Legal Ease Blog

How Will Google's BERT Algorithm Affect Your Law Firm Website?

As you may have heard, Google released a new algorithm, known as BERT, that will affect the results when you perform a search using Google.

Is it time to panic? Pay a lot of money to an SEO "expert" to make big changes to your website?

The answer is...it depends. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

If your law firm website was built to provide useful information to potential clients and others searching for information about your firm and the law in the areas of practice, this new update is likely to have little to no effect on your website and how it appears in search.

Create Content for Human Beings, Not Search Engines

As I've said before (as far back as 2010 with my post What Should Lawyers Look for in an SEO Strategy?), your first priority when creating content for your website should always be to provide value to human beings, not to search engines.

The purpose of a search engine is to return the best possible result in response to the searcher's query. Google is constantly updating its algorithm to keep improving the results it returns, to eliminate unresponsive results, and to ensure that it is providing quality information to its users (searchers).

Google's latest update is an attempt to make the algorithm understand search queries more like humans understand them, to help return results that are more likely to be the kinds of results the searcher was actually looking for.

Long-Tail Searches and SEO

According to Google, the BERT update was designed to help the search engine understand “longer, more conversational queries,” often known as "long-tail" queries. These are exactly the kinds of queries your potential clients are likely using to search for information about their legal problem, or when searching for an attorney to help them solve it. 

If your website's content targets the information your potential clients are searching for on the internet and incorporates long-tail keywords that respond to their queries, you'll start seeing results in traffic to your website.

But it takes time to develop long-tail keywords - you need to be very familiar with your potential clients and what information is important to them. This is one of the reasons I warn lawyers to beware of is SEO "experts" who say they can "guarantee" first page results, or who say they can optimize your site for search without your input and without knowing much about you or your area of practice. Many of them will engage in underhanded tactics to try to "game" the Google system. 

With each Google algorithm update, it is more and more difficult to have success with these kinds of underhanded practices. And for most lawyers, especially solos and small-firm lawyers, the paid options like pay-per-click are prohibitively expensive.

How to Optimize Your Website Now

There is never any guarantee that you'll appear at the top of the organic search results for every keyword you target. But there are ways to improve your chances of appearing in search. 

There are also technical issues that can hurt your website in search, and there are certainly legitimate SEO professionals who can help here, too, but they are usually different people than those who can help on the content side. Look for someone who knows the technical side of SEO and can fix problems such as broken code, slow load speed, poor site architecture, etc. Hopefully, those will be one-time fixes.

On an ongoing basis, one of the easiest and simplest is by writing your site for humans and providing valuable information. Create quality content that answers the questions people have around your area of the law and how it affects them.

Then optimize that content for search by including relevant "long-tail" keywords where it counts to signal Google that's what your site (and each individual page) is about. This can be accomplished by adding appropriate tags and meta descriptions, ensuring each page is targeting a different long-tail keyword. You can find help here as well, but again, this help is likely to be from a different source that the technical SEO professional.

If you need help writing copy for your website and making sure it's SEO optimized the right way - please feel free to contact me.

Choosing Ghostwriters, Blogging and Social Media Service Providers

In my last post,I talked about delegating or outsourcing some blogging and social media tasks to others to reduce the burden of managing these activities, while still gaining many of the benefits.

But using outside services to write or post for you does raise some potential issues, including loss of engagement, style that is inconsistent with the individual lawyer or firm, and potential ethical issues. (For more on blogs and ghostwriting, see my posts Should You Use a Ghostwriter for Your Blog and Ghostwriting and Legal Blogs or my post on the Lawyerist blog, Outsourcing Blogs and Social Media). 

My last post talked a bit about choosing a writer or service (or an employee or associate in your firm) that understands and can convey the correct style, but there's more to consider than that.

The safest (and most effective) course of action, rather than outsourcing the entire endeavor, is to delegate or outsource only part of the process, while maintaining control over your content, voice and interactions. Lawyers often use paralegals or younger associates to draft pleadings, motions or other court papers in the lawyer’s name, and a similar practice for blogging and social media posting is not inherently unethical if the lawyer is also providing input into the work, supervising, reviewing content for accuracy, ensuring that no ethics issues exist, and signing off on it before it is posted online.

