The hit TV series Boardwalk Empire is set in the Prohibition Era of the 1920s, but the lessons that it teaches about leadership and entrepreneurship are timeless.  Nucky Thompson, the boss gangster of the series, has successes and failures that are directly attributable to following or failing to follow points of advice that are just as true for law firms—whether fledgling or well-established—as they are for bootleggers and mob bosses.

#1: Opportunities Can Come From Problems

In the opening scene of Boardwalk Empire, celebrants gather to celebrate a new year that will be different from any that came before, because with New Year's Day comes Prohibition.  While many American companies were put out of business by Prohibition, the series follows people who are celebrating because they know that the law will end up making Atlantic City—with all its attendant vices—more attractive than ever to tourists and more profitable than ever for its business owners.

Legal practices can take advantage of opportunities created by problems, as well.  Any time a new law or situation disadvantages a group of people, that group has just become a market for legal services.  For example, when the economy started having problems, real estate lawyers suddenly had much less business—but there were many more bankruptcy filings.

#2: Nobody is Invincible

One of the biggest lessons of Boardwalk Empire is that everyone is human, and that even the biggest bosses can be laid low.  Large firms would do well to take this lesson into consideration, especially if those firms are consumer oriented.  Today's consumers are often seeking legal information online and using discount practitioners instead of becoming clients of older and more respected firms.

By the same token, newer law firms should also keep in mind that by offering something new and different, you may in time be able to upset even the biggest players in your local market.  The sky is the limit, especially in a new era of legal services where technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in marketing and advertising.

#3: Understand Your Home Turf

In Boardwalk Empire, turf matters, and the local area right around where you're from is always your home base.  Too many attorneys try hard to market their firm in too wide a radius, even when the vast majority of their client base comes from within just a few miles of their firm's office location.

It's important to understand not just the city you're in, but even your own neighborhood when it comes time to advertising and marketing locally.  Using the demographics of your neighborhood can help you decide on marketing strategies and ways to target.  From there, you can use A/B testing—something more advanced than Nucky Thompson and his crew ever had—to figure out which of your strategies is giving you the best name recognition on your home turf.

#4: Make Connections In Other Organizations

One of the most valuable things that Nucky Thompson has is ability to connect with people who are different from him and belong to different organizations—even rival ones.  Having this ability to talk to people, even people you don't like, will get your law firm a long way in an ultra-competitive market.  Many legal clients today still come not from web searches, but from referrals made by other attorneys.  When you make connections with other law firms in your area, putting aside petty rivalries and extending a hand in friendship, you're really investing in the future.

#5: Know How Far You're Willing to Go

Nucky Thompson says toward the beginning of Boardwalk Empire that everyone has to decide for themselves how much sin they're willing to live with.  For attorneys, that means that you need to know how far your firm will go and what you're willing to do in order to represent clients.  Are there some types of cases you just don't feel morally right taking?  If so, know that, and make that a proud part of your firm rather than trying to hide it or be ashamed of it.
Law firm partners need to make these parts of your ethical commitments clear to your attorneys and other staff members.  If you have ten attorneys with ten different ethical codes and standards, you're going to end up having significant conflicts.  Make your priorities clear to all personnel, and bring them into any new decisions.

#6: Cutthroat Competition Hurts Everyone

In the most recent season of Boardwalk Empire, Atlantic City was turned upside down by a massive gang war.  While the dirty and violent tactics of the gang war have changed a few fortunes, overall it's important to note that every organization involved in the gang war has lost men and merchandise.

If you realize that you and competitors are starting to have a real rivalry, try to see if there's any way to patch it up instead.  It can be hard to predict how a pitched battle will turn out, and it can be better to resolve differences before they start cutting into everybody's business.

#7: Trust Matters

In the world of Boardwalk Empire, the moment people stop trusting you is the moment you stop being a valuable asset to the organization.  The same is true in law firms.  If there are personnel in your firm that you simply don't feel can be trusted to keep your reputation intact, you shouldn't whack 'em, but you might want to give them fair severance instead.

In order to make sure that your reputation is the best that it can be, show your firm to be trustworthy in all its dealings.  Don't take work on that you're not equipped to handle, and don't overpromise to your clients in an effort to seem like you're more on top of things than you actually are.  Your reputation is your life as an attorney, and you should never squander it for a few short-term gains.

If you're keeping a blog as an attorney, odds are that your entries started off strong, but after a few months, you may not know what to talk about to keep your blog fresh.  Your law firm's blog thrives on new content, and blogs that have grown stale or unused won't attract fresh visitors.  In order to keep your blog current and helping your search engine rankings, you need a steady flow of new posts.  This guide will give you some good ideas for posts that you may not have made yet, but that almost every attorney can write in an interesting way.

#1: “How I Got My Start In Law”

While it's likely that your law firm website already has some information about how you got your start in the legal field, it's just as likely that this website version of the story is a scaled down, watered down version of how you really got there.  Consider telling the real stories of what made you become a lawyer.  Did people say that you should be an attorney even when you were very young?  Did you expect all your life that you'd be doing something else, only to suddenly find yourself receiving a J.D. at the end of three years of law school?

People like origin stories—it's why superhero movies keep going back to superhero origins.  People like knowing where you came from, it humanizes you in spite of the fact that you're in a profession that is often dehumanized in popular media portrayals.  By telling people about your earlier history, you ensure that it they can relate to you on a deeper and more real level than if you just tell the story of your academic history.

