Everything About Viral Marketing

Over the last decade, several new forms of marketing have evolved on the web—and one of the most exciting is viral marketing.  Viral marketing can change a company's fortunes overnight, and companies using successful viral strategies have been able to get millions of page views for company websites and videos.  Viral marketing, by definition, spreads like wildfire.  Whether you're looking for strategies to help your company's website go viral, or if you're still asking “what is viral marketing?”, this guide can give you some great pointers.

What is Viral Marketing?  Pinning Down a Viral Marketing Definition

When asking “what is viral marketing?” it's a good idea to look at some of the things that viral marketing is not.  For example, while the viral marketing definition does include some things that could be classified as publicity stunts, not all publicity stunts are viral advertising.  The viral marketing definition is using some way to enhance brand awareness through people's word of mouth, in a way that explodes numerically in the same way that a virus does when infecting a population.

The reason that you need to know what is viral marketing is that people respond to it.  While only about 15 percent of people will click on an advertisement, up to 80 percent of people will click on a website or video link that a friend sent them.  To capitalize on that, you need to take advantage of the viral marketing definition and get your ads to spread because people want them to, not because you paid an advertising company to post links.

How Viral Marketing Began—And What That Can Teach Us

One of the first great success stories that started people asking “what is viral marketing?” was the success of Microsoft's Hotmail client in the 1990s.  With relatively minimal advertising, Hotmail became the email client of choice for millions of internet users, all because the viral marketing definition came into play—people telling each other about its services.  

Back then, most email clients cost money or came with your internet service provider.  Hotmail made its email services free, then added its own small signature to any email you sent.  The signature was unobtrusive, but it made its point: free web email.  Within months, people around the world used it, and people for the first time saw what is viral marketing and what it could do.

Even that first example under the viral marketing definition can teach us a lot.  Hotmail did something no one else was doing at the time.  Offering something different is still critical to viral marketing today.  They also gave people something for free that most people were offering for money.

What is Viral Marketing With Video?

The web has evolved a great deal since the 1990s, and the viral marketing definition has evolved right along with it.  Today, when you ask “what is viral marketing,” most people think of viral videos.  Youtube has made it easy for individuals and businesses to get their videos in front of as many people as possible.

Some of the most popular viral videos of all time, especially in the early days of web video, didn't really fall into the viral marketing definition at all.  Why?  Because they weren't associated with any particular commercial product.  Even today, not all videos that go viral are part of a marketing campaign, but as advertisers have become savvier, the percentages are climbing.

What is Viral Marketing Good For?

Now that you know the answer to the question “what is viral marketing?”, it's time to think about how you can use viral marketing to help your law firm.  If you've been online for a while, you've undoubtedly seen several viral videos.  Some things that fall into the viral marketing definition stay in a small social circle—did seven different lawyer friends all email you the same link?  Sounds pretty viral, and that's exactly the kind of word-of-mouth you want your own viral marketing campaign to generate.

Nearly any marketing goal you have can be met in part with viral advertising.  The viral marketing definition is so broad that it lends itself to a wide variety of marketing strategies, and you can focus on any aspect of your business that you think could go viral: blogs, videos, or even apps.

What is a Viral Marketing Agency?

Because web marketing strategies change so quickly, you may want to look at hiring an agency to handle all of your viral marketing needs.  Some advertising agencies are specialists in viral marketing, and can help you map out a strategy that can save you money on marketing costs in the long run and increase your name recognition throughout your community—or even throughout the world.

Hiring an agency is often a particularly good idea if you're interested in going viral, because a single misstep can prevent your viral campaign from working.  Even if you later decide to do work on viral marketing campaigns in-house, starting with agency work can give you a good idea of what is viral marketing all about, and how to run a campaign that attracts attention from all the right people.

The Future of Viral Marketing

The answer to the question “what is viral marketing?” was quite different ten years ago than it is today, and odds are it will be different still in another ten years.  The viral marketing definition in the future may evolve due to changes in social media platforms (which are still less than a decade old), or because of super high speed fiberoptic internet that makes even the fastest speeds today seem sluggish.  

Because no one knows what the future of viral marketing will hold, it's important to keep up to date: read blogs, watch videos, and—perhaps more importantly—keep an eye on what you and the people you know are receiving virally.  If a web link is being spread around by everyone you know, that's the viral marketing definition.  You should check into it, and try to figure out what made it successful.

Effective content marketing is rarely accidental, and it's not usually a matter of “eureka” moments.  What makes good internet marketing today is having a good sense of your audience, a knowledge of targeting, and ideas on how to make content that resonates with the people you want to reach.  In this guide, we'll explore seven different ways that you can make effective content marketing to reach new clients or referral sources.  Keep in mind that the ideas that worked even a few years ago may not work today.  The standards for effective content marketing change all the time, and being successful in 2013 depends on creating a good strategy now.

