Everything About SEO Blog

Today, only about 12 percent of lawyers in small firms are using the single best tool for getting your firm's name into search engine results: SEO blogs.  If you're not yet doing blog SEO for your firm, you are missing out on new business and a way to really make your firm stand out from your competition.

How is Blog SEO Changing?

When search engines were first developed, they looked largely at how often a keyword was repeated in a web page to decide where to put a page in search rankings, leading to the rise of SEO blogs.  However, after some time, SEO blog spam—often computer generated—was coming up in search results ahead of genuine, interesting material.  

So the engineers working for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines had to figure out a way to separate legitimate SEO blogs and other websites from the content-less spam sites.

With every move Google made, spammers got cleverer with spam blog SEO.  When Google started lowering the search result rank of articles with excessive keyword density, spammers lowered their density too.  In 2012, Google has released new changes (called Google Penguin) to their search indexer.

With Penguin, blog SEO depends more than ever on the quality of your content and how often other people are linking to it.  This means that SEO blogs today need to focus maintaining quality, original content while also interacting with other websites.  If what used to work for your SEO blog doesn't seem to be bringing in clients any more, you may need to change how you think of your blog SEO.

Can SEO Blogs Help My Practice?

The answer to this question is an unequivocal yes.  If you're not already using an SEO blog to help drive traffic to your website, you need to start as soon as you can.  Over half of small firm attorneys have gotten new business as a direct result of their blog SEO.

SEO blogs can also help any social media initiatives that your firm has begun.  If you're not quite sure what to post on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter to keep your audience interested, an SEO blog is a great place to begin.  You can include a short piece of your blog SEO post, as well as the headline, and wait for your social media connections to start reading.

What Kind of SEO Blog Should I Start?

The answer to this question, of course, depends on what you're good at and what your practice focuses on.  In all likelihood, it's not a good idea for a criminal defense attorney to have blog SEO about divorces or bankruptcy.

Don't make your SEO blog topic too general.  Remember that there are already many other SEO blogs, and you want yours to stand out. You should pick some specific aspect of your practice area you know a great deal about, and keep your blog focused on developments in that area.

Even more important is your audience.  Who do you want reading your SEO blog?  Some lawyers start SEO blogs that are designed to attract clients who are searching for terms related to their legal case online.  Other attorneys prefer to make their blog SEO more attractive to other attorneys, who can then see the content and send referrals on to your law office or link your blog in their blogs.

Considerations about your audience can affect the topic of your SEO blog.  SEO blogs that are about more consumer-friendly topics may get a little traffic from other attorneys, especially if they want to link your content.  On the other hand, blog SEO designed for other lawyers will probably be over the heads of most clients.

How Often Should I Post to My SEO Blog?

There's a tricky line that SEO blogs need to walk when it comes to posting frequency.  If you post too many times, people won't have time to read all of your blog SEO content and may even stop reading.  Even if they don't stop reading, the time and effort you spent making SEO blog entries will have been wasted if people don't have time to read it all.

At the same time, you don't want to post too infrequently.  SEO blogs with no entries written for a month or more can look abandoned, and will have a much harder time bringing in new business.

Your SEO blog should shoot for a happy medium—which will also give you enough time to make sure that you can produce quality blog SEO content.  Try posting once or twice a week to start, and then see whether you feel comfortable with producing a third (possibly short) article per week.

Before you start any SEO blogs, it's a good idea to have a reserve stockpile of articles.  That way, if you get busy, your SEO blog doesn't suffer from a lack of content: just take an article out of the stockpile and post whenever you need to.

What Should My SEO Blog Entries Look Like?

The key to great blog SEO is having great titles that capture the attention of your audience.  When SEO blogs have confusing titles—or titles that don't really capture what the article is about—they are often indexed incorrectly or ranked much lower.

If you still want to have clever or cute headlines instead of descriptive ones, include them as sub-headlines within your article.  This will allow your voice to shine through but won't result in your blog SEO being misread by search spiders.

Don't flood your blog entries with too many repetitive keywords.  You should be making sure your keywords appear several times in your entries, but in the best case scenario, they should flow seamlessly as part of your prose.  Usually, just 2 or 3 repetitions of keywords will be plenty for a 400 word article.

You should also make sure that your blog entries link back to landing pages on your own website at least once or twice.  Don't just link to a firm homepage, but instead make sure that you're using targeted landing pages designed to generate conversions.

Everything About SEM Blog

Lawyers make up just one percent of the population of the United States, but they maintain a full six percent of the blogs.  Having a search engine marketing/SEM blog has brought in new business for over half of solo practitioners and small firms that try it.  So how can you get on board?  Search engine marketing with blogs means more than just making sure you have the right keyword count in your articles.  If you want to get the most out of SEM blogs for lawyers, you'll need the right tips.  Here are five to get you started.

SEM Blog Tip #1: Make Your Headlines Count

While making your law blog entries creative is a great idea, you may be surprised to find that it's usually in your best interest to make your headlines more straightforward.  When SEM blogs are indexed by Google and other search engines, the headline is what they take the most notice of.  A headline that doesn't include the keyword phrases you're search engine optimizing for won't lead nearly as many people to your SEM blog.

