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.

Everything About PPC Management

So you've started using pay per click marketing for your law firm—but what now?  Do you want keywords that cost $50 or more, or to bid lower on keywords for just a few dollars?  PPC bid management software can cost hundreds of dollars, and PPC management services can cost thousands—are they worth it?  This guide will explore how you can best manage your pay per click advertising, with or without PPC management services.  You'll also learn about common PPC bid management mistakes to avoid when you begin working on your PPC management strategies.

PPC Bid Management Options

When you start learning about pay per click marketing, one of your first questions might be “how do I know what to bid?”  There are several different answers to this question, depending on your PPC management needs and your current pay per click advertising budget.  Usually, the search engines offering this type of advertising also offer PPC management services and options that can help you manage your bids.

While it's easy to use these services for your PPC bid management, you may know about your other options as well.  Some companies offer software that can help you make bids and learn more about PPC management in your pay per click campaigns.  Others offer full PPC management services that allow you to focus on your firm's business without thinking about your own pay per click advertising campaign.

When Should I Use Search Engine PPC Management Services?

If you're new to marketing with PPC, you may want to start doing PPC bid management with the tools offered by the search engines themselves.  These services have a few distinct advantages: they're easy to use, with effective tutorials that can help you learn how to do the basics of PPC management.  However, there's a reason that up to 70 percent of big businesses eventually hire specialized PPC management services to handle their pay per click campaigns: it's not easy to just use what you're given by search engines.

Keep in mind that any PPC bid management that you do with the services offered by Google or Yahoo will be run by them, and that they're more interested in their own profit than your law firm's.  When you use their tools, then, don't be surprised if the way they do PPC management seems hazy.  They simply don't make all the best analytical information available to consumers.

When Should I Use Third Party PPC Bid Management Software?

Once you've worked with PPC management tools from the search engines for a while, you may be ready to move on to tools that give you more control.  For this, you'll want to look for third party PPC management services software.  The quality of these tools can vary, and some can cost hundreds of dollars for a user license, so you'll want to make sure to look for online reviews of any software before you buy.

Of all of your PPC bid management options, using third party software can give you the most control over your bid strategies—if you know what you're doing.  Make sure that you understand the tools that you have, and consider sending an employee to a training that can help them get the most out of any PPC management tools that you've spent money on.  Remember that the tools you use are only as good as the people using them.  If you're not able to spend money on training someone to use PPC bid management software, you may want to hire PPC management services to handle your bids.

When Should I Use PPC Management Services?

Micromanaging pay per click bids isn't for everyone, and many law firms end up deciding that it would be better to leave PPC bid management in the hands of specialists.  There's nothing wrong with using one of these services for PPC management, but keep in mind that the cheapest service may not be the best.

PPC management services that keep your data may be cheaper in the short term, but make no mistake: when you lose data, you lose money and time. You may not think that your data means much, but think of PPC bid management as a series of experiments.  Some work, and some don't, and every time you find out one that works you'll save money and attract clients.  If your data doesn't belong to you and you switch PPC management services, you're back to square one: you won't know which of your PPC management strategies worked, and which were failures.  

The best companies that provide PPC bid management won't just make bids for you, they'll discuss your marketing strategies and help you build a website that converts clicks into clients.  This can be much more cost-effective than hiring bare bones PPC management services to handle your marketing on the web.

Common PPC Bid Management Mistakes

When you're new to PPC management, you can easily fall prey to common bidding mistakes.  One of the easiest traps to fall into is bidding too high.  Obviously you'll get more clicks when you bid high, but how many of those clicks become clients?  Experiment with bids that don't necessarily put you into the top position—you may find that you're getting just as many clients when you're spending a great deal less on your bids.

Law firms that are new to PPC management also tend to start by using keywords in their ad groups that are simply too general to get the kinds of clients they want.  Keywords that are too general hurt your PPC management in two different ways: they make conversion rates go down while causing your bid prices to go up.

It's also important not to keep changing your bids too often, too early.  While some PPC management strategies may require changing bids fairly frequently, smart PPC bid management relies on building historical data and using that data wisely.  Changing your bids too much when your campaign is new can result in bad data and bad PPC management.

