The Value of Social Media

Besides being fun for me, this blog has a very definite business purpose. It is a marketing tool intended to advertise my family law practice. It is a social media tool. Now I can give you more first hand proof that social media channels, including blogs like this, work.

My friend (and often quoted practice management expert) Lee Rosen is huge into social media. Just for twitter he has more than 17,000 followers. A couple of days ago he mentioned this Family Law Lawyer Tech & Practice blog in a twitter post he sent out. Here is Lee's tweet:

Three #lawyers you should be paying attention to: @johnharding, @visalawyerblog, & @HFamilyLaw - here's why: http://t.co/Xaoa6HWXt0
— Lee Rosen (@LeeRosen) December 2, 2014

Does not look like much, does it? But boy did it work! With one click of his mouse Lee advertised this blog to more than 17,000 people! Then, BOOM, 120 people clicked on the tweet and visited this blog.  That's 120 strangers learning about me. That is great traffic! It has continued for two days now, and more than 200 people have clicked through.  Just as exciting, a high percentage of those visitors then clicked through to the website for Harding & Associates Family Law! That's the magic of social media folks.  I didn't even do anything and I got to introduce myself and my law practice to hundreds of new people. People who can hire me, people who can refer to me, people who can think about me.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

#twitter #socialmedia #Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Marketing Automation

As a group we lawyers are growing into the idea of social marketing. LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, blogging are all options that we are dabbling in. Some of us check in everyday.  Others go months at a time with no interactions.  What should we be doing?

The first step is planning.  The second step is implementation. The combined exercise is called marketing automation.  You can do it yourself, or you can let others do it for you.

There are technologies and companies that will do the work for you. Custom software solutions exist, as well as entire companies created to step into your marketing shoes for you. There are writers that will create content, and technologies that will disseminate your marketing across the many platforms that exist.

Wendy Coombes is a marketing consultant with an expertise in technology.  According to Wendy, if you are to successfully employ technology based marketing  in this day and age you must cast a wide net, and you must plan, plan, plan.  When done properly marketing technology enables business to execute campaigns, automate processes, and measure their impact. Over at Duct Tape Marketing Wendy posts a great article on her methods for marketing automation. Click here to read Wendy's original article.

As for letting someone else do the work for you, there are all kinds of pay-to-play providers ready and willing to go to work for you.


© 2011 Capterra, Inc.

Admittedly some of these solutions may be a bit too grandiose, and too expensive, for the average family law law firm.  There are more modest alternatives.

If you want to do something as simple as creating a blog, you can pay others to do that for you.  Lex Blog will be happy to do ALL of the work for you.  Alternatively there are hundred (nay thousands) of independent writers out there will to provide their services for hire.  Check out BlogMutt, Blur Group, or oDesk.

Then again, you can do it yourself (I do!).  As Wendy advises, make sure you have a plan.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law 

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Massive Password Hack

Yet another massive password hack has befallen the social media world.  More than 2,000,000 user passwords were stolen from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Google.  The huge hack was the product of a virus attacking the sites for the last several months.  More details are provided in a very informative article from CNN.

The obvious response is that you, me, and everyone else should be changing our passwords for all sites.  Have fun!

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Social Media Ain't Easy

I am on the website committee for a lawyer organization that I belong to.  The organization is redesigning its website.  The membership of the organization is comprised, for the most part, of lawyers who have been practicing a long time.  Translated that means they are not in their twenties, and social media is very new and bewildering to them.

This web site committee had a meeting recently to review the rough draft, live website.  Prominently displayed up in the right hand corner of the new design were the one-click buttons for Google+ LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  All the committee members liked how the buttons looked.  However, things got a bit complicated once the question was asked:  "who is going to post the content to the social media pages?"

"Post content?"  "What do you mean?  "I thought stuff just appeared about us when we put the buttons on our website?"  It became very clear in short order that no one on the committee had the foggiest idea what LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter did.  A dialogue ensued by which it was explained that clicking on the social media buttons allowed the visitors to subscribe to, and/or visit the organization's LinkedIn page, or the organization's Facebook page, or the organization's twitter page. However, no one was aware that unless you had someone writing articles, and posting content to each of those pages there would not be anything for the visitor to see on her visit, and nothing to receive through her subscription.

Another very good question that was asked was:  "why do we need a Google Plus page if we already have a website?

Here is what you need to know my friends:  Goggle+ pages, and LinkedIn accounts, and Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are nothing more than blank billboards.  If you want your message to get out, the first thing you have to do is write your message.  Then you have to post your message to your social media page.  Then you have to create and post a new message.  And then another one.  And then another.  And so on, and so on.  You want a Facebook page or a Goggle Plus page in addition to a website to get your message out to a broader audience.  Just like you might have a billboard downtown, and one in the suburbs, or a Yellow Pages ad in the Chicago phone book and a second ad in the Joliet phone book.  A website, and a social media sight increase your audience; increase your exposure to search engines, and act as a cross-pollinators for your internet presence.  People viewing your website then click over to your LinkedIn page, and people viewing your LinkedIn page then click over to your website, etc., etc.

