campaigns.

Old Backlinking Strategy—And Why it Stopped Working

Building backlinks became important when search engines started taking these statistics into account for ranking purposes.  When backlink building was considered a relatively new strategy, some search engine marketers started developing the best backlinking strategy of that time.  The problem was, many of the backlinking strategy ideas they developed made the internet worse even as they made their own marketing performance better.

Back then, it was fine to use tricks to bring up the number of backlinks you had.  The best backlinking strategy guides of even a few years ago would recommend strategies like using article marketing websites to copy the same article onto hundreds or even thousands of different websites, each giving a link back to your law firm.  After people figured out backlinking strategy techniques that worked, they could automate the entire process and just generate large-scale backlinking for any website about any topic at all.

The problem was, this made countless “zombie” websites that just reposted other content as a backlinking strategy.  These junk websites began to fill up people's search results, and Google and other search engines started making changes so that the best backlinking strategy would be one that emphasized quality instead.

How Backlinking Strategy Has Changed

As of 2012, you won't get very far using a lot of links on press release websites or article marketing sites.  That's because Google today wants you to use the best backlinking strategy for quality, rather than for the quantity of backlinks.

The way that Google has made it optimal to use quality link building strategies is by penalizing websites that are clearly using so-called “black hat” techniques involving purchasing large quantities of non-contextual links.  If you used strategies to artificially inflate your number of backlinks, you may find that they're now backfiring on you.  About 15 percent of websites have been affected by these changes.

Backlinking Strategy 2013 Basics: High Quality Links

Obviously, quality is a key aspect to the best backlinking strategy today.  If you don't have a backlinking strategy that emphasizes quality first, you're going to be caught by Google's over optimization detection algorithms.  Even if you think you've found a loophole, remember that searches don't stay the same forever.  If your loophole is exploited by other people (or even if it's not), Google can find it and close it so that your backlinking strategy no longer works.

High quality links are typically those that come from a prestigious (.edu, .gov) top-level domain or that are from websites with a high Google PageRank.  The best backlinking strategy will have a comprehensive plan for getting these high quality links whenever possible.  If your backlinking strategy involves using primarily or exclusively low PageRank links, it's time to reconsider: this strategy is likely to backfire in the form of big rankings penalties.

Backlinking Strategy 2013 Basics: Social Media Fluency

Today, getting the best quality links means that you'll need to talk social.  If you're not already familiar with social networks, you need to get there quickly.  The best backlinking strategy today incorporates social network websites and social bookmarking sites, and requires you to have a broad and deep knowledge of how to use these websites.

Get started by reading up on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and starting your profiles there.  Once you're using social media on a daily basis, you'll be well on your way to using the best backlinking strategy.  These websites tend to give you high PageRank backlinks that will make your search rankings soar more quickly than they would by using almost any other technique.

Backlinking Strategy 2013 Basics: Avoid Purchased Backlinks

If you want to take risks with your website, try making an app or doing something flashy—don't take risks by buying backlinks in direct violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.  If you do, Google will feel free to de-list your website or punish it in search rankings.  Because over 80 percent of legal clients use web searches to find their next lawyer, this will destroy your competitiveness in today's legal world.

The best backlinking strategy tips for 2012 and 2013 should not include anything about buying backlinks or automating spam backlinks.  If they do, you can safely disregard anything else they say about backlinking strategy.  

Backlinking Strategy 2013 Basics: Do Something Different

If you really want to have the best backlinking strategy today, you need to do something that is completely unique for your firm.  Going viral, by creating a video or app or other content that people re-post again and again, is the best way to get the largest number of backlinks quickly in 2012 and 2013.

You may want to hire a marketing agency with a track record of getting viral traffic if you're not sure about a concept that could go viral.  Agencies can help you decide what you want people to see and what messages your viral promotion should project, and then can help you get the link started.  With good quality viral content and a little bit of luck, you could build hundreds of backlinks the most old-fashioned way of all: by getting them organically from people who love your content.

Less than .1% of websites have a PageRank of 9 or 10, but those high PageRank backlinks are more valuable than any other type of link you can obtain.  The relationship between backlinks and Google's PageRank system can seem complicated, so this guide will break it down for you and help you understand the parts that really matter for law firms.  Keep reading to find out why it's a worse idea to buy high PageRank backlinks than to make them yourself, and why low PageRank backlinks can actually be worse for your website than no backlinks at all.

