Lawyers.com Editor in Chief : Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, sales training, practice development, training, marketing consultant, legal consultant, individual lawyer coaching, business development, client team, practice development, business development, law firm coach

In an article titled, "Mark it on Your Calendar: January Blog Topic Ideas for Attorneys", LexisNexis Senior Director of Product Management for Web Visibility Solutions, Samantha Miller, gives ideas on blogging for attorneys.

Insightful, timely blogging that uses current events as a hook is an effective way attorneys can market themselves.

For January, in the wake of the tragic Newtown, Conn. school shooting, President Barack Obama has appointed a government task force — spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden — and charged it to propose solutions to gun violence. The task force is expected to make recommendations sometime in January and the president has said he'll take quick action on their suggestions.

As part of your law firm marketing efforts, engage clients by discussing how existing and proposed gun legislation may affect them. Here are some topic points for your blogging:

• Retail clients that sell guns, ammunition and other weapons must have detailed policies and procedures for handling these sales. Will processes need to be changed if new legislation is passed? Do store employees need new training? Some retail stores may have some employees — such as managers or security guards — who are armed in the event of a robbery. How will changing gun laws affect those individuals?
• Business clients as well as government agencies need to have emergency response plans in place in the event of a workplace shooting or other violence that leaves employees and guests injured or killed. Counsel your clients on how to create and implement these plans.
• Winter and spring are active hunting seasons. Remind hunters of the process for obtaining a hunting license and gun permit, as well as the local laws related to hunting various types of game.
• All gun owners should be well educated on the guidelines for safe gun handling and storage. Homeowners will also want to ensure that their property insurance company knows they have guns in the home. Make sure firearms owners know that they could be personally responsible if someone is injured or killed by their unsecured guns.
• Firearms owners and gun opponents may want to contact their elected officials and provide feedback on proposed legislation. Guide clients through the process of identifying their city, state and federal representatives. Also offer tips to help people express their opinions in a persuasive manner.
• What do gun owners in your area need to know if they want to sell or otherwise dispose of a firearm? The rules related to private sales vary depending on whether the buyer and seller live in the same state or different states.
• People convicted of certain types of crimes cannot legally own, possess, transport, ship or receive firearms. Criminal defense attorneys should talk to those clients about the ramifications of firearms ownership and how a convicted criminal can legally relinquish a gun in his or her possession.

Read more of Samantha Miller's tips here.

To accurately measure social media ROI, you should be using both quantitative and qualitative metrics. Both measurements are important because social media is really about two things: engagement and influence.

Quantitative measurements are those counted in quantity – it’s the “show me the numbers” part of research that can determine how your social media program is performing on the engagement level. There are a number of different quantitative measurements for social media, including:

• Number of visitors
• Number of fans, followers
• Total traffic
• Search engine rank changes

Read more of Stephen Fairley's article on which social media metrics every law firm should be measuring on the Rainmaker Blog.

In the following post, Stephen Fairley, author on The Rainmaker Blog,  describes how using social media can accelerate the referral process.

Social media has become a fundamental shift in the way we communicate and find information -- or rather, the way information finds us.  

When you consider the overwhelming number of people who are now using social media, the question you should be asking is not, are my prospects, clients, and referral sources using social media? The question you should be asking is, which network are they using most often?

A survey last year by the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center found that 56% of attorneys are already using a social network. This means for you skeptics out there, if you are not maintaining a presence on at least one social network you are already behind the curve. Of those networks, LinkedIn is the most popular, followed by Facebook – however, Facebook is still the social site favored by prospects.

For attorneys who are looking to connect with consumers (versus business owners), like criminal defense, personal injury, bankruptcy, estate planning, and family law just to name a few, Facebook should be your primary focus because of the sheer number of people that can be found there (over 950 million registered users and growing).  

Depending on the demographic of your clientele, you may have more success with one social media platform compared to another -- but it is important that you have a presence on them all.  For example: Business oriented attorneys, like business litigation, securities, and intellectual property, should focus more of their efforts on LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn also has the highest number of attorneys who use the network so it's a little more difficult to stand out as compared to Facebook or Twitter.

What many people fail to understand is how people are starting to use social media.  Social networks are more and more being used as personal search engines mainly because Google has become too generic and they often don't trust what they find there.  

This trend is especially true in the under-30 age group. In fact, many social media experts are starting to point to Facebook as the new Google! Tens of thousands of searches are conducted every day on Facebook for resources and reviews of products, services, and service providers.  

The long-time phenomenon of asking your friends and colleagues for a referral has simply gone viral and online. Social networks are quickly multiplying the number of connections a person can ask when seeking a referral to a trusted advisor.  

Read about Stephen on his bio.

Senior Copywriter for the Law Firm Marketing Solutions group at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, Dee Latham enlightens us how commenting affects our social media presence.