#1: Be A Great Storyteller

Any attorney who has ever gone to trial knows how important it is to be able to tell a good story.  Storytelling is in some ways at the heart of the legal profession, but you wouldn't know that from looking at most law firm websites.  Many of these websites don't have effective content marketing.  Instead of telling a story, they focus on irrelevant details, marketing jargon, and legal terms that their clients may not even fully understand the meaning of.

A great law firm website with effective content marketing will have a clear focus.  There's no need to use formal language in front of potential clients—try to keep a conversational but professional tone at all times.  Explain any legal terms or concepts in language a regular person in your target audience is likely to be able to understand, because potential clients are likely to hit the “back” button if they see that an attorney is using too many terms they can't understand.  Narrative and storytelling make the most compelling and effective content marketing, so you should use it throughout your site, including in attorney biographies and press releases.

#2: Understand Who Your Audience Is

Too many law firms waste a great deal of their marketing budget by making too broad an appeal.  In today's market, it's much better to be the market leader in a relatively narrow niche than to be mediocre at a wide variety of practice areas.  Depending on what kinds of cases your firm specializes in, you may have different types of clients.

Understanding who your audience is and what they're looking for when they start to look for an attorney is critical.  If your website can help people to address common concerns or questions, you'll have effective content marketing that works to convert potential clients.

#3: Be Creative When Choosing Media

Many attorneys are hesitant to change up how they spend their marketing budget, and may think that effective content marketing still looks about like it did a few years ago.  Those attorneys are getting left behind as the web changes, and you don't want to get left behind with them.  Be willing to be flexible about where you put your effective content marketing.

For example, one place that many people don't think about for content marketing is the app store for Android or iOS devices.  If you make an app or advertise your law firm in apps that you believe might be relevant for clients like yours, you'll be doing something most of your competitors don't—something increasingly difficult to do in the very connected social web world.

#4: Share Your Content Widely

Speaking of the social web, it's no longer enough just to create effective content marketing.  To really make sure that it has the maximum effect possible, you need to make sure other people can see it, too.  Sharing your content on a wide variety of social media platforms makes it much more likely that something you create will become a local or even global sensation.

However, just because you should link to your effective content marketing from several sources doesn't mean you should always use the same description.  Facebook allows for a bit more description than Twitter, and LinkedIn has a more professional audience than either.  Use your discretion when deciding how to describe your marketing content on each site, but don't make it the same.

#5: Make Your Video Content Viral-Ready

There's no specific formula for video content that goes viral, and it can sometimes be difficult to predict what the web will latch onto as the next major sensation.  However, you can help to ensure that your content is viral-ready by making sure that there are no sound or video problems and that your video content is professionally produced.

Attorneys aren't likely to create the next “Gangnam Style,” but that doesn't mean that virality is a lost cause.  Sometimes, effective content marketing can be viral in a relatively small group—for instance, other attorneys in your region—and may never really expand beyond that group.  However, if you can make something that will be shared among a group of people that you really want to talk to, viral video's a great way to try.

#6: Keep Creating New Content

Some attorneys think that they can simply create an internet marketing blitz, and that their effective content marketing is essentially a one time only purchase.  However, effective content marketing depends largely on continuing to have fresh content posted.  Google tends to rank websites lower that aren't updated with some frequency.

Some lawyers stop producing as much effective content marketing when they're busy, because they're so focused on helping clients.  However, you need to keep in mind that marketing is one of the most important responsibilities you have—without marketing, the boom times won't last forever and you may not have the momentum to carry you through more difficult times.

#7: Analyze Which Content Works Best

Not all content marketing will actually work for your website.  That's fine—but you need to know when you've made a mistake so that you can correct it before any more money or time is wasted.  This is why it's important to have an analytics tool to help you understand where your web traffic is coming from and whether you're actually getting a return on investment from your content marketing strategies.

Every lawyer with a blog wants to increase blog traffic.  But when learning how to get traffic to your blog, you may see a lot of contradictory advice.  One marketer may tell you to make very informative posts once or twice a week, while another recommends daily “microblogs” of a few sentences and a link or two.  In truth, a lot of the specific content of your blog is completely up to you—you can increase blog traffic regardless of your blog format.  In this guide, we'll look at how to get traffic to your blog no matter what topics you blog about for your law firm.

#1: Read and Comment on Other Blogs

This is a crucial component of the best strategies to increase blog traffic.  However, when some firms do this, they're not really doing it well.  You're not going to increase blog traffic if you're posting a generic “great post” comment on every legal blog you can find, then inserting an irrelevant link that goes to your own blog.  The only blog owners that are likely to put up with these kinds of comments are new to the blogging world and aren't likely to have many readers yet.