#2: Changes To Your Field Recently

While this topic can seem a bit like inside baseball, and it is, there's a good reason for taking the time to discuss some of the changes to your specific field of law and things you've observed recently.  One of the best of those reasons is that you can then share this post on LinkedIn, where it may find an audience of other attorneys.  Why does this matter?  Because that's how you get not only guest blogging spots, but also attorney referrals from lawyers who know that you can handle a specific type of case better than they can.

Cultivating an audience of both attorneys and potential clients is the holy grail for lawyers, so consider making your post understandable for regular people while still interesting and unique enough for attorneys to read without feeling like they've read the same thing ten thousand times before.

#3: Client Myths and Misconceptions

Every attorney knows about misconceptions that people have about their specific legal specialty area.  Myths and misconceptions are rampant in almost every legal area, and when you start hearing a large number of clients reciting those myths, it's a great time to dispel them via a blog post.

When you do this kind of blog post, make sure not to make fun of people who believe these myths and misconceptions.  After all, they're generally propagated by people who simply don't know any better, because they haven't been exposed to the law as much as you have.  Don't assume that people are stupid or uneducated just because they don't understand the law.  The law can be very confusing to laypeople, and potential clients value an attorney who can explain myths and misconceptions in a way that is clear without ever veering into condescension.

#4: Walkthrough of an Initial Consultation

One thing that scares many people—often to the point where they put off contacting an attorney for days, weeks, or even months—is that if they've never hired an attorney before, they don't know how the whole process works.  By having a blog entry that details what a typical first consultation with your law offices looks like, you can make sure that potential clients feel at ease.  Essentially, you're giving them a road map that tells them what to expect from the first moment that they start onto their attorney/client journey with your firm.  Any journey is a little bit easier with a map, so provide your clients with one and they'll start walking through your door with a little more spring in their step and less nervousness.

#5: Advice on Choosing a Lawyer

While this blog entry will undoubtedly be a little bit self-serving, it shouldn't read like an ad for your firm exclusively.  Try to keep in mind that many of the people reading your blog probably aren't from close enough, geographically, to pick your firm.  Consider when you write this entry how you'd tell your mother or sister to choose a lawyer, rather than thinking about what would serve your firm absolutely best.  People will trust you more when your blog entries about topics like this don't just push people into your firm, whether or not it's the best fit.

#6: Understanding Attorney Client Confidentiality

Many people who are hesitant to talk to an attorney wait because they are not sure about what a lawyer is and isn't required to keep confidential.  You can dispel some client fears ahead of time by discussing confidentiality issues on your blog.  It's a good idea to link an entry like this from some part of your main website, potentially the parts that talk about an initial consultation.  When people have a better grasp of the attorney/client relationship, they'll be more likely to come away from their experience satisfied.

#7: What to Do in the Worst Case Scenario

There's usually a worst case scenario that clients in your field worry about, if you're an attorney.  In criminal cases, it's being accused falsely of something that you don't have easy proof you didn't do.  In divorce cases, it might be a messy divorce in which a spouse is determined to go to trial even if it costs an arm and a leg.  Whatever the worst case scenario is, being able to talk about it lucidly and help people understand how to mitigate the damage is a great trait for an attorney to have.  When clients see a blog entry about the worst case scenario and how much you can help in those situations, they'll know that their situation isn't the worst you've seen and that you'll be able to help them, too.

The hit television show Mad Men just wrapped up its gripping fifth season, and the show has taught viewers a lot of lessons about life, love, and advertising along the way.  Those ideas can also translate to advice for lawyers looking for advice about how to run their law firm in a competitive market.  Keep reading to find out how Don Draper, Joan Harris, and Roger Sterling—among others—have given lessons in marketing that work for law firms in the 21^st century.

#1: Names and Brands Matter—A Lot

One of the things that Sterling Cooper knows is that brand names and brand images absolutely make a difference to consumers.  Consumers emotionally associate brands with particular feelings, memories, and sensations—something Don Draper knew in this season's finale, where he dropped a bombshell on executives from Hershey by telling them about what a Hershey candy bar meant to him during his difficult childhood.

In the law, this remains the same.  While not all attorneys are thinking about branding and making their firm name into a brand name, it's definitely something that every attorney should be considering.  Whether you want it to or not, a brand will start to develop that is associated with your firm—a brand based on the perceptions of clients and those who see your marketing materials.  It's better to develop your brand consciously than to let it develop completely on its own.

#2: Know Which Clients Aren't Worth It

In Season 4 of Mad Men, the newly formed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce agency faces a dilemma many new law firms are familiar with: they have a beautiful office, but they don't yet have the client list to match it.  In their race to bring in new clients, the agency begins to court Jaguar.  Soon, though, they find that there's a catch: in order to make the sale to Jaguar, they'll need to get a “yes” from a man who is only interested in Joan, the firm's long-suffering and very buxom secretary.

After a round of tense negotiations, they end up agreeing to make Joan partner if she'll clinch the sale—which she does.  However, less than a year later, the client gets difficult again and the agency is forced to drop them from the client list.  This goes to show: when a client makes unreasonable demands at the beginning of your business relationship, even if you really need new business, it's often best to just let the client go.  Clients who are too demanding and unreasonable make your workplace worse to work at, and decrease morale across the board.  It's even worse when you need to rely on that demanding client's business at the risk of having to shut down.  Cut it off before you have to rely on a client who will be more trouble than he or she is worth.

