Setting clear marketing goals, and identifying what needs to happen in order for a campaign to be successful, will help to insure a successful investment in social media campaigns. Whether you are looking for a law firm social media consultant for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs or other media outlets, it will pay to acquaint yourself with the basics.

Here are a few ways you can determine if your law firm’s social media campaign is working:

• Traffic to your website from social media sources increases, as measured by Google Analytics
• Clients start to mention that they enjoy reading your social media posts
• Qualified prospects expand as a result of your social media campaigns
• Journalists start to contact you after reading a blog post
• You see a steady increase in the number of followers, friends, and retweets

Now that you have some metrics, you can start to determine what is the right budget level for your law firm’s social media campaign.

An informal industry survey published by social media guru Mack Collier, founder of the famous Sunday night #blogchat on Twitter, reports the following average prices for indicated social media campaigns.

Blog Campaigns

Custom design and template creation: $1,000-$3,000
Writing/Editing Content for the blog plus training: $1,000-$3,000/month for 1-2 posts per week
Ghostwriting blog posts: $75-$200 each

Twitter

Account Setup: $500-$1,000
Ongoing Account Management and Training: $500-$1,500 a month

Facebook

Initial Page Setup: $500-$1,500
Monthly Content Management and Curation: $1,000-$2,000 a month

Social Media Strategy

Setup: $1,000-$2,000
Ongoing Reports and Advisement: $1,000-$2,000

Note that the cost of a social media marketing campaign will vary with the size of a law firm (number of attorneys and practice areas, for example), the number of keywords involved, competition within a geographic market, and other factors.

Read the full story.

Every 60 seconds on the Internet, the following Internet marketing activities take place:

* 100 new LinkedIn accounts are added
* 1,500 new blog posts are published
* 70+ domain names are registered
* 600 videos are posted to YouTube
* 79,364 wall posts are added to Facebook

That’s all in one minute! Think of how this translates to the 24 hours in a day. It’s difficult to comprehend how much new material is published on the Internet on a daily basis.

Here are the competitive advantages law firms and lawyers can gain by being part of this social media activity in 2012:

* Stay “top of mind” with substantive materials on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
* Attract new prospects looking for your services
* Facilitate online referrals with the sharing features of social media
* Reinforce client relationships with your knowledge and use of technology
* Increase SEO visibility with high Google page rank and search engine placement
* Leverage Internet marketing results by blending your campaigns

Here is a link to the full article. Let’s talk about how these concepts can apply to the 2012 legal marketing campaigns for your law firm.

Here are a few tips you can use to maximize the benefits of a networking event.

• Approach people who are either alone or in groups of 3 or more. Breaking into the conversation of a twosome can be awkward.
• Help people to remember your name, and be sure to keep your name badge visible so that others can see and remember yours.
• Write notes on the back of business cards to remind yourself about the people you meet.
• Follow up by connecting through LinkedIn. This is so much better than a “nice to meet you” email, plus you can stay in touch electronically. You also get the benefit of a photo and profile to refresh your memory.

Set a goal for yourself of meeting 5 or 10 new people at each networking event you attend. It takes a little effort, but can be well worth it in terms of building your contact list.

Google issued new guidance on the reconsideration process recently that you may want to discuss with your webmaster. If you feel that your law firm website is in compliance with all of Google’s guidelines (i.e., no hidden text, no links to spammy sites, and high quality content) but still not getting the search engine visibility you expect, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google. Of course you will need to fix any known issues or violations before submitting your request.

In the past Google would respond by simply saying they processed your request. Most webmasters were left scratching their heads over what this meant. Now Google offers more specific feedback. You will be notified if Google took a manual action to improve your site’s position, if the site is OK now, if the site is still in a violation state, of if no action was taken. The latter generally means that you will see improved performance as the site is crawled in the future.

Don’t expect personalized feedback, but this more detailed albeit automatic feedback process is intended to be more responsive to and informational for the webmaster community.

Here are reconsideration tips from Google, including a reconsideration video from Google Webmaster Tools.