So how to get traffic to your blog without spamming?  Try becoming an actual valued contributor to other blogs, helping to inform and discuss with your comments.  Don't dominate the conversation, but make sure that you're valuable to the debate.  Then, post response blog entries.  When considering how to get traffic to your blog, remember that no one likes to read the blog of a spammer.

#2: Network With Blog Authors

When you know that authors of legal blogs will be at conferences you're attending, you can start commenting on their blogs and contributing to increase blog traffic, then network with them at the conference later.  This is a great way to get guest posting relationships (which can boost your inbound links from web pages with high PageRank values—the most coveted inbound links there are).  They may also be able to help you learn how to get traffic to your blog.

This doesn't mean that you should be a pest just to increase blog traffic, or keep trying to guest post with someone who's clearly not interested.  The best way to get a guest post is to earn one by having a consistently excellent blog that can be relied upon for good information on legal topics.  You'll learn how to get traffic to your blog just by following the example of some of the blogs you comment on.

#3: Tweet Your Blog Entries

Lawyers so far aren't using enough Twitter to increase blog traffic.  Research shows that well under half of law firms currently have a firm-wide Twitter account, even though this is one of the best ways to reach both other professionals and likely clients.  Some very high power people use Twitter to increase blog traffic, and tweeting headlines for your blog entries, especially if you can find a related trending tag, can be a great answer to the question of how to get traffic to your blog.  Make sure that you're also following other people and making comments on their posts that are relevant and informative.  Consider answering general legal questions on your Twitter feed to increase blog traffic (although ethics rules will prohibit the giving of specific legal advice).

#4: Share Blog Entries on Facebook

Tweeting isn't the only thing you should do with new blog entries to increase blog traffic.  You should also post your blog to Facebook.  Don't make the mistake of just connecting Twitter to Facebook and posting updates automatically.  This is a bad way to increase blog traffic because people on Facebook interact with posts in a different way.  Instead, excerpt a portion of your blog entry to have appear with the link, in quotes.  Then, put a “link bait” headline that draws people in—that's how to get traffic to your blog by using each social media platform wisely, and in accordance with the norms that have been set out by the community.  People tend to stop following people whose Facebook feeds are simply reposts of their tweets.

#5: Consider Video Blogging With Youtube

If you're ready to really enter the technological era to increase blog traffic, why not video blog at least once a week?  Video blogs appear in almost every list of how to get traffic to your blog, and there's a good reason: they bring in an audience that is poorly served by regular blog entries.  Not everyone learns well from reading, and by creating videos on similar topics to the ones you're covering in your blog, you'll be able to increase blog traffic substantially.

#6: Develop Niche Audiences

There's no reason that you should learn how to get traffic to your blog by blogging about more topics.  Some of the most successful legal blogs are the ones that have chosen very specific niche topics to talk about.  When you pick a niche topic that is being discussed by very few other blogs, you ensure that anyone looking for information on that topic finds you quickly.

This is a great way to ensure that you can increase blog traffic.  However, you may want to find intersections between your niche and other areas of the law in order to increase your broader appeal as well.  Striking the right balance is a tough part of learning how to get traffic to your blog.

#7: Respond Courteously to Critique

No matter what someone says about your blog, don't angrily respond.  If someone says something defamatory or hateful, feel free to moderate the offensive comment away—that's what blog ownership and comment moderation are for—but don't get into a mud wrestling match with a pig.  You both get dirty, but only the pig enjoys it.  Internet “trolls” aren't worth your time to get mad about.

On the other hand, if someone offers you genuine critique, even if it's posted in a harsh tone, pay attention.  You might learn something that would help you increase blog traffic or even increase the overall amount of new business your firm gets.  The people who are most successful at adapting to a changing world are the ones who'll listen when someone tells them that they're doing something wrong.

Every minute, 2000 people are checking in using Foursquare, one of the internet's hottest social media apps.  While Foursquare started out being useful only for people on mobile phones, they have recently expanded to allow non-member searches and have integrated with several other social media platforms.  This makes Foursquare marketing one of the biggest new waves for law firms who want to get the most out of their local targeting strategies.  Here are seven tips to get you off to a great start in using Foursquare to market your legal business.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #1: Leave Relevant Tips

“Tips” on Foursquare let people know what a previous visitor from Foursquare thought about a location.  You can use tips in several different ways to help your law firm marketing efforts.  For instance, let's say that you're in a city like New York, where many legal cases have begun.  You could give tips about certain locations that indicated when those locations were important in court battles.

Another way that you can use tips is to actually help people out who might need to go to courtroom buildings.  Leaving tips about how to navigate the courtroom buildings and who to talk to for what problems can be a good idea.  Other attorneys can base their tips on their specialty areas.  For example, if you're a disability attorney, you may want to provide tips on accessibility at courthouses and other public or private buildings.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #2: Claim Your Space

One of the first and best things you can do for your Foursquare marketing efforts is to claim your location on Foursquare and start editing the information there.  You can add your hours, information about the services your law firm offers, and any other information that you think people would find relevant.