Tips for choosing a ghostwriter, outside service or employee for blog or social media activities:

• Use a service that understands the difference between promotion and providing value to your audience
• Use someone who has worked with lawyers and understands that ethical rules may prohibit some activities, words, phrases or posts.
• Thoroughly investigate the company or individual, their philosophy, writing style, and approach to blogging and social media. Ask for examples that demonstrate how they use these tools themselves or on behalf of other clients.
• Require that all content be original, and provided only to you, rather than generic content provided to many other attorneys who practice in your area of law (even if those other attorneys are outside of your geographic area)
• Insist on a work for hire agreement stating that the work created for you and your blog or social media accounts belongs to you and not to the writer or their company
• Develop a written agreement that states that nothing may be posted on your behalf without your prior approval, whether the posts are made on your accounts or are comments on others’ accounts or sites
• Review all content – you are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of all content posted on your behalf and for ensuring that it complies with the ethical rules. You’ll also want to be familiar with what is being posted so that you can speak intelligently about it if you receive inquiries or comments about it, and to confirm that it presents you and your firm in the best light possible
• Check that the legal information is correct and that you agree with and support any opinions expressed, and that those opinions will not offend or otherwise upset or create conflicts with your clients and referral sources
• Establish a good mix of posts that provide value and link to other sources in addition to providing your own content and links to your own content, and make sure that promotional posts are kept to a minimum

Finally, remember that social media is meant to be social. To be the most effective, you should be the one engaging with your readers and followers. Respond to comments and communicate one on one. Take online relationships offline into the real world; set up meetings and phone calls. Make introductions and connections between people in your network. Share others’ content; it not only reduces the amount of original content you need to post, but it builds your networks and your relationships with those whose content you share.

Related articles

New York Social Media Ethics Guidelines

Delegation Tips for Lawyer Blogs and Social Media Accounts

Marketing experts recommend that to gain visibility and get traffic to your firm’s website, you should maintain a blog and participate in social media. But for attorneys in firms of all sizes, especially small firms and solo practices, it can be a challenge to find the time to properly manage these activities and develop professional quality content that provides value to readers and followers while at the same time managing your clients, your cases, and your practice.

Personally engaging in these activities is the gold standard; writing your own posts creates a greater connection with your audience because the audience feels as if you are speaking directly to them. But it requires a regular commitment of time. However, there are ways that you can delegate or outsource some of the work of creating an active and engaged blog and social media presence to reduce some of the burden on you, while still gaining the benefits of participation.

Ways to Delegate Blogging and Social Media Tasks

For example, you could hire a writer to do some repurposing for you – taking some of your existing materials or writing and developing blog posts and social media posts or campaigns around them. If you have written a legal brief, a writer may be able to turn the writing you’ve done for a legal audience (the court) into writing on the same topic for a different audience – potential clients or referral sources – by explaining the legal concepts to a lay audience and breaking down your brief into a series of blog posts.

Or you could also ask someone to interview you about a timely topic or a story in the news. That interview could become a podcast or audio posted to your website, and the transcript of the interview could be transcribed into text as a blog post. You could also have a writer expand a bit on some of what you discuss in the interview.

You can also ask others to write guest posts for your blog. They can be other lawyers, clients, experts, or other service providers. Guest posts are a win- win: they provide the guest poster with increased visibility and access to your audience, and give your audience a different perspective or new information that you might not be able to provide on your own, while reducing the frequency with which you have to create your own content. (You may want to include a disclaimer on these posts and make it clear they are written by third parties and represent their views, and not necessarily yours.)

Other Blogging and Social Media Tasks to Delegate or Outsource

Other tasks you can delegate or outsource include:

• Conducting basic research
• Identifying of story ideas or news items as the basis for posts
• Maintaining an editorial calendar
• Developing a first draft of a post based on some bullet points or a topic idea you provide
• Suggesting other blogs to follow or link to
• Setting up a blogs or social media accounts
• Proofreading and editing
• Reviewing analytics and post performance
• Posting links to articles, blog posts or to your website on social media

For those that don’t have the time or don’t want to actually write themselves, but still want to maintain a blog or social media accounts, using a ghostwriter or subscribing to a blogging service may solve the problem. But you’ll want to be sure that their writing fits with your firm’s style, voice, and the image you’re trying to project.