Try coming up with punchy but descriptive headlines for SEM blogs that give a great idea of what's to come.  Numbered lists are sometimes a great way to come up with a good headline.  “7 Ideas For Keeping Your Divorce Amicable” could be a workable headline for a divorce attorney, and “What's Next in Mobile Marketing for Lawyers?  6 Possibilities” would be a great headline for an SEM blog focusing on marketing topics.

SEM Blog Tip #2: Don't Ignore Social Media

Most web users today share content of some type or another with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  While LinkedIn has gotten the most attention from lawyers with SEM blogs, you can no longer afford to leave Facebook and Twitter out of your web marketing strategy.

Facebook, the single most popular social media platform in the United States and the world, is a great place to share SEM blog entries or video blogging.  You don't have to stop there, though.  Ask your Facebook fans some open-ended questions.  If you're already maintaining SEM blogs, ask your Facebook friends or fans to give you more blogging ideas or ask questions about the law for you to answer in blog form.

Twitter is a little harder for some attorneys to learn to use for their SEM blogs, but its number of users has doubled for two years in a row and may double once again this year.  That means you're going to need to get used to Twitter's 140 character limit, and link your most mobile-friendly SEM blog entries with a short headline as “tweets.”  Why mobile friendly?  Twitter users are notoriously early adopters of technology, and more of them access the web with mobile devices than users of other mainstream social media sites. 

SEM Blog Tip #3: Open the Floor For Comments

Most SEM blogs have a comments section by default, but some attorneys decide to close comments in order to maintain more control over their blog.  This is a huge mistake: comments are one of the places where you can really set your SEM blog apart from the competition.  An active comments section will generate more links back to your blog entries and will engage your readers more.

If someone asks a question in your comments section, you may want to answer it with another comment, or you may want to shake it up by making a whole new blog entry about the question.  Making a new blog entry is an especially good idea if you've heard the same question repeated by several different people over the last few weeks, months or years.

When comments are particularly interesting, or if a good discussion has started in your comment section, you may want to link the comments instead of your entry using social media sites.  SEM blogs that can show an active, intelligent comments section are more likely to be seen as authoritative.

SEM Blog Tip #4: Moderate Your Comment Section

Not all comments on SEM blogs are helpful to discussion.  You should set up notifications about new blog comments, and make sure that any comments made on your SEM blog appear to be relevant.  Too often, otherwise good SEM blogs end up littered with spam comments from other websites trying to piggyback on your hard work and get an extra inbound link.

Delete right away any comments that appear to be littering your SEM blog with keyword spam.  SEM blogs with a great deal of this comment spam may be caught by Google's spam filters and find their search engine results pages declining fast.

The same can be said for any comments on SEM blogs that are clearly “trolling”: made just to get a rise out of you.  Comments that involve extensive name-calling or clearly deliberate misinterpretations of the law (especially very strange ones) are likely to be made by people who just want to make trouble for your SEM blog.  It's usually best to ignore and delete these comments rather than giving the commenters the satisfaction of your angry reply.

Please note: this doesn't mean that you should immediately delete a comment if it disagrees with your article.  Disagreement and discussion can actually be good for your SEM blog, as long as you keep it civil and try to inform and educate.  Deleting any comment that you think isn't positive enough will make other people much less likely to comment or discuss your articles.

SEM Blog Tip #6: Check Your ROI

The point of SEM blogs is to generate buzz and get more clients working with your law firm.  Even if you're having a blast writing SEM blog entries, you need to verify that what you're doing has actually been effective.

Using analytics tools is important so that you can see exactly where your web traffic is coming from and how much of it is attributable to your SEM blog.  If you're seeing certain topics or keywords that keep bringing clients in and generating conversions, you may want to keep your blog focused on those topics or keywords.  If something isn't working, analytics lets you know so that you don't keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Everything About Facebook Viral Marketing

While LinkedIn is the most common social media site for lawyers to have a profile on, Facebook is a close second.  Studies show that 68 percent of attorneys use Facebook at least once in a while.  If your firm wants to get into Facebook viral marketing to get clients, though, it won't necessarily be easy.  People interact with Facebook in very particular ways, and failing to pay attention to the prevailing norms can leave you with a worse reputation than before you got into the social media game.  In this guide, you'll learn four mistakes that a lot of law firms make when they begin Facebook viral marketing, and ways to avoid the mistake and get the clients or referrals you want.

Avoid This Mistake: Whoa, Text Overload!

One of the advantages the Facebook platform has over Twitter is that Facebook statuses can be significantly longer.  All the extra room may make you feel comfortable with writing long paragraphs of text, but be careful.  Studies show that Facebook users are much more likely to “Like” or otherwise interact with a post that is substantially shorter than the maximum length.

Remember that your updates aren't the only ones your readers are viewing.  People want to be able to scroll through their Facebook feeds relatively quickly, and if they get bogged down in text, they are likely to just keep moving instead of reading your Facebook viral marketing content.

Try This Instead: Short but Sweet

Keeping your Facebook status updates limited to the same character limit that Twitter uses—140 characters—can help you stay focused on maintaining brief messages that still hit hard.  If you want to link to a blog article, keep the text before your link very short and to the point.