Don't forget to create photos of your law firm offices and some of the people who work in them.  Foursquare's system allows you to upload these photos, and they can help people understand what to expect from your office before heading in.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #3: Network With Other Attorneys with Foursquare

You don't need to think of Foursquare marketing as exclusively B2C oriented.  If you want to improve networking opportunities with other attorneys, which can help you get more client referrals, consider using Foursquare to help.  You can use Foursquare to see who's in your vicinity right now, and if you see that person, you can begin to get connected.

This is a great reason to get a personal Foursquare account to use for marketing as well as a law firm business account when you sign up.  When you meet someone else using Foursquare, you've already got something in common to start a conversation about—and that makes it easier to break the ice and start networking.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #4: Offer a Freebie

The efficacy of this Foursquare marketing tip is sometimes in doubt.  Law firms often don't want to offer anything for free, because they worry that people will visit their firm office, take whatever is free, and leave.  The trick to making this Foursquare marketing tip work for you is to pick something that meets two criteria for your giveaway: it should be interesting to the kind of users that Foursquare has, and it should be relatively cheap (think less than $7-10).

A medical office has had good luck giving away bottles of hot sauce, which come labeled not only with the normal label but also a label that mentions their office name and address.  This is a great idea—hot sauce bottles usually stick around in someone's fridge for months, meaning that your ad will be in front of them every time they open their fridge or spice up their meals for a long time, as long as you make sure the product is high quality enough that it doesn't get trashed on the first day.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #5: Express Yourself

Your brand image should be consistent over every social media platform you use.  You don't want to project one type of image on your law firm's website, then use completely different branding tactics for your social media sites.  This kind of disjointed web presence can make you look directionless or even like you're simply grubbing for whatever customers you can find, using whatever lines you can use.  Not the best image for lawyers—so pick your brand image and stick with it.  

If you want to create a change, have it ready to roll out over a very short time across all your branding platforms, including Foursquare.  This will ensure that you can get a fresh look without sacrificing a consistent brand image.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #6: Train Your Law Office Staff on Foursquare

Your Foursquare marketing efforts will be more successful if more people at your office know and understand Foursquare.  You don't want a Foursquare user checking in at your office and talking about the service to someone who clearly has no idea what the user is talking about.  Since Foursquare is a consumer product that doesn't have a steep learning curve, a simple mini-training in your law offices can make sure that everyone is up to speed on your Foursquare marketing efforts and how to most effectively make use of the service and bring in Foursquare users.

Foursquare Marketing Tip #7: Market Foursquare In Your Office

Make sure that inside your office, you have some indicators that you are a Foursquare user.  Having some mentions of Foursquare within the office can make it so that more people who are already visiting might be interested in signing up for Foursquare, giving you more people who can help you to get out your marketing message with the service.  Foursquare marketing will become more effective with every person at your law office that you can get to become an active member.

Foursquare now allows users to link Foursquare to Facebook in ways that can make it easier to market with both social media platforms.  If you're not already using both Foursquare and Facebook, you need to get on board today for the best law firm marketing opportunities in the social world.  Millions of users have already chosen to link Foursquare to Facebook, but businesses have lagged behind.  Get your law firm connected on Foursquare and Facebook first, and you'll have a leg up on the competition that can give you all the new business you can handle.  In this easy guide, we'll give you 4 tips on what to do once you link Foursquare to Facebook.  We'll also tell you the nitty gritty on how to link Foursquare and Facebook together after the tips are done.

#1: Sharing Your Foursquare Tips

One of the biggest features that attorneys can make use of on Foursquare is the “tip” system.  Not tips like you give to waiters—tips like you'd give to your friends or colleagues or clients, about locations that matter to them.  Of course, the kinds of locations that matter to you may depend largely on what kind of law you practice.  If you're someone who works in education law, for example, you may want to put tips about school accessibility or where to go if you have a legal problem related to a school.  Disability attorneys can use tips to help people understand their disability access options.

Make sure that none of the tips you put on your Foursquare and Facebook are in any way unethical—for example, you shouldn't give client names on these tips for any reason without a client's express consent.  However, once you link Foursquare to Facebook, your Facebook viewers will be able to see it any time you write a new tip.  This means that your Foursquare and Facebook followers will get a view of how you see the city you're in and what you find important—a great way for attorneys to be able to showcase their brand image without looking fake or disconnected.

#2: Getting Out the Word About Foursquare

It's no secret that Foursquare and Facebook aren't the same size.  When you link Foursquare to Facebook, you're making it so more than ten times the users have the ability to see your posts.  Since Foursquare and Facebook tend to have slightly different demographics (Facebook users are, on average, a bit older and less likely to live in big cities), it's a good idea to link Foursquare to Facebook just to get more people using your Foursquare features.