Nothing comes easy though and social media is no exception.  The ultimate goal of social media for lawyers is to draw attention to yourself and your law practice, so that people will hire you to be their lawyer.  This happens through people subscribing to your social media site so that your freshly posted content is sent directly to them.  It also happens when the search engines perceive that your social media account has been updated with fresh content so that you move up higher in the search engine rankings.

Take a look at this post.  It is filled with words, and it has a picture.  It took time to write this article.  When I clicked on the publish button in my blog software this article was posted on my blog.  A summary of the article, along with the picture were simultaneously posted to my Google+ page, my Facebook page, my Twitter page, and my LinkedIn page.  The people who are subscribers to this blog automatically received a copy of this article in their email inbox.  Because there are a bunch of words in this post, and a picture, it will draw the attention of Google and Yahoo.  When someone does a Google search of, for example, "social media for lawyers," all of those word are in this article, Google will do the math, and it could then very will post a link to this article in response to that search.  In a few days I will generate a report to see how many people read this article.  It will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 people.  200 people might read this article!  That means 200 people will be thinking about me because I am the author of this article.  200 people will read the name John Harding.  200 people will read the name Harding & Associates Family Law.  200 people will have the opportunity to click on the link to my website that appears at the bottom of this story.  Guess what?  About 75 to 100 people actually will click on that link to my website.  There they will read all about me and my family law practice.  That increased traffic on my website is also something that stimulates the search engines and helps my website pop up in Google when some searches for a divorce lawyer!

For the more senior set or readers out there, let me draw an analogy for you.  75 to 100 people will have opened up the Yellow Pages and studied my ad, and thought about hiring me as their family law lawyer.  That's pretty good!  But it took some effort on my part.  I had to come up with an idea to write about, and then I had to spend about 15 minutes doing the writing.  Not a lot of time, but I did have to make the effort.  And that is the key to social media.  You get out of it what you put in to it.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers #socialmedia #twitter #facebook

Social Media: What Is It Doing For Me?

Social media can be hard to track as a marketing tool for your practice.  Here is what I know. . .

I am actively engaged with LinkedIn; and am frequently asked to comment about my experiences.  Here is what I can say.

In the three or four years that I have been actively engaging with LinkedIn I have landed two paying clients solely from LinkedIn.  That is clients that found me first, foremost, solely, and directly through my LinkedIn profile. Not overwhelming, but better than nothing.

What I am more impressed with is the traffic that LinkedIn directs to my website.  I am able to review statistics for my website, and at present we are getting one to two viewers per day directly from LinkedIn.  That may seem like a small number, but it really is not a bad return on a free investment.  As a comparison, my Facebook posts do not even average one viewer per week clicking through to our website.

My social media observation?  LinkedIn works modestly.  Facebook, not so much.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information about Harding & Associates Family Law

#Harding&AssociatesFamilyLaw #californiafamilylaw #divorce #family law #superlawyers #americanacademyofmatrimoniallawyers #Pleasantondivorce #AlamedaCountyDivorce #ContraCostaCountyDivorce #lawyers

Proof That Twitter Does Not Work For Marketing

Mark Herrmann writes the Inside Straight column at the Above The Law blog. He posed this question: "As measured by my readership numbers, do more tweets yield more page views?" His conclusion: No.

In his column he ran three articles as samples. Each article generated more than 12,000 page views via the blog. He then tweeted about each article. The results:

Three people tweeted about the first article. Zero people tweeted about the second article. Twelve people tweeted about the third article.

His conclusion: twitter is not driving traffic his way. Please click here to view Mark's original article.

Now of course the twitterati will say statistics mean nothing, traffic means nothing. That twitter must considered but one component of your overall social networking model. Yea, yea, yea... To that I say: Tweeting takes time. Every marketing activity can be measured. If the activity does not produce a measurable result on its own, it isn't worth the time. And I don't give a hoot of credibility to the idea of looking at the bigger picture. That argument does not hold water. If it works at all, it works as a standalone. If there is no measurable return as a stand alone, then it does not work as a component of a bigger social networking plan (let us not forget the old days of Yellow Pages where the sales people always said buying a bigger, more expensive ad will produce the results you are not getting from your current ad).

My opinion: Tweet for fun, but don't invest a significant amount of time tweeting for business.

Please visit hardinglaw.com for more information of Harding & Associates Family Law

Twitter Use/Growth Down

I am an unabashed pundit when it comes to relying on twitter as an actual business tool. I relish mentioning twitter with less than absolute frenzied adoration just because I am thrilled by the foamy, vitriolic, crazed responses twitter criticisms draw from the twitter jihad (anyone remember the savage attacks upon Larry Bodine when he dared to question the relevancy of twitter as a marketing tool?). Here is my hard data supporting my case.

Hubspot.com has just released its 2010 State of the Twittersphere report. The report indicates that twitter growth has fallen from a high of 13% in March of 2009 to 3.5% in October, 2009. In all due fairness, the report also indicates that those people still on board with twitter are amplifying their use of the technology. In summary, fewer people are using twitter; but those who do use it are using it more aggressively.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the report. I'm just reporting the findings.

Now, let the whining from the twitter community begin!