#3: First Impressions Make All the Difference

The reason that SCDP got a big office in the first place is that they knew: you can't build a client base working out of a dingy basement.  While it's not a good idea for new attorneys to hock everything they own to get a big spacious office, it does pay to make a good first impression for clients.  Remember that your clients are paying a fairly high amount of money for legal services—they tend to want to see that their attorney's office is clearly professional and that some thought has been put into the décor and the general layout of your space.

#4: Maintain Long-Term Relationships

One of the things that the partners at Sterling Cooper have the hardest time with is fidelity—and that goes in their business lives as well as their love lives.  In several different situations throughout the five seasons of Mad Men, the firm's partners have not only cheated on their spouses, but have also been duplicitous about soliciting business from competing firms—business that would require them to end longstanding relationships with other companies.

While this has sometimes worked for the Mad Men, it's often a lot more trouble than it's worth.  Your longest term clients are the ones you want to keep around most: they're loyal, they clearly like your work, and they are very likely to recommend your firm to other people.  Courting new clients at the expense of your existing relationships is rarely a way to get ahead, and often a way to tank your reputation as a professional.

#5: Small Firms Can Do Big Work

Throughout the show, Sterling Cooper is never one of the biggest agencies on Madison Avenue—and they're not trying to be.  Sterling Cooper presents a great example of why you don't have to be a big firm to do work that matters and gets results, and why big clients might choose a relatively small and nimble firm as opposed to one of the older giants.

The lesson law firms should take from this is to think big, even when you're still fairly new and unestablished.  Don't limit yourself by thinking that your firm isn't yet large enough to get the kind of business that you want.  Make yourself into a specialist and do the research, pick a mentor, and start doing the kind of work that your firm wants to be doing.  Smaller firms are often preferred by legal clients because they can give a more personal touch and offer substantially more flexibility than larger firms.  You can also offer clients at a small firm the same attorney throughout the process of their case, while larger firms often have clients talking to several different people (some of whom they may get along with better or worse than others).

#6: Change the Conversation

Early in Mad Men, Don Draper gives one of the key rules of marketing in any industry: “If you don't like what they're saying about you, change the conversation.”  Too often, when marketing professionals try to respond to critique of their brand online or offline, they get too defensive and reactive.  Instead, you should consider talking about a different topic and highlighting your services in a creative, proactive way.

It seems like there's a new internet marketing trend just about every year, but 2012 has been a doozy: there are so many internet marketing trends that it's hard to keep track of them all.  As 2012 winds down, here are seven trends in internet marketing for attorneys and law firms that will help you develop a comprehensive marketing plan for 2013.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #1: The Dawn of the Local Web

One of the biggest changes for 2013 according to internet marketing trend watchers is that local's going to be more important than ever.  When people started using the internet, they were fascinated by their ability to connect with people all over the globe.  The idea that you could be sitting at a computer in Chicago, typing to a person who lived in Munich or Vladivostok or Canberra that you'd never met before, was one of the biggest changes that the internet brought into our lives.

However, as people have grown used to the internet, they've grown increasingly attached to local based searches and are forming geographically based groups.  There are a number of reasons for this, but the simplest is this: when you This means that more and more, you're better off following internet marketing trends that emphasize the local.  Consider getting a guest blog spot on a blog that talks about local issues, or be the interviewed guest on a local podcast if some aspect of your legal practice might be interesting to listeners.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #2: Everyone's a Social Butterfly

Some lawyers are still clinging to an idea that seemed reasonable enough a few years ago: that internet marketing trends toward social media sites are just fads.  Today, social media is finally big enough that holding onto that attitude may be what's holding you back.

There's no reason not to become part of social media sites today.  Social trends are the biggest internet marketing trends today for a reason.  Surveys show that the number of people who have obtained consumer information about attorneys from social websites has been doubling for each of the last two years.  By giving yourself a social presence, you're not just jumping on an internet marketing trend bandwagon.  You're giving yourself the best chance to build long term professional relationships with a much wider range of people in your community than you ever had access to before.

Learn how to really use technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Don't start by assuming you already know what internet marketing trends matter most on these sites—look for information that is recent, because what works at one time may not work six months later.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #3: Grassroots, Not Astroturf

Because internet marketing trends in 2011 and 2012 have tended to result in attorneys paying a lot of attention to review websites, some lawyers have gotten the same idea as other businesses: to either write the reviews themselves or have some other non-client write good reviews to keep out the bad.  However, most review websites have protocols that prevent this, and will stop you from using bogus reviews if any are detected.

Even if you're not caught automatically by the site, putting new fake reviews onto a review site ignores the real problem.  If someone's actually giving you an honest critique that you're failing to address, you're not going to cover up the problem for long with fake grassroots postings.  Instead, try responding to a person's negative review reasonably and without assigning blame to the other person.  You may also want to ask real clients you know have had a positive experience to write about your law firm on the same sites where you're currently having problems with negative reviews.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #4: Funny Business

Not every attorney is funny, and not every attorney has to be.  But if you honestly do have a good sense of humor, you can get on board with a lot more internet marketing trends.  The internet is often a funny kind of place, and if you understand its inside jokes and its memes, you'll be a lot more likely to succeed at placing funny content on the internet.