Everything About PPC

In today's legal marketing world, the internet has begun to dominate the discussion, and pay per click is more popular than ever.  You may have heard that PPC pay per click advertising can raise your law firm's website traffic by as much as 66%, but have very little idea what else PPC can do for your firm.  This guide will help answer the most basic questions, from “what is PPC?” to “How do I manage my PPC bids?”  It doesn't have to be hard to set up a PPC pay per click campaign—you'll learn how to start from the basics here.

What is PPC?

Both new and old law firms need advertising that works on the web.  You have several options: you can manage keywords on your website or in blog entries, then use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to get onto the first page of someone's web search.  However, this kind of search engine marketing requires a high level of skill with web writing to make sure that your content is relevant while keeping keyword density high enough to put your firm into the top few pages of results.

Instead of trying to get your website into the first few pages of results through a traditional search, you can instead use PPC pay per click marketing.  Even if you have little computer experience and are still asking “what is PPC?” you can still use Google AdWords or another PPC program to get your marketing campaign off the ground.  PPC pay per click advertising allows you to target your firm's advertising and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

What is a PPC Keyword?

When you start to run a PPC pay per click advertising campaign, you'll need to think about what clients are typically looking for when they come to your website.  If your firm specializes in helping people to beat traffic tickets, for instance, your clients probably begin their web search by looking for keywords relating to traffic tickets.

When you advertise using PPC, you can decide which searches your PPC pay per click advertising is seen on.  You will choose the specific keywords that your firm will bid on.  If you're in the top several bidders for a keyword when someone searches for it, your website's ad will be seen by that person—meaning that your site is seen by the exact people you want to attract as clients.

What is PPC Going to Cost My Firm?

The cost of a PPC pay per click campaign depends largely on exactly what kinds of keywords you're bidding on and what your bid strategies are.  If you want to bid on very expensive keywords, like “mesothelioma,” the answer to “what is PPC going to cost” will be very steep indeed—often tens or even hundreds of dollars for a single click!  However, by narrowly tailoring your keywords, you can bring PPC costs down.

For example, you may want to include geographic terms in your searches.  You may also want to include very specific keywords that clients are likely to use, rather than using the kind of keywords that lawyers use.  Instead of using PPC pay per click keywords like “personal injury attorney,” consider terms like “rear end car accident lawyer.”  You can also choose some PPC keywords to exclude from searches—so if your firm doesn't handle a particular type of case, you can exclude clients searching for lawyers who can.

What is PPC Bid Management?

Because PPC pay per click advertising uses bidding, the cost you'll have to pay to get your advertisement displayed prominently will depend on what other firms have already bid.  While firms that are still trying to figure out “what is PPC?” may not be able to work out a great bid management strategy right away, as you continue to use pay per click services you'll learn how to maximize the profits from your bids.

For example, you may find that it might be much cheaper to appear early in search results with your PPC pay per click campaign when you're advertising at certain hours of the night.  If you still get the same conversion rates (the same percentage of people call your firm after clicking), you'll want to make sure your PPC bid isn't any higher than it needs to be.  You can use PPC pay per click bid management software to help you figure out what is PPC bid strategy that will work best for your law firm.

What is PPC Campaign Management?

“What is PPC?” is a more complex question than just what keywords to bid on.  If you're still not sure how to use PPC pay per click marketing, you may want to look into PPC campaign management.  Campaign management services can help you get beyond the initial difficulties of setting up your PPC campaign so you can move on to getting the clicks and conversions you're hoping for.

What is PPC Strategy?

Building a great strategy for your PPC pay per click ads requires knowing about your potential clients.  When your clients are looking for websites to answer their legal questions or find a lawyer, they want accurate information and contemporary web design that is aesthetically pleasing.  In order to have the best PPC results, you'll want to create strategic landing pages that contain the content your clients are searching for.

When you have done PPC pay per click advertising for some time, you can begin to look at changing and developing your strategy based on what works.  What is a PPC effective strategy can depend largely on the exact nature of your practice—you'll want to look at which pages are driving conversions and what those pages have in common.

What is PPC Going to Do for My Business?

Used effectively, PPC pay per click can help your business to grow—not just by getting eyes on your website, but by getting the right eyes.  When you use PPC, you're targeting only clients who specifically want exactly the kinds of services your firm is providing.  When you begin to develop your PPC pay per click strategy, you'll find that your conversion rates can steadily increase, making it cost less for each new client you're finding online.  While other forms of marketing require a great deal of computer knowledge, you can begin a campaign with pay per click advertising relatively quickly and easily.