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

How Can Lawyers Use Twitter

In my mind the jury is still OUT on twitter. Sure there are many who have taken big chugs of the twitter kool-aid and proclaimed there lives to the technology. I am not one of them, yet. I do reserve the right to change my mind, but right here, right now, I am not there and neither is twitter. Jim Calloway is the the Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association's Management Assistance Program. He also publishes the Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog. Jim recently wrote an in depth article on twitter. His answer to the question "Can a Lawyer Really Use Twitter to Market a Law Practice?" is a definite maybe. Here is what Jim has to say:

Some of you may think you have no interest whatsoever in Twitter. But if you read through this entire article, you will learn of several ways to use Twitter, even without registering for the service and you will also have my answer to the question in the title.

Can a lawyer use Twitter to market a law practice? This simple-sounding question has generated a bit of controversy which seems to have heated up recently as notable lawyer marketing consultants Larry Bodine (www.lawmarketing.com) and Kevin O’Keefe (www.lexblog.com) took opposing positions in various online forums, with Bodine being anti and O’Keefe being pro.

Twitter is a quite interesting phenomenon. By now, most everyone has heard of it. Over 7 million people have registered Twitter accounts. And the phrase “follow me on Twitter” is now more likely to be heard from TV personalities and celebrities than early technology adopters. A Twitter posting is called a tweet. Twitter is an interesting writing exercise for lawyers as the tweets are limited to 140 characters.

Late night comedians have lampooned Twitter. Recently I was in a room where a respected lawyer unleashed a tirade about Twitter and the egotistical nature of its users messaging about where they ate and other trivia. He didn’t know, of course, that several of the lawyers in the room did use Twitter.

So what’s the truth about Twitter? Is it a great technology advance or an utter waste of time? And, more importantly, can a lawyer use Twitter to market the lawyer’s practice?

To really examine this concept you have to look very briefly at the nature of online information today. Just because Twitter appears to be one of the hottest things right now does not mean it is the best for everyone.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently broadcast an episode of the Kalb Report on the state of American journalism. Panelists included the chiefs of the Associated Press and CNN, among others. One of the topics covered was the challenge presented to newspapers and other traditional media by the Internet.

As many of you know, the rise of blogs, personal Web sites and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been referred to as citizen journalism. Today’s Internet tools allow anyone with the time and inclination to create the online equivalent of a newspaper, radio station, wire service or video broadcast service. This is referred to the democratization of the Internet. Gaining an audience is, of course, another matter.

President of CNN Jonathan Klein may have made a larger point than he intended on the Kalb Report when he said:

“The world is changing. There are many other ways evolving for humans to commit journalism. You know, journalism, it's not really a profession, it's an obsession, you know? It's not really an occupation; it’s a preoccupation for people who want [to do it.]” kalb.gwu.edu/2009/0323/transcript.pdf.

So the question is not whether one can build awareness of practice areas or market one’s law practice through Twitter or other social media. The answer to that question is an obvious “yes,” in my opinion. The real question is whether the individual lawyer or law firm has the inclination, time, talent, writing ability and understanding to open an outpost on the frontier of citizen journalism and to support it once it has been opened.

Let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion that a media source, even a modest small citizen’s journalist outpost needs more than “once a month” posting of content.

So what’s your public information output currently? By that I mean information someone outside of the law firm might read. Many small law firms would truthfully have to answer that question with an answer of one (or less) press release, article or speech per month. My opinion is that if you do not already have new content that you are generating at least a few times per month, it is difficult to see how a law firm would gain any value from opening up a new social media outlet even though it is certainly true that having the outlet would encourage one to produce more content.

This does not mean the once (or twice) a month content producer is precluded from online marketing activities—quite the contrary. A new feature added each month to a “traditional” small law firm Web site or a blog can build great value over time and would put the small firm lawyer among the elites in online marketing compared with the online presence of many other small law firms. Many law firms are likely better served by a traditional law firm Web site or blog for online marketing at the present time than leaping into Twitter or Facebook.

Do not take this statement the wrong way. Using social media can be great fun and even somewhat addictive. If you enjoy it, by all means use it. It could be great if your hobby generated a little business for you.

It should also be noted that the issues are very different when applied to large law firms as opposed to solo or small firm lawyers. Even a 30-lawyer firm will likely have some lawyer or staff person with the ability and inclination to become a social media conduit and even if each of the 30 lawyers only produces “publishable” content three or four times per year, that aggregates to a lot of content. And, of course, if a law firm is large enough to have a marketing/communications/PR department; those staffers will be looking at communicating through all forms of social media.

Twitter is certainly hot. We hear about it all the time. There are several ways to “consume” information from Twitter. Most with an interest have a Twitter account. They follow those other Twitter users with content that interests them. (Subscribing to receive the content of another is called “following.”) One could follow only those you know personally. One could follow celebrities. One could follow news outlets or particular journalists. One could follow only those who tweet about your favorite sports team. One could register with Twitter and never post a single tweet, but just use it to read what others have posted. You can learn more background information about Twitter by reading a pair of articles we published on our Oklahoma Bar Association Web site earlier this year at www.okbar.org/news/onlineexclusives/twitter.htm.

If you do post tweets, then people will follow you so that they can read all of your tweets. I tweet primarily about law office management and technology issues.

