The days of being limited to mobile text advertising with SMS are over.  Today’s statistics show that most users spend more time in apps than browsing or checking texts, and mobile advertising trends are showing a huge increase in the types of advertising currently being done.  From using mobile advertising networks to creating mobile video advertising, the new mobile world can seem a bit confusing if you’re not used to it.  Keep reading this guide, where we’ve identified the six biggest mobile advertising trends that your business needs to be aware of.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #1: Mergers of Mobile Advertising Networks

The explosive growth of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising has given rise to thousands of relatively small mobile advertising networks.  One of the mobile advertising trends you can expect in the next few years is that these companies will start to fuse together.

When mergers begin to pick up steam among these mobile advertising networks, you may have more choices for one stop solutions for mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising.  Because mergers can sometimes result in changes to user interfaces, you’ll want to keep on top of any merger or acquisition news that could affect your mobile advertisements.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #2: Mobile Video Advertising

Mobile advertising networks weren’t able to fully take advantage of video ads when they first came out.  This wasn’t because mobile video advertising didn’t work well, but rather because the capabilities of wireless providers hadn’t yet caught up to mobile advertising trends.

With the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks across the United States, it has become more and more feasible to replace mobile text advertising with video.  Mobile video advertising has been shown to be significantly more effective than advertising with text and images alone.  These ads now represent one of the biggest mobile advertising trends.

To take advantage of the new mobile video advertising market, you can start by using similar videos to your traditional web ads.  Today’s mobile advertising networks may also let you make a video interactive, which can make its conversion rates even higher.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #3: Location, Location, Location

As mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising have become more sophisticated, so, too, have the targeting systems from mobile advertising networks.  More than any other factor, mobile advertising networks have latched on to geolocation services as the next big mobile advertising trends.

Unlike a traditional laptop or desktop, mobile phones contain GPS technology that can pinpoint exactly where a potential client is at the time when they see your ad.  Mobile advertising networks can now target so accurately that it’s possible to make sure your mobile text advertising or mobile video advertising is seen exclusively by people within a few blocks of where you are sitting right now.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #4: The End of the Desktop-Ported Mobile Site

If your firm started using mobile text advertising some time ago, you may have simply directed ad viewers to your normal website.  Mobile advertising trends show so much traffic being funneled through smartphones that you’d be foolish to continue directing potential clients to a website that isn’t optimized for mobile.

When you use mobile advertising networks, you should also make a mobile optimized website that still contains all the major information from your old website but in a shorter, easier to read format.  Then, you can direct all your current mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising to this version of your site instead of the old one.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #5: Marketing With Apps

In summer 2010, mobile consumers spent an average of 43 minutes using apps and 64 minutes using the web every day.  By December 2011, consumers were spending more time on both activities, but apps had eclipsed browsing: people now spent 94 minutes on apps and 72 minutes browsing the web.

Consumers of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising are now more likely to be looking at an app than at the web as a whole.  What does that mean for mobile advertising trends?  Well, for one thing, it means that your firm may want to consider focusing on mobile advertising networks that advertise in apps rather than on the web.  These mobile advertising networks are better situated for current trends than web-focused networks are.

It may also be time to consider supplementing your mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising with building your own apps.  Mobile advertising networks can help you develop your first app.  The interactivity of apps makes people substantially more likely to take further action (like calling your firm) than if you had used traditional mobile text advertising or mobile video advertising.

The kinds of apps you can build are limited only by your imagination.  You can make an app that is informative, entertaining, or both.  Like great mobile video advertising, a really amazing app also has the potential to go viral, spreading out on the internet even without direct marketing efforts.

Mobile Advertising Trends to Watch #6: Better Analytics

So far, it’s been much harder to track the results of mobile text advertising and mobile video advertising than other types of web ads.  Why?  It’s not because the analytics are actually more difficult, but rather because mobile advertising networks have been slow to build the same kinds of analytics tools that other web advertisers have developed.  Now that there’s big money in mobile advertisements, analytics companies have begun to see the potential in developing analytics software exclusively for the mobile market.

As mobile advertising continues to evolve, and especially as networks merge their information and tools, you’ll start to see better analytics leading to better lists of best practices. If you want to stay on top of your mobile ad campaigns, keeping an eye on analytics is crucial.  New analytics software may let you perform a number of geotargeted split tests, as well as figure out which landing pages help your conversion rate most.