Remember, fresh content is one of the best ways to get SEO attention from Google.

Law firms looking to get higher placement on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) in competitive practice areas like personal injury law, family law, and immigration will want to take a look at the “Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors” published by Search Engine Land, Column Five and Third Door Media.

Key factors in search engine optimization are broken into 3 primary categories:

1. On Page SEO Factors

Content: Quality, keyword usage, recency
HTML: Titles, descriptions, headers
Architecture: crawl access, speed, meaningful URLs

2. Off Page SEO Factors

Links: Quality, text, numbers
Social: Reputation and # of shares
Trust: Authority and history
Personal: Country, location, history

3. Violations and Blocking

Includes weak content, hidden text, paid links, and getting blocked by users from search results

Time for a Tune Up

Any time is a good time to audit your SEO factors. It is particularly important when you are building a new site or want to boost the performance of an existing website.

The chart also indicates the relative importance of each SEO factor. Quality content, targeted keywords used in the body of a page, and properly structured HTML tags and headlines are the most important SEO factors.

Of course, attorneys need to practice law and not necessarily become an expert on Google. A well informed webmaster and legal marketing consultant can help you build a law firm website with search engine optimization in mind.

SEO requires active management for best results. If you rely on a constant flow of traffic to your website to generate transactional clients, it’s worth investing some time and money in the effort.

Remember, never stop marketing!

Here is one slide from the deck that contrasts a frequent social media marketing strategy of getting new clients versus the rockstar’s strategy of building passionate brand advocates.

While law firms and other professional service providers don’t need brand advocates like Starbucks, Taco Bell or Target, the slide raises an interesting point.

The truth is that most law firms are constantly on the lookout for new clients. This is particularly true of consumer-oriented transactional law firms like personal injury attorneys, family lawyers, or immigration firms.

However, it is important not to lose track of the clients who love you. These are the clients who had a favorable outcome and now are enjoying improved personal circumstances as a result of your work.

Here’s the irony. The fact that they are very satisfied means they are probably past clients. Your work for them is done. It’s so easy to fall out of touch. When this happens, all the goodwill a law firm has built up dissipates quickly.

What is the answer? You need to keep marketing to past clients. These people are your best source for new business through high value referrals to friends, family members, and co-workers. Plus we all know that a high quality lead from a happy former client has a much better chance of converting to a new client than does someone who lands on your site while randomly searching the Internet.

Newsletters (print and/or electronic), events, holiday cards and other outreach efforts all work well to stay in touch. Connecting with past clients on Facebook, especially in the consumer arena like with personal injury firms, is a great way to keep those bonds strong.

Want to learn more? The author is available to talk about targeted social media marketing campaigns for your law firm.

New features of Google+ will include:

• Group video conferences for mobile phones
• The ability to share what is on a user’s computer screen
• Word processing capabilities with Google docs
• Games
• Group chat
• Photos that upload themselves

Developers can now to create personalized software applications for Google+ using profile data that participants have shared publicly about themselves.

Learn more about Google+ here.

Publishing a blog is not to be taken lightly, as I always tell the attorneys and experts who use my legal marketing services.

The technology-part of starting a blog is as easy as 1-2-3. It’s writing the blog that is the challenge. If you can come up with a plan to create about 20 one-page blog posts, however, you can turn your posts into a short self-published book.

Books are viewed as having value, and provide the author with added credence and expertise. Few people will throw away a book, which makes it a great legal marketing tool.

Online Blog to Book Services

Here are some blog to book publishing services that I came across online:

Blurb.com

BlogToPrint.com, a service of SharedBook based in New York

You generally can print short runs, choose your book size, and select between color and black and white. Pricing is also quite reasonable for custom printing.

Select a Topic for your Blog Book

Whether you want to write about personal injury law, family law, or intellectual property, developing your list of topics is really not that difficult.