I know what you're thinking: How can other folks' comments really help my blog? Comments or feedback mean that people are reading your blog, which is the purpose. When a blog receives comments from regular posters, it becomes more dynamic and it attracts more visitors. The more visitors it receives, the more perceived value. It's a basic way of gaining readers, highlighting your strengths and ultimately driving more leads to your firm.

There are also things to watch out for, however, such as being mindful of hot-button topics and responding to comments. Take this one as an example: How will the new healthcare laws affect your audience? There are numerous pros and cons for either side, which is exactly what is needed to stir up interest, but really it can only do you harm to respond to posts, especially the negative ones. Why? Once you comment, it can be construed as imparting legal advice in an unregulated way. And the question arises as to whether attorney-client relationships are created. Sure, fresh comments are a way to make the search engines fall in love with your blog to keep its URL ranked high on searches. But don't get caught in the ethical trap of engaging in these types of discussions through blog commenting and social media.

Here are some other tips to help keep your readers engaged:

• Ask a question. Leave posts that are open-ended and prompt an answer.
• Refine your "blog dialog." Get to know your own "voice"; consistency of tone is key as your readers get more familiar with your writing.
• Post often. Keep your content fresh; by not updating your blog with new posts, you may be missing out on opportunities to grow a responsive readership and readers will take you less seriously.
• Check your local bar. Are there any disclaimers that need to be included when you post? Your local or state bar can provide tips to help you keep compliant.

And don't forget:  The more you nurture your blog, the better it will be for your firm in the long run.

WordPress offers a free plugin designed for bloggers who want to add legal news content to their websites. You blog's own content will be combined with fresh legal news from LexisNexis' legal news website, Lawyers.com at blogs.lawyers.com.

Download the plugin 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.)

Here is an excerpt from a recent  paper from LexisNexis demonstrating social media’s viability for law firm marketing purposes.

When a consumer faces a crisis—a failing business, an unfaithful spouse, a family member in trouble—that person is more likely than ever to turn to the Internet looking for answers to his or her legal issues.Three out of four consumers who sought an attorney in the past year used online resources, including search engines, websites, YouTube™, Facebook® and other tools at some point in the process, according to a recent survey.

 As I have found, not everyone can write an amazing guest blog post.  Danny Brown of bestbloggingtipsonline.com, shared 5 simple ways to be a great guest blogger on this or any blog.  

If you’re a blogger, you may have been asked to write a guest post by another blogger. Or, you might have offered a guest post yourself to a blogger you admire.

Either way, writing a guest post opens you up to a whole new audience and can increase your own readership into the bargain.

Blog readers that may never have heard of you otherwise now have their eyes on you.

Add to that the credence that comes with someone else thinking enough of you to have you on their blog, and a guest post is a pretty big thing.

So it’s only fair that you follow the five unwritten rules when it comes to guest posting on other blogs.

Make It Great

This should pretty much go without saying, but the amount of guest posts I’ve read where you can see the author has basically just mailed it in is both surprising and disappointing.

If someone has taken the time to give you real estate on their blog and put you in front of their audience, the very least you can do is make sure that the post you provide is top notch. Before you send the post, ask yourself the following questions:

• Would I be happy posting this on my own blog?
• Is this the best this post can possibly be on this topic?
• Am I being relevant to the audience of the blog I’m posting on?

Unless you can answer yes to at least two of these questions (the relevance factor may not come into play if the blog owner wants to mix things up a bit), then your guest post isn’t ready.

Research

What’s your guest post going to be about? Did you make the suggestion of the post, or did the blog owner ask you to guest? Either way, one thing you need to make sure of is that you do your research.

This could be of the blog’s archives, to get a feel for the topics that normally appear there. More than likely it’s going to be about the topic you’re writing about. Names, places, facts, statistics, references – all these and more need to be checked before you submit your post.

Let’s face it, you wouldn’t write a load of bull on your own blog, would you? So why even think about doing it to another blogger? Quote your sources and link to external references and sites and make sure the blogger you’re writing for doesn’t end up looking an ass as he or she tries to cover your mistakes in the comments.

This might seem a harsh view, but think of it as if it was your blog. Get the facts right; get the blog right.

Go here to read the three remaining tips.

Next month, I am moderating a panel discussion at the 2012 Legal Marketing Technology Conference/West

The American Bar Association has reported the results of it's 2012 Legal Technology Survey. According to respondents, blogging is the way to drum up new business.

Blogging is a viable channel for unlocking new business for many small law firms and solo practitioners, according to the American Bar Association's 2012 Legal Technology Survey.

In fact, 50 percent of responding small law firms (2-9 attorneys) and 53.3 percent of surveyed solo practitioners that are blogging reported retaining clients directly or via referral as a result of their legal-topic blogging, based on the recently released survey.

That's not just attracting website visitors or fielding phone calls for free consultations, but landing actual new business.

Moreover, small law seems to be far outpacing certain segments of larger firms. Forty percent of respondents at larger firms (100-499 attorneys) who are blogging reported generating new business from their efforts.

Read the remainder of this article at the source.  Then get blogging!