Checking on Style

If you decide to hire others to write for your blog or post to your social media accounts, do a trial run and check their writing style:

• Does the writer’s style match yours?
• Does it convey the impression you want to convey?
• Does their language reflect the language you use with clients?
• Does their writing reflect your philosophy and values as a lawyer?
• Does it reflect your personality? Is it more or less formal, conversational, lighthearted, humorous, etc. than you usually are?
• Are posts written specifically to connect with your target audience?

Using outside services to write or post for you may raise some additional issues you should be aware of, including potential ethical issues. For example, having someone else writing blog posts in the lawyer’s name could be potentially misleading. And posting about clients or cases could run afoul of confidentiality rules. In my next post, I'll give you some tips and things to think about when choosing a ghostwriter, outside service or employee to run your blog or social media activities. (Hint: you'll still need to be involved).

For more on blogs and ghostwriting, see my posts Should You Use a Ghostwriter for Your Blog and Ghostwriting and Legal Blogs or my post on the Lawyerist blog, Outsourcing Blogs and Social Media. 

Related articles

New York Social Media Ethics Guidelines

New Ethics Opinion Outlines Attorneys' Ethical Obligations on Social Media

Holiday Cards: To Send or Not To Send?

Every year at about this time, the subject of client holiday cards resurfaces. Should you send holiday cards to clients, former clients and referral sources? Why or why not?

Holiday cards can be a nice way to stay in touch with clients, potential clients and others during this festive season, and may serve the remind those with whom you are not regularly in contact of your continued existence, but before you take on that task (which always seems to take longer than you think it will), consider what your main goal is with sending these greetings.

If you’re sending pre-printed, auto-addressed, remotely mailed cards, you may be accomplishing the opposite of what you intend, especially if it's the only time all year that you reach out to some of the people on your list. As one commenter noted when I wrote a post about this issue in 2010 on Lawyerist, “Your motivations are more transparent than they seem;” these efforts can feel blatantly self-promotional, or can make recipients feel that they are just another name on a list or in a database. At worst, clients and referral sources who don’t hear from you all year and then receive an impersonal holiday card will be turned off or have negative feelings towards you for not taking the time to do something more personal. At best, your card will be tossed and forgotten.

Think you’re being “innovative” sending an e-card? Many recipients won’t even open them for fear that the cards contain malware. Others will take your holiday e-card as a sign that you are cutting costs to the bone and can no longer afford to send actual cards. Sending an e-card can send an even stronger impersonal message than pre-printed cards, since they are so easy to send; it’s easy for people to assume that you’ve mass emailed everyone on your contact list, regardless of your relationship with them.

Instead of giving clients a “warm, fuzzy” feeling, these types of holiday greetings can seem like a transparent effort to reach out – not with genuine holiday wishes, but with the sole goal of reminding them that you’re out there and that you want their business.

If you’re going to send holiday cards, do it to thank clients and referral sources for their business or to genuinely wish them greetings of the season in a personalized way, if not with a hand-written note (although that's recommended), then at least with a customized typed message and a real signature.

If you are truly just looking for business, why not be transparent about it instead of trying to hide it? Send clients, potential clients or referral sources something that will be of value to them and let them know you would like their business and how you can help them.

You might want to recognize your gratitude for clients on other holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, the client’s birthday or anniversary of their business, the anniversary of the founding of your law practice, or the anniversary of your admission to the Bar. If you want to acknowledge the festive season by reaching out to your clients, make your greetings stand out from the crowd by sending something creative and memorable – how about a plantable card  if you’re an environmental lawyer, or a card that doubles as a coaster for a liquor lawyer?

Of course, you might consider sending something that isn’t a card at all. But please, if you’re sending a “corporate gift” at the holidays this year, think carefully before sending something with your logo on it. If you want to include a logo on a ‘gift,’ the holidays might not be the best time to do it – unless you’re sending something with the client’s name or logo on it. Who wants stuff with your logo hanging around, anyway - especially if it's seen as a blatant self-promotion, rather than a genuine holiday greeting?

I’d love to hear what you’re doing for your clients for the holidays this year – the more creative, the better. Are you sending cards? What kind? If not, are you sending an alternative? Let me know in the comments!

What Makes Content Go Viral?

Content marketing is one thing, but pumping out content simply for the sake of creating it is a waste of time - especially when you've got other important things to do.