In 2010, only 2 percent of companies were using mobile phone advertising to reach their customers.  Today, that number is growing rapidly, and a number of analysts believe that mobile advertisements will someday be a bigger market than traditional web advertising or even bigger than television ads.  This is a trend your law firm should stay up to date on if you want to keep pace with the rapid changes in legal marketing today.  Keep reading to learn the basics of mobile advertisements and why they look like the wave of the future for law firms.

The Meteoric Rise of Mobile Advertising

A few years ago, the only kind of mobile advertisements you were likely to see were text messages (also called SMS for short messaging service).  This type of mobile phone advertising was not particularly effective, but represented a big change toward targeted advertisements and market segmentation.

Today, phones have gone smart, and mobile advertisements have exploded onto the scene.  No longer just confined to the text message, today's mobile advertising looks sleeker and more integrated into mobile advertising systems. 

While the popularity of mobile phone advertising has increased worldwide, no country has seen it rise like the United States.  Recently, the U.S. eclipsed Japan for the number one ranking in mobile advertising spending.  Mobile phone advertisements are now a multi-billion dollar business, and the U.S. leads the way in innovation and growth.

Does Mobile Phone Advertising Really Work?

One of the few things that all the biggest marketers agree on is that mobile advertising is both incredibly effective and incredibly underutilized by most of the market.  People today spend hours on their smart phones, texting friends and browsing the mobile web.  When they see mobile advertisements, they're up to 13 times more likely to click these ads than to click a similar advertisement on a desktop site.

Now, don't get too excited: some of the clicks on mobile phone advertising are mistake clicks.   But even when you just take into account new business, mobile advertisements are substantially better at bringing a return on investment.  Mobile phone advertising is undeniably the wave of the future—smartphone use hours have been more than doubling for the last several years—and the smartest law firms will start running mobile advertisements as soon as possible.

How is Mobile Advertising Different?

If you've ever advertised on the web before, you know how frustrating it can be to narrow down the keywords you want to advertise on, or find the right demographics.  Trying to target your ads locally can be a huge hassle when you're using the web.

Mobile phone advertising changes all of that.  Instead of advertising to people who have listed a particular city on Facebook (which may or may not be where they're located now), mobile advertising has the capability to only target people who are actually nearby.  Do you want to limit your mobile advertisements to people within a mile of your office right now?  Now you can, and that kind of targeting means your ads are only being seen by the consumers most likely to actually need your services.

When consumers see mobile phone advertising, you've also got them in a place where it's easy to make a phone call.  Mobile advertising's fantastic rates of further action (like making phone calls to a law firm) are so high because smartphones make calling a number from a website so convenient.

Mobile Advertisements—The Do's and Don'ts

When you begin to work with mobile phone advertising for your law firm, you should know some basic principles to guide your mobile website and mobile advertising redesign:

Don't copy your existing website or advertising as your new mobile phone advertising, or try to duplicate the same experience as your website gives.
Do try to keep your brand image consistent and represent your firm personality in your mobile advertisements and traditional web advertising.
Don't be too wordy—studies show that you're better off using short sentences and paragraphs for mobile targeted sites and mobile advertisements.
Do give good information in as short a form as possible.
Don't run the same mobile advertisements for weeks in a row.  Ad fatigue is real, and your ads will lose effectiveness over time.
Do have many different versions of your ad copy and images available so that you can change them frequently.

The state of mobile advertising changes quickly, so perhaps another “do” should be added to the list: do keep up to date on trends.  Finding out what the next big thing in mobile advertising is before your competitor does can give your firm the edge it needs in today's competitive business world.

Types of Mobile Advertisements

Because today's smartphones offer a variety of ways to connect to other people, mobile advertisements have diversified into a huge number of forms.  The humble SMS mobile ad has given way to mobile phone advertising that interacts and targets automatically.

In-app banner ads and other display ads give your firm a good way to use images and text.  Because people today spend more time in apps than they do browsing the web on their smart phones, these ads are even more likely to generate results than ads that are dependent on search engine use.

A click to call ad can make a big difference in the number of clients your firm hears from due to your mobile phone advertising.  These ads will look like part of a person's organic search engine results.

Twitter and Facebook both have great potential for mobile advertising from law firms, but most firms haven't yet started using these mobile advertisements.  Because mobile phone advertising shows a great return on investment for Facebook and Twitter ad platforms, you should seriously consider adding these sites to your ad strategy if you do much B2C marketing.