In 2012, Foursquare started allowing users to actually interact with the website and see tips even if they weren't signed up to use it.  This means that it's easier than ever once you link Foursquare to Facebook for your Facebook viewers to access not just your content, but everything that Foursquare has to offer.  They may even want to become members themselves so that they can start doing checkins and offering tips.

#3: Linking Your Photos To Locations

Another way that you can carry your brand image through when you link Foursquare to Facebook is by bringing in photos.  On both Foursquare and Facebook, images tend to capture people's social minds better, and are more likely to be shared with others than text based tips and other verbal cues.  This means that in your Facebook timeline, once you link Foursquare to Facebook, you can actually indicate exactly where your photographs were taken.

Courthouse photos, in-office pictures—there are many possibilities for how you can incorporate pictures into Foursquare and Facebook.  Since when you link Foursquare to Facebook the Timeline feature now tracks when you added photos, you'll now have a location-pinpointing timeline that can help people understand the history and mission of your law firm.

#4: Bringing In New Fans

Foursquare can also help you attract Facebook fans when you link Foursquare to Facebook.  By making relevant tips, doing consistent check ins, and otherwise being a good Foursquare citizen, you'll be putting your law firm's brand in front of local people all over your city or town.  Because many people like Foursquare for the incentives, you may want to try creating some sort of incentive for becoming your Facebook fan as a Foursquare user.

Keep in mind that you'll have a much easier time getting Foursquare and Facebook to work well together as marketing tools if your client base already skews relatively young.  Because older people aren't using social media as frequently or in the same ways as younger people, it won't help nearly as much to link Foursquare to Facebook if you're working in a practice that has clients who are mostly over 50.

You should also try to make sure that some of your content is different on each site, and that you're giving value added for members of each website.  This encourages people who are already accessing your marketing materials through one site to visit the other and get new information there, increasing their social reach and making both Foursquare and Facebook more effective for making your content go viral.

How to Link Foursquare To Facebook

You'll need to use both Foursquare and Facebook's websites in order to link your accounts, so make sure you have access to both accounts before attempting to link them up.  First, sign into your Foursquare account.  You can then go to your settings page, which offers an option that says “link to your Facebook account.”  Follow the instructions there and check which of your updates you want people to see on Facebook.  Make sure that you're not overloading Facebook with Foursquare posts—this can be overwhelming if you make a lot of posts and lead to fewer followers.

Then, go to Facebook, where you should see an invitation and can set permissions for Foursquare to post on your Facebook Timeline.  On the Foursquare app, you'll now see that sharing is enabled and that you can highlight the blue “F” to share your post with Facebook followers any time you post on Foursquare.

According to the American Bar Association, only 8 percent of people looking for an attorney today turn to a print directory like the Yellow Pages.  The vast majority of people who want to find a lawyer look online, either through search engines or on directories.  There are two different types of website traffic that you can get.  Free website traffic comes from sources that don't cost any money directly.  However, you can also buy website traffic.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to buy web traffic—in fact, doing so is a great way to start your website's rise in search engine rankings, even before strategies for building free web traffic can start to really work.

What's Wrong With Free Web Traffic?

Well, there's nothing wrong with it, strictly speaking.  But when you buy website traffic, you're able to more directly target your most likely clients and get immediate results.  The problem with building up free web traffic because you don't want to buy website traffic is that free web traffic takes a great deal of your time to build.  What's more, changes to search algorithms can wipe out months of work in a single programming change.

What's more, nothing says that you can't buy web traffic and keep working on your free website traffic at your own pace.  You can gradually buy website traffic less as you become familiar with what kinds of free website traffic strategies work in your area and with the kinds of clients most likely to call your firm to schedule an appointment.

Keep in mind that many comprehensive “free” website traffic strategies are actually going to require hiring someone part or full time to run your campaigns.  You may find that especially if you're a small firm, it can be cheaper to buy web traffic than to get it for “free” in this way.

What Will It Cost to Buy Web Traffic?

It's easier than ever to buy website traffic today, and one of the things that makes it so easy is that the budget can start very, very low.  If you called a TV station or newspaper or radio station and asked for $20 worth of advertising, you couldn't even get the smallest unit possible.  But when you buy web traffic, you can set your budget as high or as low as you want.

Not all clicks cost the same amount.  Usually you'll buy web traffic as PPM (this means per thousand views) or PPC (per click).  For attorneys, it's usually better to pick PPC advertising when you buy website traffic, because otherwise you run the risk of having your ad displayed in front of thousands of eyes that don't have a legal problem and can't use your services.  When you pay only for clicks, you buy web traffic that has a much better chance of converting into a paying client.

Making The Most of Paid Web Traffic

If you've never tried to buy website traffic before, you may not know much about getting value for your money.  Here are a few good rules to live by when you buy web traffic, so that you don't pay for anything that isn't actually making you money.

