First, understand what both you and your potential clients are hoping to get out of social media.  Yes, at the end of the day, you hope to have a person connect with you who eventually becomes a client, but that’s not how most of your connections will view the relationship.  They’re connecting with you because they think you have something to offer, be that a unique perspective of the law or access to breaking legal information before the rest of the world gets it.

Notice that they’re not asking to be constantly pitched to.  If you’ve had a potential client connect because they’re thinking about legal representation, the last thing you’ll want to do is shamelessly promote your firm.  Not only does this go against the rules of legal marketing (as described in our last report), but it turns clients off.  They want to see your authority, not your promotional pitch, and everything you do should showcase your legal knowledge without you directly calling attention to how smart you are.

Also realize that you’re not going to foster interaction if you’re not willing to contribute to the social community at large.  When your followers pose queries to all of their followers, do you answer?  Or do you ignore them?  Social media marketing is different from other forms of advertising because not only do you have to create messages but you have to listen to the messages of others.  Otherwise, you could find that your post asking, “What area of the law goes largely unexplored by the media?” doesn’t engender even one response.  Social media is a two-way street.

You also shouldn’t overestimate your ability to retain the attention of your every follower.  Social media is a fickle medium.  Every Tweet and post should stand alone, even if they speak to the various aspects of a wider topic when taken together.  It might seem clever to post something like, “Landmark lawsuit being announced tomorrow, stay tuned.”  But although this might get a few people to take notice, you must make sure that tomorrow’s post can stand on its own merits.

By that same token, realize that you’re dealing with people of myriad backgrounds.  They don’t share your legal knowledge.  You might know what a motion for nolle prosequi is, but your followers don’t.  Make sure your posts don’t come across as so inside baseball that they turn off the very people you’re seeking to gain the approval of.

The ethics committee of the California bar has deemed that certain Tweets and Facebook posts may run afoul of advertising rules if they invite a client to interact further or seek a free consultation with the firm.  The worry is that advertising rules, while carefully followed on such media as television or radio, are ignored online because attorneys and marketers in general don’t believe they apply to social communications.

Not so, said the Committee.  In reviewing a series of posts appearing on a lawyer’s personal profile page, the committee weighed whether or not the posts run contrary to the California Rule of Professional Conduct pertaining to Advertising and Solicitation.  Although coming into compliance with this rule within 140 characters can admittedly be tricky, the committee decided that it is absolutely essential, as the rule almost certainly applies to electronic communications on social media.

If you’re looking to stay on the right side of the rules, then you’ll have to be careful with what you post.

For one thing, stop offering free consultations to your followers.  That’s clearly an advertisement under the interpretation of the rule.  You’re actively seeking new business with the post, but this undermines the trust inherent in a social media connection.  A potential client might connect with you, sure, but they’re going to be turned off if everything you post is a solicitation for business.

Other posts might breach the advertising rules in a less obvious way.  “Who has two thumbs and can get anyone a million dollar verdict for their car accident?  This guy.”  Aside from sounding like a hipster rather than a respected attorney, you’re implying that someone who calls you will be able to receive a beneficial decision.  This type of guarantee leaves you open for harm and runs against proper advertising practices.  Believe it or not, even telling your followers to reference other people to your website is inappropriate, as you’re still advertising even if you’re letting others do the heavy lifting.

So what can you Tweet or post about?  You can announce court victories or developments without including a prompt for further action from the reader.  You can even reference content that you’ve written on the web, which is good news for those who have begun content marketing.  Again, you can’t say your opinion is expert or it will help someone’s case, but you can simply explain that you’ve written the information.  When all else fails, do a little curation to find third party content about your area of interest and link to those materials without further self-promotion.

If your law firm is ready to issue press releases, then PRWeb is still a valuable tool, but you have to make sure that you’re following the various guidelines they have in place.  Should your announcement appear spammy in any way, shape, or form, an editorial hold will be placed on the release, and you could find yourself missing the window of opportunity you sought to capitalize on in the first place.

Understanding how PRWeb does things will help you protect yourself from such denials.  Realize that your initial release may not be read by an actual human being at first blush.  A program will run through the release to determine the intentions of the sender and to figure out whether the information contained therein is spammy or fraudulent.