I came across a great article from the New Yorker earlier this week on the six things that make stories go viral. The article in its entirety is an excellent read, but one of the key things to keep in mind comes from the title of the article itself, and that is to remember - and understand - that it is stories that make the difference.

Whether you're writing about the latest legal developments in no fault divorce, the best ways to protect your legacy in your estate plan, or the most important risk factors to keep in mind when starting a business, what grabs people are stories - readers want to know how these issues have affected others and how they might affect them. They want the human element.

The New Yorker article is about a study conducted by Jonah Berger, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania along with another professor, Katherine Milkman, which analyzed three months' worth of articles from the Times in 2008 to see which ones were read and shared the most - and to try to figure out why.

According to the article, the research found that articles that evoked emotion performed better, and the stronger the emotion, the more likely it was that the article would be shared (after all, there's nothing more human than emotions). In general, stories with positive messages outperformed negative ones. Similar results were found in a more controlled follow up study done with students, and Berger has continued to do additional research. He is also the author of a new book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch On."

The six factors Berger has identified that contribute to virality are:

1. Emotion - Stories that strike an emotional chord are more likely to be shared.
   
   
2. Arousal - Essentially, the intensity of the emotion elicited; stories that arouse strong emotions - whether positive or negative - are more compelling.
   
   
3. Social currency - Something that makes people feel they are "with it" or part of the insider culture not only garners attention, but prompts sharing because those who share will appear to be "with it" too.
   
   
4. A memory trigger - When something sticks with you, it makes you want to share - as Maria Konnikova, the author of the New Yorker article notes, "We share what we’re thinking about—and we think about the things we can remember."
   
   
5. Practical value - There's so much content out there and so many messages to wade through; when something provides real value, it's worth sharing - and it makes the sharer look good, too.
   
   
6. The quality of the story - Important or compelling stories fare better than bland ones.  

Looking for ways to improve your content, or make it more engaging and share-worthy? Take a look at this list of 6 things and see how you can incorporate some of them into your content. If you can tell a story that evokes strong positive emotions, you're off to a good start. But if your subject doesn't lend itself so much to that kind of story, offering practical, down to earth tips may still boost your engagement.

 

Related articles

Content Marketing: Quantity Alone is not Enough

The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You

Content Marketing for Lawyers

How to Get Speaking Engagements

I talk to lawyers all of the time who want to use speaking engagements as a way to establish their expertise, provide value to a potential referral source, or as a means to reach an audience of potential clients, but they don't know where to start.

One of the easiest places to start is by becoming a CLE speaker. It's a great way to gain experience speaking, and most bar associations are looking for new, dynamic speakers with good ideasto present for them.

Jennifer Ellis from Freedman Consulting did a recent guest post on the Legal Productivity blog on how to become a CLE speaker and then be invited back. Her post contains some excellent, common-sense tips (which can apply to speaking engagements other than CLE programs as well), including:

Be specific: Make it as easy as possible for the CLE director to choose your proposal by giving him or her a specific program topic, rather than just expressing your interest in speaking on a broad practice area. I can tell you from my experience working at our local bar associations trying to choose program topics and presenters that those who just express and interest in speaking, without more, are rarely contacted. 

Giving the program coordinator a topic idea, along with a proposed title and perhaps even a draft outline will put you head and shoulders above the rest. It is also helpful to include some information about you and why you think you would be a good choice to speak on that topic.

Show you're responsible: If you've never presented for this person or organization before, you need to prove yourself. Make sure you know all deadlines and meet or exceed them. Respond promptly to all requests for information.

Provide valuable information: Most states require written materials to accompany the presentation. Don't skimp on those materials or complete them at the last minute, as an afterthought.

You can read more of Jennifer's tips in the full post here.

If you want to do a lot of speaking engagements, you may want to create a speaker sheet or "one sheet." It's like a bio, but it is specifically targeted to showcase the information that would be attractive to someone seeking to engage you as a speaker for their event or program. Instead of being written with your clients in mind to sell your expertise and services as a lawyer, the speaker sheet is meant to highlight your expertise for a different audience.

If you want to try your hand at creating a speaker sheet for yourself, Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle has a one sheet generator tool that you can use to create a professional looking one sheet to give to organizations or program coordinators.