Everything About PPC Campaigns

The internet has changed everything about finding a lawyer.  Today, 65 percent of potential legal clients look online for law firms before choosing which lawyer to call.  One of the fastest ways to get your website into the top pages of search results is to use PPC search engine advertising.  This kind of advertising is highly effective, and can increase the traffic to your website by 60 percent or more when you design your PPC campaign with your client in mind.

Starting Successful PPC Campaigns

One of the toughest things about designing a pay per click ad campaign is just knowing where to start.  You may have seen other law firms buy their way into sponsored web results, and wonder if there's a way to have your firm do the same thing.  PPC search engine advertising is available through most major search engines, and many of these search engines offer quick tutorials that can help you get PPC campaigns off the ground within days if you want to move fast.

While the speed of starting a pay per click campaign is one of the advantages of this form of advertising, it's important not to get too carried away.  Waiting to initiate your PPC campaigns until you are sure you know what you're doing can ensure that you get the maximum return on investment.  Before you start working with PPC search engine advertising, here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you know what your goals are for your advertising campaign?  Keep in mind that just generating more website traffic doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more clients—don't just have a goal like “we want to see a 50 percent increase in visitors to our website,” think about how many new clients you're hoping for.

• Are you familiar with the jargon and terminology of PPC campaigns?  You'll have a much easier time understanding best practices for PPC search engine advertising if you know enough of the vocabulary to do your research.

• Is your website attractive and well designed?  Even the best PPC campaigns won't work if your pay per click ads lead to a website with inaccurate information or broken links.  If your website is merely mediocre, up to 85% of clients will leave before they've even looked for 30 seconds—and they aren't likely to come back.

What to Do If Your PPC Campaigns Don't Work

Because PPC search engine advertising is still relatively new, it's easy for people designing new pay per click campaigns to run into some trouble when they first start designing their advertisements.  Here are a few common problems and how to fix them:

• If you're spending your PPC search engine advertising budget too quickly on too few clicks, you may want to focus your PPC campaigns on narrower, less prestigious keywords.  Hyperlocalization can help you to get the most out of each click made on your advertisements.

• If your ads aren't bringing in many clicks, the copy of your ads themselves may need fine-tuning.  Don't bother including a phone number in your PPC search engine advertising—save that for your landing page, where it isn't taking up such a high percentage of your space.

• If you're getting a lot of traffic with “broad match” keywords, consider adding negative keywords to your PPC campaigns.  For example, you may want to make sure that your PPC search engine advertising doesn't involve paying for clicks from people seeking free legal aid.

• If you have plenty of clicks but no one's calling, take a long, hard look at your website. PPC campaigns can fail even when ad copy is brilliant if a website is messy or just plain boring. The more you can differentiate yourself from the competition with your website, the more likely it is that your PPC search engine advertising will be successful.

You may want to consider hiring a service to help you with your PPC campaigns if you have corrected what you believe to be the problem, but haven't seen any results.  A well-organized pay per click campaign should have a significant impact not only on your website traffic, but on your number of clients.  If it's not, you may want professionals to evaluate your PPC search engine advertising and your website.  Professional help may save you money and time when trying to design a new campaign—think of these services as an investment, rather than a cost.

Third Party Software and PPC Search Engine Advertising

When you want to step up your analysis of data from PPC campaigns, you don't just want to rely on Google or Yahoo services for bidders.  There are dozens of third party tools that can help you improve any aspect of your PPC search engine advertising.

In order to understand how to get the most out of any third party software tool, you'll need to know how to use it.  Some tools for PPC campaigns include enough tutorials and documentation that you'll understand the basic features right away.  However, if you're a power user or you want to be one, it's critical to seek out training.  Training seminars and webinars can make it easier to use the more complicated features on your software so that your analysis of your PPC search engine advertising is more robust.

Alternatives to PPC Search Engine Advertising

While PPC campaigns can be a great way to get your website in the spotlight quickly, it's important not to let pay per click be your only marketing strategy.  A more complete internet advertising campaign will also include search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that can help place your website higher in organic (non-sponsored) search results.  