Just because a website is funny doesn't mean it's not informative.  A number of websites are devoted to lists of interesting events or people in history or pop culture (like cracked.com) and these sites are likely to have an educational as well as humorous tone.  You can give people valid legal information even if it's got some humor tied into the message too.  Stay away from jokes that could cause offense to oppressed groups or that could give you public relations problems later on.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #5: Ratings Matter More

Ratings really do make a difference for your law firm's success now.  Because it's one of the biggest internet marketing trends, you should put some effort into your strategy for building a good presence on these sites.  Most review websites, like yelp.com, allow businesses to include some information about themselves.  Keep this information updated consistently, and double check to make sure there are no typos.  No matter how many clients want to call your office after seeing your Google Places profile, if your phone number is a digit off, they'll be thwarted every time.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #6: Rise of the Mobile Machines

The shift toward mobile content distribution is one of the ongoing internet marketing trends that shows no sign of slowing.  All internet marketing trend predictions estimate that in less than 36 months, people will use mobile internet as much as traditional desktop or laptop internet.  Get to know mobile marketing and mobile internet marketing trends now, including things like QR codes (whether or not you decide to use them).  If you're not informed about the possibilities of mobile marketing, you may be leaving huge numbers of clients out of your strategy.

Top Internet Marketing Trend #7: Diversified Content

It's not enough any more to just have a blog, unless you're part of a very small firm, according to current internet marketing trends.  Consumers want videos and infographics.  The more that you diversify your content, the more you'll be ready to evolve toward whatever the next internet marketing trends will be.

The biggest social news stories of 2012 shocked internet marketers and changed how the web works for consumers.  But perhaps the biggest shock is how little these major changes are actually noticed by consumers or anyone who isn't in the know about social media.  If your law firm is getting up to speed about social media strategy, you need to know about these big social news stories from the last year.  We'll tell you the basics of each one and why they matter for marketing in 2013 and beyond.

#1: Social Media's Ever-Expanding Demographics and Geography

One of the biggest trends in social news stories for 2012 was the idea that social is no longer just a fad.  While social networking was once considered the exclusive province of high school and college students, today, it's just as likely to be grandmothers and grandfathers signing up for the biggest social media services.

What's more, the vast expansion of broadband internet connections and smartphone technology, along with 3G coverage expanding to rural areas, means that rural people are also able to use social media more than ever before.  Law firms should start to consider having a social media strategy today even if they're not in a major metropolis—even the smallest towns in the sleepiest areas of the United States now have vibrant groups on Facebook.

This also means that you should never assume that your demographics on Facebook and Twitter are exclusively young people.  If younger and older people using your firm's services tend to have different concerns, you may want to change the visibility settings so that you're only showing each group of people posts that they're likely to get something out of.

#2: The Skyrocketing Success of Facebook

Facebook has become the biggest social network in the consumer arena by far, and at this point just about every law firm should already have a Facebook firm page.  However, one thing that has been consistent about the legal industry with every social network is that lawyers have lagged behind in social media adoption.

The social news stories coming out about Facebook should be enough to convince you to sign up.  In many ways, Facebook is the best generator of the kind of word of mouth buzz that used to bring people into attorneys' offices.

#3: Twitter's Continued Rise, 140 Characters at a Time

While it still lags significantly behind Facebook in terms of overall users, Twitter was reported by social news services to gain millions of users in 2012.  Twitter's users tend to be more influential and connected overall than the average person, and that means that people who tweet can become fantastic brand ambassadors when given the chance.

Law firms can use this social news story to their advantage by signing up for a Twitter account as soon as possible.  Very few attorneys are on Twitter compared to other social networks, according to social news stories about attorneys' use of these sites.

#4: Foursquare Defeats Gowalla, Becomes Geo-Champion

Until early 2012, there were two major competing services that were in social news headlines for geolocational targeting abilities and “check ins” based on a person's location.  The two services were Foursquare and Gowalla.  However, Gowalla couldn't make it through 2012, and Foursquare became the undisputed champion in this area.  If you're looking for a solution that lets you target potential clients in particular geographic areas, your law firm needs to start considering Foursquare.  While this smaller social networking service isn't useful yet outside of cities, you may want to keep an eye on its growth.  It recently made its search results available to non-members, which may mean that it will become a hub for more and more traffic.

#5: Google Search Updates Make Social More Important for SEO

One of the biggest stories to affect internet marketers in 2012 was Google's newest update, Penguin.  This update changed the way that Google ranked some pages, and made it much harder to use things like article spinners to make your web presence look bigger than it was.  Because of this, social news became more and more important, as social sites skyrocketed to the number one place for companies to build their inbound links.

Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are the three most important networks you can focus on if you want to improve your search engine performance in Google as well as on Bing/Yahoo.  If you're interested in creating more inbound links, you may want to look at social bookmarking websites like reddit in order to get your links looked at by more people. Social bookmarking sites also allow the possibility for your content to go viral.

#6: Sponsored Social News Stories Become Major Form of Advertising

Social networks used to just have content from friends, and no ads at all.  Ads started out on the sidebar, but in 2012, they started invading the Facebook feed.  Sponsored social news stories can now be purchased by companies, which can show them to people in a certain area, people in certain demographic categories, or people who are connected to people you're already connected to.  

You can also promote your posts to ensure that everyone who is following your Facebook timeline sees your story in their feed.  If you don't promote a post, only approximately 15 percent of your Facebook friends will usually see what you have posted, according to social news published in 2012.

