Branding and marketing usually aren't a lawyer's favorite tasks.  But to succeed in a legal market where almost 40 percent of newly graduated lawyers are without a job requiring a J.D., you'll need to get smart about brand marketing to stay competitive.  Why are branding and marketing so important today, and what does it take to implement a successful brand marketing strategy?  These are the questions we'll answer in today's guide.

Why You Need a Brand

Twenty years ago, it was possible for attorneys to compete in the market without using much branding and marketing strategy.  This is because at that time, the American Bar Association exercised much more control over the number of law school graduates entering the market each year.  Now, more law schools are open than ever before and huge numbers of new firms are starting up.

Clients today don't just find their lawyers based on an ad in the Yellow Pages.  Today, clients do research.  Over 90 percent of legal clients now do at least some online research while looking for an attorney.  With so much competition, the most successful law firms are those that show a consistent brand image.  If clients already feel like they can relate to your firm based on branding and marketing, they're less likely to keep looking and find another firm that suits them better.

The next four sections of this guide are about the fundamental questions you can use to shape the brand of your law firm.  There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and different firms will answer them quite differently.  However, these answers will make it much easier for you to understand the right way to implement a brand marketing strategy.

Who Are You?

This is a very critical question for your firm to think about for brand marketing.  Whether you're a solo practitioner or have dozens of attorneys, what's at the core of your identity for branding and marketing?  What are the principles you refuse to compromise?  This question can set the tone for your other brand marketing answers, or, if you're not yet confident about who your firm is, you can come back to this question after answering a couple of the other questions posed here.

When you implement branding and marketing strategies, you need to make sure that you never compromise this part of your brand in exchange for a quick uptick to web traffic or new sales.  When people perceive a firm as going back on fundamental parts of their identity, they're less likely to see them as trustworthy advocates.

What Do You Want?

This question is critical for understanding the purpose of your branding and marketing goals.  Brand marketing will be different for a firm that wants to show continuous hiring growth versus a firm that wants to hold steady with a small number of attorneys.  Your clients will be different if you're an IP firm than if you're a tax firm, and different still if you're doing criminal defense cases.  That means your goals in terms of reaching clients and growing your firm should be different, and you should be realistic within the framework of the current legal market not just nationally but in your local area.

Law firms that don't know the answer to this question often present confused branding and marketing strategies.  Their brand marketing shows them trying to be all things to all people, having no goal more specific than getting more clients.  In 2012, you're more likely to have success with branding and marketing by focusing on a particular niche practice than by trying to represent clients with any and all legal concerns.  Once you make your goals realistic, you can narrow your niche so that you're getting more clients who are advancing your brand marketing goals.

Why Are You Here?

This question is one that every law firm has to answer eventually.  Are you just here to make money?  Or are you in business to genuinely help your clients?  You may find that by having the latter as your answer for branding and marketing purposes, you're actually helping yourself make more money as well.  Thinking about why you're here and what your purpose is in having a law firm is important for brand marketing.  But remember, it can't just be your branding and marketing slogan—you need to live your answer.  This means making it right if you make a mistake (which can be a great opportunity for brand marketing if you handle it well).

Where Are You Going?

Whenever you implement a new brand marketing strategy, you should ask whether it's compatible with the long term future you envision for your brand.  Branding and marketing that works only for the short term and isn't keeping long term goals in mind can distract your brand and make you do work that actually hurts your work on your overall brand image.

Many law firms think only about the immediate future, but consider making a 5, 10, and 20 year plan for your firm.  If everything goes realistically but well, where do you hope to be at each of these points?  Track your progress toward the goals, and change them as you need to, but always keep some long-term goals in mind.

Implementing Branding and Marketing Strategies

Once you have the four questions answered, it's time to think about creating a brand marketing strategy that uses your answers.  Make sure that your brand image is consistent across all platforms—you don't want your Facebook tone to be so different from your website's tone that it looks like two totally different brands.

If you can answer the questions with confidence and carry the answers into all of your branding and marketing materials, you'll be much less likely to make a misstep in your brand marketing.  Confidence in who you are shines through, and will help you differentiate your firm from those on shakier ground.

