Lawyers and Personal Branding
June 1, 2018
Soft Skills for Successful Lawyers
June 14, 2018
Online marketing is an essential part of any business in today’s internet dependent society. For lawyers (and law firms), who are ruled by time, online marketing might seem like a good idea in theory, but in reality it’s usually last on a very long ‘to do’ list.
According to The Guardian online, a recent study from Lexis Nexis suggested that more than three-quarters of people looking for a lawyer in the US did so online, with the majority of these using Facebook as their primary search focus.
However, in the UK, a study by the Law Society of Scotland, undertaken by Ipsos MORI, found that only 24% of solicitors in Scotland use LinkedIn either weekly or daily, and only 7% Tweet weekly. These figures highlight the shifting patterns of clients over recent years, and the failure of lawyers and law firms to remain up-to-date with technological advances.
If you still need persuading that online marketing is a vital tool for the legal industry, or you’re unsure about how it can help your legal career or your frim, read our five top tips below:
1. Update your Website
Your website should be the nucleus of your online marketing activities. Make sure it is operating at optimum levels for your firm, and is fulfilling the needs of clients, online visitors, and so on.
Websites should be regularly updated with relevant content, appropriate and clear calls to action, and links to your social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Ensure you can track all visitors to your site using analytics; where are they coming from? What are they looking for? Which visitors became clients? Is your site easy to find on search engines? Any questions that are relevant to online marketing should be considered when developing and updating your website.
2. Social Media
Networking has always been an essential element of winning clients in the legal industry. Once, this was completed on the golf course, at seminars or conferences, and at industry events, now however, it is more frequently undertaken online using social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
Current figures for Twitter show 330million active users each month, with 500million Tweets sent each day. LinkedIn has almost 500million members worldwide and is available in 24 languages in more than 200 different countries. You really can’t afford to miss this networking opportunity.
Social media looks like it is here to stay – continuing to increase the way social channels are used to promote, develop, and maintain business connections. If you wish to target niche markets, or attract specific clients, it should become a vital part of your online marketing strategy.
3. SEO and Algorithm Updates
It can be an almost impossible task to keep up-to-date with algorithm updates by search engine providers such as, Google, but it is a task that is necessary if you wish to make full use of their potential.
Recent changes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) means that those websites that offer valuable, index-able content, with good link structures for crawlers, and that make effective use of Meta tags, URLs and other ‘background’ content, should be placed higher in search engine ratings.
SEO is a challenging subject to master but there are many blogs and tutorials available online to help even the most wary beginner.
4. Legal Blogs
Regularly updating your website may sound like a bore and a challenge, but creating a blog linked to your main website can be an invaluable way to increase SEO, refresh your website, and target niche clients.
If you don’t have a consistent blog, or a content generation strategy, you are likely to be left far behind your competitors.
Blogs can use images, videos, vlogs, training, tutorials and so on, to encourage new clients to your site and improve your search engine rankings.
5. Plan Ahead
This should go without saying, but having a functional online marketing strategy is vital to success. Plan the frequency and content of blogs, set aside time and money for social media development, and propose website progress and improvement.
Don’t forget to include a detailed strategy for dealing with users who access the internet through mobile devices as in recent years this number has surged. Prospective clients are not always sat behind a desk at their computer, they are more likely to be on their mobile phone or tablet when they are searching for your legal services.