Rule #1: Buy Website Traffic That Is Targeted

After your law practice has been in business for a long time, you know the kinds of clients that you do best with.  The demographics of your clients can go a long way to telling you how to target your website advertisements.  Today's pay per click advertising lets you buy website traffic from the age group, gender, and location of your choice.

Using some platforms, you can actually buy web traffic that is coming from mobile users in your very specific area.  For example, on a platform like Foursquare, you can actually draw the boundaries you want to in order to only show your advertising to people near enough to your office that they have a much higher chance of converting.

Rule #2: Buy Web Traffic That Can Convert

This may sound like it's obvious, but make sure that if you're going to buy website traffic, make sure your site is conversion ready.  There's no sense spending money on buying traffic only to have the bounce rate be extremely high due to a poor website design or excessive downtime.  Make sure that you have reliable, fast website hosting and a website designed to be accessed by both desktop and mobile users.

Rule #3: Monitor Your Web Traffic Performance

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make once you set up your pay per click ad campaigns is just leaving them alone.  You need to constantly change things around in your ad campaigns, not only to avoid ad fatigue but also so you can tinker and find what works.  The most successful web marketers are the ones with a healthy sense of experimentation, who are willing to take a bit of risk now and then to find a new and better way to get the traffic they need.

You may even want to buy a tool or two that will help you to better visualize your web traffic.  Although some of these tools are free (for example, Google Analytics), the free tools are often geared toward making you purchase more ads at higher prices rather than just helping you analyze what will save the most money.

Transitioning To Free Web Traffic

While you buy website traffic, you should also work on getting free traffic.  The more you build your social media presence, for instance, the less you'll have to buy web traffic to get the same amount of new business per month.  Try to make a slow transition from paid to free traffic, to minimize the short-term negative impacts of making such a switch.  You may also want to continue to buy web traffic at least at some level in order to ensure that changes to search algorithms can't destroy your traffic numbers.

With over 2 billion check-ins at locations all over the world so far, Foursquare is becoming one of the social media networks you can't afford to overlook in your law firm's marketing strategy.  Foursquare brand pages are one of the several ways that you can get your firm's message across using the Foursquare brands platform.  This guide will give you an easy to understand overview of Foursquare brand pages.  You'll learn not only the basics of how to build Foursquare brands, but also some of the unique issues faced by law firms and lawyers looking to market themselves on Foursquare.

What Are Foursquare Brand Pages?

In 2012, Foursquare has been expanding a great deal.  Not only can non-members now access Foursquare's information, but the site also made it easier for companies and brands that don't have physical locations to still make use of the platform.  Foursquare brands can now be developed both for businesses with and without an actual office location.  However, Foursquare brand pages still work best in conjunction with companies that still have actual offices—like law firms.

Foursquare brand pages are a one stop shop for anyone looking to see what kind of activity you've been involved in on Foursquare.  The Foursquare brands that are most successful with the platform tend to have active, well developed Foursquare brand pages.  If your brand page looks like a piece of abandoned real estate, you won't be likely to get a lot of customers because of it.  At the time when you start building your Foursquare brand page, make sure someone is in charge of providing consistent updates.

What Gets Displayed on Foursquare Brand Pages?

Recently, Foursquare brand pages were changed to reflect an increased focus on recent activity.  What customers will see when they look for Foursquare brands and find your page is that your brand name and recent photos are at the top of the page.  Other information, like your most recent check-ins, and any tips that you have made (more on that in just a minute), will appear lower on the page.

This means that you should make sure that your photos, which are the first things people will see, are changed substantially on a regular basis.  Foursquare brands that use the same photos for months or years will often stop getting as many views.  People on social media want something new, and Foursquare brands should try to accommodate this need for novelty if they want to remain competitive.

Law Firm Foursquare Brand Pages

As a law firm, you have some unique issues that will present themselves.  Lawyers need to pay attention when building their Foursquare brands to keep confidentiality with clients.  It's always worth it to make a quick call to your bar association to find out if they have any specific policies about geographical web services like Foursquare.  You'll get peace of mind by knowing that you're not breaking any rules with your Foursquare brand pages.

Law firms should make sure that they're taking pictures not only of the people working in their offices, but the offices themselves, when they're building Foursquare brands.  Legal clients, especially new legal clients, are often anxious about the specifics of where they'll be seeing a lawyer, and seeing the inside of your law firm can help people better understand what to expect and feel less anxiety and apprehension about their first meeting with an attorney at your firm.

Law firms also need to strive to maintain a very professional demeanor on Foursquare.  While it's fine to have fun with your Foursquare, don't just have someone at your firm check into every location where they eat a meal.  Your check-ins should be targeted.  If you want to have personal fun with Foursquare, don't use your Foursquare brands account.  Instead, create a personal account that won't be part of the Foursquare brand pages for your law firm.