#7: Ratings Websites and Continued Yelp Controversies

One of the biggest social news controversies in 2012 centered around Yelp.  Yelp was already sued once for blackmailing business owners, but the judge granted summary judgment in their favor.  However, in 2012, many businesses still noted that they were seeing the same pattern: consistent positive reviews, a phone call from Yelp asking them to sign up for an expensive premium service, and then their positive reviews disappearing if the service was refused.  This is definitely an issue to watch out for if you rely on Yelp for any part of your law firm business.

Over 90 percent of attorneys are now engaging in some form of online marketing.  However, with online marketing comes new copyright concerns, and many attorneys may not be aware of the ways in which they may be committing copyright infringement or making the theft of their copyrighted materials easy.  In this guide, we'll go over some of the basic concerns about copyright that attorneys should keep in mind when they are designing websites, making content for search engine optimization purposes, or distributing content, including through social networks.

Search Engine Optimization and Infringement

One of the biggest recent changes to how search engines rank pages is that Google will no longer rank inbound links that come from web pages that they believe are copyright infringement.  This means that if you use an “article spinner” service (which makes many copies of an article, possibly changing it slightly, and copies it to various locations on the internet for the purposes of building a large number of inbound links in a short period of time), only one of those links is likely to count for each new piece of content you feed to the spinner.

This means that you'll now need to focus not only on getting content that is high quality, but on differentiating your content on different websites.  It won't be enough just to change a few words around—Google is now clever enough to detect when this kind of obfuscation is used in many cases, and will still consider it potential infringement.

Try to make sure that you're not copying a great deal of your content from one page to the next—not for different social media profiles, not for blog entries.  If you're copying content in a way that looks deliberate, it's likely that it will be regarded as an attempt at over optimization, which will be used as a reason to lower your site's rankings.

Intellectual Property Problems With Online Images and Text

When you're building your website for the first time, you may not have paid much attention to where you got the images and layout of your website.  However, in most cases, those images and any content that you “borrowed” were actually copyrighted by their creator and may not have allowed free use by just anyone.

You should always check the source of any content that you post online in order to avoid potential infringement claims later on.  There are a large number of stock photo services that will provide you with the full licensing rights to use an image as long as you pay their licensing fee.  By paying these fees, you ensure that you can defend yourself from any infringement claims.

Monitoring Your Online Reputation

You should also make sure that you're monitoring your reputation online.  Infringement isn't the only way that your content can be used inappropriately.  If you find any potentially defamatory content online, there are reputation management services that can quickly get it removed from most websites.  

As a law firm, you'll have a lot more credibility when you send a cease and desist than most other website owners, so you probably don't need to worry about defamatory content remaining up for long as long as you maintain an attitude of vigilance.  Self-Googling isn't just a vanity pastime when you're working in this kind of market—it's an absolute necessity for understanding what people are seeing first about you and your law firm.

If you see that you're having some reputation problems, you should take some positive action as well as taking action to remove the offending statements.  One of the best ways to make sure that your search results stay “clean” even with a negative result is by simply adding more content that is high quality and will rise above the offensive page in search rankings.  Because most web searchers never go past the first or second page of search results, you don't need to push it down much to make it disappear for the vast majority of users.

Monitoring the Use of Your Content

If you've used original content—for instance, original writing or photographs of your law office—as part of your website or your social media presence, you should search for that content online periodically.  Infringement can happen while you're not looking, and you may find that your content has been used for purposes you would not have approved of.

If you do find that infringement has happened, you can start by emailing the webmaster of a website.  If the webmaster doesn't respond to a cease and desist notice, you can try talking to the hosting provider.  Many hosting providers are very sensitive to infringement claims and will take a website down immediately upon being provided with evidence of infringement.

Keeping an Eye on Infringement Laws

The state of copyright on the internet is in some flux.  There are currently several plans in place from content providers to start punishing copyright infringement, but most of these schemes involve video and audio files rather than the types of content most likely to be part of an attorney's website.

You should make sure that you're keeping informed about any changes to internet copyright law and how internet service providers deal with claims of infringement.  You should also make yourself aware of your own hosting provider's policies about infringements of copyright, in case you would ever be accused of infringing on someone else's copyright.

How to Avoid Infringement

In addition to making sure that all of your images are purchased legally from image websites or are created in-house specifically for your site, you should also make sure to run your written content through a plagiarism checker before you post it.  If it detects plagiarism, you should alter the content significantly so that you aren't considered to be infringing on another person's intellectual property when you post your article and have it indexed by Google.
 

Attorneys who work primarily for businesses as clients can have a harder time creating a brand and marketing that brand than attorneys who market to consumers.  B2B content marketing can seem tough because the clients are tougher—they expect a better product and they're not afraid to shop around.  You can make those attitudes work to your advantage by using these strategies as your firm heads into 2013.

Strategy #1: Make Good Blogs Into Great Blogs

Surveys show that most business oriented firms are already doing some B2B content marketing through blogs.  Lots of lawyers have good blogs.  However, few have truly great blogs.  Why is that?  What separates the excellent from the merely pretty good?  B2B content marketing depends on knowing how to appeal in a way that goes beyond just you talking and informing.

The main thing that a great blog has and a good blog doesn't is a sense of community.  A great blog owner makes room for conversation and community, and knows how to moderate comment sections to minimize animosity and spam while maximizing opportunities for genuine interaction.  Great blogs develop cult followings not just because the B2B content marketing on your page is great, but because you've let your readers and blog become a community that is more than the sum of its parts.