A recent report released by LexisNexis has revealed some amazing statistics about internet marketing in the digital age.  The report analyzed the results of a survey conducted in February of 2012.  4,000 total adults, weighted by demographics including age, sex, and race, were asked questions about how they use the internet and offline sources to seek information when they have a legal problem.  With 58 million Americans trying to find an attorney in just 2012, the stakes couldn't be higher.  Learning more about this report can help you tailor your legal practice to the ways people use the internet now.

Where Do Consumers Look For Lawyers?

Even a decade ago, people who weren't able to obtain the name of an attorney from friends or family were often confined to looking through the Yellow Pages.  Some more savvy consumers would use hotlines sponsored by state or local bar associations.  The new LexisNexis survey shows that these methods have fallen nearly completely out of favor.

In total, 76 percent of people seeking an attorney had looked for information on the internet.  Only 24 percent used exclusively offline methods to look for a lawyer.  For the first time in such a survey, LexisNexis found that slightly more people used the internet than referrals from friends and family.  Only 73 percent consult family or friends at any point during their legal search.  Over 60 percent of total internet users have looked for a lawyer online at some point during their adult lives—33 percent in just the last year.

What Do Consumers Use the Internet to Find?

The biggest reason that consumers start looking online for legal resources is that they want to gather information.  This is one of the greatest strengths of web searches, and many people initially simply want to know whether they might have a case that an attorney could help with.  At the next stage—finding attorneys who might be able to take their case—61 percent of internet users turn to online resources.

The next two stages involve narrowing down the field of potential attorneys.  53 percent of internet users have used online sources to validate an attorney—to make sure that they seem well qualified and are as experienced as they claim they are.  44 percent use websites to make their final decision about an attorney.

What Do Consumers Do With Information from the Internet?

One of the most surprising results of this survey is the number of consumers who converted after searching for attorneys online—in other words, how many people actually hired a lawyer as a result of their search.  The survey shows that a staggering 57 percent of consumers who had searched for an attorney online said they had actually hired a lawyer because of information they found during their online search process.

Of course, that still leaves 43 percent out—what did those consumers do?  Six percent of them ended up hiring a public defender, which means that they may not have been able to pay for the services of an attorney.  Eight percent decide, after looking at legal information online, that they would prefer not to pursue their case and they stop looking for any legal representation.  13 percent continue their search offline, and 15 percent decided to use online services to help them resolve their legal problems on their own (for instance, people who decided to self-file for divorce or print a legal form instead of consulting an attorney).

What Websites Do Consumers Use Most?

Search engines tend to be used most by consumers who are in the earlier phases of searching for legal information and representation.  Google is the most commonly used search engine among the adults surveyed, which is in keeping with findings about Americans' search engine use habits.  Smaller percentages use Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and MSN.

However, not all of the searching for attorneys happens on search engines.  Social media sites were used by just over 20 percent of overall internet users who searched for a lawyer.  If you're not already creating a social media presence to get these consumers, you need to act fast—these numbers were much lower just a few years ago, and in a few years social media could easily be the dominant way that people look for attorneys.  The most common social sites for people to look for legal information and lawyers were Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, and legal blogs.

The Importance of Ratings

A full 57 percent of the users surveyed also mentioned that they looked at one or more websites that contained ratings and reviews for attorneys.  28 percent of those who looked at these results said that they were extremely influential, while just 3 percent said they were extremely uninfluential.  Attorneys who have not yet created profiles on ratings websites may end up behind in their internet marketing.

The Mobile Web and the Desktop Web

While laptops and desktops were the most common way for people to do their legal research, smartphone devices are rapidly gaining ground, as are tablet PCs.  Over one fifth of consumers doing legal research already use these methods, and if current rates of growth continue, that could be over one half by the time 2014 comes to a close.

What this means for you is that as an attorney, you should be working on having a mobile presence.  If you're not already thinking about buying app advertising as part of your ad strategy, you should start thinking about it now.  Geo-based apps like Foursquare can help you get connected with the ultra local consumers most likely to be ready to schedule an appointment today.

You should also work on your law firm's website.  You don't want to have a website that is Flash-based any more (if, indeed, you ever had one), because Flash players won't work on iOS devices.  Making sure that your content is at least visible—preferably beautiful—to both desktop and mobile users is one of the biggest things that will set your firm apart from the competition in the rapidly-changing web world.

