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.

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.

Everything About Social Media Marketing Plan

Marketing with social media can have a huge impact on your law firm website's effectiveness—which is probably why 90.9 percent of small firms already use social media for marketing purposes.  Making social media marketing plans can be intimidating if you don't have much experience with marketing on the internet, but an effective social media marketing plan can be critical to getting the clients you need.  In this guide, you'll learn great tips for marketing with social media so that you can move forward with your law firm's long term marketing plans.

Initiating a Social Media Marketing Plan

Maybe you already have a personal Facebook or LinkedIn account, but you don't know how to leverage those profiles for better marketing results.  Maybe you're trying to integrate your website with social media platforms or blogs.  Whatever your level of familiarity with social media, the first step of creating social media marketing plans is the same as creating any marketing plan: familiarizing yourself with your clients and their needs.

The next step is familiarizing yourself with various social media platforms.  You may want to do competitor research to figure out how they're marketing with social media, but be careful: duplicating a competitor's strategy just makes you look the same.  You'll want to develop social media marketing plans that set you apart from your competition, so look with a critical eye: what could they be doing better?  How could you make your firm seem not just different, but better than its closest competitors?

Developing Your Social Media Marketing Plan

It's important to go slow when you start marketing with social media.  Implementing social media marketing plans too quickly, creating a blitz of new content, can seem overwhelming to potential clients rather than inviting.  Make both short and long-term goals so that your plan can be implemented over time.

Unlike traditional marketing plans, a good social media marketing plan will include many opportunities for client interaction and feedback.  Successful marketing with social media requires, above all else, having the flexibility to respond positively to the feedback you receive.  Good social media marketing plans include consistent monitoring and analysis of feedback, so you should make sure that your social media marketing plan assigns these responsibilities to someone in your firm.

If your firm is busy and you think you don't have enough time for successful marketing with social media, you may want to consult with a social media marketing service.  Several of these services now cater specifically to law firms, and can help you to develop a winning social media marketing plan that can take your firm's web presence to the next level.

Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing Plans

In the social media world, authenticity rules.  Clients can be easily turned off by a web presence that seems phony.  If your social media marketing plan includes a lot of content that looks very much like paid advertising, you may have the wrong idea.  The best social media marketing plans involve creating useful content—in fact, your goal should be to create content so useful that it's not even seen by your clients as marketing with social media, but as an interesting article or post worth sharing with their friends.

You should also make sure your social media marketing plans avoid trying to exercise too much control over the conversations that start on your social media pages.  While it is of course necessary to monitor and moderate (for example, you wouldn't want an abusive comment or one that broke confidentiality rules to stand), behaving like an internet dictator will hurt your reputation for marketing with social media.

It's important to remember that social media makes you part of a community, and you need to work within the established rules (both written and unwritten) of that community for your social media marketing plans to be successful.  This means that your social media marketing plan should include a great deal of listening, not just talking.  By listening to the other conversations that are going on in your chosen social media platforms, you'll be able to avoid sounding tone-deaf when you create your marketing copy.

Marketing With Social Media: Experimentation and Analytics

Creating an authentic social media presence takes a great social media marketing plan, but once you have that presence, how can you be sure you're getting a return on your investment?  You should always include web analytics in your social media marketing plans, so that you can fully understand how your marketing with social media affects the traffic to your website.

Today, a multitude of web analytics tools are available for anyone who wants to make sure that their social media marketing plan is working.  Make sure to identify the key performance indicators that you want to improve before starting to crunch the numbers on marketing with social media.  

If your social media marketing plans seem to be falling short, try to identify where you've reached the greatest number of clients and analyze why that part of the social media marketing plan has been successful.  As long as you keep experimenting with marketing with social media and don't come off as fake or overly “salesy,” you'll usually strike upon a strategy that works for your firm's unique brand voice.

Marketing With Social Media: Looking Ahead

The world of social media is in a state of constant reinvention.  That's why it's important to diversify your social media presence, rather than focusing your social media marketing plan on a single social media platform.  The best social media marketing plans don't rely on just one or two websites, but instead aim to create a comprehensive web presence for your law firm.

Continuing to investigate new avenues for social media participation can ensure that your law firm doesn't get left behind when clients online move to the next big thing.  You can't execute social media marketing plans while standing still—the web is moving faster than ever, and if you want the best web presence, you need to be willing to move with it.