The only time when you might want to have longer text for your Facebook viral marketing campaign is when you have something truly mind-blowing or unique to say.  If you can honestly say that a 250 character message is going to make people scrolling down their feed stop and say “wow,” and that you need that number of characters to convey the message, use it.  Just be aware that you may be losing out on the benefits of Facebook viral marketing if your content is too long too often.

Avoid This Mistake: Broadcasting Your Brand

Law firms that have done a great deal of advertising in the pre-social media days are often reluctant to adapt to the new norms of Facebook and the rest of the social media world.  Many of these firms think they're starting a Facebook viral marketing campaign, when in fact they're just dressing up the same old ad in more internet-savvy clothes.

You should never use a hard sell, or even use your Facebook statuses for directly advising people to contact your law office.  More than anything else, this is the mistake that can make you look like a Facebook viral marketing rookie, and will drive Facebook friends and fans away fast.

Try This Instead: Work on Your Conversation Skills

No one likes the person who spends every moment talking about themselves.  Remember that when your Facebook icon is being seen by viewers, it's being seen among the voices of many individual people—what personality do you want that icon to have?  If you don't want to be seen as self-centered, you need to learn to participate in the conversations that the people you're connected with are having.

When people comment on your status updates and links, keep the conversation going if you can.  You should also try to make at least some of your status updates questions, rather than statements.  People like to be asked what they think, and it's a great Facebook viral marketing strategy to use this kind of question to actually generate more content.  Ask people what they want to see you talk about next, and then follow through and deliver that content.

Avoid This Mistake: The Vanilla Firm—Hold the Vanilla

Horror stories about what happens when companies offend the social media universe abound.  That's why it's no wonder that some firms tone down their personality in an attempt to be all things to all people.  These firms may be trying to be professional, but they end up seeming like vanilla ice cream without the vanilla—a bland, boring glop.

Try This Instead: Spice it Up

You don't have to be boring to maintain your professional reputation.  While it would still be a bad idea to try raunchy or inappropriate Facebook viral marketing, there's nothing wrong with livening up your messages.  People prefer to read posts from people (and law firms) with a great personality.  You need to let yours shine through if you want your Facebook viral marketing to be as successful as it can be.

Avoid This Mistake: Shutting Down Negativity

Uh oh—now you've done it.  You've made a mistake online, a big one, and now an Angry Customer On the Internet is ready to start a nationwide boycott and probably burn your office down, for good measure.  These mistakes can be especially painful because they occur in public, where anyone can see that you did the wrong thing.

Of course, if the whole thing was in comments after a Facebook post, you could just delete the whole thing and never speak of it again, right?  Wrong.

Try This Instead: Talk It Out

Unless someone's actually harassing or threatening you, your Facebook viral marketing efforts will be best served by actually discussing the problem, instead of trying to make it go away.  Transparency through this process is key.  If you're perceived as having censored critics, you are unlikely to win new friends or further your Facebook viral marketing campaign.

Keep in mind that as long as you keep someone talking and manage to defuse the situation, it will generally go away very quickly.  Stay polite and upbeat in all communication with negative people on your Facebook page.  An internet mob has a short attention span, and as long as you don't add fuel to the fire with comebacks, defensiveness, or censorship, they'll find something else to be angry about soon enough.

Everything About LinkedIn Tips

Every new website you use has a learning curve, and LinkedIn is no exception.  With nearly 77 percent of LinkedIn users using the site to research people and companies, you can't afford not to know the best, most up to date LinkedIn tips.  Learning LinkedIn profile tips can make your profile more appealing at first glance, and other kinds of tips can make sure that you are getting the most out of your groups and network.  Keep reading to find some LinkedIn tips that can change the way you use social media to do business.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #1: Don't Hide

When you create your profile on LinkedIn, you'll be asked which privacy level you want your profile to be listed at—and that's where these LinkedIn profile tips begin.  One of the most important LinkedIn profile tips is to select “public” for this profile.  When you create a public profile, you're getting your face, name, and brand in front of a much wider audience than if you had been more selective about who can see it.

And speaking of photos, every list of LinkedIn profile tips will tell you to include one.  While these LinkedIn tips are right—every profile should have a photo, not just a logo—they aren't the whole story.  Go beyond those LinkedIn profile tips by using the same photograph on your LinkedIn profile that you use in your attorney bio.

Why?  Well, not all of your connections on LinkedIn will necessarily know you personally, especially if you're involved in groups.  It can be hard to recognize that someone is the same person from one picture to another.  By using these LinkedIn profile tips, create one image that is you for the sake of your internet presence.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #2: Be Original

Another place where a few LinkedIn profile tips can make a huge difference is your summary.  While your picture should be identical to your website photo, your summary should not be identical to your attorney bio.  Why?  Because let's face it: most attorney bios sound about the same, and you won't get anywhere with LinkedIn profile tips sounding like a robot.  Many of the best LinkedIn tips revolve around making yourself stand out, and your summary is a good place to do that.