You can follow me if you like. I am @jimcalloway

But you can also use Twitter without ever registering with the service because, by default, Twitter content is published to the Internet.

So in your web browser, @jimcalloway can be found at twitter.com/jimcalloway.
The Oklahoma Bar Twitter feed, @OklahomaBar, is found at twitter.com/oklahomabar.
OBA Continuing Legal Education’s Twitter feed, @obacle, is twitter.com/obacle.

But that’s not the only way one can use Twitter. Earlier this year, the Twitter home page, twitter.com, was changed to make it look a lot more like Google and other search engines. It has a search box and displays the most popular topics of the last week, day and minute. You can click on a popular topic to read the most recent tweets or you can search through what the millions of Twitter users are posting about right now. Tom Mighell, @TomMighell, gave a good example of how that would be useful when he spoke at the OBA Technology Fair. His Gmail account wasn’t working and he wondered if it was system-wide or just something with his account. He did a search on Twitter for Gmail, found many recent complaints and new ones being posted every second and knew it wasn’t just him. As opposed to Google or Bing, Twitter search is more about what is popular right now than links to comprehensive or authoritative information.

Certainly a lot of what is tweeted to Twitter is nonsense or of interest only to one’s close friends.

Lawyers who wished to promote their law practices via Twitter would be best advised to tweet about something related to their law practices and profession, in my view. Others would disagree. Certainly a lawyer who loved archery and tweeted about it frequently, mentioning he or she was a lawyer only infrequently, could pick up some legal business or referrals from other archery enthusiasts who use Twitter. But that’s not really using Twitter as a law marketing tool. That’s enjoying Twitter and picking up some business as a result just like one might do from coaching little league or participating in a civic organization.

My view is that you are not likely going to convince anyone to hire your law firm tweeting every mundane detail of your life. And those who follow you may soon un-follow you.

I know there are many ways to market, but here’s one concept of how a small firm lawyer could use Twitter to market his or her practice.

1. Set up a Twitter account using either your name or your law firm name, possibly with the word law included. Post your picture and a link to your law firm Web site on your profile. Twitter accounts are personal and you need a picture.

2. After you have posted several tweets, send an e-mail out to your tech-savvy friends announcing that you are on Twitter and giving them the web address, e.g., twitter.com/myfirm. Those already using Twitter will understand they can follow you at @myfirm. Those who don’t use Twitter can click on the link.

3. Do some searches in Twitter to see those who you might want to follow. When you find them and follow them, also look to see who they are following and who might be following them for more prospects for you to follow.

4. Try to tweet at least weekly, but no more than 4 or 5 times a day. (The Twitter evangelists have given me grief over this expressed opinion before and others are free to use a different business method. To me, there’s a great danger for a practicing lawyer to give the appearance on Twitter that they are not all that busy and have lots of free time to tweet.)

5. Follow almost everyone that follows you. (Many people view this as a hard and fast rule of Twitter etiquette. I do not and I do not do that personally right now. But for this business model, I believe it makes sense.)

6. Check your followers every now and then and block the few with inappropriate profile pictures or other salacious content.

7. Be very, very, very careful not to violate attorney-client privilege or your client’s privacy with tweets. Don’t post negative things about opposing counsel or judges. You will regret it later.

What do you tweet about? News relating to your community, your practice areas and the legal professional in general. The people I follow on Twitter are those who provide me links to great articles online that I might otherwise have missed. To me, the best thing about Twitter is the fact that it provides me with a large group of friends, professional acquaintances, some total strangers and some technology superstars who all voluntarily serve as a clipping service for me with links to news articles, blog posts, product launches and more. They also toss in their own unique and personal content.

But the main thing to remember is that Twitter is a tool. There is more than one way to use a tool. If you have fun following everyone’s comments about your favorite sports teams and never post a tweet, that is great, and if you build a national practice representing archery enthusiasts, that’s great, too.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal Oct. 10, 2009 - Vol. 80; No. 26. Please click here for the original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Channeling Your Social Networking Energy

Social networking continues to be the latest "it" in legal marketing. But where to turn? Networking sites are popping up like daisies in spring time. Larry Bodine offers his thoughts on law.com. In a nutshell: LinkedIn is in, twitter is out.

You could hear the collective groan when Twitter made the cover of Time magazine and marketers realized that they had to become familiar with yet another online medium. There's Facebook, MySpace, Naymz, Spoke, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Martindale Connected, Legal OnRamp, JD Supra and listservs, to name a few online social networks. It seems overwhelming.

The good news is that marketers and lawyers can ignore most of them, concentrate on a single online network, experiment with one or two others, and turn their efforts into new clients, new files and new billable work. Another big plus is that all the online networks are free.

WHY BOTHER?

There is a huge conversation taking place online that works for business development purposes. In fact, more people are conversing on online "member communities" than via e-mail (according to Nielsen Online, Global Index, 2008)! Fifty-nine percent of lawyers have joined an online social network -- and here's the good part -- so have 48 percent of in-house counsel, according to Leader Networks, 2008.

This is the result of a sea change in the U.S. population. The techno-reluctant Baby Boomers are no longer the largest generation in history -- they account for only 23 percent of the population. The biggest generation today is variously called the "Net Generation, Millennials or Gen X," and they account for 27 percent of the population. They grew up with the Web, cell phones, texting and online social networks. These people are making corporate purchasing decisions and are junior partners at law firms. Therefore, law firms need to be online to reach these people.