Client Testimonials for Law Firm Sites

"How do I ask clients for endorsements or testimonials?"

"If a client posts a testimonial or recommendation on sites like AVVO or LinkedIn, can I copy that endorsement and put it on my website, too?"

These are questions I hear from lawyers fairly frequently. Most recently, they appeared on a lawyer's list-serve that I participate in, and they sparked quite a discussion.

Asking clients for recommendations

There are many ways that you can ask clients to recommend your work. I think the most effective approach is the simple, straightforward approach. It’s always good to strike while the iron is hot – when a client sends you a nice email or thanks you for helping them, that’s the best time to ask if they would mind writing an recommendation of you for your website or other marketing materials. 

You can also make a request for a recommendation part of your standard closing letter (or conversation) to clients. If you've done a good job for them, most clients will be happy to do so - and your work will be freshest in their minds right after their matter has been completed.

What makes an effective testimonial

Testimonials are most effective when they address common objections or misconceptions, but you can also ask clients to write something that addresses a specific aspect of your service – especially if they have already mentioned it themselves in their "thank you" note or comments to you. 

It isn’t necessary to use a client’s name in a testimonial. You can still get the point across and showcase what you do in a concrete way without breaching a client’s privacy. Ed Poll, coach and law firm management consultant, believes that client names shouldn't be used on lawyers' websites - he believes firmly that even if the client agrees to reveal their name, it sends the wrong message.

Whether you agree with Ed on that point or not, as you can see from the client success stories on Ed’s site, it doesn’t matter that the client’s name isn’t used. The stories are written in such a way that it is unlikely that they were “made up” and they contain the kinds of specifics that address the exact reasons why clients would hire someone who does what he does.

Beyond credentials

While your credentials are important and should be included in your marketing materials, the problem is that, to the layperson, many lawyers seem to have 'the same' credentials or experience. It's hard to tell lawyers with similar levels of experience and similar practice areas apart.

Sometimes, you can set yourself apart by the number of years that you have been in practice, but that alone won't cut it. Potential clients want to know more about who they will be working with or who they will be entrusting their business, their financial future or their freedom to. The writing or speaking you have done in your area of expertise can be another factor - which is why it is always good to keep developing your content and publicizing it - but again, those won't show the human side of what you do, or the day to day realities of working with you.

Even if you haven't been in practice that long or you haven't yet built up your content library and speaker credentials, the work you have done for clients can work for you.

Basic principles

This goes back to the main principles of marketing:

• What is it that convinces a client to hire you?
• What makes you stand out from others?
• How can you demonstrate your expertise and give the potential client or referral source looking at your marketing materials a concrete understanding of the specifics of what you do for clients on a daily basis?
• How can you anticipate and overcome the common objections to hiring someone in your field?
• How can you demonstrate that you understand the client's problems and that you have a solution that will work?

Cover these basics in your marketing materials - and keep them in mind when writing case studies or talking to clients about recommendations or endorsements.

Copying a client's endorsement for your website

As for the second question posed at the beginning of this article, I think it’s a great idea to use endorsements that others have already given you in multiple places. But I always think it’s best to ask them first.

Drop the client a line saying something like, “Thanks so much for the great endorsement you gave me on Avvo. I really appreciate it. Would you mind if I posted it on my website as well?” Most clients are going to say yes, but I always think it’s better to err on the side of caution.

I've written about testimonials before on two of the other sites I write for: on the Lawyeristsite, I wrote generally about client testimonials for lawyer marketing. I followed that up with a post on Slaw on what makes a good testimonial for a law firm website. Check out these posts for additional tips.

Questions from LinkedIn for Lawyers Webinar

I just finished doing a webinar with the ABA Law Practice Management section on LinkedIn for Lawyers with Michelle Golden and Dennis Kennedy. Of course, there is so much more information that we didn't have time to cover in the 90 minute program, and although we covered some of these questions during the presentation, I'm not sure that all of our particpants caught the answers, so I've decided to list some of the questions (and my resposnes) here.

Please feel free to comment and add your responses, too, since I know not everyone has the same 'take' on these questions as I do:

How can you take advantage of Linkedin as a business entity if you are a solo pracitioner or a small firm?