How To Make Your Foursquare Brand Pages Stand Out

Law firm Foursquare brands can stand out with excellent use of the Foursquare tips system.  The tips system allows people who know something about a particular location to share it with anyone else visiting that location.  Consider the things that tend to be relevant to the people that use your services.  When you think like one of your clients, it's easier to decide which locations you should give tips for.  A personal injury attorney specializing in car accidents may want to leave tips about dangerous intersections, for example.  Keep in mind that because no two Foursquare brands or Foursquare brand pages are exactly alike, you shouldn't just copy what someone else is doing.  Figure out your own need to fulfill, and you'll be more likely to generate new Foursquare customers.

Keeping Up With Foursquare Brand Pages

Just because you shouldn't copy your competitors doesn't mean you shouldn't take a close look at what they're doing.  Competitor Foursquare brand pages can be a great way to see what's going on in the legal marketing world, and you may be able to build on and improve a marketing concept that's being done in a mediocre way by a competing firm.

You should also keep an eye on blogs that talk about social media marketing.  These can offer great insights into what some of the biggest brands in the world are doing with Foursquare and other social media services.  Keeping an eye on the blogs helps you to use the latest trends before your compeitors can even identify them.

The Future of Foursquare Brands

Foursquare has made several exciting changes over the course of 2012, mostly involving expanding access.  What this means is that in the future, Foursquare may be good for targeting a much wider audience demographically.  The Foursquare model seems to be moving beyond badges for check ins and toward a model built on offering discounts and information about the places people care about.  Even if you don't think Foursquare is a good fit for your firm yet, it's a good company to keep an eye on for the future.

It isn't always easy to increase web traffic to a law firm website.  If you're a brand new law firm starting from scratch, learning how to increase website traffic is one of the most important things you can do for your future.  When you increase website traffic, you increase the number of people calling your office.  Nearly 9 out of 10 legal clients now use the internet to research attorneys before they choose one, leaving less room than ever before for attorneys to stay out of the internet spotlight—you need to increase web traffic just to stay competitive.  In this guide you'll get great tips on how to increase website traffic, including ways to increase website traffic for free and through pay per click advertising.

Design For Humans, Not For Search Engines

No matter what strategies you decide to use to increase web traffic coming to your site, you should always keep this rule in mind.  If you increase website traffic to your site but it is clunky, slow, and difficult for users to navigate, you'll never actually get all the business you could have been getting.  Instead, you should think about how to increase website traffic only after you've made sure that your website is very much readable and interesting to actual human beings.

Don't overoptimize your website, a practice that Google is good at catching and doesn't work as a means to increase website traffic today.  Instead of overburdening your website with keywords that don't really increase web traffic, try making it easy to use and include a lot of actual relevant information.  This will do much more to increase web traffic to your site than any other method.

Know Who You Are

Having a consistent and professional brand image will also help you learn how to increase website traffic.  You can't increase web traffic very much on a website that looks messy or generic.  You want your law firm to stand out, and that means taking a fresh approach in order to know how to increase website traffic.  Consider writing out a brand profile of your site before you start learning how to increase web traffic.  This brand profile can help you understand what your clients are getting out of your firm and how to increase website traffic for your site most effectively.

Another lesson in how to increase website traffic: don't try to be all things to all people.  A well constructed niche site can increase website traffic much more easily than a generic site that promises that a three attorney small firm can handle 100 different types of cases.  You'll do the most to increase web traffic by being honest about your capabilities and niches of expertise.  It's a rookie mistake for people to try to learn how to

Be a Social Media Butterfly

If you thought Facebook was just for connecting with your old college roommate and the cousin you haven't seen since the last family reunion, think again.  Social media is now one of the best ways to increase website traffic, and no guide about how to increase web traffic would be complete without mentioning it.

Social networks allow you not only to build a profile, but also to increase web traffic by purchasing sponsored stories and advertisements.  This makes it substantially easier for you to increase website traffic from the people most likely to actually need legal help and already have a positive impression of your work—the people nearest you and people who are already friends with someone who has followed you on Facebook.  Foursquare lets you target ads with unprecedented geographic precision, which is extremely useful if you want to increase website traffic from a small neighborhood area in a larger city.

Keep Up on Search Trends

One of the other things that can help you increase website traffic for your site is to look up what's going on in the search world.  Advice that would have helped you to increase web traffic a great deal in 2008 would be practically useless today, because the ways that people use the internet and the ways that search algorithms work are very different.

Periodically, you should do searches about how to increase website traffic, but narrow your search to web pages that have been created in just the last few months or a year.  Anything older than that is substantially less likely to be accurate and less likely to help you attain your goals.