Caveat: Online networking is no substitute for face-to-face business development meetings. An online presence will make it easy to contact you, showcase your knowledge, help meet potential clients and generate leads. But the goal of online networking is to meet with a contact in person.

SO WHERE DO I START?

• Begin by eliminating the time-wasters -- and in my opinion, the primary example is Twitter. Consider this. A new study by Pear Analytics found that: 40 percent of the tweets on Twitter were "total pointless babble."

• 10 percent of Twitter users account for over 90 percent of tweets, according to Harvard Business School.

• Among people with a Twitter account, 60 percent drop out after one month and never come back, according to Neilsen Wire.

• 55 percent have never posted a tweet, according to HubSpot.com.

Twitter is useful as a supplemental marketing tool -- if you issue a press release or update your Web site or blog, you can use the 140-character limit to send out the headline and URL. It's also useful to monitor your own name and firm name. Tweetbeep.com will do this for you for free. You never can tell what someone will say about your firm or yourself online.

You can also forget about MySpace, which has been losing users for some time now. As for Naymz, Spoke and Plaxo, none of them get enough traffic to be worth your time.

Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla with 200 million users. For law firms, it is useful as a recruiting source. Firms like Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle have create firm profiles for young lawyers, because many of them have Facebook accounts. Caveat: If you have a personal Facebook account, don't put anything online that you don't want clients to see. Also be aware that anyone can write anything on your wall, or post a picture on their own account showing you in an embarrassing way.

LINKEDIN: THE PLACE TO DEVOTE YOUR EFFORTS

Some 840,000 lawyers have profiles on LinkedIn, according to Stemlegal.com. LinkedIn is business-oriented, and has become the de facto online directory for looking up more than 40 million professionals of all kinds. Homework: your assignment after you finish this article is to create a full-fledged profile with a picture on LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn? In comparison, Facebook is for staying in touch with people you used to know. LinkedIn is for connecting with clients and referral sources, and getting in touch with new people you'd like to meet. Having a profile is the starting point. Thereafter your must use LinkedIn to generate new business:

• Seek recommendations. When your client is delighted with the outcome of a case or completion of a deal, at that moment, ask him or her to visit your profile and make a recommendation. This is a testimonial, which is very powerful marketing. Join a Group. This is where the action happens on LinkedIn. You can find a group for your practice area, an association you belong to, or an industry where you would like more clients.

• Start a Discussion. Every group has online discussions, giving you a chance to demonstrate your expertise. Pick a hot topic of the day and ask for opinions. By starting a discussion, you are positioning yourself as a leader.

• Make a Comment. LinkedIn will e-mail you a current list of discussions underway. This is your chance to chime in an offer a comment. Caveat: Don't give a legal opinion, or you'll attract unintended client relationships, and do not express a legal opinion, which may conflict with a position your firm is taking in a brief for a client. Also avoid personal attacks that could be viewed as defamatory falsehoods. Simply stick to facts -- news, new opinions, new regulations and new accomplishments -- and you'll be ethically OK.

• Ask a Question. Go to the "Answers" section and you'll see a box where you can ask a question or make a statement. You can select who among your contacts you want the message to go to.

• Build up your Connections. Whenever you speak to a client, referral source, prospect or news person, get their e-mail address and invite them to connect to you.

FOUR OTHERS

Once you have a fully complete LinkedIn profile, are actually using the account in groups and comments, and have a full schedule of in-person business development meetings scheduled, there are some other networks to consider.

JDSupra was launched in 2007 and it lets you market the old-fashioned way: with your work-product. You can upload briefs, court opinions, forms and articles, which will allow you to create a profile. In-house lawyers and potential clients can search JDSupra for free; when they find your document, they will click to see your profile and potentially call you. You can tag a brand new ruling or alert as a "hot doc," designed for the media to notice it.

LawMarketing Listserv was founded in 1996 and is the original e-mail discussion group devoted to law firm marketing. There is an annual fee, and as a result it attracts an elite membership of marketers and attorneys. The members discuss strategy, tactics, quick questions, and product opinions, as displayed by the TV set on the site. Members get invitations from editors to write articles, offers to review books which they get to keep, and the first notice of job openings. (Full disclosure: I operate it.)

Martindale-Hubbell Connected launched on April 1 and gained more than 12,000 members in four months. What's nice is that all the members are lawyers (and some in-house marketers) and that every member is authenticated. (On Twitter and Facebook anyone can pick a name, including yours, and open an account.) Any lawyer can join Connected, regardless of whether you have a Martindale-Hubbell listing.

Legal OnRamp is an online social network for GCs and in-house lawyers. Lawyers in private practice can visit the site and request an invitation to join. It's a site of potential clients, where GCs can ask questions, search lawyer profiles and share best practices. There are groups, discussion boards, search function, and access to Lex Mundi and Eversheds surveys. Interestingly, corporations are inviting lawyers to seek work from them by using Legal OnRamp. For example, FMC Technologies, an oilfield equipment company based in Houston, put a two-page questionnaire on the site, inviting tech-savvy firms that were open to alternative billing to apply. More than 30 law firms, some as small as seven lawyers, are being considered. None of these firms had done a stitch of work with FMC before.