Let’s use personal injury as an example. Here are some ideas for the topics you can write about for your personal injury blog book:

Car Accidents
- What to do if you are in a car accident
- Safety tips for highway driving
- How to keeps kids safe in the car
- Why texting and driving does not mix
- When to review your car insurance coverage
- Emergency supplies to keep in your trunk

Keeping Your Family Safe
- How to monitor product recalls
- Facts about dog bites
- Staying informed of harmful food products
- Patient rights in medical malpractice

That’s 10 pages of educational blog posts right there! You can see how easy it would be to add another 10 pages and make a short book or even an informative, in-depth law firm brochure.

Book Print-on-Demand Services

Print-on-demand publishers help you prepare a professionally typeset PDF for the book’s content, and can assist with cover design and printing. A few firms include:

Self Publishing, Inc.
This is the firm I used for my legal marketing book, Courting Your Clients, and I would recommend them.

FastPencil
Lulu.com

Let’s Talk About Your Publishing Efforts!

As an author myself, I can help you pick the publishing format that works best for your legal marketing efforts. Let’s connect on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter @RainmakingLady.

Not long ago I had two outstanding proposals for law firm marketing services. Both seemed to be quite solid, and in one case the attorney had actually agreed verbally to all the terms including the price. Then both proposals got stuck in the “no response” mode. (You probably know the feeling!)

Follow up emails and phone calls did nothing to move the business development process forward. Then I decided to write each prospect a personal letter. The text of the letter is below, in the event that you might want to use it yourself.

The letter did the trick on one of the two proposals. I got a phone call within a couple of days from one prospect, followed by a meeting date several weeks hence. On the day of the meeting, the agreement was signed and we started planning our first marketing campaigns.

Here is the letter below. Let me know if it works for you too, or if you have other techniques to close the sale that you are willing to share.

Dear [Client Name],

It appears that our initial proposal for [fill in the blank] services may have missed the mark. If this is the case, let’s talk about an alternate arrangement that works best for [Firm name]. There are many ways to structure a [fill in the blank] program.

If you’ve selected another firm, we certainly respect your freedom of choice and wish you much success.

Many times, however, we find that the decision on a [fill in the blank] program can get stalled due to daily deadlines and/or varying opinions among the partners.

We welcome a chance to stay in the conversation. Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Happy selling! Here’s to your success in new business development.

Writer’s block is a frequent starting point. I am regularly asked by attorneys what they should write about in their blog. Here are two easy ways to start writing.

First, pick topics that are in the news to avoid rehashing old material. The law is perfect for this, since new laws and court cases provide a steady stream of topic ideas. On July 1, 2011 alone, 160 new laws took effect in Florida. From dogs tied up in backyards to pill mills and landline telephone deregulation, your clients need to know what the new laws are and how the laws affect their life or business.

Second, you can write about the legal topics that create a steady stream of transactional business for your law firm. Examples include, “how to create a parenting plan,” “what to do if you are in a car accident,” or “how to protect your business from trade secret theft.”

The recommended frequency of social media publication is a related question asked by lawyers who want to increase the SEO visibility of their Internet marketing campaigns. Of course, more is better. Daily or weekly social media updates are not always possible, however, for busy attorneys struggling to meet court and client deadlines.

If you want to start a social media campaign, but don’t have the time to attend to it every day, here are some social media strategies that will leverage one high quality piece that you prepare once a month or even quarterly.

You can make your social media marketing multi-task by writing one monthly or quarterly piece and publishing it, with slight variations, over the following 10 different marketing channels.

1. Publish as a blog post
2. Distribute as a client newsletter
3. Publish as an article
4. Get a speaking engagement
5. Produce as a Q&A sheet
6. Issue as a news release
7. Conduct a webinar
8. Create a video for YouTube
9. Start a LinkedIn Discussion
10. Post to Facebook and Twitter

In addition to this blog post, for example, variations on this article will be published in The Broward County Bar Barrister, used as a speech for the Florida Lawyers Network, posted as a LinkedIn discussion, recorded for a YouTube video, posted to Twitter, and distributed as an e-newsletter.

Give some thought to how you can create a “1:many” leverage factor between the number of articles you write and the many ways you can distribute your information.