2012 has been a year of incredibly big changes for businesses involved in online marketing, including law firms.  Google Panda and Penguin are two of the code names for two of the biggest changes to how Google, the internet's most used search engine, ranks search engine results.  These changes only affected about 1 website out of every 6—but the shock waves they sent through the marketing community were much bigger.  In this guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about Google Penguin and Panda, including whether your website is affected and what steps you need to take to make yourself Penguin-proof.

Help!  I Don't Know Anything About Google Panda/Penguin.

Don't worry—even if you haven't kept up much with search engine marketing terms and techniques, Google Penguin and Panda are easy enough to understand with some basic explanations.  As marketers got to know what made websites rise higher in search rankings, updates like Google Panda and Penguin became necessary in order to ensure that people weren't getting a leg up on the competition by making websites that were great at attracting search engines but bad at having content people actually wanted to see.

Google Penguin was an update launched on April 24, 2012 that was designed to root out web spam techniques and stop aggressive over optimization of websites.  Having a lot of exact match anchor text and inbound links that come from blog spam can make it so that Penguin is affecting your website.

Only about 3 percent of websites were affected by Penguin.  It's much more likely for a website to have been affected by one of the several versions of Google Panda, released from February 2011 to April 2012.  Panda updates had a major effect on sites called content farms.  These websites often worked by duplicating content found elsewhere on the web, and often had low quality standards.  These sites were lowered in Google's rankings as being irrelevant to users' actual desires for content.

How Do I Know if Google Panda/Penguin is Affecting Me?

The best way to know whether Google Penguin or Panda has had an effect on your business is to check your traffic logs from 2011 and 2012.  Do you notice a very steep drop in your traffic levels after sometime in April 2011 or April 2012?  If so, you may have a problem with Google Panda or Penguin.  Panda problems happened on or around February 24 2011, April 11 2011, and April 19 2012. 

If you had a sudden decline in your traffic on or around those dates, it may be that Google identified your website as potentially having thin content without enough real information that consumers might care about.  However, if your website experienced a big reduction on or around April 24-25, 2012, it's very likely that you have been affected by Google Penguin.  You may need to stop using so many exact keyword matches, or stop using inbound links that come from spammy sources. 

My Site Is Affected—Is My Practice Doomed?

Some webmasters are still finding out that the changes of the last year are affecting their websites.  Because many smaller firms and solo practitioners contract out any work that needs to be done on their websites, not all attorneys are aware of what marketing techniques were being used by their web marketing contractors and haven't always checked on their own site's performance lately.

If you find that your referrals and calls have vanished because your website was affected by Google Panda or Penguin, you need to get a new web marketing company right away—not fixing the site by now has undoubtedly had significant consequences for your law firm.  However, you should also make sure that this is a lesson to your firm—always monitor what's going on.  Another web marketing firm can help you to re-design your site, get rid of old unwanted links from spam websites, and rebuild what you've lost as a result of Google Penguin or Panda.

Preventing Your Site From Becoming Affected

The best way to make sure that neither Google Penguin nor Panda will affect your website is to make sure that you're building high quality content.  Both Google Penguin and Panda tend to affect websites that use a great deal of bad content and bad links, so as long as your links come from legitimate sources and your content is actually of interest to users, you shouldn't have too much to worry about.

Keeping Up To Date About Google Updates

Of course, no one outside of Google's research laboratories knows exactly what the next Google algorithm update will look like.  That's why it's a good idea to keep track of what's going on with Google search updates—you don't want to be caught off guard when the next Google Panda or Penguin update is made, or another even more sweeping update with a still different codename gets turned on.

Content Guidelines for 2013 and Beyond

When building content that Google Panda and Penguin will consider okay, you want to take into account whether it's actually something that somebody will want to read.  Gramatically incorrect keywords, extensive exact keyword phrasing and links, and so on aren't just optimizing a website.  They're also making it look worse and making it harder for people to read through the content presented there.

The focus of your website in 2013 should always be content-based.  When you ground all of your marketing efforts in quality content, updates like Google Penguin and Panda will rarely, if ever, affect your website.

Building Enthusiasm for New Sites

If some of the most common ways to boost initial site visitors are stopped by Google Panda and Penguin, how can a new legal website make itself successful?  The best ways involve social media.  Social presences like on Twitter and Facebook are ranked quite highly by Google's ranking algorithm, and a good social media presence can lead to getting new clients from referrals as well as direct marketing.

