Archive for February, 2010

TextLinks is a newest link building product from BackLinks.com. TextLinks, just like Backlinks and their other related products, offers textlinks for the cheapest prices to drive your link building campaign and this one seems to be more innovative – at least as a whole package.

This new product was launched only last month and now they are offering a 21 days FREE trial period which is completely risk-free (not charged for the first 21 days). Basically this 21 days free link building campaign may be good enough to boost your page strength and rank before the next Google PR update which is due anytime now. They offer 25 Free for life links with this offer. More over the monthly package comes with a lot of other goodies as well.

How TextLinks works?

Unlike Backlinks, which has both buy and sell links options, TextLinks (referral link) offers only buy links option but they come at the lowest possible prices and biggest packages. Compare it with services such as Text-link-ads and you will see the huge difference.

Once signed up as an advertiser you will get to use 99 text link credits for 99 dollars monthly fee (after the 21 days trial). These link credits can be exchanged for one way links (Homepage links $3, other links $1) during this period.

continue

Yes, you know who you are. Your that lawyer who likes to send out direct mail to all your prospects, telling them how great you are at what you do. You think it is a great way to market your law firm but in reality, people DO NOT WANT TO KNOW HOW GREAT YOU ARE. Your an attorney, and people know that you are a educated professional person, and they want to hear what you are going to do for them rather then what you did for yourself of your own firm.

Direct mailing from lawyers and attorneys is a hit or miss area. You can either successfully reach your prospects in a non advertising manner, or ruin it by promoting youself, rather then what type of service or quality of service you can provide to your prospect. Take it from someone with direct marketing experience, show them you actually want to help them, and it will convert more then any other method of direct mail marketing for your law firm. The proper method is to give and support, rather then brag and advertise. This method almost never works, inless you are in a heavily competitive network with highly skilled law firms with endless marketing dollars to spend. Basically, they buy their clients.

Some direct mail marketing for lawyers tips:

1. Use direct mail as a support source. Show them that they need help and you are their for them, and not their to brag about how good you are. People need to know that you will take care of them.

2.  Use aggressive and professional design tactics. The more professional your design the better, but do not make it seem like it came right off the paper mill. Use some personalized touches to show them that you actually did it yourself. This goes a long way in terms of how they view your loyality.

3. Test and Test some more. Use a couple different designs in your direct mail campaign. People will almost never convert on the first mail piece you mail out. Be Repetitive in your marketing. The more times someone views your mailings the better, and the better the chance they remember you name.

4. Think outside the box. Use something different then what you would prefer. Typically lawyers and attorneys know nothing about design elements or tactics of converting with direct mail.

Those 4 tactics will get you going in the right direction with a good base of knowledge. Again, the most important point of this article is to not send junk advertisement. BE PERSONAL!! Follow the above guidance and you will do well in your direct marketing campaign. This method is a old but great method and way to send a personal message. When looking at a design element, have a graphic designer help you or someone who has knowledge of conversion tactics.

EasyLegalMarketing has experience with direct mail marketing with lawyers and attorneys. Use it to your advantage. Be patient, repetition is key in this area of marketing. Read more Direct Mail Marketing for Lawyers Articles.

A great new legal wiki site (thats short for encyclopedia) has just been launched with the opportunity for its users to create their own information and legal definitions. Not only can you list your law firms website and information about the firm, you can also help the community by leaving your imput about legal definitions and resources for the consumer who will come across the legal wiki.

This is a great way to promote your law firm website, but at the same time connect with your prospective clients with legal information.

Lawfo Legal Wiki promotes interaction between lawyer and consumer. Taken directly from the same idea of Wikipedia, it offers a easy user interface that everyone can use and understand.

Take a look! I think lawyers and attorneys have the chance to explain what some legal terms means in their eyes. Click the link to the right of this post! >>

Easy Legal Marketing shows lawyers and attorneys how easy it is to navigate the marketing world of the web with its helpful articles and interaction with its subscribers. Sign up today to take a big step in the right direction for your law firm marketing.

In the fierce world of online marketing for lawyers and attorneys, the intial impression you leave in a prospective clients mind about your law firm intially comes from your website or web design. Making this a key point in your plans on building a effective online campaign is crucial for not only getting traffic to your site, but to be able to convert those who visit your site into clients.