Strategy #2: Don't Be Afraid of Social Media

Many attorneys don't see the benefits that social media can bring to their firm's marketing and brand presence. However, one of the best things you can do for B2B content marketing is to make and share social media content.  You should make sure that if you're doing business marketing, you're focusing most of your internet marketing dollars on LinkedIn.  Surveys consistently show that to be the most commonly used social network by the people who would be most likely to be on your client list.

Good social media conversations are a huge part of B2B content marketing.  Remember that every conversation you have in public on social media websites will become something that other people look at and use to judge whether you're a good firm to do business with.  Put your best foot forward, and don't let anger or frustration cause you to lose sight of your brand image.

Strategy #3: Start Writing Engaging Press Releases

A press release is only as great as the eyes that it attracts.  If your B2B content marketing press releases are only getting published on websites that will publish anything, odds are they're no longer helping your website's SEO ranking much any more.  That's because of some algorithm changes collectively referred to as Google Penguin that effectively shut down the usefulness of those sites.

Instead of writing press releases designed for search engines, start writing ones designed for humans.  If you create compelling storytelling as part of your press release B2B content marketing, you'll have a much easier time getting noticed.  Sending your press releases to the right people can also be a big help to your overall success rate.  Try sending press releases with your B2B content marketing to local business magazines as well as bloggers who discuss local business news.

Strategy #4: Consider Creating Microsites

One strategy that less than a third of law firms are currently using to attract B2B clients is creating microsites.  It's now so cheap to buy domain names that there's nothing wrong with buying a domain for a single very specific purpose—even if that purpose is just to showcase a single piece of B2B content marketing.

A successful microsite will address a direct consumer need in a way that is informative or entertaining.  If you're not paying attention to your clients' needs, your presentation is likely to fall flat on a microsite.  Make sure that any microsites you create are professionally designed—it's all too easy to tell when a law firm has skimped on its website budget.

Strategy #5: Webinars and Webcasts

A large number of law firms are already making at least some use of web broadcasts, including webinars.  If you're not already creating webinars, consider the types of legal subjects that you most enjoy talking about and helping people understand.  By creating a webinar, you let people see you in action, explaining things just like you'd explain them to a client.  It's a great introduction to how you practice law and what a client can expect from your firm if they choose to hire you.  This is one of the best B2B content marketing practices for firms to increase their conversion rates.

Strategy #6: Creating Useful, Targeted E-Mails

You may think that direct email is dead as a B2B content marketing technique.  The old days of just spamming everyone and seeing what stuck are over—spam filters are too good, and even if you get past them, people are too cynical.  Instead, try microtargeting niche guides.  When someone becomes part of your email list, keep track of the things they're actually interested in and only send them emails about those things.  This keeps the number of people who unsubscribe from your email list lower, while giving a higher chance that people will contact you because of your email marketing.

Strategy #7: Mobile Optimized Content

The mobile web is growing in importance at a truly staggering rate.  As more areas become connected with 3G and 4G coverage, mobile traffic online has been doubling every year for the last three years.  It is expected to nearly double once more in 2013, eclipsing desktop and laptop traffic as the most common way for people to access the internet.

This means that the best time to start optimizing your B2B content marketing for mobile was about 6 months ago.  The second best time is today—and you need to hurry!  Other firms are starting to figure out B2B content marketing through the mobile web, but as of now, only 15 percent of firms are actively using it.  By getting in on the ground floor, you ensure that some of the most affluent and connected clients are able to connect easily to your law firm through their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet computers.

If you've been looking for local SEO tips, you may be seeing a lot of contradictory information.  That's because local search SEO is a relatively new form of search engine optimization.  Already, local accounts for over 20 percent of searches, and over 40 percent of searches made from a mobile device like a tablet PC or smartphone.  Keep reading to find out how you can use local search SEO to get clients whether you're a huge law firm or a solo practitioner who's just starting out.

How Local Search SEO Helps Small Firms

When you're a small law firm, you don't really usually draw in clients from everywhere.  Most small firms bring in clients just from their city and the surrounding communities.  Local SEO tips can help you to get more of those clients without advertising to people from outside your community (who, after all, are very unlikely to ever become paying clients of your firm).

The great thing about local search SEO is that it can help to level the playing field with the larger law firms in your area.  If you use local SEO tips effectively, your website will appear on the same search pages as your larger counterparts.  That's the kind of advertising you can't afford to do in most media—to actually stand shoulder to shoulder with the biggest firms in your area.

Combining Local Search SEO With Mobile Optimization

In today's cell-phone oriented world, mobile optimization has become more important than ever.  Your firm needs some local SEO tips that are designed for mobile devices.  One of the reasons that mobile phones are great for web traffic is that they make it very easy for a potential client to actually call your law firm and schedule an initial consultation.  Local SEO tips that don't include any information on mobile traffic are likely to be outdated—by 2014, most web traffic will be mobile based in the United States.

When you're doing local search SEO with mobile optimization, you'll need to work on a lot of different profiles for ratings websites and Google+ Local.  In addition to hiring consultants who can give you some local SEO tips for mobile, you may want to consider reputation management services.  These services work to monitor what's being said about you online and can provide you with quick and easy takedown of negative reviews in many cases.