CONCLUSION

Always remember that online networking is fruitless unless it results in a face-to-face meeting. Online social networking will vastly extend your reach for new-business opportunities. You may have a bunch of online buddies, but you are merely an e-mail address to them until you meet in person.

Please click here for the original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Word of Mouth is a Much Stronger Influencer Than Social Networking

Thanks to Larry Bodine at the Law Marketing Blog for sharing this article.

Stephanie Molnar, CEO of WorkPlace Media, says "When it comes to influencing brand perception and purchase decisions... social networking... has a long way to go."

A recent Harris poll also supported this assertion, says the report, showing that word of mouth is a much stronger influencer than social networking. When a group of adults were asked about their information-gathering process for the most recent purchase they made,

• 21% of Harris poll respondents cited "face-to-face with a person not associated with the company, such as a family member, business colleague or friend."
• 12% cited a phone call with someone similar
• 4% mentioned using "public online social-networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace"
• 4% mentioned "private social networking sites, such as customer communities"

According to additional findings from the WorkPlace Media survey, Facebook was the clear winner in terms of users:

• 89% of respondents reported having a Facebook account
• 40% MySpace
• 31% LinkedIn
• 18% Twitter

A study, recently released by WorkPlace Media, outlines some of the hurdles facing major brands as they attempt to harness the worlds of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, to create an impact with consumers.The study, which polled office Internet users, found that 55% maintained at least one social networking account. However, of those respondents, only 43% reported accessing their social networking accounts at work, and even for those with access, 78% reported spending less than 30 minutes per day on their site(s).

The overall impact of a brand's presence on social networking sites was shown to be minimal in terms of impact and perception. 96% of respondents said their opinion of a product brand did not change if that brand had no presence on a social networking site, and only 11% of social networking users reported following any major brand through a social networking site, and just 12% of respondents said their opinion of a brand changes if that brand maintains a social networking presence.

Please click here for the original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

More Flutter on Twitter

OK folks, here we go again. I am going to ask the question, "what is all the fuss about twitter?" I still am not sold on idea that we all must tweet or our professional practices will die. This is the same mantra that I heard from Yellow Pages sales people for years. Are we sure twitter is not just another online toy?

For those of you who follow this blog with any regularity, you know that I am a big fan of Duct Tape Marketing boss John Jantsch. In an article posted on his blog John makes some hard observations about the real value of twitter.

Today I’m going to take on a topic that may not be altogether popular in some social media circles, but it’s a message that small business owners need to wrestle with.

Like me, you are probably sick of hearing about twitter like it’s the next coming of Sidd Finch. Social media experts will have you believe that if your business is not on twitter for hours each day, then you don’t exist.

Here’s my take, I use twitter to meet a handful of objectives, I try to write about it in practical ways, I enjoy some of the interaction, get some nice insights, get decent return on the time I spend, but it’s not for everyone, not right now at least, and here’s why.

While the odd restaurant or coffee shop may be grabbing some headlines because of their tweeting strategy, most small businesses have far greater pressing foundational needs when it comes to the limited time and resources they can allocate to marketing.

Do not bother with twitter or Facebook or any other social networking tools right now unless:

* You have perfected a simple point of differentiation that a narrow market truly values and gets
* You have a killer white paper that clearly demonstrates your 7 steps to blah, blah, blah expertise
* You have built relationships with 5 journalists that routinely call you for quotes and tips
* You are presenting workshops, seminars and web conferences based on white paper above
* You have a roster of strategic partners that you automatically refer and who refer you
* Your web site/blog is chock full of education based content, articles and tutorials
* You have a fully scripted/automated lead conversion process that you can measure
* You have a marketing action plan and action step calendar that is focused on marketing objectives

I know the fun is in the new thing of the moment, but spending your precious time on something like twitter is likely a giant waste of time for your business if you have not build the foundation that can tap social networks as outposts for your marketing hub.

Now, to some this message may actually be refreshing, so let me throw a little cold water. I am not saying that social networks are on their own waste of time as an essential marketing activity, far from it. My real message is that social networks, including twitter are growing in importance for small business, but hold little value to the business that has not built a strong marketing foundation.

This message gets confused when people see social media gurus, some with thousands of followers and nothing but time on their hands to tweet all day, stand up and condemn those not yet in the twitter fold as somehow strangely out of touch. Here’s your test - follow the tweets and see if you find any cattle before you succumb to this line of thinking. Some of the largest advocates of social media have no real foundation, no return on their tweets, and little business, other than the occasional speaking gig at a social media lovefest - and that should be your warning to keep your eye on the real prize - your business objectives.

Please click here for John's original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Colliding Channel Marketing

I am a big fan of John Jantsch. Below is his article on colliding channel marketing. What is it? It is the cumulative effect of blogs, twitter, and everything else we do. John get it, and he explains it! The graphic really brings home the message. All by itself a twitter presence, or a blog may not provide a return that you can sink your teeth into. By the cumulative benefit does! Here is what John has to say.