You may want to work on your PPC search engine advertising at first, when your internet marketing campaign is new, and then gradually increase the effort your firm puts into SEO.  Then, once your organic search results are high enough, at least for some terms, you can scale back your PPC campaigns on those terms and work on different sets of keywords or simply reduce your pay per click budget.

Everything About PPC Advertising

Starting your PPC campaign can seem like a giant headache: how do you make sure that your PPC advertising works and doesn't cost more than you can afford?  This guide will help you sort out the basics of PPC advertising, including common pitfalls for your law firm to avoid as well as strategies to maximize your conversions and clicks.  You'll also learn how the best PPC campaign strategies can depend largely on the size of your firm and the amount that you can budget for your pay per click ads.

PPC Campaign Management: Common Pitfalls

When you begin working with PPC advertising, it can be tempting to start with just one ad group leading to a single landing page on your website.  While this is certainly the easiest way to begin your PPC campaign, it also takes many of your options for PPC campaign management away.  Without running multiple campaigns, it's very difficult to see what's working well for your firm and what is failing.  While it's possible to run a successful PPC campaign without multiple ad groups, it's very difficult—and why would you want to miss out on valuable information?

You may also want to avoid having your bids managed by the same company that is profiting from those bids.  While bid management tools from Google and Yahoo can be easy to use, they also take away some of your control, and work mostly to maximize the profit to the search engine, not to your law firm.  You may want to look into obtaining third party software to make sure that your PPC campaign is working for you, not for Google.

One of the other big mistakes made by beginners to PPC advertising is spending too much on bids.  This usually happens for one of two reasons: either your PPC campaign is not focused enough on a niche target, or your PPC campaign management strategy has involved bidding too high for keywords.  Expensive “prestige keywords” can cost a great deal of money without offering great conversion rates.  If you always have the top bid for a particular keyword, you may be overpaying for your PPC advertising without seeing the results you were hoping for.

PPC Campaign Management: Landing Pages

One of the most important aspects of your PPC advertising involves where your potential clients go when they click on one of your advertisements.  Many firms that are new to running a PPC campaign make the mistake of having advertisements go to their law firm home page.  However, especially if your firm handles several different types of cases and is using multiple ad groups, you should consider making separate landing pages to get the best conversion rates.

PPC advertising that goes just to your home page requires clients to go through multiple clicks just to find what they're looking for.  By creating targeted landing pages, your PPC campaign ad goes right to the information your client wants.  Today's internet depends on instant gratification: if your clients can't get the information they want within that first click or two, your PPC advertising is likely to fail.

PPC Campaign Management: Learning From Your Campaign

Every PPC campaign that you run can give you valuable information about how to run future campaigns.  You may want to get some third party PPC advertising tools to help you learn how an individual PPC campaign went and what you might be able to do in order to maximize future returns.  You may want to examine which niches have been generating the most clients for your firm and either strengthen your advertising for those niches or use the same PPC advertising techniques for your other niches.

Especially when you're buying very targeted, lower cost keywords, you can afford to experiment.  Remember that trying something new with your niche marketing won't always work, but you should be careful not to give up too quickly.  Sometimes a new PPC campaign strategy will take time to work, and your PPC advertising may be more effective at a certain time of day or even a certain time of year.

PPC Campaign Management Strategies

When you begin to experiment with PPC advertising, you should think of it as science.  Much like with any type of science, having a clear hypothesis in mind before you begin experimenting can help you to get the best results.  Instead of just saying “I want to try a bunch of PPC campaign strategies and see which ads stick,” think about a question that you have about PPC campaign management.  Do you want to see if “exact match” gets better results for your ads than “close match”?  Do you want to see how much your click rate increases when your bids are toward the top?

No matter what your hypothesis is, it's also important to be honest when looking at the results of your PPC advertising strategies.  If one PPC campaign didn't work, or your hypothesis was incorrect, remember that this information isn't bad—it's great!  Knowing what doesn't work can be as important as knowing what works when you're working with PPC campaign management.

Complete PPC Campaign Management Services

If your firm has a large budget for PPC advertising, you may want to look into having your PPC campaign managed by a specialized marketing firm.  Make sure that if you are using the services of one of these firms, they allow you access to any data that is generated from your PPC advertising.  Without this data, you will have to start over from scratch if you need to hire a new company to handle your PPC campaign management.

