Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal editor, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, marketing consultant, legal consultant, business development

Jay Butchko, Director of Retention and Aquisition Web Visibility Solutions for LexisNexis, offers some New Year's resolution ideas for the law marketer.  Below is one such idea.

Stale content and broken links will frustrate your visitors and negatively impact their perceptions of your ability to practice law.

Kick off 2013 the right way by scouring your website, refreshing content and updating bios.

Consider adding different types of content, especially video. Does your content accurately reflect the latest guidance in the area of law you practice? A polished, professional website with fresh content will be rewarded by search engines and site visitors alike.

Areas of Focus While Refreshing Your Website

As you update your website, remember the content needs to be engaging and deliver the right information to (1) increase your online visibility to attract quality traffic and (2) help turn casual visitors into profitable prospective clients who request consultations.

How can you do that?

• Provide engaging, unique content (your take on your practice-specific topics not found anywhere else on the Web) to connect with visitors and drive them to contact you.
• Prominently display contact information (phone number and quick contact email form on every page of your site), with an offer of a free consultation.
• Make it easy for visitors to grasp key details without having to read every word. Use headlines/headers to break up the content sections on your site, especially on your homepage. Cleary communicate the area of law you practice.
• Make content informative and keyword-rich (use terms consumers use when searching for info on the areas of law you practice).
• Demonstrate experience and provide past results, testimonials and video.

In the coming weeks, follow me and Amy Kaplan, Director of Product Management for Advertising & Profile Services at LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell®, as we provide online marketing strategies and tactics that can help generate results for your law firm in the New Year. If you'd like to jump ahead, feel free to download our recent paper. Or if you prefer, download the free recording of the companion webinar Amy and I recently co-hosted.

Read article at original posting site here.

I will admit, I was intrigued by the title of Craig McGuire's most recent posting: "What Do Beer and Chocolate Have to Do with Law Firm Marketing?"  Read his article below to find out the connection.

How do consumers find law firms online?

Understanding consumer behavior can give you an advantage when planning your law firm's online marketing.

For instance, one in three U.S. consumers responding to a recent survey reported that they would rather give up television than be deprived of their smartphones.¹

Moreover, 43 percent of surveyed consumers said that they would be willing to give up beer for a month if it meant they could keep accessing the Internet on their smartphones. And, 36 percent of survey participants stated that they'd be willing to give up chocolate.¹ Here are some more findings from the survey:

• 62 percent have used their smartphones every day in the past seven days
• 80 percent do not leave home without their device
• 66 percent access the Internet from their smartphone every day

Why a Mobile Strategy is Essential for Law Firm Marketing

By 2015, for the first time ever, more U.S. consumers will be accessing the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs.²

Smartphones are rapidly becoming an indispensable part our lives. But what does this mean for your law firm's marketing?

Have you ever visited a website on your smartphone that WAS NOT optimized for mobile viewing, where it was nearly impossible to read and navigate, let alone find contact information? Then you would know how unlikely mobile users are to actually turn into leads after such an experience.    

To remain competitive and generate a healthy stream of leads, you need to ensure your law firm's website and profiles are easily found with a mobile optimized website, to be accessed and utilized around the clock by mobile device users.

And whatever marketing channels you leverage for 2013, make sure there is a mobile component, or you will be neglecting a key segment of your target audience.

Is your law firm positioned to tap into this wave of mobile activity? Find out by requesting a free Law Firm Website Evaluation and Consultation: Contact a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist.

¹ "Our Mobile Planet: United States," Google/Ipsos OTX MediaCT, May 2012

² "International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide New Media Market Model," IDC, Oct. 2012 

Craig McGuire is Product Marketing Manager, LexisNexis^® Web Visibility Solutions (Websites/SEO/Social Media), solutions that enable solo practitioners and lawyers at small law firms to establish a successful, comprehensive, and manageable web and social media presence.

Donald Rohan, a LexisNexis Territory Account Manager, posts an insightful piece geared toward personal injury attorneys. 

Ask 10 nonlawyers about the legal profession, and nine will probably refer to mid-morning commercials for personal injury (PI) firms. Marketing is paramount for firms that work on contingency and seek to attract clients who might lack personal referrals for this type of legal work. Dramatic images and content are effective with all sorts of marketing, and PI firms are known for pushing the envelope with striking messages.

However, it's easy to go too far and present an image that many would-be clients find unprofessional and unappealing. So, many firms seek a subtler approach that attracts attention without turning off prospects or damaging their prestige. Here are a few tips for PI attorneys and firms that want to position themselves as client chasers, not ambulance chasers:

• Use imagery that involves the viewer personally.

If you have a brutal accident or injury picture next to a standard attorney portrait, the viewer's eyes will automatically leap to the dramatic image (unless the person in the portrait resembles the viewer or someone close to him or her, such as a family member). If you don't want to use stock photos of vicious dogs or mangled cars, find an image that people can connect with and imagine themselves as the victims in that type of situation — a situation  that your firm can help make right.

Read the remainder of Donald's post here.

This free WordPress plugin was designed for bloggers who want to add legal news content to their website(s). Your blog's own content will be combined with fresh legal news from LexisNexis' legal news website, Lawyers.com.  900+ have already downloaded this free plugin.  You can too by clicking here.

Features:

• Combine Your Content With Fresh Headlines: This WordPress plugin will display a mix of fresh legal news headlines that your predetermine intermixed with your blog's own content.

• No 3rd Party Branding: This plugin is "White Label". The design is determined by your WordPress theme and no other logos or branding will be displayed or marketed to the end user.

• Customized Legal News: You customize what types of legal news (bankruptcy, family law, etc.) is displayed to your readers in the easy to use admin screen.

• Adjustable Content Display: Ability to add a character limited summary option to display excerpts from stories directly on your blog.

• Continuous RSS Scrolling: Headlines will vertically scroll at a speed you determine, allowing a large amount of content to be displayed in a small box.

• Easy Installation: No coding knowledge required to configure this plugin. Just activate the plugin and drag and drop the widget to sidebar and check the front end.

• Scalable Performance: Based on the latest WordPress feed fetching technology for enhanced performance and scalability

• Multiple Flavors of RSS Supported: Supports all major types of RSS and Atom feeds including: RSS 0.91 (Netscape), RSS 0.91 (Userland), RSS 0.90, RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3, Atom 1.0

• Easy Configuration: Easy to use configuration settings screen

• Multiple sources of legal news categories: bloggers can select specific types of headlines to be displayed in widget (Divorce, current events, Family Law, etc.) in admin interface

• Configurable name for headline box: Call this widget box whatever you want (ie. Top Legal News, Name-Of-Your-Blog News, etc.)