Smart marketers are plunging headlong into social media and extending their brands and ecosystems to boldly go where no brand has ever gone before. The digital landscape is exciting, it’s where the buzz seems to be, but the true catalyst of growth and change, I believe resides in the place where your digital and analog worlds collide.

In other words, when you can build a network by conversing with seemingly like minded individuals on your blog and then turn one or more of those individuals into strategic alliances built on a burgeoning relationship of truse, and finally, get a chance to introduce that person to a good customer over lunch, well that’s what I call the ultimate cross channel experience.

To me, twitter is not simply another extended world to manage, it’s an opportunity to initiate community based on ideas instead of geography or industry and then potentially explore ways to move members of that community into other exciting and profitable relationships.

I had a brief conversation on this subject over the weekend with David Armano, author of a great blog called Logic+Emotion. David creates incredibly effective illustrations of ideas and concepts. Visual thinkers will love his work. - Spend some time with this set of illustrations.

What I’m really talking about here of course is integration of marketing messages, campaigns, opportunities and channels, but I think the ability to do this in planned, impactful, and scalable ways has increased dramatically through the addition of social media. But, not to the total exclusion of the conference, chamber social or MeetUp.

Bottom line: we need to think intentionally about the ways to use online to create richer offline opportunities.

Click here for his original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

New Tool For Twitter

Found a neat new twitter tool today. Twitter Karma logs into your twitter account and then shows thumbnails of all the people that your are following, or that are following you. And all on one page. Quite handy to remind you of all your twitter friends.

Check it out for yourself by clicking here.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

A Great Guide For Using Twitter

So I am still on the fence regarding twitter, the tool that is taking the social networking world by storm. Perhaps my lingering reticence is a product of my low comfort level with the twitter technology. In other words, I may not know what I am doing? "Gasp!" Well that is about to end. Derek Halpern is coming to my rescue. The publisher of Prevential.com, Derek has posted the entirety of his twitter e-book on his site. Actually it is a collection of Twitter articles and resources that Derek has compiled onto one site filled with hyperlinks. Technically it isn't a traditional e-book, but it is a great Twitter resource!

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource is packed with practical, technical, and over the top tips for Twitter users. I am going to find the time to read through it.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Law blogs more important with advent of Twitter

From Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Kevin O'Keefe give us more inspiration to keep working on our blogs, and to integrate our efforts into twitter for valuable marketing returns.

I'm often asked with the advent of Twitter does it mean law blogs are less important. (Most recently this morning on Twitter and then at a law firm presentation this afternoon) It's just the opposite.

Twitter makes blogging as a lawyer more important than ever. In addition, the ROI to a lawyer who's blogging is even greater with the growth of Twitter.

Why? Social media in action.

Social media just means passing on news and information to friends via the various Internet mediums we have today. The hottest and fastest growing form of social media is Twitter.

Millions of people a day share links to news and information they've read. With the decline in main stream media and the rise in niche focused blogs, it's safe to say the majority of the links being shared on Twitter are to blog posts.

And we're not dealing with a random group of people tweeting and receiving news and links on Twitter. We're dealing with communities of people with similar interests.

These communities without gates and walls flourish with people with like interests following each other on Twitter. In addition, people following an RSS feed of a search at search.twitter.com follow topics being discussed by communities on Twitter.

If I'm an environmental engineer, there's going to be a lot of people I am following on Twitter and who are in turn following me that have an interest in environmental matters. When links and info are tweeted and re-tweeted within this environmental community on Twitter they're reaching a network I'd kill to reach if I am an environmental lawyer. I'd love to get to know people in this community and for community members to get know me as reliable and trusted authority on environmental law matters.

With a niche law blog, people tweet about the insight and commentary you offer on your law blog. Your insight reaches the hundreds or thousands of people who follow you on Twitter and the thousands of people who receive a link to your post when it is re-tweeted by some of your followers.

Without a blog, what are people going to tweet about you? That you're a great guy. I don't think so. Sure you can Tweet about things of interest and people may re-tweet it. But that's nothing compared to people sharing your blog content on Twitter.

And without a blog, what do people see for your profile link at Twitter? Your law firm website profile? Boring and typical. Your LinkedIn profile? Better, but no where near the 360 degree view one gets of your passion, skill, expertise, and philosophy on legal issues of concern to them when they see your blog.

In addition, the ROI from blogging is up big time with Twitter. Though ranking at the top of Google searches for what I do and the services LexBlog offers, Twitter is the leading source of traffic to my blog. And since using Twitter the traffic to my blog is up by 20 to 30%. With my blog the leading source of work for LexBlog, Twitter has increased my returns dramatically.

Blogging and Twitter are both part of social media, the concept of sharing insight and commentary on things we read and see. For lawyers looking to enhance their reputation as an authority they work very nicely together.

Click here for Kevin's article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

LexBlog to Host Webinars on Social Networking, Blogging, and RSS

LexBlog's announces monthly Client Webinar Series.

The topics covered in this Webinar include:

Social Networking sites

* What value do they hold for business professionals/attorneys?
* How can they be used as a business development/marketing tool?
* Which social networking sites are worthwhile, and which are lame?
* What are some etiquette tips on professional social networking?