The key to any marketing effort in the legal industry is having identified goals. This is no truer than when it comes to marketing your law firm through a website. So ask yourself, what are your goals for your website? Here are just a few examples:

Getting your Point Across

Some law firms just want what I describe as “an online business card” or “static site. Their website goal is to have something to show people who want to see something up on the internet about their website. They don’t care or plan whether or not their site will get visitors, leads, or generate new clients. This is the term known as a ego that wants to serve just a single purpose of seeing their name on a website.

Using a Blog To Boost Your Site

Some lawyers recognize that merely having an online static site or frontpage is not enough for them to be profitable. They want to be the next great blog author. They want a following of people to read what they have to say. Perhaps they want to generate advertising revenue. They understand some basics about law firm internet marketing, but aren’t really ready to completely commit to a full-scale online marketing campaign. Typically, they’re less excited about practicing law than they are about writing about it. Read a previous article about the best lawyer blogging tools.

Improving Your Practice Online

That brings us to the main goal of any law firm marketing on the internet, making money from prospects from the internet. Many law firms are learning that the internet can be an excellent source of new clients and new sources of referrals. They need comprehensive web marketing services utilizing SEO and online marketing projects and plans. These typically include a website and blog, contact form integration built into the website, link building best practices, and other features designed not only to help the website get found online, but to turn more traffic into leads and clients.

These are only a fraction of the different goals amd projects that a law firm website can be used to achieve. The key is to identify these goals band plans before you even start. Jeff Bermanof AttorneySync states “Your goals for your website can take you in completely different directions and change your prioritization of time investment, monetary investment, and overall implementation. That is why it is critical to establishing these goals before diving into an expensive and time consuming law firm website solution.” Wow what a great statement about a law firm design aspect.

Need an Attorney or Lawyer Website Designed?

It is hard to find someone with the knowledge of designing a website for a law firm. I typically do not recommend having just any website design company taking this task, as they do not know the audience a lawyer or attorney is typically going after in clients. Lawyer Website Design by JLG Marketing Solutions is a tried and true website design company that can help you with your needs. With the trend of web 2.0, you need a up to date website to keep up with the times and JLG does great work! Click the link above to contact them to help develop either a blog or a full functional website for your law firm.

In the world of Lawyer Marketing, Avvo has created something great for the consumer to experience in terms of selecting a lawyer to represent their claim or accident.  It highlights great information about each lawyer, how they are ranked amoung their peers in their selective areas, and shows the consumer a great insight about each law firm or attorney.

In the About Us section of Avvo, it explains what the purpose of Avvo was, what they do with their website, and why you would use Avvo in choosing an lawyer or attorney from their website.

Some key information from Avvo:

“Avvo rates and profiles every attorney, so that people can choose the right attorney. Lawyer profiles contain helpful information including a lawyer’s experience, areas of practice, disciplinary history, and ratings from clients. Profile data comes from many sources, including state courts and bar associations, lawyer websites, and information provided by lawyers.

Information meets guidance in the Avvo Rating—our effort to evaluate a lawyer’s background using a mathematical model that considers the information we know about a lawyer. This information is shown in the lawyer’s profile, including a lawyer’s years in practice, disciplinary history, professional achievements, and industry recognition—all factors that, in our opinion, are relevant to assessing a lawyer’s qualifications. ”

The above information about Avvo just goes to show that they actually developed a great system on selecting an attorney or lawyer. If your wondering where the term “AVVO” came from, it orginated from the French word avoocato, which means lawyer.

Lawyer Marketing helps in every single way! Set up your Avvo profile today, and be sure to fill out everything in your profile to see the optimal results using Avvo.

Yes, the title is shocking, but what happens to lawyers and attorneys not using video lawyer marketing on websites like Youtube or DailyMotion?? Well, they fall behind, and now is the time to do this or you will be too far behind in video marketing. Check out a previous written article here about why it’s important as wel to use video lawyer marketingl. Let’s take a look at what works best for lawyer video marketing:

Short Guide to Lawyer Web Video Marketing

1.  Setup and start using video NOW!!!! You do not have to have professional video for viral video marketing, using a Flip Cam HD or something similar will be fine for shooting basic videos on how to. Address the questions of the consumers..not about yourself!

2. Setup accounts with videos sites like Youtube and DailyMotion for example.

3. Setup a channel or profile for each with a descriptive page of your law firm or practice.

Those three steps will get you going in your video marketing campaign. Lawyer Video Marketing will be a thing of the future, and if you do not think so, you will be reading this article when it is too late to act and take advantage of it.

