When someone is looking for a lawyer these days, they are more likely to search online than to open a phone book (do those even exist anymore?) That’s why it’s important for you to make it as easy as possible for that person to find you.

Having a strong online presence goes beyond owning a website. A website doesn’t do your firm any good if no one is visiting it, or if the people that do visit your site aren’t being converted into clients. In order to make that happen you need to actively promote your firm online.

According to a study by LexisNexis and Martindale-Hubbell, 85% of law firms find that the majority of traffic to their website is directed at their lawyers’ bio pages. That’s because your potential clients are looking to hire a lawyer, not a firm. They want to see who the individual people are that make up your firm before they actually pick up the phone to give you a call.

This means that each lawyer or attorney at your firm should take steps to actively promote their personal brand online so that they come across as more than just a generic picture on a company website.

Improved bios: Since the bio pages are generally where visitors to your website head to first, you want to make sure that they are as informative and engaging as possible. Have each lawyer flesh out their own bios to include all of the following information:

Linkedin profiles: Linkedin is a business-oriented social platform for networking with other industry professionals and each lawyer at your firm should have an account here.

To ensure that your lawyers get the full benefit from their Linkedin accounts, they should do the following:

One way to get prospective clients to visit your website is by offering them interesting and informative content that they will find valuable. This will not only help draw people to your website and keep them engaged but it will also establish your firm as experts in your specialized area.

You can use a tool like BuzzSumo to find out what topics are currently popular online and write an article related to legal aspects of the subject.

Creating a publishing schedule is also a good idea since this will help you plan articles in advance and select topics to write about that are relevant for particular times of the year.

In addition to becoming active on social media, it’s a good idea for the firm as a whole to have accounts on the most popular social media platforms: Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google+.

Social media is a great way to connect online with potential clients and other industry professionals. It’s also a very effective way of sharing the articles on your website.

Linkedin: Create a company page, fill out the profile and add an attractive banner and logo. Encourage all of your firm’s employees to follow the page. Make sure to update your page regularly with articles from your website and interesting news and updates from your firm.

Twitter: Create an account and begin following clients, lawyers and professional influencers. Twitter is a great place for networking in real-time and for learning about your competitors.

Facebook: Create a business page for your firm and send a one-time email to your business contacts and friends inviting them to like it. Here you can share links to articles on your website and introduce topics for discussion to engage visitors to your page.

Google +: One of the great advantages of Google + is that, being a Google services, the content posted here is indexed by Google and prominently featured in search results. You can also promote yourself locally by creating for your firm a page in Google place, which will be found on Google’s local search. To get started you need to setup a Google+ profile, write a description and start connection clients, professionals and prospects in your area. There are also several active Google{ communities for lawyers that you may want to join.

Newsletters: Don’t let your contacts forget about you! Keep your firm on their minds by regularly sending them a newsletter with valuable information. You can also include links to articles on your blog to drive them to your website.

MadMimi is a great service to use for sending out your newsletter since it will also allow you to track the emails and see how many of your recipients actually opened them up or clicked on the links.

Youtube is the second largest search engine and it’s owned by Google, which means videos receive attention from Google searches. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest in creating a few videos that can be posted on your website and shared on Youtube.

Create a series of videos addressing different topics within your specialty. Videos can feature you discussing various situations in which have assisted clients or they may answer some of the commonly asked questions that you receive. These videos will also help potential clients feel more of a connection to you, when they get to see you in action.

If visitors to your website are coming by to browse and then leaving, you need to make some changes to your site that will convert these visitors to leads.

Make sure that your firm is listed in all of the local business and industry directories.

Below are examples of some of the popular industry directories that you can be listed in:

HG.Org legal directory

FindLaw

Lawyers.com

LawInfo

Yahoo Directory

Getting involved in local events can be a great way to promote yourself both on and offline. If you host a seminar or sponsor the local softball team, there are sure to be participants taking pictures and posting them to Facebook and Instagram. When this happens make sure that your firm is tagged in the pictures and, you can request from the poster to include a link to your website as well.

Sign up for a service that alerts you whenever your firm is mentioned online. You can set up alerts for the firm’s name as well as for each of the lawyers at the firm. When your name comes up in an online discussion or in a review, you will be notified. You can then decide if you would like to respond to the comment, such as offering an appreciative “thank you” to a client who’s praising your services, or defend yourself if you come under criticism.

Try Talkwalker, which is a free social media monitoring tool that will let you know when your firm or lawyers are mentioned online.

Now that you have gone to all of this effort to bring more traffic to your website, it’s time to see if any of your marketing activities have worked.

One of the best ways to do this is by using Google Analytics to track your website’s visitors to see where they are coming from, how they found you and what are they doing on your website. Once you have this information you can see if your online marketing activities are working and which areas might need some tweaking.

Each social network also offers their own set of analytic tools that will allow you to measure the results of your activities on those specific platforms.

Follow these 11 guidelines to promoting your firm online and you will soon see a definitive rise in your website’s traffic.


Article reference:
www.wisestamp.com