Twitter

* What is Twitter (in plain English)?
* How is Twitter being used by attorneys and other industry leaders today?
* Who are some of the "big guns" in the legal industry using Twitter, and what are some examples of how they use it?

The webinars will be hosted by LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, Client Services Director Stacey Merrick, Project Manager Rob La Gatta and Editorial Manager Lisa Kennelly.

Click here to go to the registration page. On the registration page, enter the word seattle when prompted for a password. If you cannot attend, a recording with the audio and screencast will be available after it's finished at the LexBlog Support Center.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Formerly Skeptical Lawyers Now Use Twitter in Interesting Ways

From LawyerCasting.com, more info on twitter:

Last month, we looked at some of the ways that attorneys can use Twitter. As follow up, let's consider a few examples of how lawyers are actually using this micro-blogging tool.

This article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer features four lawyers who use Twitter extensively. All were initially skeptical about using Twitter when they first heard of it, but became sold on its benefits after using it for a while.

* Wayne Serra, a partner at the Cleveland, OH firm of Ulmer & Berne, practices patent law. Serra calls Twitter a "very powerful tool" and uses it to network with other patent lawyers and information technology professionals. He has "tweeted" (posted short updates on Twitter) about court cases involving patents, new computer technology, new interpretations of the law of intellectual property, and developments at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

* Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer, writer, and technology consultant based in Boston, had doubted whether Twitter could be useful because of the service's "high noise ratio." Ambrogi now calls Twitter a "virtual watercooler," and says it helps him monitor the big topics that lawyers are discussing. He explained that attorneys can read Twitter to monitor what people are saying about them, their firms, their clients, or a particular business. Ambrogi also noted lawyers can use Twitter to build their professional brands by placing their name repeatedly in front of potential clients.

* Scott Greenfield, a New York criminal defense attorney and publisher of the Simple Justice blog, also admits to initial reluctance toward using Twitter. Although he's somewhat disappointed because he has observed that the increased use of Twitter has coincided with a decrease in thoughtful conversation on law blogs, Greenfield "tweets" because he finds many of his blawgging friends are now spending more time on Twitter and less on blogging. Simply put, Greenfield uses Twitter because it is now "incredibly mainstream for lawyers" and he doesn't want to miss any of his fellow blawggers' comments.

* Kevin O'Keefe, chief executive of LexBlog, also was a Twitter skeptic. But when breaking news was reported first on Twitter before appearing in the mainstream media, he began to understand the value. He now calls Twitter "networking on steroids," and avers that it's a far more efficient business development tool than joining a country club and playing golf.

For lawyers starting out on Twitter, if you already have a blog, you can feed your posts to Twitter automatically. To find opportunities to share your "two cents," search thousands of tweets to find topics that interest you. Then browse the many third party applications that can help you get the most value from Twitter.

Click here for the original article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

More Praise for Twitter

Larry Bodine predicts that Twitter will be the business development story of 2009. According to Bodine:

Attorneys are part of a massive increase in professionals using the website Twitter.com as a marketing tool, according to Lawyers USA. Twitter had 282,000 users at the end of 2007, but will boast over three million by the end of 2008, according to the third party site TwitDir.

He continues:

Twitter is valuable to legal professionals as it shows reaction with current trends, many of these posts are made from mobile handheld devices, so not having access to your desktop is no longer an excuse to blog. There has been a lot of reaction from lawyers on the global recession and how it has affected the legal world. It’s not all legal talk on twitter. It is not uncommon to see legal professionals tweet about their hobbies or funny family stories from the holidays.

Click here to read the entire article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.

Blogs, LinkedIn, & Twitter. The Holy Trinity of Online Marketing.

Kevin O'Keefe is one of the pioneers of internet marketing by lawyers. His Prarielaw was one of the first interactive portals for lawyers and legal consumers (and yes, I was there on the electronic prarie interacting). Kevin was also one of the first folks to extol the virtues of blogging as a marketing tool for lawyers. Now, he is in love with Twitter.

In a recent post on his Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog Kevin writes about blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Kevin on blogs:

Blogs? Got to have one. How else can you develop a central place where clients, prospective clients, and the influencers (bloggers, media, and social media hounds) pick up on your passion, philosophy, reasoning, and skill? How do you get seen when people search for info? You think I'm picking a pig in the poke by reading a lawyer profile on a website or Martindale? That's nuts.

Kevin on Twitter:

Twitter? Single biggest learning, brand building, network expanding, and reputation enhancing tool for me this year. Twitter's influence is what took me off this blog so much in the last couple months. Twitter is no longer an experiment for me. . . I'd rather go without my cell phone for a week than Twitter.

Kevin on LinkedIn:

LinkedIn? LinkedIn has won the professional social networking/directory space. The race is over. I get invites from professionals inviting me to join their network elsewhere. Other than LinkedIn and Facebook I ignore them.

This guy makes his living from online marketing. He lives and breaths the stuff. If you are A family law lawyer looking to build your practice, and yet you are having trouble drinking the internet marketing Kool Aid, Kevin's article will give you compelling reasons to climb on board. Please click here to read the entire article.

Please be sure to visit www.hardinglaw.com, the website for the law firm of Harding & Associates, for more information on California family law.