Take this as a word of advise from an experienced legal marketer, you need this. To compete with all of the competition on the web, you need to approach this as you would your perfect client, fight for the best return on your efforts right?

Lawyers and Attorneys always want the latest in technology to be on the forefront to show their clients and other marketing buddies that they know whats in style and in tech. Well the introduction of the Apple Ipad comes without hesitation, it simply is awsome! The touchpad, the fast processor, and all the other features in which makes it really neat to use on the go. After all, if your a lawyer you NEED to be on the go right?

Well here is your answer to the Apple Ipad, its called the Notion Ink Adam tablet pc. I call it a pocket pc due to its size and versiability. Even though this company is relatively small, I see this product being a Ipad killer in the future for many reasons.

This is where Notion Ink’s Adam is heads above its much publicized rival Apple iPad – Lets look at some of the major features:

• Display – 10.1-inch Pixel Qi transflective display
• Fully capacitive touch screen
• 12mm Thickness
• CPU – dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPUs
• Graphics – Nvidia Tegra 2 on-board chipset
• Resolution supported – 1024×600
• Playback – Full 1080p

Not only will this be better for the standard pc user, but it offers use of Google Chrome and FireFox, which is a huge plus! Also, it is developed on the Andriod OS platform, we are all starting to fall in love with.

Ok well enough technical mumbojumbo, what will it do for my law firm? Well, simply put, bring documents to clients digitally, rather then just in paper. Have them sign forms electronically as well! Use this as your phone with Skype intergration as well! The possiabilities are endless.

Learn more about Notion Ink’s Adam.

EasyLegalMarketing is here to help you intergrate the latest technology into your law firm or practice. Subscribe for more updates!

In the world of Social Media, if you do not know or know how to market your law firm on Facebook, you might as well hang up your law degree and say goodbye to your future! Well not exactly, but if your not making a strong move to market to younger generations (even though the major age using Facebook now is 35) you will be left in the dust when the next wave of potential clients come around looking for a lawyer online.

Well to better prepare yourself for the future and your law firm, USE FACEBOOK FAN PAGES! This is a simple and easy way to let people know about your law firm, without doing that cheesy lawyer marketing in your name. With a Facebook fan page, you can update your status with your blog feed, use interesting tools to help feed your other social media accounts into it, all while letting your professional time intact. This means you set it to go on auto pilot and your done! With the exception of just sending out invites to join your law firms Fanpage, that really is it! You can even setup your Fanpage to use a great URL in order to create some good search engine optimization into your page! (Google and other search engines use realtime search features now that intergrate Facebook and Twitter into search engines if you haven’t noticed!).

Set up a Fan Page to market your business.  This is where you will post public thoughts, pictures etc. that promote your product or service.   The reason the Facebook fan page is a powerful marketing tool is because it is open to the public and can be found by search engines. It is also viewable by anyone (even if they don’t have a Facebook.)

Ok so, you ask, “How Do I setup a Facebook Fan Page?” well here is your simple guide on how to:

Step 1:  Set up a Facebook Profile (if you don’t have one) by going to www.facebook.com

Step 2:  Set up a Fan Page, (this is the most difficult link to find so simply CLICK HERE.)

Step 3:  Add a profile picture or logo by clicking.  Upload a picture from your desktop.

Step 4:  If you have a blog, you can add content automatically to your Fan page by importing your blog through the notes

section.

Step 5:  Add a Fan Box to Your Website or Blog to encourage your website vistitors to become fans. 

Its that easy! Set this up and let it fly with clients coming from Facebook! Law Firm Marketing and Lawyer and Attorney marketing made easy for you from EasyLegalMarketing.com!

When is the last time you were driving down the road and came across a law firm advertising on a billboard? Yes, I think your pondering the same answer that I am. I see them ALL THE TIME! To this degree, when do these lawyer billboard advertisements become less effective? Everyday!

This post is to inform you of the change in lawyer marketing and advertising. If you think your law firm can get away with some billboard advertising and some signs across town, you might be looking for new customers a lot in the next year or two. Yes, granted this works in some circumstances (if you live in a small town or area or you dominate the area already-by which you wouldn’t be on this site looking for information) but sooner or later, everyone will be able to have a billboard just as nice as yours. So you ask, what should I do then?

The answer to the above question is very simple, use the internet to have a client generator so you can spend your money elsewhere, and have a steady flow of incoming traffic to your website. This website is to help you do so with online marketing and also with low cost direct marketing ideas to help really stimulate your target clients. Most lawyers today that rely on these advertisements will be behind the times when it comes time to make the transition to online marketing, so do yourself a favor and look to this site for help with online marketing for your law firm.

