If you have hesitated putting yourself on Social Media websites, read this guest blog post from Lead Generation Lab.

Okay, so it’s not so secret. But why are so few law firms maximizing on the incredible benefits of social media for marketing their services?

It’s simple. Lawyers and social media just don’t mix well together. But with today’s online social trends, it’s about time law firms should conquer that social media dragon. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn give you that ability to reach out to hundreds of individuals and potential clients at the same time.

Forums, blogs, and video sites also give you the chance to interact personally and give helpful advice that will establish you as a thought leader in your area of expertise.

Here are other reasons why you should jump on over to the social bandwagon:

• Websites that cater to business people and professionals attracts thousands of people daily. Take for example LinkedIn, it has over 200 million registered users with 35% of those visiting the site daily! Even if just 1% of that can see your posts, that’s 2 million people and potential clients!
• It is the fastest way to promote your website. You could have the greatest law firm website in the world that has complete attorney profiles, list of cases and former clients, and full contact details but it’s not getting as much traffic as you want. Why? Because people these days no longer surf the web as much as they used to. They search for something, they avail the service, and that’s it. Being on social media marketing ensures that you can reach out to more people, and at the same time tell these people that there’s someone behind that company name that actually reaches out and interacts with them.
• Everybody’s on social media. Well not really, but consider the latest statistic that says social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the net. Now that’s saying something, isn’t it? (http://youtu.be/QUCfFcchw1w)

There is no doubt at all that any marketing strategy should involve social media. But law firms should be careful, as abuse of social media can have its consequences too. Every post on social sites should focus more on marketing and less on actual cases, current and otherwise, to avoid possible legal problems.

Just remember that when it comes to social media, as with any other marketing platform, too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

About Lead Generation Lab:

The Lead Generation Lab (LGL) team represents the most comprehensive and integrated group of Performance TV professionals under one roof in Australia – Creatives, Copywriters, Strategists, Data Analysts, Media Buyers, TV Editors, CGI animators, Producers and Client Service Managers. 

I recently came across an insightful article that can apply to any of us in this information (overload) age. The original location of the article in on the Longhorn Leads  website on July 16th.

In a world that seems to be saturated with social media use, it can be difficult to recognize the very blurry line between normal usage and dependence. Much like drugs or alcohol, social media can become a real addiction for those that are prone to compulsive behavior. Maintaining a normal level of connectivity with the people on your friends list without becoming so fixated on those sites that you begin to miss out on face-to-face interaction is possible, but it requires a certain level of discipline and the ability to objectively appraise your own level of social media usage.

While a social media addiction isn’t likely to cause the physical destruction that comes with substance abuse or alcoholism, it can very easily become an impediment to living a normal, productive life. There are very real repercussions stemming from behavioral addictions which can dramatically impact the life of not only an addict, but also those around them. These tips can help you spot a budding addiction and cut it off at the pass, as well as address the issue with loved ones that are becoming unhealthily fixated on the Internet and social networking sites, in particular.

Keep Your Network Manageable

When you see the number next to your list of friends growing, it can be a very exciting and fulfilling affirmation of your popularity and desirability. After all, if so many people have sent or favorably responded to friend requests, you must be a sought-after person. Still, a cumbersome friends list means that you’ll eventually be bogged down with updates, and simply staying abreast of the changes documented in your newsfeed can become  a full-time job. The first step to staving off a social media dependency is to keep your friends list at a realistic, manageable level. You can’t possibly stay on top of the big events and random thoughts of a thousand people while remaining productive and active in real life. Don’t approve every friend request you get, and don’t send requests out to people that you don’t have an actual, real-life connection to. This will help ensure you’re not spending valuable time congratulating the engagement of a relative stranger or liking the updates of a celebrity you’ll never meet.

Learn How Filtering Lists Work, and Use Them

If you use your social media account as a professional networking tool, you’ll have to add people that you don’t have a personal relationship with in order to expand your reach. There are filtering options built in to all the major social networking sites that will allow you to separate your contacts into more manageable lists. In addition to saving you time and limiting the amount of energy you pour into a social networking site, these lists can also help you ensure that the content you share is visible only to relevant contacts. Your business acquaintances won’t be looking at your family vacation photos, and  your parents won’t be reading your work interactions.