For example, if you've already followed LinkedIn profile tips about filling in your whole profile and using a photo, you can make your summary more original by talking about yourself using “I” and “me” rather than maintaining a third-person, more objective sounding narrative.  A couple of quick additional LinkedIn tips for this section: talk about both the projects you're currently working on and what you're hoping to expand into doing in the future, and make sure that you always update your summary when those projects or goals change.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #3: Be Active

LinkedIn is a conference table, not a billboard.  You can't just walk away from your profile and expect it to do the marketing work for you.  In order to get the most out of any of these LinkedIn profile tips (and other LinkedIn tips), you'll need to make sure that your profile is routinely seen by other people.  That means you'll need to stay active and participate enthusiastically in your LinkedIn network.

Good LinkedIn tips about activity require you to do more than just providing an occasional status update.  Instead, you'll want to make posts to groups, start groups of your own (if you can think of a good topic), and share things that you've learned.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #4: Keep Current

One of the earlier LinkedIn profile tips was to make sure that you update your profile routinely.  That's one way of keeping current, but in order to make sure that you are getting the most out of the website, you should also follow news about any changes that are being made to LinkedIn itself.  These kinds of changes are common as LinkedIn figures out how people are using the website and how the internet itself is evolving.

When you keep current, you'll be able to take advantage of new features before your competitors do, giving you an advantage, even if only a temporary one.  Search for new LinkedIn profile tips and other tips on a regular basis, so that you can keep your LinkedIn presence updated and ensure that you're acting in accordance with best practices for marketing purposes.

If catching up on new LinkedIn features has been tough and you're already finding that you've fallen behind, make a list of which LinkedIn profile tips you'd like to follow, and create a calendar with deadlines for each different tip you're following.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #5: Get Connected

Today, people can access LinkedIn using more devices than ever.  If you have an iPad or a smartphone, you may already use LinkedIn through these devices, like an increasing number of users.  Using these devices to connect to LinkedIn during your commute or other downtime can really help you to engage with the website and your network on a daily basis.

You can also work to connect your LinkedIn marketing efforts with other marketing campaigns involving different social media websites or blogs.  By creating a consistent brand presence across several different social media networks, your visibility increases and you're more likely to get new business.

Easy LinkedIn Tips #6: Track Progress

There are a wide variety of analytics tools that you can use to see if your LinkedIn efforts are bringing in the new traffic you had hoped for, especially if you're using direct pay per click ads.  When you use analytics tools, you can do split testing to determine which of your advertisements is more effective at getting conversions from a particular audience.

Even if you're not using direct ads, you can keep track of how many contacts you've gained and how much new business you've gotten as a result of your LinkedIn efforts.  This can help you to see where your strengths are and what kinds of activities you should engage in more frequently.

It's not easy to admit when you've made an internet marketing mistake.  Sometimes, attorneys put thousands of dollars into a new advertising method before realizing that something just isn't going according to plan.  But what's actually preventing your internet marketing campaign from succeeding?  The answer may surprise you.  In this guide, we'll take a look at some of the most common marketing mistakes that attorneys make when they're using the web to advertise their services.

Mistake #1: Paying Before Your Website is Ready For Traffic

If you've just found out about a new web marketing technique, you may be enthusiastic about trying it out.  Sometimes, in fact, legal marketing professionals can get a little too enthusiastic about new methods.  If you're not making sure that your website is ready first, you may as well be lighting your money on fire—you're unlikely to gain any actual new clients no matter how much money you throw at your advertising project.

Signs that your website isn't ready for primetime include pieces of it that don't display or display incorrectly depending on what browser you're using.  If your website looks boring, dated, or simply like a thousand other attorney websites, you're also going to have a much harder time keeping potential clients on your website.  Optimize your user experience, and you'll have better luck with every internet marketing campaign you ever engage in.

Mistake #2: Buying Expensive Google Keywords

If particular keywords on Google are the most expensive ones to buy, they must be the best ones, right?  Wrong.  This is one of the mistakes many people who are new to buying direct ads on Google make.  However, most of the firms that are paying big bucks for big, heavily used search terms are very large firms with very large marketing budgets.  If that doesn't describe your firm, you don't need to be buying the most expensive keywords you can on Google.

Instead, focus on locally based, “long tail” keywords.  You should also consider using some negative keywords, so that you're not putting your advertisement up for searches that may not be relevant to what your firm does.

Mistake #3: Focusing on Search Engine Optimization Keywords

A few years ago, search engine optimization was all the rage, and it largely depended on having the right ratio of keywords in your internet marketing copy.  However, many different websites misused SEO and created low-quality websites that didn't really fulfill users' needs but did have a lot of keywords.

Today, Google and Bing/Yahoo have made their search engines substantially more difficult to fool with keyword counts and nonsense content.  If you're overusing search engine optimization keywords in your internet marketing, odds are that your website is or will become “sandboxed” by Google—artificially lowered in search rankings in order to discourage spammy techniques from internet marketers.

Mistake #4: Low Quality, Jargon-Filled Content

Attorneys may have gone to three years of law school, but usually their clients haven't.  That's why it's important to make sure that any content you create on your website avoids the pitfall of being written at a law school level.  In general, an average high school graduate should be able to read your website copy and come away from it with a good understanding of the material you've presented.