Okay, let's face it: attorneys don't learn anything about creating or maintaining a website when they go to law school.  Many lawyers don't realize until they have their own firm how critical marketing is to law firm success, and lawyers in surveys list marketing as among their least favorite responsibilities.  The days when attorneys could make their website #1 in Google searches just by using a lot of keywords is at an end, so you need to learn how to market your content so searchers can find it.  Here are seven different types of creative website content that you can use when re-designing your website to take advantage of cutting edge marketing strategies.

#1: Social Media Status Updates

Social media is a place where many attorneys are doing something, but not really enough to be worth bothering with.  If your idea of website content on Facebook and Twitter is putting up an occasional status update and re-posting it to every social network you're part of, you're not really doing social media—you're just going through the motions.

Each of these websites is a community.  And like any communities, each has its own set of rules, both written and unwritten.  By re-posting content from one social media site to another too much, you're showing an unwillingness to really engage with the community.  Try making different posts for each different network you're part of—someone on LinkedIn will likely be interested in a very different aspect of your practice than consumers looking at your firm on Facebook.

#2: Attorney Biography Pages

Research shows that 85 percent of legal clients say that they call a law firm after reading its attorney biography pages—more than any other section on attorney websites.  This means that your website content for attorney biography pages needs to be terrific.  This isn't a place to skimp or to be generic.  Being yourself on your attorney biography page is the right idea: clients tended to respond most to website content that reflected individuality.

Try making your attorney biographies less a rehash of your curriculum vitae and more of a story of who you are and why you practice.  This kind of attorney biography is less likely to intimidate and more likely to captivate your audience.  You can and should still include relevant details from your educational and work experience, but make it part of a narrative that people reading your website can actually feel involved in.

#3: Online Directory Listings

Many people who are looking for attorneys online don't really know exactly what they're looking for.  That's why they turn to website content like online directory listings.  Some of these directories may be location based, like Google Places.  Others may be more specialized, and may be just for attorneys.  Making sure that your online profiles are complete is great, but you should also be prepared to spend some time on your web content on these pages.

Get nice photos of your offices, create good copy for the description of your firm and its attorneys, and try to be as helpful as possible about providing hours and contact information.  These online directories are also often used by people looking to validate attorneys who have been recommended by friends or family, which means that the web content you have on these directories can be critical to getting referral traffic in 2013.

#4: Legal FAQs

One area of website content that every attorney should have is a FAQ.  No matter what your legal specialty, there are some questions that you undoubtedly hear very often.  You can probably also think of a few misconceptions that most people have when they walk into your office for the first time.  Using your website content to help answer some of those questions can ensure that your initial visits with clients go more smoothly and people are more likely to call your office to schedule an appointment.

Make sure that you're writing your FAQ for your intended clients, not other attorneys.  Other lawyers know the law—clients, on the other hand, need it explained with a minimum of jargon and a maximum of clarity.  Try to make sure that you run your copy by someone who isn't a legal professional to make sure that it all makes sense.

#5: Splash Pages

Too many attorneys greet people with too much splash and not enough substance.  Today, great website content is the way to get clients to pay attention.  You should make sure that even the first page that people see is tailored to their needs.  Consider having different website content for the initial page visited by people depending on how they got to your website.  For example, if someone comes to your site from an advertisement about no-fault divorce, they can go straight to some basic information about no-fault divorce statutes in your state.

#6: Videos and Audio

Not all of your website content should be text.  Consider adding multimedia content to make your efforts at online marketing even more successful.  Sites that contain video website content have conversion rates that are up to 50 percent higher than those that don't, according to surveys.

Audio can also be useful.  Consider creating a mini audiobook that can help people understand the basics of what your practice is and how you go about solving a client's legal problem.  Make this audio available for either download or streaming for maximum effect.

#7: Press Releases

Every time you create a press release and put it on press release websites, you may be missing out on an opportunity to get this type of website content placed elsewhere.  Reputation of the websites where your press release is sent matters.  Instead of using press releases just for inbound linking, try using them to really get publicity.

One of the best ways to do this is to build in story hooks to your press release.  By giving some narrative structure to what you write, you'll be giving other people something to sink their teeth into and write blog posts or other website content about.  This is a fantastic way to get links that will really improve your reputation and your search rankings.