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.

Today's law firms have to think about reputation in more than one way.  Offline reputation, like how you're viewed in your community, is still important.  More and more, so is managing your online reputation.  If you want to manage your online reputation but aren't sure how, you could use a few pointers.  Here are 8 tips to get you on the right track today and help you avoid some of the mistakes that can wreck a firm's reputation for good.

Tip #1: Conduct Yourself Appropriately—Online And Off

It may seem obvious, but the best way to start managing your online reputation is to make sure you're conducting yourself in a way that makes a good reputation deserved.  If you're skating by with barely ethical practices and aren't particularly concerned with whether you're getting repeat business, you're setting yourself up for a major reputation failure.

On the other hand, if your firm is full of attorneys who are already working hard to maintain a highly visible and positive reputation in their communities, you'll have a much easier time managing your online reputation.  Your offline reputation definitely casts a light or a shadow on your online reputation, so make sure yours looks bright.

Tip #2: Monitor Your Online Reputation Consistently

If you're not checking to see what people are saying about you, you won't have much success managing your reputation online.  You can't know what to say in response unless you're taking a close look at what people are saying and where negative and positive thoughts are coming from.

You should consider having an online reputation firm help you with managing your reputation online if you're not able to devote time and energy to it.  This has become such an important part of how people view your law firm that it no longer makes good business sense to keep out of online reputation management.

Tip #3: Be Honest With Yourself And Others

You know that your law firm isn't perfect.  Part of managing your online reputation will be understanding what your law firm's true strengths and weaknesses are, and being able to portray the firm in a favorable light given both.  Don't try to be something that you're not, and if there's a problem with the culture at your law firm, don't think that managing your online reputation means you can just deny those issues.  You'll be much more successful at managing your online reputation when you're willing to change your company's habits in response to feedback.

Tip #4: Work to Remove False Reviews

Even if you've done a good job managing your online reputation, it's always possible that an unethical competitor will try to smear your hard-won rep.  That's when you need to take decisive action quickly.  If you see a negative review about your law firm that doesn't seem to be grounded in reality, you should notify the website where the review was posted.

Most of these websites have procedures for identifying and removing reviews that do not meet content standards or are created by competitors to slander a business.  However, you often have to do the work of notifying them of these reviews, so you may want to check these websites as much as once a day to be diligent about managing your online reputation.

Tip #5: Solicit Positive Reviews From Satisfied Clients

In addition to abolishing the false and bad reviews, you should also solicit their opposite—true excellent reviews from the people you know you've made happiest at your firm.  These clients are often glad to talk about their experiences with your firm if you ask them to review your firm on a reviews website.

Positive reviews tend to be worth more to people if they include at least some small amount of criticism—reviews that are too positive tend to be met with more skepticism.  Keep checking review sites to see if this method of managing your online reputation is generating new reviews consistently.

Tip #6: Don't Make a Bad Situation Worse

Unfortunately, a lot of law firms get this one wrong.  If you're caught up in some sort of mistake, faux pas, or just a moment you'd rather forget, don't defend your actions.  You'll have much better luck managing your online reputation if you apologize for mistakes right away instead of waiting for days—days that can lead to pressure heating up and a tempest in a teapot.  Delete things that offend people and move on.

Tip #7: The Internet Has a Short Memory

Remember that no matter how bad a week you're having at managing your online reputation, this, too, shall pass.  As long as you do some damage control, even if your law firm gets a negative mention on a major blog like Above the Law, you can salvage your reputation and you'll see the internet denizens move on quickly to a new target.  The worst thing you can do is continue to rise to the bait. Managing your online reputation sometimes means knowing when keeping your mouth shut is the only way to let things move on.

Tip #8: Never Make the Same Mistake Twice

This is one of the biggest keys to managing your online reputation.  If you make a particular mistake once, most people won't hold it against you for long.  However, if you make the same kind of mistake twice, it starts to look much worse for your company.  You'll have a very hard time managing your online reputation, for example, if you have a tendency to write rude or sarcastic replies to people who criticize you.

Keep in mind that managing your online reputation is an ongoing process, not something you do all at once.  Mistakes and setbacks are bound to occur, but as long as you learn from each one, you'll get better with each successive effort.

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.