Respond Thoughtfully to Critique

Anyone who wants to know how to increase website traffic should look at stories of web marketing gone bad.  Most of these stories involve a company trying to increase website traffic with something that sounded like a good idea at the time, but later turned out to have been insensitive or problematic.  If this happens to your company, don't panic.  In some cases, you can actually increase web traffic as a result of something negative.  The way to do it?  Keep your responses apologetic and kind.  No one likes a bully.  Don't just do damage control, figure out a way to fix problems and prevent them in the future.

Keep Doing What Works

Once you figure out something that works to increase website traffic, keep doing it.  Different firms find that using different ways to increase website traffic work best for them.  No single guide on how to increase website traffic can possibly tell you all of the creative and innovative things you can be doing to make your web footprint bigger—the only thing that you can do is keep learning and trying to do better in your web marketing efforts.

You should consider getting some analysis programs to help you analyze the increase to website traffic you get from your efforts.  If you don't analyze your data, you'll never know how to increase website traffic most effectively.

Performing a website traffic check isn't the most glamorous part of internet marketing, but it's also one of the best ways to make sure that the techniques you're using are actually working in the way you intended.  When you check website traffic, you can learn things about your website that would be impossible to tell just from navigating the site itself.  Most of the time, performing a free website traffic check that tells you anything beyond the basic numbers will take copying and pasting a piece of code into your website's HTML.  In this guide, we'll look at why you may want to check website traffic, and some information on what to do with what your website traffic check reveals about your site.

Why Should We Check Website Traffic?

Performing a website traffic check is something that you should consider doing every week to two weeks, but up to half of smaller law firms literally never check their website traffic.  If you haven't done a check of website traffic in longer than three months, you really need to get in there so you can look at what's going on.  Without running a website traffic check at least periodically, you'll have no idea if your website is really bringing in new site visitors, or whether your traffic numbers are being created by unique visitors or just the same people checking the site repeatedly.

Checking website traffic regularly also makes it much easier to experiment with different types of marketing and advertising campaigns.  By watching the differences to traffic to different landing pages (which should be different for each ad, to help you track results), you can determine what phrasings are most effective and what kind of ads seem to get you the most conversions or the most overall clicks.

Performing Your First Website Traffic Check

Even if you haven't yet installed any code on your website to help you do a detailed check of website traffic, you should be able to do a basic traffic check using Alexa or Compete.com.  These sites can not only help you see what your website looks like in terms of traffic, they can also help you compare your traffic numbers to a website of a competitor or a similar website.

Keep in mind that websites like Alexa and Compete.com do have a slight delay in their statistics.  If your website is brand new and most of its pages aren't yet indexed by Google, it's not going to help you much to use Alexa or Compete.com.  However, if you have a well established website, these sites can give you a good idea of where you're starting.

You should also put Google Analytics code onto your website.  This code can ensure that you are able to check more than just the big, raw numbers about who's visiting your site.  By using Google Analytics, you'll also be able to examine the more detailed numbers that are relevant to your website traffic, like bounce rates and how long people read each page on your website.

Why One Website Traffic Check Isn't Enough

If you check website traffic once, it's kind of like taking a single snapshot.  Trying to extrapolate about what's going to happen next or what came before is very difficult when all you have is just one image of one moment in time.  Once you start putting images together, though, you can start to see movement—the more images, the more clear the movement becomes.  That's why you should check website traffic fairly frequently.  By using a tool like Google Analytics, you'll actually have continuous monitoring done, so any time you do a website traffic check you'll be able to monitor smaller increments of time as well.

Getting The Most Out of a Website Traffic Check

In order to really get a feeling for what's going on when you check website traffic, you should take a look at what numbers are available for you.  See how long people tend to spend on each page of your site.  If there are pages that seem to be making people leave, you need to check up on those pages.  They may contain broken links or content that is not really well targeted toward the market most likely to contact your offices.

You should also see whether any particular phrases or keywords are generating the most traffic for your site.  In some cases, it'll be exactly what you expect, but in others, you may find when you check website traffic that you're actually getting a lot of hits from a niche keyword you didn't expect.  Consider making a specific landing page targeting that type of client to better draw them into your law firm's website.

Finding More Sources For Website Traffic

If you check website traffic and are disappointed in what you find, you may want to start bringing in traffic from more diverse sources.  For example, if you're not already active on social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, you should become part of those social networks and then do a website traffic check after you've figured out how to effectively create content and share it on those websites.

You'll also get better results when you check website traffic by making sure that your website is search engine optimized without being spammy or over-optimized.  Search engine optimization means not just doing keyword research and a website traffic check, but also making sure that your hosting is fast and reliable and that the code for your website is optimized effectively.

Outsourcing Your Website Traffic Check

While some companies may offer to do a paid check of website traffic and then give you an analysis, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do it yourself.  This ensures that you can keep all the data that you mine, rather than leaving it in the hands of some other company.  It also ensures that you are the one keeping up with the latest trends and what those trends are doing for your law firm, rather than a company trying to sell you on a particular method of advertising.