New attorneys often have a hard time getting a handle on what the best marketing techniques are to get their firm in front of the competition.  If you're worried about your marketing plan as a new attorney, fear not—there are actually places where new lawyers have advantages over the old guard.  In this guide, we'll take a look at some marketing ideas that you should be implementing as soon as you can.  Because most new attorneys are working with a limited budget, every idea in this guide is designed with cost effectiveness in mind.

#1: Go Social—You Have Advantages

While attorneys who are older and have been in the profession a very long time have many advantages over you as a new lawyer, you have some places where you can far outshine them.  For example, many attorneys are basically dinosaurs when it comes to technology.  This means that adapting to how people use social networking websites has been exceedingly difficult for a lot of lawyers who are very good at the legal parts of their job and used to be very good at the marketing parts, too.

If you can build a successful social networking presence, you'll soon notice your website climbing search rankings and clients starting to come in from word of mouth referrals and web searches.  Because new attorneys today usually are younger and already have social networking experience, they understand what users expect of businesses online.  Keep it professional and make sure that you're attentive to the people who link to you and share your posts, and you'll have a great social media presence within a fairly short time.  What's more, doing marketing with your social media pages is completely free—it only costs time, not money, which is handy for attorneys who have more of the former than the latter on their hands.

#2: Use Social Bookmarking Sites

Another social venue that young attorneys often understand intuitively from previous use is the social bookmarking site.  Sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit can help your law firm get noticed by people online, and can help you build a backlink profile that is more favorable to your firm in search results.

While social bookmarking websites are great for younger attorneys to use if they understand them, use caution. If these sites think that you are contributing spam, they will often delete not only the post you've made but even your entire account.  Make sure that if you do post, you keep the marketing angle subtle—perhaps a link to an interesting blog entry, rather than a link to your main firm homepage—and don't make it your only post on the website.  Try to be an active participant generally, and it is much less likely that you will be suspected of posting links to your own content.  Alternately, be clear about it being your own content, and make sure that it stands on its own as something interesting enough to be worth viewing.

#3: Answer Legal Questions Online

While you may not know everything about the law, you should at least have a good grasp of a lot of the basics—and fortunately for you, that's a lot of what people ask questions about when they want to talk to attorneys online.  When you answer legal questions online, you show yourself to be a subject matter expert to people, as well as improving the profile of your backlinks and helping you to appear higher in web searches.

Be careful not to overstep your ethical boundaries when talking to people about their legal questions online.  However, done correctly, these kinds of answers show you to be a personable attorney who can answer tough questions in plain English—exactly the kind of thing potential clients want to know about you before they decide to pick up the phone and call.

#4: Start Your Own Blog

If you've already been an avid blog reader—and maybe have kept a personal blog of your own in the past—now's the time to start a law blog that will help the profile of your law firm.  Make sure that you're maintaining professionalism in your blog, and link back to the firm website so that you are generating additional backlinks and “link juice” to help your Google standing.

Make sure that your blog has some level of specificity—there are plenty of blogs already out there from young attorneys talking about life, the law, and everything.  If you make your blog more niche-focused, you'll be better positioned to draw in searchers.

#5: Give Talks in Your Community

Doing community outreach, like giving talks at community centers, senior centers, libraries, postsecondary educational institutions, and so on, can have a beneficial effect on your business.  By getting face to face interaction time with people, you're showing them your professional demeanor and improving your community reputation.

Typically, the topic of your talk should focus on a legal area you both know well and that you hope to get clients in.  For example, you might want to have a workshop that teaches people how to make a living will, and then make sure people know that your services are available for other estate planning needs.

#6: Find a Niche

The age of the generalist attorney, who didn't ever know what the next day would bring to his office door, are long gone now.  Today, the profession belongs to the specialists and subspecialists, who mine narrow groups of clients.  The reason niche marketing works has everything to do with how search engines work.

The longer a search term and the more unusual it is, the fewer people will be searching for it and the less it is likely to cost on Google.  Targeting these keywords can be really good for conversion rates—the people who are actually making these very specific searches are often quite likely to be looking for an attorney.  By niche marketing yourself, you're setting yourself apart from the competition and no longer need to be in the same rat race as hundreds or even thousands of other lawyers in your area.

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.