A good marketing service will be able to show you how your campaign is working and what ad groups are most profitable for your law firm.  Even if you can't afford dedicated PPC campaign management services, you may still want to purchase PPC advertising software.  This can help you to analyze the results of a PPC campaign so that you can maximize profits on future campaigns, without the costs of hiring professionals to do the analysis for you.

Everything About Social Media Marketing Tools

Using social media as a marketing tool can expand your client base and build your brand with businesses and consumers.  As of 2012, 20 percent of law firms have hired a full-time staffer to monitor and expand their social media presence.  Social media marketing tools can make it easier for your company to manage several different accounts, monitor your reputation, and make sure you're getting the return on investment you need.  What kind of social media marketing tool can help your law firm thrive?  Keep reading to find out.

Managing Social Media as a Marketing Tool

In order to get the most out of social media as a marketing tool, you'll need to diversify your social media presence across multiple websites.  One social media marketing tool that almost every social media specialist will use is a management system.  These social media marketing tools can log you in to a wide range of websites with just a single username and password, and help you aggregate recent activity from people and businesses you're following.

Some social media marketing tools of this type also include mobile and email marketing features, and will allow you to share your links in a wide variety of ways simultaneously.  When using this type of social media marketing tool, be careful not to share too often—the key rule of using social media as a marketing tool is getting new followers, not scaring them away.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Reputation Management

So you've used social media marketing tools that helped you put together great looking, well-functioning pages on major social media networks.  The next step to using social media as a marketing tool is finding out exactly how you're perceived in the online world.  Do people love your Twitter feed, or hate it?  Do people think your blog entries are fascinating or failures?  That's where a new kind of social media marketing tool comes in: the reputation management tool.

Tracking and monitoring programs for reputation management help you effectively use social media as a marketing tool by keeping track of what the rest of the web is saying about you.  If your other social media marketing tools have been successful, you may have generated comments and blog posts all over the web.  To make sure you're reaching the right people, you may want to use a social media marketing tool that also identifies Klout scores or other measures of online influence for those linking to you.

One of the best ways to use social media as a marketing tool is to engage with people when they talk about your brand online.  Some social media marketing tools offer integrated functionality that lets you comment and post with a single interface.  Because time can be of the essence, especially if you're dealing with a potential public relations headache, this type of social media marketing tool is a must-have when you're a legal professional.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Social Bookmarking

Using social media as a marketing tool is easier when you can spread your message far and wide.  Today, a large number of social bookmarking sites exist that base their content on user submissions.  If you use the right social media marketing tools, you can submit to a large number of these sites at once.

For example, you might want to use a social media marketing tool so that you can simultaneously post to Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon—all sites that can generate great web traffic.  However, if you use social media marketing tools in this way, make sure you're observing website rules.  If you try to use social media as a marketing tool without learning the etiquette for the websites you're using, your links will languish in obscurity or become the target of mockery.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Measurement

Even if your social media feeds are regularly updated, you can't just assume that your business is effectively using social media as a marketing tool.  To find out how effective your outreach efforts have been, you need to download a social media marketing tool that can measure how your web traffic is being affected by your social media presence.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Analytics

In some cases, you may find out that in spite of trying to use social media as a marketing tool, you aren't getting the measurement results you want.  Measurement tools can't always help you figure out why this is happening—for that, you need an analytical social media marketing tool.  Analytics can crunch the numbers so that you see exactly what parts of your social media strategy are succeeding and which may need revision.

This kind of social media marketing tool works best when you use it continuously and try to make repeated incremental improvements to your strategy.  Using analytics, not just measurement, ensures that you're able to fix mistakes promptly so that using social media as a marketing tool keeps being effective.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Campaign Creation

A final type of social media marketing tool is often underused by law firms, especially smaller firms and solo practitioners.  Campaign creation lets you use social media as a marketing tool by creating contests, quizzes, and other types of content that go beyond graphics, video, and blog entries.  The types of content you can create with many of these tools is interactive and designed to promote conversions—if you've ever wanted to make a video game about your law firm, now's the time to try it, and there are tools to get you started.

The type of social media marketing tool you'll need to create your campaign depends on what kind of content you're hoping to create.  Most of these tools also allow you to track the results of any campaign that you create, integrating measurement and analytics for specific campaign actions.  If your company thrives on cooperative work, you may want to choose a social media marketing tool for campaign creation that allows multiple authors to edit campaigns at the same time.