The best profit and ROI dollar to dollar is in search engine marketing, not only because with some guidence you can be doing it for FREE (minus your professional time) and little by little it will help you in years to come.

Rules to live by for Lawyer Online Marketing:

1. Start Small – don’t try to do everything at once! You will become frustrated and overworked and you will want to give up.

2. Map a Plan- draft a plan of action to help go with your marketing, this not only structures things, but makes it easier for you to schedule in your day.

3. Research and Use Sites Like This to Help- yes of course you could hire someone to help, but without an understanding of what to look for in a SEO or marketing assistant, you will take whatever they say and be ok with it.

Take those three above starters to help formulate a plan and then implement it. If you choose not to follow those 3 suggestions above, come back and read them again in 3 months when you decide to really get serious about things and take it step by step! Good luck and Contact me if you have any questions or need some legal marketing help.

Lawyers and Twitter -

3 Years ago when someone would have said a Social Media platform with 140 characters or less would overtake the world you would have said WHAT? haha.  Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

The Basics of Twitter

Setting up your twitter profile is a very simple process but yet the most important. Simply enter your full name, choose a username, and select a password. Use your real name some people can connect with you. In choosing your username, keep it short. You may want to consider using keywords relevant to your law practice like FloridaPIlawyer or something similar to your area of expertise. That way, when people search for those terms, your profile will appear. You should also decide whether this will be a personal profile, a professional profile, or both. To start, I recommend using it for both. Properly maintaining one Twitter account can effectively serve both interests.

Next, think about what you would like to do with your profile. Upload a picture of yourself or your brand. Remember, social media is a conversation. People like to see with whom they are talking so a picture of yourself might serve as a better choice. You should also set up an extended profile. Twitter is very restrictive with regard to the length of your online bio. Using an extended profile will allow you to share much more information about yourself and your firm. You may also want to include a disclaimer on your profile (i.e. this does not constitute legal advice, blah, blah, blah). Also be sure to include a link to your website. I encourage you to leave the “Protect my updates” box unchecked. Protecting your updates will take your “tweets” off the public feed and make it difficult for you to be found.

Remember, social media is about getting found. Check out this primer on more Twitter basics. On following: Once you’re up and running, you will want to seek out other tweeters to follow. Don’t be tempted to follow for the sake of following. Follow those who post tweets that are interesting to you. To get you started, you should, obviously, follow me: @Jesse_Guthrie.

On tweeting: Never, never, never, spam through twitter. No markety, advertisey speak at all! Don’t talk about how long you have been in practice. Don’t talk about how hard you fight for your clients. Tweet interesting things you read on the web. Retweet interesting tweets. Reply to interesting tweets. Think of twitter somewhat like an instant messenger. As with all social media, it is not the forum for advertisements. Build relationships. Talk about what interests you.

Enhanced Tips for Lawyers on Twitter

First, you’ll want to download a twitter desktop client. I use TweetDeck, but there are a host of other options. Once installed, click the magnifying glass to set up search columns. This is a great way to view tweets about specific topics. Always remember that you are limited to 140 characters, so keep your tweets short and shorten your links with a service like tinyurl.

Follow the following blog: http://www.twitip.com/. It’s a great twitter resource. Also, check out Qwitter (which tells you when someone unfollows you), Twitter Grader, and Twitalyzer (to monitor the health of your twitter account). If you prefer not to use a twitter desktop client, make sure you at least use http://search.twitter.com. Check out this resource for a comprehensive list of Twitter tools.

Finally, check out the following resources for finding new legal birds to follow:

http://legalbirds.justia.com/ and http://www.lextweet.com/

Pit-Falls

Don’t let Twitter run your day! Be efficient and deliberate with your twitter time. If you catch yourself staring at your feed, close it! Use the search function to find interesting tweets.

Don’t follow for the sake of following. Make tweeters earn your follows. You will have better twitter health if you are somewhat selective of whom you follow.

Don’t spam. Don’t spam. Don’t spam. I think I have made my point.

Don’t solicit on twitter. Remember, the ethics rules still apply in web 2.0. Check your bar rules.

Don’t use mass follower tools. I am intentionally leaving them nameless.

Great Article at AttorneySync.

With all said above, be sure to update your twitter account now and follow me!