LinkedIn is a great tool for solos or small firms because it helps you extend your reach further and faster. Leverage your connections by seeing who they are connected to, asking them for introductions to people you want to meet, and looking at their Groups for ideas. Answer questions and join discussions within Groups to increase your expert status. Make sure your profile is complete and that it showcases your best skills and abilities. Use LinkedIn's powerful search tools to find events, industries and companies that you want to watch or connect to. Add a link to your profile on your website, email signature, blog, and other profiles on the internet for greater visibility. Build a company page for your law firm and make use of the 'services' feature to describe your practice areas and link back to practice pages on your firm's website.

What is the new Skills section, and how can it be useful in the future?  

Skills is a new feature on LinkedIn that can be included in your profile. I think this feature will be especially useful for job-seekers as a place to quickly summarize the skills and abilities that set you apart from others. For young lawyers who may be skilled in social media, you may find a firm looking for someone who can be the firm's social media presence. Perhaps you are fluent in another language - putting that in 'skills' might get you noticed.

Is there a tactful way to refuse a connection request? Do you have any guidance about people you shouldn't connect with or is it an all-comers approach? 

We didn't have a chance to discuss this much during the webinar, but I know that Michelle and I differ somewhat in our approaches. Some of it comes back to what you consider your purpose to be in participating in LinkedIn. I do not take an "all-comers" approach, because I prefer for my network to be useful to my connections. In other words, if one of my connections wants information about or an introduction to someone else in my network, I'd like to know enough about both of them to make an intelligent introduction (or have ready reasons why I wouldn't do so). 

I take two approaches to 'refusing' connections. First, if it is someone I really don't know and never heard of, I may just ignore the connection request. This is particularly true if I don't know the person and they have sent me the generic 'invitation' without personalizing it or telling me something about how they know me. Sometimes there are just too many to respond to each of them personally.

My second approach is not to accept the invitation, but to reach out to that person with a note expressing thanks for the invitation and asking them if we can connect by phone, in person or otherwise to get to know one another better before we actually connect on LinkedIn. (For more on this topic, see my post, "Who Should I Link to or Friend on Social Networking Sites")

I don't usually report an invitaiton as "spam" unless I have a very good reason to do so (and I'm not sure that has ever happened to me).

Do you recommend upgrading from the free LinkedIn service to a paid one? 

I haven't tried the paid service, so perhaps it isn't fair of me to answer this one. I know the paid service has some greater functionality as far as organizing contacts (although the new 'tags' feature does that fairly well in the free version, from what I've seen), and it allows you to see full profiles of people who are 'out of your network,' but I don't know whether that makes the paid version worthwhile. There is plenty of functionality in the free version to make it a very robust tool for most lawyers' purposes.

Is there a way to put video on a Linkedin profile?

Yes! (And it's a great way to stand out - although I haven't gotten around to doing it myself yet.) With the SlideShare application, you can add video to your LinkedIn account. You'll need a slideshare.net account (free). Create the video and upload it to YouTube and then embed the video into a SlideShare presentation, and publish the SlideShare presentation to your LinkedIn account. 

 All in all, I had a great time preparing for and putting on the webinar with Michelle and Dennis. If you're looking for more ideas about how to use social media effectively, check out Michelle's book, Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms.

[Update: Two more questions came in after we finished the webinar]---

Is it a good idea to connect LinkedIn to Facebook?

To me, this comes back to your purpose. Many people use Facebook as a more personal, social interaction and LinkedIn as more of a professional network with colleagues, clients, referral sources, etc. and cross-posting or linking the accounts may not work in that case. You will want to ask yourself whether your postings on each are appropriate for both audiences, and whether you want to have a different kind of presence on each platform.

On occasion, I do cross-post to both (using my Facebook Fan Page, rather than my personal FB profile), but I don't automatically link them.

How do you connect LinkedIn to Twitter?

Connecting your LinkedIn status updates to twitter is easy. You can add your twitter account to your profile in the space provided as you are building your profile.  In the status update box, you can check the box next to the little bird that represents Twitter to have your update go to Twitter as well. Click the little arrow to the right of that to get to your Twitter settings or to add a Twitter account. LinkedIn will lead you through the process. 

You can also connect to Twitter by going to your Account Settings in LinkedIn and clicking on Manage Twitter Settings. Those settings will also allow you to tell LinkedIn which of your tweets you want to display on LinkedIn - you can display all of your tweets on LinkedIn, or only those that are 'tagged' with a LinkedIn hashtag (#li or #in).