One of the best ways to make sure that your internet marketing content really is readable for lay people is to simply give a draft of some of your content to people you know who are less informed about the law than the people in your office.  These people can provide you with questions or pointers that can help you move in the right direction.

Mistake #5: Underbudgeting For Internet Marketing

Over 80 percent of Americans now have access to the internet, and about 60 million internet users in America will be looking online for an attorney in 2013.  That's a huge potential market, and what's more, over 50 percent of those potential clients will eventually contact an attorney about their case after researching lawyers online.

With this big an audience on the line, it's silly to make internet marketing a secondary marketing priority in 2013.  The internet has become the biggest way to shop for a lawyer, surpassing even the time-tested personal recommendation as the most common method for attorney research and selection.

Mistake #6: Shotgun Marketing

Many lawyers believe that their marketing materials should try to appeal to as many people as possible.  This kind of marketing is like a shotgun—when you fire it, it goes everywhere instead of being precisely targeted.  The kind of internet marketing you should want is like a rifle—targeted narrowly so that you have the best chance of hitting what you're aiming at.  Shotgun marketing costs more for a smaller return, and the best marketing principles for attorneys today all involve making sure that you're targeting the correct audience for your marketing materials.

Mistake #7: Putting All Your Eggs In One Basket

There's no reason to spend your entire internet marketing budget on just one or two websites, no matter how big those websites are.  Diversifying where your website appears in advertisements is a great idea.  If you put all your eggs in one basket, keep in mind that search engine algorithms change all the time.  You don't want to be just one Google update from losing a large number of clients because the site you advertise with is no longer popular.  Diversification shields you from changes large and small in internet marketing trends.

Mistake #8: Losing Flexibility

If you find an internet marketing strategy that genuinely works for your law firm, you may be tempted to keep simply using it without continuing to search for new techniques.  While this may work in the short term quite well, it's very likely that you can expect to see additional changes to internet marketing trends in the mid and long term.  The law firms that will do best at internet marketing in the future are those flexible enough to change and adapt their techniques to take those trends into account.

Everything About LinkedIn Statistics

In a country like the United States, where 90 percent of lawyers are already. Using LinkedIn, you can't afford to get left behind.  According to Alexa, LinkedIn became the 12th most visited website worldwide in 2012.  This popularity means that LinkedIn can and should be a vital component of your legal marketing strategy.  Keep reading to find out some shocking LinkedIn statistics so that you know why it's so important to maintain your networks on this site.

LinkedIn Statistics: Growth and Development

In 2002, LinkedIn was started by a single entrepreneur in his living room.  The month it began, LinkedIn statistics registered 4,500 unique users.  The next years saw the website grow exponentially, and by the time LinkedIn went public in May of 2011, it was already a place where over 100 million people were networking.

LinkedIn pre-dated Facebook and Twitter, and maintained its popularity throughout the explosion of these websites' user bases for one big reason: it wasn't trying to do the same things.  While LinkedIn, like Facebook and Twitter, was a social media website that gave people the opportunity to share content and follow the activity of others, it carved its own brand niche as the center of the web for professionals.  The business orientation of LinkedIn has meant that its popularity among lawyers has soared in recent years.  Over 80 percent of attorneys at all sizes of law firms currently have a LinkedIn profile.

The number of searches done on LinkedIn is truly staggering.  LinkedIn statistics today show that 4.2 billion searches were made last year, and this year's numbers are set to break that record by over a billion searches.

From a living room enterprise, LinkedIn has become a company with 25 offices worldwide from Milan to Melbourne.  Nearly 3,000 people are currently full time employees of LinkedIn, and they serve the site's 175 million users.  Every Fortune 500 company has executives using LinkedIn, and the site's users have formed more than one million groups.

Linkedin Statistics: Who's Using LinkedIn?

Because LinkedIn is business oriented, its user base differs significantly in several key ways from other social media websites.  Over half of LinkedIn users report having at least a bachelor's degree, with a sizeable percentage having graduate or post-graduate coursework.  LinkedIn users also have statistically higher income levels than users of other common social media websites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.

The fastest growing groups on LinkedIn today are college students and recent graduates.  These students account for over 10 percent of LinkedIn's current traffic, and are increasingly looking to the website to help them secure networking opportunities, internships, and eventually jobs.  Many law school students also make profiles on LinkedIn to be able to connect with law firms and discuss opportunities or just build a network of other lawyers in their desired practice area.

It's not all individuals who are using LinkedIn.  Over 2 million companies also maintain Company Pages according to the most recent LinkedIn statistics.  Because LinkedIn tends to be a better place for business to business transactions, B2B companies are particularly likely to participate.  Companies selling products marketed toward affluent consumers also tend to prefer LinkedIn to its competitors.

LinkedIn Statistics: How People Use LinkedIn

The single most common way that LinkedIn users make use of the website is by researching people or companies that they have some sort of personal or business interest in.  77 percent of users report this kind of activity, while the next most common action is connecting with colleagues you've fallen out of touch with.

LinkedIn statistics reveal some other uses for the website as well, with nearly 50 percent of users building new relationships with key decision makers and influential people.  44.5 percent of LinkedIn users report that they've used the research functionality of the site to get a leg up in face to face networking opportunities, while for 38% of users, LinkedIn has been a springboard for finding new career opportunities.  38% of LinkedIn users also built relationships with potential customers using the site—mostly users who run B2B oriented companies.