Local SEO tips are actually becoming more important than ever because of mobile phones.  Why?  Because most mobile customers just don't want to have to click, scroll, and zoom through many different pages.  They're more likely to just click on one of the top five results of their search than desktop users.  This means that you need to get your local search SEO to the top of Google and Bing if you want to draw in mobile traffic.

Combining Local Search SEO With Direct Ads

One of the biggest disadvantages of local SEO is that even if you use all the best local SEO tips, you're not going to see results today or tomorrow.  It can take weeks, or even months, for your local search SEO to pay off.  Meanwhile, your firm needs to attract business today.

The best way to fix this problem is to look for some direct advertising tips as well as local SEO tips.  Direct advertising gets you new business as soon as you start using it, and can be much faster than local search SEO.  

While you're doing direct ads, though, you should be enhancing your website with local SEO tips so that you can gradually get away from paid search results.  Studies show that only about 20 percent of users actually click search ads, so you'll be better off with effective local search SEO than you will be with even the best advertisements.

Can I Do Local Search SEO For Free?

One of the best parts of local SEO tips is that if you use them wisely, you won't need to keep paying to make your website stick at the top of the search results page.  In fact, if you're willing to do a lot of local search SEO research, you will probably be able to do most of your search engine optimization without paying anything.

That's because local SEO tips blogs are common online, and most of the best tools for local search SEO are actually available completely free of charge.  Google and other search providers like to provide web developers with these tools so that legitimate websites know how to reach the top of search engine results.  You can start your local SEO efforts by just looking around on Google's website and using its built-in tools for local search engine optimization.

Hiring Local Search SEO Services

The fact that it's possible to read enough local SEO tips to do it on your own doesn't mean that you necessarily want to.  If you're having trouble developing a local search SEO strategy, you may want to think about hiring a service to help you do better.

These local search services can do the tedious work of putting all of your firm's information into various profiles and local directory listings.  Instead of spending hours trying to apply local SEO tips to your web presence, the work is done for you and the results will start to build slowly over time.

The Future of Local Search SEO

Local searches are likely to get even more local in the future.  Because people tend to want services right away when they're using mobile devices, you may even be able to focus your marketing strategy on SEO for people right in your neighborhood or other hyperlocal area.

Attorneys in cities have started using local search SEO to optimize for suburban customers by incorporating keywords pertaining to nearby suburbs in their copy.  This is a great way to expand your reach if you're trying to compete in a cutthroat area, and it's a strategy attorneys are likely to use for years into the future.

Maximizing the effectiveness of your social networking strategies should be one of your law firm's top priorities for 2013.  Surveys of attorneys show that over 1/3 of lawyers are still not using Facebook or Twitter,and many of those who are using them aren't using them well.  This guide will help you understand which strategies are actually effective for social networking professionally.  Along the way, you'll learn a few key things not to do if you want to make your social networking campaigns effective.

#1: Differentiate Your Presence on Different Sites

Today, most of the major social networks are linked up, and many allow you to cross-post the same update to several different networks.  Even on networks that don't offer this feature natively, social media dashboards allow law firms to release a comment on several different social media sites simultaneously.

Before you go too wild with the possibilities, remember this: just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.  Crossing too many social media wires isn't good for your business, and you won't get far targeting the same material to fellow attorneys and professionals on LinkedIn to users on Facebook who are more likely to be consumers with less legal knowledge.

#2: Understand Your Market

The era of the attorney who takes any case, big or small, about any issue, is long since gone.  Today, you need to look at niche markets if you want to succeed in the legal field.  When you're marketing to niches, effective social networking requires understanding the concerns and questions of that niche.

Do you notice that at initial consultations, clients tend to have some questions that it seems like almost everybody asks?  Effective social networking depends on your ability to address some of those questions and concerns before people ever come to your office.  By seeing how you respond to their real, commonly asked questions, people can get an idea of what it would be like to hire you as their attorney.  That means that they'll be more likely to pick up the phone and call, instead of just thinking about calling—remember, potential clients who just think about calling won't keep the lights on in your office.

#3: Don't Be Afraid to Advertise

When you're getting involved in social media, you might think that the best indication of effective social networking is not spending money.  After all, if you truly go viral completely organically, you won't have spent much or any money promoting your work.  However, keep in mind that the chances of actually having legal content go viral on a global scale aren't really very high.

What is more likely is that your content could become viral—on a smaller scale, to a legal community or consumers with a particular legal concern.  The best way to get your content passed around and create effective social networking content in these audiences is to make something that's informative, yet entertaining.  If you've managed to make something effective, though, advertise it!  Don't just wait for people to recognize your genius.  Self-promotion isn't just optional in the legal marketing game today.  Effective social networking requires you to actively advertise your brand and get your message in front of new people on social networks.

#4: Have Social Networking Goals

The goals that you set for your social marketing campaigns don't have to look like traditional ROI goals on something like direct e-mail marketing.  Effective social networking doesn't always look like it results in new clients.  However, with more than 85 percent of legal consumers now doing research on the internet before they contact an attorney, you'll do best if you put your best foot forward on social networks.

This means that you may want to have goals for metrics like how many times you engage people in discussion on social media websites, and how many new contacts you make on these websites.  You don't have to see immediate quantitative results for your campaign to have been effective social networking.  Reputation pays off dividends slowly over time.