When a risk is perceived, the editorial goes in front of one of PRWeb’s editors, who take on the lofty task of reviewing around 2,000 press releases every day.  It’s these people whose good side you’ll want to be on.  You have to be sure that your press release is grammatically and verbally correct and that it offers actual news value to your target demographic.

Although it’s acceptable to link to your law firm, it’s not acceptable to include such links every other sentence.  Two links is about the maximum (one for a homepage, one for a deeper landing page), and those links should involve natural anchor text.

You can’t be overtly promotional rather than to let a member of your firm express an opinion or provide tips.  Imagine two press releases.  The first says something like “The Idaho Personal Injury Lawyer John Smith believes his law firm is the only one that can offer adequate representation to injured parties.”  That press release is no different from an advertisement.

The second, more appropriate release, could say, “John Smith, an Idaho personal injury lawyer, is directing injured parties toward online resources that can help them gain their bearings.”  Notice how the release comes in the form of an advice column, offering actual value that just so happens to be from your firm.

Finally, avoid those topics that will immediately get you flagged.  You might be representing the plaintiff in a male enhancement dietary supplement case, but an announcement on this subject may not go through, nor will announcements about you taking on online pharmacies, e-cigarettes, or a number of other topics.

The first thing you should realize is that you don’t actually have to physically post every Tweet or update at the exact moment it goes out to your followers.  A host of apps are out there which allow you to set up your content well in advance.  That way, you can get into your account at the beginning of a day, or even at the beginning of a week, and start setting up your content to go out at whatever intervals you’ve deemed appropriate.

Please be careful with this scheduling method though.  Although you’ll want to develop a content calendar in order to keep things straight and everyone on the same page, you shouldn’t be a slave to that calendar.

Let’s say you’re going to blog and subsequently Tweet about a class action lawsuit headed to court, but a settlement is reached before your content goes live.  At such times, you’ll have to dive back in and rethink your initial piece, developing the content from the ground up with the new information in mind.  Otherwise, you look a bit like the merchandise hocker outside the Super Bowl stadium that has a thousand T-shirts with the wrong victor emblazoned upon them.  Your content suddenly becomes worthless and contradictory to the truth.  Don’t let it get out.

Realize too that one person at your firm doesn’t have to pull all the social media weight.  Your law firm stands to gain the most ground when everyone gets involved.  Develop a social network among the various employees of your firm.  Each should be encouraged to share their thoughts so long as they align with your law firm’s message.  To guarantee the latter, you might have one individual who acts as a buffer that can ask firm members to rethink their Tweets if they’re off-message.

You also shouldn’t shackle yourself to one social media platform.  Every piece of content you create should be postable to any social channel.  Buttons that allow a potential client to Tweet, Pin, Post, or anything else can dramatically expand the reach of your legal content.  You never know what’s going to catch on with the population, and including these buttons ensures that you won’t miss out on a great opportunity.

Believe it or not, a text message has become an acceptable way to communicate with a client.  In fact, it might be a great way to keep in touch with prospective clients.  It used to be that the only way to keep a client up to date with their legal situation was to bring them into your office, or in the case of severely injured parties involved in a personal injury dispute, to visit them directly.

While bringing such a personal touch to proceedings is great, it’s not always feasible.  Email and mobile phones are thus a godsend to lawyers who pride themselves on their personal investment in each case.  You can call clients immediately, and if they’re okay with it, you can even send text messages.

But for those clients who have obtained a free consultation but are still not sure about your legal representation, it’s quite alright to ask them if they want to receive updates via text message.  Let’s say that an individual was harmed by a product that has since been recalled.  Court proceedings could take years, and perhaps the person is initially not sure that they want to pursue a lawsuit.  You might ask them to allow texts and to connect with you on social media so you can keep them up to date on the situation.

A mobile phone is also a great way to come up with content ideas.  Send an email or a mass text that asks a question pertinent to your legal expertise.  You can get a sense of how clients feel about the law and the areas where your own attention to clients could be improved.  You can then write about these subjects on your blog and share the information on social media.