The feature of LinkedIn that users are most likely to report as a favorite is the Groups feature, followed closely by people searching.  LinkedIn statistics also reveal that some features of the site are being underutilized, with only 5.9% of users reporting that they like using polling, while only 1.7% is using the presentation features LinkedIn makes available.

On average, LinkedIn statistics show that users spend about 17 minutes using the site every time they log in.  About half of users spend up to 2 hours a week using LinkedIn, while a quarter spends 3-4 and 12.2% spends 5-6.  10.5 percent of users are power users (or addicts?) spending at least 8 hours a week on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Statistics: Groups and Networks

Your number of first degree connections on LinkedIn can make a big difference to how well the site works to get new business for your firm.  Currently, 11.7 percent of LinkedIn users have fewer than 50 contacts, which will limit their opportunities for networking.  About 20 percent have 50-100 connections, while another 20 percent have between 100 and 200.  

Only five percent of users have more than 1000 first-level connections, and having this many connections can sometimes be an indicator that you are not being selective about allowing new connections to come in.  Allowing simply anyone to connect to you through a request can mean that you're more likely to be vulnerable to phishing attacks and other hacking, so be careful and make sure that you actually know anyone you are accepting as a first degree connection.

Because groups are one of people's favorite aspects of the LinkedIn platform, a huge majority of users report joining at least one group.  Only 3.7% of LinkedIn users have joined no groups at all, with a plurality of 41.6% belonging to between 1 and 9 total groups.  Over 30 percent of users belong to 10-29 groups, and it may surprise you to learn that over 10 percent use more than fifty groups.

Everything About LinkedIn Review

LinkedIn had humble beginnings in a programmer's living room just ten years ago.  Today, it's one of the 50 most visited websites in the world.  LinkedIn reviews can help you to evaluate whether creating a LinkedIn profile would be beneficial for you individually or as part of a business.  Because no one LinkedIn review covers everything, and because you may need to read several reviews to know how LinkedIn can help your law firm, in this guide we've tried to make some general conclusions about the website based on a large number of trusted LinkedIn reviews.

What's So Great About LinkedIn?

One thing that almost every LinkedIn review today mentions is how enormous LinkedIn has gotten.  The huge user base—over 160 million members and growing by nearly 200,000 people every day—is unique among social media websites.  As LinkedIn reviews can tell you, while consumer-oriented social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) have users with a wide range of backgrounds, LinkedIn is primarily a business tool.

For law firms, the user base of LinkedIn is even better.  Every LinkedIn review about using the site as a law firm marketing tool will mention the staggering number of lawyers with a profile: between 80 and 90 percent of all attorneys in the United States use LinkedIn according to these LinkedIn reviews.  What this means is that you won't need to work hard to get your professional contacts into LinkedIn—odds are, they're already there.

LinkedIn allows you to share what you're doing with others and strengthen your networking contacts from your own computer.  You can also do direct advertising that is similar to the kind of pay per click ads appearing on Google AdWords (more on what LinkedIn reviews have to say about that in a minute).

If you're interested in having reviews on your website, your LinkedIn contacts can actually create a LinkedIn review of your law firm and have it automatically posted to your website.  Having a positive LinkedIn review is good—having several positive LinkedIn reviews can substantially increase the conversion rate once people see your website.

What's Not So Great?

Social media skeptics are often reluctant to join any website that wants to obtain their personal information.  While LinkedIn reviews its privacy information frequently, you should remember that a great deal of the information posted on your LinkedIn page can be seen by the public, and nearly all of it can be seen by the people in your network.

The privacy problems were made even worse in June of 2012.  Any LinkedIn review that doesn't bring up these potential problems is ignoring a very real concern for many internet users.  Over 6 million passwords were stolen in June and made available online.  Because (as many LinkedIn reviews after the hacking incident made clear) LinkedIn asks users to create a strong password, people's strongest passwords and passphrases were compromised.

LinkedIn reviews also note that users are vulnerable to another type of security problem: “spear phishing,” in which your public data on LinkedIn is used to make it appear that a message you receive is from a co-worker or contact.  An internal LinkedIn review of this problem has been ongoing, but so far no major changes have been made to combat this possibility.

Usually, any negative LinkedIn review will mention that compared to the other big social media hubs today, LinkedIn appears to be somewhat bland and featureless.  LinkedIn reviews usually find that there aren't as many features that have a great deal of mass appeal—it's less flashy, in short.  That's somewhat by design, given the intended audience: odds are, if LinkedIn increased these types of features, a new negative LinkedIn review would talk about how the changes were bringing in non-professionals.

How Can I Get the Most Out of LinkedIn?

LinkedIn can help you more when you use it more.  By tying in your LinkedIn page with the rest of your branding and social media efforts, you can increase its value to your company.  If you just set up a LinkedIn profile and never use the website or interact with other users, you're not going to get the kind of value that LinkedIn reviews discuss.  If, instead, you interact a lot, and encourage professionals to give you a LinkedIn review that appears on your website when they're happy with your firm's services, you'll find that it becomes a much more useful marketing tool.