Pare Your Networking Site List Down

There are a plethora of social networking sites on the Internet, all with what seems to be a specific purpose. You can easily spend hours between four or five sites with which you have an account, feeding the beginnings of a social media addiction. Instead of maintaining profiles all over the web, try to limit the number of sites you use. When you can check all of your updates and interact in a reasonable amount of time, you won’t be roped in to spending hours on separate sites. It’s also easy to lose track of just how much time you’re spending on social media collectively when the usage is broken up between several sites. If you spend two hours a day using four separate sites, you’re effectively putting in a full day’s work, just browsing your social networks! You may not notice hours spent on several sites like you would if you spent six straight hours on Facebook alone.

Use Blocking Apps and Timers

If you run an Internet browser that allows apps, plugins and extensions, peruse the Productivity section for functions that will periodically block “time wasting” websites. When you’re forced to disable a plugin before logging on to your Twitter account, you’re more likely to think twice about how much time you’re investing in your online social life that could be spent on a real, in-the-flesh interaction or two.

Be Realistic and Objective

It’s never easy to be honest with yourself about destructive habits, especially those that have become compulsive. Still, it pays to be realistic about the level of dependency you have on social media and networking sites, especially if your friends and loved ones have commented on your excessive usage. While it can be difficult to notice a gradually growing dependence, it’s wise to know the signs of behavioral addiction and to be able to recognize them, both in yourself and in those around you.

Today's post is a press release that reveals which social media outlets are the most popular, therefore most important to utilize.

LinkedIn, blogs by fellow lawyers and Wikipedia are among the tools most frequently used by in-house counsel in their professional lives, according to a new survey released today by communications firm Greentarget, consulting firm Zeughauser Group and InsideCounsel magazine.

In-house attorneys use social media more than ever, for everything from building professional networks to consuming substantive content to conducting business and industry research.

This survey, referenced with the hashtag #ICSurvey on Twitter and represented visually by an infographic, suggests that many legal marketers are not yet making full use of the channels and platforms that can effectively reach the primary buyers of legal services. But it also affirms the wisdom of law-firm marketers who take an integrated, content-centric approach to incorporating digital platforms into their communications strategies, treating them as an extension of their thought leadership efforts.

The In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey, conducted for the first time in 2010, measures the changing perceptions, attitudes and social media usage behaviors of in-house lawyers and their impact on business development efforts. Earlier iterations of the survey are now hosted athttp://insidecounselsurvey.com. 

“The survey results suggest, in no uncertain terms, that the convergence of digital and traditional media is fueling the continued use of social media among the in-house bar,” says John Corey, president and founding partner of Greentarget. “Our 2013 survey makes it crystal clear — as evidenced by the sustained prominence of LinkedIn and attorney-authored blogs, the growth in mobile consumption of news and a continuation of the ‘invisible user’ trend — that in-house lawyers are using social media as part of their daily routines.”

The Highlights:

• New media use is now mainstream. The percentage of respondents who say they do not use new media has plummeted from 43 percent in 2010 to just 27 percent today.
• LinkedIn is still the “serious” social network. Sixty-seven percent of in-house counsel used LinkedIn for professional reasons during the past week, and 40 percent used it during the past 24 hours. It remains the most frequently used platform for professional reasons.
• Attorney-authored blogs are popular and trusted. Respondents say they read blogs by attorneys as often as they read blogs by professional journalists, and more than half (53 percent) say well-executed blogs influence hiring decisions.
• The “invisible users” trend is accelerating. Although social networks are designed to promote online engagement, most respondents (74 percent) are using social media in a listen-only mode versus commenting on posts and participating in discussions—up from 68 percent who identified themselves as invisible users in 2012.
• Use of mobile is prevalent. Fifty-three percent of survey respondents read business news on their smartphones daily, while 39 and 23 percent, respectively, use tablets and mobile apps for news every day.
• Wikipedia is emerging for business-oriented research. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they use Wikipedia to conduct company and industry research, up from 51 percent in 2012. This is one of the more significant jumps in the year-over-year data.
• Online video is largely unexploited. Many respondents report that they are watching online video from law firms, but they are doing so infrequently.
• Peer-driven rankings lack influence. Despite the energy and resources that law firms continue to invest in peer-driven rankings, they have minimal impact on the opinions of outside lawyers or hiring decisions, the survey data suggests.