That attention to social media will be crucial for your ongoing mobile marketing efforts.  Smartphones give clients a way to interact with your various social media accounts with the push of a button.  This comes with the caveat, though, that they can de-follow you just as easily.  Strive to create but not abuse loyalty through everything you do and you should be set up for success on the social front.

A new article goes into this idea in greater detail, explaining that the best link building is getting links without having to purposefully go out and force those links.  We’re not saying that you have to wait decades for the links to come to you, but you are going to have to put in the work necessary to ensure people will appreciate your site and link to it naturally.

Doing so revolves around your ability to create great content.  When people see that you’re willing to take the time necessary to carefully analyze a given legal situation and describe it in detail for clients and other interested parties, they’ll understand that you care about the matter at hand.  It looks as if you’re not in it just for SEO mileage, and this attitude is exactly what gets you SEO mileage!

Setting aside the SEO ramifications of focusing so much on link-building that you lose sight of the very content that all those links are pointing to, how is a client supposed to trust that way you’re saying is accurate if all your links are coming from an untrusted source?  When links to your website are featured on a domain that looks like it’s going to give the user a virus, something has gone wrong.

When you feature a particularly salient piece of content on your site, the quality of the people and agencies who link to you improves.  You have to create things that people actually care about and that show your handle of legal knowledge.  If somehow you manage to draw in clients to your website, they’re just going to go elsewhere if low-quality content dominates your every page.

Instead of going out and paying to get links from potentially shady directories, create an outreach program to get your valuable content found by those who need the information contained therein.  Look to social media.  If there’s a legal ratings site it’d help to be featured on, or a respected attorney in your field also has a social presence, connect with them.  You are the company you keep, and if the company you keep includes other high-quality venues and platforms, your SEO abilities will improve, as will your ability to acquire clients once they actually arrive at your site.

Instead, your law firm might find more success marketing to specific demographics using certain touchstones that those demographics hold dear.  If you appeal to the sensibilities and sympathies of certain parties, those persons will be more likely to call for a free consultation.

Just in time for Father’s Day, a new report examines how marketers can improve their messages to appeal to dads.  If your law firm heeds some of the advice contained therein, you might be able to better reach fathers and all other types of demographics.

The author explains that for many fathers, family is going to be the most important consideration for any decision.  But really, this type of virtue isn’t the sole realm of dads.  Mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, brothers, sisters, and more all want to know how to help their families.

You can serve that desire to protect one’s family by crafting marketing messages that focus on that subject.  Your firm can write copy in one of two ways:

Have you been injured in a medical malpractice suit?  You’ve been taken advantage of and deserve compensation for your injuries.  Your way of life may have been altered.  Our law firm can help you get back on your feet.

Not bad.  But this might be better:

Has your family’s wellbeing been compromised by a surgery gone wrong?  Your kids rely on your income, and it’s not fair that the negligence of another party has altered their way of life.  Watching as a mother or father is put through a dangerous personal injury situation can have a lasting impact, and we want to help your family through this tough spot.

The first appeals to self-serving interests, while the second plays on a person’s desire to do right by those they love the most.  Appealing to such a sensibility can do more for your marketing than you might expect.

There are those who are reluctant to admit they need legal assistance, and at such times, they need a little push.  Most people will be willing to set their stubbornness aside  and swallow their pride if you can explain how your help can assure their family’s safety when they’re sidelined.

Your ability to rank for local search queries is going to be the bread and butter of your legal SEO efforts.  After all, if the members of the community you call home aren’t able to find you, it’s going to be nearly impossible to establish a stronghold in the legal arena.

But how do you go about establishing this local presence if you’re not currently ranking?  You can start with the creation of on-site content focused on matters that distinctly affect your community.  If a city has been affected by smog pollution that perhaps has run afoul of environmental regulations, then an environmental attorney should be all over that.  They should be writing landing pages, blog posts, press releases, and anything else focused on the topic.

Reacting in such a way shows that your law firm is just as passionate as those affected by a given situation.  You can do this with anything.  If you’re a personal injury lawyer, write about accidents that have happened in your town.  If you’re a real estate lawyer, focus on market trends that have an impact on persons buying and selling houses.  Even “drier” legal topics such as bankruptcy law can entail updated content about business closures and tips on avoiding bankruptcy.