Pandora and Groupon both give you the ability to choose hyper local targets.  Pandora also lets you have video advertising, which has been repeatedly proven to be more effective for lawyers than text alone.

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.

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.

6 Lessons for Law Firms from Game of Thrones

What can law firms learn from the bloody fantasy epic, Game of Thrones?  It turns out that the answer is: plenty!  While the real world may be a bit short on dragons and warring kings, the characters in Game of Thrones are acting in ways that professional services firms can get a lot out of.  Read these tips and be glad that the White Walkers will stay far away from your office.

#1: Know Who Really Holds the Power

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in Westeros is to think that power rests solely with the people who have crowns on their heads.  In truth, the economic power often lies somewhere else, and several kings are really led by their advisers rather than coming up with most of their ideas on their own.

In Stannis Baratheon's kingdom, for example, approaching Stannis himself will get you nowhere—you need to be smart enough to approach the priestess Melisandre instead.  In much the same way, law firms that mostly do B2B work should know who the right person is to talk to at the companies you're trying to do business with.  Knowing the power behind the throne is a much more effective route to a new client than just trying to start with the points of contact that everyone else knows about.

#2: Winter is Coming

The Stark family's words are “winter is coming.”  These words are a reminder that hard times are always ahead, and you should always plan for more difficult days.  Many law firms started doing bankruptcy business when times started getting tough in 2007 and 2008.  Some of those firms found that business was so good that they transitioned to doing mostly bankruptcy work.  Now, bankruptcy filings are dropping and continuing a slow slide downward, and those same firms are scrambling for business when they had a boom just recently.

Keep in mind that the economy changes, technology changes, and the state of legal services will continue to change in the years and decades to come.  While it's important to specialize and to try to do business where the business is, you shouldn't ever act like the good times will last forever.  Don't overextend yourself or make the assumption that your current success is guaranteed to last into the future.

#3: Own Your Weaknesses and They Become Strengths

In the first season of Game of Thrones, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister says to the illegitimate Jon Snow: “Never forget what you are.  Others will not.  Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.”  Being honest about who you are and what your weaknesses are will help you to market yourself in a way that will be authentic and effective.

For example, if you're a practitioner who prefers not to go to trial and who would rather negotiate out an agreement, that would be considered a weakness if you market yourself as a litigation firm.  Instead, though, you can choose to market yourself as a negotiation specialist who mediates agreements between parties for people who don't want to go through the expensive and difficult process of going to court.

#4: Make Your Own Destiny

Some of the characters in Game of Thrones make their own destiny, striking out on their own and using their unique talents and strengths in a way that benefits them.  Others allow fate to just take them wherever it may, and these characters very often end up in difficult circumstances or dead.

For example, the two sisters Arya and Sansa have very different outlooks on life.  While Sansa tends to do what is expected of her, even at great personal cost, Arya strikes out on her own and tries to survive on her wits alone.  While Sansa still lives in great material comfort at the palace, she is also at the mercy of everyone there.  Arya, on the other hand, is making her own fortune and has even managed to be a leader herself several times.

In professional services, your marketing shouldn't just follow the crowd and do what you “should” do based on what your competitors have already done.  Try something new and different, something people aren't doing in droves already.  Make your own destiny, and live by your strengths rather than by what is expected of you.

#5: Keep Your Promises—Reputation Matters

This season in Game of Thrones, viewers were shocked when Robb Stark's decision not to wed one of Walder Frey's daughters led to the “Red Wedding,” where Robb, his mother, and his wife were brutally murdered.  The gruesome Red Wedding was a reminder in the most dramatic way of how badly breaking a promise can backfire.

While it's unlikely that your rivals will engage in cold-blooded murder, consider another example of reputation in Westeros.  “A Lannister always pays his debts” is a saying known throughout the Seven Kingdoms, and because of this saying, Lannisters are able to negotiate their way out of problems by promising later payment.  When you have a good reputation, you can bank on it—and that kind of reputation is critically important for attorneys who want to market their services successfully.

#6: Be Careful Who You Trust

“Not trusting me was the smartest thing you did since setting foot in King's Landing,” says Lord Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish to Ned Stark in the show's first season.  One of the biggest things that veteran attorneys say that new attorneys need to know is that it's okay to trust your gut feelings about clients that may not be trustworthy.  Often, attorneys say, these are the clients who can eventually lead to problems when they fail to make needed disclosures or do something that causes more trouble than the case was worth.