Why Your Law Firm Needs High PageRank Backlinks

In order to make sure that law firms were building backlinks from high quality, authoritative websites, Google started determining how much “link juice,” or authority, a particular website gives when it links to someone.  High PageRank backlinks give much more link juice, all else being equal, than low PageRank backlinks.

The reason that Google makes these distinctions isn't to privilege the most elite websites.  Instead, it's as a way of recognizing that usually, high PageRank backlinks mean that a website has established a certain amount of authority in its subject area.  Whether you buy high PageRank backlinks (we don't recommend it—see the section below about buying high PageRank backlinks), build them yourself, or get them organically, you will see your search rankings become higher after getting these links than low PageRank backlinks.

Sources for High PageRank Backlinks

Some of the best places to get great backlinks without needing to buy high PageRank backlinks are social networking and bookmarking websites.  You won't get low PageRank backlinks by circulating your message on Facebook or Twitter—instead, you'll get the kinds of high PageRank links that you might have thought you'd need to buy.

What's more, when you get links from these websites, you may be able to get additional low to mid PageRank backlinks simply through word of mouth.  This kind of viral spreading of your link is exactly why high PageRank backlinks are so valuable.  If you buy high PageRank backlinks instead of generating them yourself or having them created organically by interested web viewers, you will miss out on many of these benefits.

What Link Quantity Has to Do With High PageRank Backlinks

While it's true that low PageRank backlinks won't give you as much link juice as high PageRank backlinks when all else is equal, all else isn't always equal.  The biggest factor that can make a difference is link quantity.  When there are too many links on a single webpage, you'll get much less of the link juice from your high PageRank backlinks.  In fact, if there are hundreds of links on the webpage where your link is, you might receive less link juice from a very popular website than from low PageRank backlinks that you built organically on websites with few links.

Because of this, it's important to check how many other links are on any page where you create high PageRank backlinks.  If you buy high PageRank backlinks, make sure they aren't appearing in places where they'll have to share their link juice with too many other websites.

Can I Just Buy High PageRank Backlinks?

This is the first question of many marketing professionals after they realize how difficult it can be to get organic high PageRank backlinks.  While low PageRank backlinks can be quite easy to build just by talking to colleagues and friends, it's not always easy to build links on websites with more traffic and more name recognition.

However, even though it may be tempting to buy high PageRank backlinks, it's better not to.  For one thing, if you buy high PageRank backlinks, you'll usually be posting them in a pattern that appears non-organic.  These non-organic patterns can be detected by Google and lead to your website being penalized.  In the end, it might have been better for you to have low PageRank backlinks than to buy high PageRank backlinks.

What's more, you actually lose most of the benefits other than the search engine optimization benefits when you buy high PageRank backlinks.  When you grow your backlinks on your own, there's a much better chance that even a low or mid PageRank backlink will start your content going viral.  Purchased backlinks tend to look more like spam and have a much smaller chance of being picked up virally.

Are Low PageRank Backlinks Ever Worthwhile?

Before you decide to buy high PageRank backlinks, consider creating a new strategy for making more low and mid PageRank backlinks.  Why?  Because these links are actually the lifeblood of most law firm backlinking strategies that work, and they offer you the best chance of getting picked up organically by people who will post your content elsewhere.

For example, a low PageRank social bookmarking website like Metafilter might seem like it doesn't have enough users to make it as worthwhile as a StumbleUpon or Reddit.  However, upon closer inspection, you'll see that the users of this website are very likely to re-post content they find there on their own Facebook or Twitter accounts.  That kind of viral potential makes it much more worthwhile to build low PageRank backlinks.

Generally, you'll only be penalized for low PageRank backlinks if you're buying them and using automated techniques.  Organically built backlinks are unlikely to be penalized, no matter what website they're built on.

Finding New Places to Get High PageRank Backlinks

Since you probably won't buy high PageRank backlinks after reading this guide, how should you build them?  The best way is probably to start really using the internet to learn on a daily basis.  If you're keeping track of a dozen or more websites with frequently updating content relating to law or legal marketing, you'll find out the newest sources for building the best high PageRank backlinks possible.

There's no reason that your law firm should have exclusively high PageRank backlinks, though.  Keep trying to find mid PageRank backlinks as often as possible, which also helps Google to see that you're not gaming the rankings.