Remember that using a site like LinkedIn effectively isn't just “playing around on the internet,” it's genuinely something that can help your business.  You can get more LinkedIn reviews for your business and more leads when you encourage your attorneys to use the site and check out what's new on a daily basis.  That time isn't wasted—it's being used to increase brand awareness of your firm and get new connections that can develop into new business.

Advertising With LinkedIn

While most professionals like LinkedIn's main functionalities, LinkedIn reviews are mixed about whether the website's direct ads are useful for businesses.  Usually, when a LinkedIn review about the site's advertisements laments a low ROI, it's because the business involved wasn't a great fit for LinkedIn's target audience.

To an extent, lawyers can disregard negative LinkedIn reviews about the advertising system, because law firms are in a unique position to capitalize on these ads.  Rather than using LinkedIn ads to market to new clients, you may want to target your pay per click LinkedIn ad campaigns on advertising to other attorneys, in order to increase the number of referrals received by your firm.

Attorneys also have another advantage that a typical LinkedIn review may not take into account: nearly every lawyer in the United States uses LinkedIn, making it the website with the most ability to connect you to other law firms.  Other industries have not seen anywhere close to the adoption rate of LinkedIn that has occurred in the legal world.  Because of this, legal advertising is likely to be more effective than advertising for some other product or service.

Everything About LinkedIn Network

Having a LinkedIn profile means nothing if you aren't connected to anyone.  Building your LinkedIn network is absolutely critical if you want to have a viable social media strategy as a law firm.  Almost 70 percent of LinkedIn users today have at least 100 first degree connections in their network.  If you're not there yet, keep reading.  These LinkedIn networking tips can help you expand your connections and improve your reputation with other professionals and in your community as a whole.

LinkedIn Networking Tips #1: Keep Checking Your Contacts

Some LinkedIn networking tips will warn you against having the website look through your Outlook contacts and automatically indicate people who already have LinkedIn accounts.  Typically, the reason that people are reluctant to build their LinkedIn network this way is that they are wary about what LinkedIn will do with the information, or concerned with the potential of hacking.

While the website has had several high profile privacy gaffes in recent years (including a leak of 6.5 million password hashes in 2012), keep in mind that you're already giving a great deal of personal information to LinkedIn about who you know.  The advantages of being able to build your LinkedIn network so quickly with the automatic contact importing feature easily outweigh any disadvantages from a perceived invasion of privacy.

Whenever you make a new contact, you should always see if they're on LinkedIn.  But what about the people who were already in your contact list but just didn't have a LinkedIn account quite yet?  That's where these LinkedIn networking tips come in: In order to make sure you're keeping up with which of your contacts now have LinkedIn network pages, you should recheck your Outlook address book with the automatic connection tool on a regular basis.

LinkedIn Networking Tips #2: Reciprocity and Return

The basis of social media networks is interaction, and the users in your Linkedin network will work for you more if you work for them.  Don't just stalk other people's profiles and do research and reconnaissance.  This kind of behavior will usually make your LinkedIn network distrustful of you and won't win any friends or new business opportunities.

Instead, the best LinkedIn networking tips will always tell you to be transparent.  The more information that you make available about yourself, the more other people will be willing to share with you and the more likely it is that a new contact will accept your connection request even if they don't know you very well.

Don't be afraid to give information and advice to your LinkedIn network.  Keep in mind that even though you're giving the information away for free, this will often mean that other people will return the favor by sharing similar types of information with you, or even referring new business your way.  They can also help by giving you new LinkedIn networking tips about a firm or attorney you're not already connected to. There is never a reason to be a miser with your information with your LinkedIn network, as long as you're not revealing anything confidential or that would violate your ethics.

LinkedIn Networking Tips #3: Become a Groupie

When LinkedIn users were polled about which features on LinkedIn were their favorite, the largest number (almost 80 percent) picked groups.  Because so many attorneys are already using LinkedIn, you can almost always find a group that's talking about a topic that will interest you.  These groups are a great way to meet new people and learn new things about your practice area, emerging legal technology, or whatever else interests you professionally or personally.

Groups offer several additional advantages, as well—which is probably why over 96 percent of LinkedIn users belong to at least one group, and why no LinkedIn networking tips would be complete without some tips for getting the most out of groups.  For example, you're not usually able to contact a person unless you already have an existing connection to that person through the LinkedIn network.  However, if you're in the same group as somebody else, you can send them a private message.  This means that whenever you really need to contact someone you have no connection with, you can always try joining a group they're part of, then sending the message.

LinkedIn Networking Tips #4: Make Something Useful

If you're involved in conversations as part of several groups, you'll already be building your LinkedIn network at a great pace.  If you want to get LinkedIn networking tips to make even more first level connections, though, you need to think of something you can create that will be unique.  

Whether it's a useful e-book or a quick app that helps people decide whether they need to hire a lawyer for a particular legal issue, making something new is a great way to get your name passed around and watch your LinkedIn network swell accordingly.