To download a summary of the research report, click here. For more information, contact John Corey at jcorey@greentarget.com or 312-252-4100.

At LegalTechNY, Steve Mann, chief marketing officer of the Research & Litigation Solutions business at LexisNexis, posed this question: If we have passed the tipping point for firms to use social media, why are so many firms reluctant to dive in?

Recently, Jay Butchko, Director of Retention and Acquisition Web Visibility Solutions,  co-hosted a webinar titled "Ethics Essentials for Successful Online Legal Marketing." 

Find out what's legal and what's not with real-life examples of online law firm marketing that violate ethics rules, and how to avoid repeating them.

There is no cost to download this webinar, focused on strategies to adhere to Rules of Professional Conduct. Learn to use these essential best practices — and apply them to your own marketing strategy.

Click here to access the recording.

Phillip Livingston, CEO of Marketing and Business Solutions at LexisNexis, posted about Facebook's new "Graph Search" feature that they will begin to allow people to test.

What Graph Search will mean for lawyers looking to leverage social media remains to be seen. According to Whitson Gordon, editor in chief at lifehacker.com: "This is an awesome new feature for Facebook, not an awesome new feature for the internet. For anything not related to Facebook or your Facebook friends, you'll still be better off going to Google, or Yelp, or Amazon...." Others are predicting Graph Search will prove useful to people seeking lawyer referrals, lawyers looking for job opportunities, journalists needing legal SMEs, and more. We'll be watching the Graph Search launch with keen interest!

So what is it?

"It's going to cause people to do all kinds of searches they have never done before because you couldn't do these searches before," says Danny Sullivan, founding editor of SearchEngineLand.com in a story by the Los Angeles Times. In short, it adds another layer of possibilities for what you'll be able to search for and find on the site. As opposed to searching the Web, Graph Search takes place within Facebook. If it proves popular, it could mean users begin to spend even more time on the site.

According to Facebook, Graph Search will enable you to search using simple, specific phrases like "photos my friends took in New York City" or "restaurants my friends like in London." You can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them. Each person sees unique results. If there isn't a match, it will show results from Bing.

"Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: 'hip hop') and provide the best possible results that match those keywords," Facebook further explains in a press release. "With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: 'my friends in New York who like Jay-Z') to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that's been shared on Facebook."

Graph Search is available now in a very limited beta. It is expected to launch publicly within the next few months. Stay tuned!

Read original post here.

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.

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.

Here's a great tip about Using Google+ that I picked up from Mike Elgan.

Instead of saying, "I'm going to write a blog post now," or "I'm going to send an e-mail" or "I think I'll tweet something" you simply say what you have to say, then decide who you're going to say it to.

• If you address it to "Public," it's a blog post.
• If you address it to "Your Circles" it's a tweet.
• If you address it to your "My Customers" Circle it's a business newsletter.
• If you address it to a single person, it can be a letter to your mother.

I'd say this is pretty revolutionary.

There are lots of great articles online now about Google+. Here are my favorites:

5 Ways Journalists Are Using Google+ - from Mashable

Google+: The Complete Guide - from Mashable

5 Possible Reasons U.S. Users Are Ditching Facebook

- from PC World

Why Google+ Business Profiles Will Trump Facebook Pages - from CFO World

35 Personalities To Add To Your Circles -- HuffPost Tech

If you see the headline “Social Media King: Facebook lost its Social Media crown” or “Data: StumbleUpon Beats Facebook As Top Social Referrer” – they are WRONG!  The news writers referred to data from StatCounter - http://bit.ly/flFAPk -- but set they the date parameters incorrectly.

The top social media sites are:

1. Facebook 63%
2. Stumbleupon 18%
3. YouTube 8%
4. Twitter 5.6%

According to StatCounter, its data is based on the analysis of four billion page loads per month among StatCounter's two million members.