Just as I noted above with Facebook, you'll want to think about whether you want to simply display your twitter 'handle' on your LinkedIn profile or actually cross-post between platforms, depending on your audience and your use of each platform. Since Twitter is generally thought of as a more 'conversational' platform, simply posting status updates may not work as well on Twitter as it does on LinkedIn. And if you tend to get into conversations with others on Twitter that would be difficult to understand by reading a stand-alone tweet, you may not want to publish all of your tweets automatically to LinkedIn. 

 [Update: The program should be available by Friday afternoon, August 19 on demand here:www.ali-aba.org/rstp03]

Social Media and Reputation Management

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, when speaking with a group of lawyers about marketing on the internet, one lawyer said to me, “I’m afraid to enter into the world of social media because I think it will open the door to allow disgruntled clients or other naysayers to put bad things about me on the internet.”

My response to this is that you cannot prevent disgruntled clients or crazy people from posting negative reviews on the internet. Not participating in social media or other outlets on the internet cannot prevent this, and indeed, these kinds of bad reviews are a good reason why lawyers - particularly those in small firms or with solo practices - need to participate in social media and other online outlets.

Why?

Precisely because you cannot prevent those kinds of postings, and often once they are posted, the damage is done, even if the post is eventually taken down. But more often than not, they cannot be taken down unless the lawyer can prove that the posting is factually false – opinions are exempt. And if you don't participate, the only content about you on the internet will be controlled by others, and it is very likely that the message they put out about you will not be the message you want.

One of the only ways to counteract negative reviews or complaints is to flood the internet with positive content about you, whether that content is directly generated by you or is a result of collaboration with others online or through opportunities for clients and colleagues (where permitted by your jurisdiction’s ethical rules) to post positive comments about you and your work.

If you are not participating in social media and actively searching for information posted online about you, it will be nearly impossible for you to manage your online reputation. And the fact is that whether you participate directly or not, you do have an online reputation. Why not participate directly and make that reputation a result of your own words and actions, rather than the words and actions of others?

At the Massachusetts Super Marketing Conference last month in Boston, Conrad Saam, Director of Marketing for the lawyer rating site Avvo expressed a similar point - you cannot erase content on line. The best thing to do is to overcome it with good content that you control.

According to Saam, the worst thing you can do is make a big deal about it or "play the lawyer card" because usually that strategy blows up in your face, and the negative content "goes viral" and gets repeated over and over. Trying to suppress content on the web makes it proliferate more, and posting negative responses to negative comments on line only sends an additional negative message about you online.

 

Testimonials for Law Firms

My most recent column on Slaw appeared earlier this week, discussing what makes a good law firm testimonial. Coincidentally, on the same date, fellow consultant Ed Poll's LawBiz Tips Ezine arrived in my mailbox with an article entitled, "Testimonials Should Sell Soap, Not Lawyers."

Ed and I have had this discussion about testimonials before.The point of Ed's article (which he makes in his opening paragraph) is that Ed feels that lawyers should not use client names in testimonials, but I'm not sure that he believes that lawyers should stay away from testimonials entirely.

As Ed himself will tell you, he believes strongly in client confidentiality and believes that testimonials should not contain client names even where the client consents, because it dilutes the privilege and commoditizes lawyers. But there is no getting around the fact that a lot of lawyers get business through "word of mouth" or referrals.

What if a prospective client doesn't know anyone who has used a lawyer, or if their legal matter is too sensitive to discuss with someone else, so they do not want to ask for a referral? The fact is that testimonials - in the form of stories from real clients who have had an experience with a lawyer or law firm - can make a huge difference in getting a prospective client to take the next step and contact your firm.

As I point out in my post on Slaw about what makes a good lawyer testimonial, what is important isn't necessarily the name of the client - it's the story that they tell about their experience with your firm. Even anonymous testimonials can have a big impact. So if you're in Ed's camp and you believe that a testimonial which is attributed to a client by name is a bad idea, don't toss out the idea of testimonials entirely.

Does your firm use testimonials in your marketing? Have they been successful? Why or why not?

(For more about lawyer testimonials, see my recent post on Lawyerist, Effective Testimonials for Lawyer Marketing).