Client see this information and react in kind.  And the benefits are twofold because every time you write a story about your town you’re providing natural keywords that can help you climb up the search results.  If your website has no content dedicated to matters of law in your base of operations, you can’t rank for keywords related to the same.

Social media and local pages then allow you to develop your presence further.  Get listed on sites like Yelp, Google Plus, and others that show clients the physical side of your internet presence.  Then, use social media to foster interactions on those pages and your website itself.  Start connecting with other local businesses and citizens so that incoming clients will be able to identify your place within the community.  Submit pertinent links and talk about subjects of interest that aren’t necessarily legal-centric but nevertheless mean something to the city.

Finally, understand how clients really find lawyers.  They’re hearing about you from their friends and neighbors and then going online to conduct research.  You thus have to promote your community efforts and back those up with a wealth of information on the web.

Thus, approaching digital marketing requires a completely different set of guidelines and benchmarks.  Fostering success might begin with applying some of the advice contained in a new report.

The standard marketing message isn’t going to hold water online.  You have to be able to convey that you relate to the situation of the client.  You can’t stay at a distance; in the modern world, clients don’t want an attorney who remains aloof.  They want someone who will be willing to take them under their wing and explain and carry them through a tough situation.

Showcasing this ability starts with every piece of content you create, whether that be a landing page, an email, or a social media post.  Strive to explain why the piece you’re creating has value for a client.  Tell them that you’d love to provide free consultations to persons who think they have a case.  If you make a client seem like you’re doing them a favor rather than vice versa, they’ll be more comfortable hiring you as their legal representative.

Making yourself open to clients does mean you’ll have to let the flow of information go both ways.  For every message you send out, clients should have an instantaneous way to relate their opinions right back to you.  Have an email address that’s set up to receive client queries, and don’t make it something like info@suchandsuch.  Blanket forms like that make the client feel like they’re not going to get through to an actual lawyer.  If you have an email address that includes a first name, it’s likely that your number of queries and subsequent clients will rise.  The same goes for opening yourself up on social media.

Bringing clients closer to you will also necessarily involve giving a little bit of background beyond the standard resume.  Instead of using your About Us page as a platform to list your law school degrees and experiences, actually take the time to explain why those experiences are important to you.  Instead of the who, when, where, and what of it all, seek to place an emphasis on the why.  If you tell your story, a client will be more inclined to tell theirs.

Finally, contribute something real to every conversation.  Be a good listener and a good speaker.  Approach social media as a town hall type meeting rather than a lecture.

At times, lawyers can feel like they’re on an endless cycle of content creation that never pays off.  But this is where so many falter.  Content is the one thing in the modern era that will keep your rankings high and bring clients to your sight to view opinions that only an expert in the legal field can provide.  The moment you stop creating content is the moment clients will go elsewhere.

Going into this idea in greater depth is a new article in the Harvard Business Review.  In it, the author takes on the idea that sometimes there is such a thing as too much content.  He argues that this is untrue and that the reality of the situation is that there can be too much low-quality content.

You might have this same worry when you branch out with a new marketing strategy at your firm.  If you’re writing content for your legal blog on a daily basis, you might worry that the content will lose steam and quality with each iteration.

For instance, you might be proud of your first write-up on automobile accident law.  Then, when you issue a press release on the same topic, you’re happy but feel like you’ve trod the same ground.  Then you create a Podcast on that topic.  And you Tweet it, and you Pin it, and you Post it, and you write up new content pieces on each of your automobile accident law landing pages for the different cities you operate out of.

And then you repeat things all over again with a new topic.  It can be exhausting, right?

This, however, is the wrong mindset to take.  If you’re filming a television commercial featuring a firm partner talking to the camera, you might require take after take, each a little different.  Why should content marketing be any different?  If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again, and have a team that can back you up to check your work, edit things appropriately, and generally keep you honest.

Think about it this way:  you’re presenting your content the way you’d present evidence in court, only this time, you’re convincing your clients (the jury) of the ability of your firm, rather than innocence or guilt.  Some pieces of evidence may resonate, others might falter, but at all times you must be prepared and meet a certain quality standard so that you don’t look like an amateur.