#5: Listen at Least as Much as You Talk

Don't just use social media as your soapbox.  One of the best things about effective social networking is that it lets you make contact with people and find out what your clients actually love and hate about your brand and your law firm.  If someone has a problem with how you do things, it's not an effective social networking strategy to just shut them down.  Let them speak, hear them out, and you may find out something about your company that you didn't know before.

#6: Guide Discussions—But Don't Dominate

Many attorneys have a tendency to over-police the discussions occurring on their Facebook or Twitter feeds.  Just because a discussion starts with you doesn't mean that you need to interject all the time.  While you should delete harassing comments as part of an effective social networking moderation policy, you should also allow room for dialogue to develop.

This means that a policy of “hovering” over discussions and steering them in a desired direction isn't as effective for social networking as simply asking questions and encouraging people to converse with each other.

#7: Apologize for Mistakes and Move On

Everybody makes mistakes, and it's very likely that at some point you'll try to implement an effective social networking strategy and instead will find out you've offended someone.  When this happens, some law firms react with defensiveness and an unwillingness to apologize.

Effective social networking doesn't require you to be perfect, but it does require you to own up to your imperfections.  When you make a mistake, it's much better for your online reputation if you admit to it, take steps to ensure that it won't happen again, and stop re-hashing it over and over.  Attempting to silence critics will often just lead to online campaigns that will smear your firm and hurt your reputation for the mid and long term.

Over half of marketers think that creating content is the hardest part of their job duties.  That's even more true for attorneys, who often try to juggle marketing responsibilities at small firms and don't necessarily know how to produce effective social content.  In this guide, we'll go over some tips for making content that is interactive and projects a positive brand image.  You'll learn what social media and networking are really for, and how to make social content that shows you “get” what going social is all about.

#1: Think From a New Point of View

Remember that the things that you as an attorney find interesting about the law are probably not what most potential clients think are interesting.  Too many smaller law firms (and other small businesses) tend to post social content that is clearly all about what they find interesting.  In reality, social networking is a relationship building tool, and when you're only talking about what you find interesting, you're not in a two-way relationship.

Try to think about what your potential clients are looking for before you make your social content.  What are their concerns and misconceptions about the law?  What are things most people get wrong or seem misinformed about?  These are places where you have a chance to educate, inform, and generate discussion with potential clients on social media websites.  Your social content will have a chance to really shine when you consider your clients' desires ahead of your own.

#2: Get Creative In Integrating Social and Mobile

Social and mobile marketing are two concepts that work best when they're implemented in tandem.  Forward thinking law firms are already incorporating mobile marketing into their social content.  For example, sponsoring stories on Facebook and other social media websites can be a great way to get new people looking at some of the content you're offering.  Research shows that users of mobile Facebook apps are more likely than desktop users to click on this type of advertisement.

Making sure you have a presence on various web review sites is also a great way to ensure that you're integrating social content and mobile marketing.  Review websites are often checked by mobile users before they contact someone to provide them with a service, including legal services.  Asking satisfied clients to provide you with reviews on the websites where you're establishing a presence can significantly boost your rates of attracing new business.

#3: Show Yourself to the Social World

Too many companies make the mistake of thinking that they need to conform to some sort of marketing ideal rather than projecting a brand image that says something about who they really are.  Your branding efforts should always be focused on presenting a real side of yourself, and your social content should consistently work toward that goal.

If you've been making your social media updates sound generic or like sales pitches, you're not doing yourself any favors.  Instead, work on making your updates sound like your most friendly and professional self.  Don't be afraid to use a bit of humor or to use different tones in different types of posts.  Sounding too generic just makes it seem like you're only going through the motions of creating social content.

#4: Stay Updated About New Social Content Trends

The world of social media has been changing rapidly and isn't showing any signs of slowing down.  2012 brought us a new look for Facebook that caused a lot of complaints when it was first rolled out.  However, those complaints have since died down, leaving marketers with new ways to place social content on the networking giant.

In order to get on board with the next big thing in social media, you'll need to keep up with news and information about social marketing.  Social marketing blogs can help you stay on top of the scene and understand what types of social content are most likely to get results.

#5: Avoid Becoming an Annoyance

While it's great to advertise on social media, many people in surveys indicate that some businesses are being obnoxious with their social marketing campaigns.  Try to avoid creating social content that will oversaturate the friends of your Facebook friends with advertisements for your company—this type of content is best used in small doses.

You should also make sure that you're not inundating everyone who is connected to you on social media with messages and new posts.  Keep your post count lower, but create higher quality, higher value posts each time you do create one.

#6: Interact With People on Facebook

While typically only about 15 percent of people will be able to see any given Facebook Timeline post you make, there are two ways to make that number bigger.  One is to “sponsor” your social content and pay for it to be put in front of all your friends and connections.  However, the other way is to have your content reach the top of friends' feeds is to get a lively discussion going.

When a post receives more Facebook comments and likes on those comments, it becomes more likely to be seen by a larger number of people.  This is why you're likely to have better results with social content that tries to ask some questions and open up discussion than content that doesn't leave much room for commentary.

#7: Don't Ignore the Value of Video

One of the things that some attorneys forget is that social content featuring video is really popular—and more likely than other types of content to go viral.  Even if you're more used to blogging than Youtube, you should consider making some videos to augment your other forms of content.

Attorneys should make sure that any video they upload has reasonable production values and sound quality.  You won't improve your brand image online by uploading videos that are shaky, out of focus, or full of unintentional pauses and hesitations.