If you're not sure what kind of new content would be most useful for building your LinkedIn network, just observe groups relevant to your practice area for a while and look for an unmet need.  If you provide something that can help to fulfill that desire, you won't have to do the work of distributing it—all you'll have to do is post it to some LinkedIn groups and watch your connections do the distribution work for you.

LinkedIn Networking Tips #5: Back to Basics

Keep in mind that you can build your LinkedIn network offline as well as online.  It's a good idea to customize your profile URL so that you can easily include it on a business card and hand it out at any in-person networking opportunities you may have.  

Many lists of LinkedIn networking tips ignore the fact that you can vastly expand your LinkedIn network with just a few new in-person contacts from a conference or seminar.  Don't forget that while the online world is very important for law firms today, it's not a replacement for face to face networking opportunities—it's an enhancement to them.

Everything About LinkedIn Marketing

It's a big step for your law firm to start marketing on LinkedIn, but if you're already one of the 90 percent of attorneys using the website, with a few tweaks you can start getting a real return on investment.  Even the very first steps of profile creation can have a significant impact on your LinkedIn marketing—did you know that without a photo of yourself, you may be losing a third or more of possible networking opportunities?  Keep reading to find out how to make sure your LinkedIn marketing makes your firm prosper and look great.

Marketing on LinkedIn: Making a Profile

LinkedIn marketing begins when you create your profile.  Don't just hurry through profile creation, because your profile is your public face, your first impression that will bring in new connections.  Not all lawyers marketing on LinkedIn are using all of the features of the profile system: statistics show that of the attorneys currently using the website, just over 50 percent have a profile that is at 100 percent completion.

You should always make sure that your LinkedIn profile contains a photo—studies have shown that having a photo of at least your face, rather than a company logo, will increase your LinkedIn marketing success and your ability to generate new connections.  The best photo to use is the same photo that you're using on the attorney bio page on your website—this will help to make sure that the “you” people see in both places is the same, and increase recognition.

In order to have great LinkedIn marketing, you need to go beyond the defaults.  Instead of using your job title as your profile “headline,” consider making a headline that gets into the specifics of what you do and who you are as a lawyer.  Customize your links as well—instead of “My Web Site,” you can use link text that is more descriptive about your firm's homepage or attorney bio page.  Even your LinkedIn URL can be customized so that you can more easily include it on business cards or email correspondence.

Marketing on LinkedIn: Making Connections

When you start using LinkedIn marketing, you'll be asked whether you want to import your Outlook contacts into LinkedIn.  This can be a good idea for quickly populating your contacts list, but you may not want to send additional invites to people who aren't yet part of the site—they could perceive these as spam, and your reputation could suffer as a result.

Once you've added a number of initial connections for marketing on LinkedIn, make sure that when you continue adding people to your network, you're customizing (there's that word again!) your messages.  Sending just the default message sends another, unwritten message to your would-be contact: that you don't want to take the time to address them personally.  Write a quick, heartfelt message and you'll be much more likely to be added to someone's network.

Marketing on LinkedIn: Making Conversions

One of the easiest ways to use LinkedIn marketing to make direct conversions is by using direct ads.  These pay per click advertisements usually cost significantly less than Google AdWords (often in the neighborhood of $3 per click) and will appear only to people with the job titles and geographic locations you select.

In order to make your ads effective, you're going to need to use a lot of the same strategies that you would use for any web sidebar advertisement (like the ones that you can buy with Google AdWords).  You'll want a clear, direct call to action and to make sure that both the ad text and the landing page it links to are highly relevant to the people you are targeting with your ads.

Marketing on LinkedIn: Making Conversations

LinkedIn marketing gives your firm the opportunity not only to talk about your own services, but to talk about new case law, state statutes, and changes to legal technology with colleagues and friends.  By exchanging ideas and creating engaging new content, you can get the most out of your marketing on LinkedIn.

For example, if you have a knack for answering people's questions quickly and eloquently, you should consider trying to answer a few questions on LinkedIn every day or nearly every day.  This kind of contribution reflects well on you and your firm, and can help you to build your reputation with other attorneys and with potential future clients.

Groups are another good way to get a conversation going.  Groups should always be part of your LinkedIn marketing efforts.  Don't directly advertise (you always want to avoid the appearance of spam), but engage in creative ways that show you are helpful and friendly.  Marketing on LinkedIn will most often take the form of networking opportunities with people who can send your firm business through client referrals.

Marketing on LinkedIn: Making Plans for the Future

If you're not using direct ads, your LinkedIn marketing should be primarily based in building your reputation and making sure that your firm is visible in your community.  It's important for you to stay informed about changes to marketing on LinkedIn that could affect your company's business.  New sections for profiles should be filled out so that your LinkedIn marketing maintains competitiveness.

The future of the internet is being shaped every day, and from what forecasters today can tell us, the future is mobile.  You'll want to make sure that your LinkedIn content is visible and easy to use even for people using iPads or smart phones, rather than just for people who are accessing the internet from their PCs.  

An increasing number of people primarily check their LinkedIn accounts from mobile or tablet computing apps, and this is a trend that so far shows no signs of slowing down.  If a LinkedIn direct ad, for instance, links people to a website landing page that is full of images and long, scrolling text, preparing for the future will mean reshaping your landing pages to make them more accessible.