ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference in Nov.

I don’t think I can attend but there are a couple session, I wish I could go to:

Small Firm Track: Utilizing The Internet for Small Firm Marketing – How to Maximize Websites, Blogs, Social Networking, Directory Profiles and Other Aspects of Web 2.0
Our panel of attorneys who are on the cutting edge of internet marketing will discuss how a smaller firm can use the internet to compete with Big Law. Learn how you can use simple tools to optimize your exposure and show off your expertise on the Internet.

Moderator: Steven Silverberg, Esq., Conference Chair, Silverberg Zalantis, White Plains, NY
Panel:
William W. Bowser, Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP., Wilmington, DE
Tom Mighell, Fios, Inc., Dallas, TX
Greg Siskind, Siskind Susser, P.C. – Immigration Lawyers, Memphis, TN
Tim Stanley, Justia, Inc., Mountainview, CA

Niche Marketing
Lawyers are constantly hearing that they must differentiate themselves from the competition, but what does that really mean? As your firm pursues a “cottage” market segment, consider some guiding principles on how to successfully target and exploit your niche.
J. Manly Parks, Duane Morris, Philadelphia, PA
 
Conference info:

Twitter ratio should be more prominent

Joshua Fruchter on his blog “Lawyer Casting” makes a good point about Twitter and the case for selectivity in choosing followers.  If you want to create a community make sure they share your interests and have interesting things to say.  I look for a couple things: are they law or social media – related twitterers?  Do they post interesting links rather than random comments?  If yes to both of those, I follow them.  As a result I following about 200 and have 260 followers.

“Which brings me to my modest proposal: Twitter should start displaying Twitter ratios in people’s profiles. For those of us interested in using Twitter to identify bright people with smart things to say (rather than simply boosting our egos), displaying the Twitter ratio will help us separate the wheat from the chaff, and identify thought leaders worth following.

Indeed, what’s great about the Twitter ratio is that it can’t be manipulated. In contrast to the number of followers, you can’t just raise your Twitter ratio by clicking “follow” on a huge number of people. That will drive down your ratio. Rather, the only way to obtain and maintain a high Twitter ratio is to publish intelligent observations that attract followers. Only by attracting followers with great content can you boost your Twitter ratio.

Bet you’re wondering – what’s my Twitter ratio? Check out http://twitter.com/joshfruchter. I have 274 followers, and am following 130 people, for a Twitter ratio of 2.11 (take that, President Obama!).”

Article:

Social networking improves marketing efforts

Social networking presence can improve your brand:
“Common wisdom over the past few years has been that people are interested in interacting with social network friends, not marketers. Not so, according to Anderson Analytics’ May 2009 survey—52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%). ”

Article:

Google tips for lawyers:Ross Fishman

Nice basic review of Google offerings:

*Use iGoogle as your home page (I like to set up various iGoogle pages depending on what my interests are.)

*Search on your name.  Very important and he mentions setting up Google alerts on your personal and business name which I’m going to do right away!

*Set up a Google profile: yes, this is great because it shows up on the first page of Google results with your photo.  Nice.

*Couple other Google tools I like: Google analytics which is a free traffic monitor for your websites and also Google keywords which can tell you what are the top search terms for a particular niche.

Judges use Facebook too

“…That’s because Criss, a state court judge who is learning to adapt to social media as a way to connect with long-lost friends and is leveraging Facebook as a judicial campaign tool, has also learned a few things she didn’t expect.

Biggest surprise: Even lawyers don’t fully grasp how public social media is, even when privacy controls are in place.

“Anyone can cut and paste,” said Criss, who was part of a Friday ABA Annual Meeting program “Courts and Media in the 21st Century: Twitterers, Bloggers, the New Media, the Old Media, and What’s a Judge to Do?” sponsored by the ABA’s Judicial Division.

Criss recalled one time that a lawyer asked for a continuance because of the death of her father. The lawyer had earlier posted a string of status updates on Facebook, detailing her week of drinking, going out and partying. But in court, in front of Criss, she told a completely different story.”

Article:

Facebook agrees to improve security

“More than 200 million Facebook users around the world scored a great victory as the world’s most popular social-networking Web site, on Thursday, agreed in accordance with the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, announced to implement a major enhancement to its user privacy controls as well as its developer API, and agreed to improve the way personal information is collected and used, as a large number of third-party applications built on Facebook’s developer platform, Canada’s privacy commissioner said in a report from Ottawa.”

Article:

Social media tactics easier than strategy for lawyers

Kevin O’Keefe posted an interesting take on Seth Godin’s post on tactics over strategy and states that attorneys and law firms have a hard time focusing on strategy.  This makes sense because strategy involves risks, uncertainty, taking a stand without knowing if it will work.  Tactics either work or they don’t.   You either know how to add content to your blog or stream blog content into your LinkedIn profile or you don’t.

I don’t think the strategy vs. tactics discussion has to be so polarized.  First, you need to understand how various social networks sites and tools work before you can determine a strategy.  For example, if you think that  your LinkedIn profile  content will impress potential clients, you probably don’t fully understand how LinkedIn works and doesn’t work. 

And to me, the first rule of social networking is that its not a panacea.  No matter how big a social networking presence you have, that alone won’t make clients flock to you. 

My strategy?  To increase my online visibility as a legal marketing professional and build a likeminded community.  Over time, that strategy might shift and as I learn more about the tactics; how to use social media sites, about new applications, what works and what doesn’t, that will influence my strategy.

I think the problem is that people think tactics ARE strategy and when a tactic doesn’t work, they bad mouth social networking as a time waster and hype.  Their loss.

Twitter for lawyers: all hype?

Recently Sysomos did a survey of Twitter users and found not surprisingly that 85% of new twitterers posted fewer than once a day and that 5% of twitterers were responsible for 75% of the traffic.  This suggests that there has been lots of curiousity in Twitter but only a small subset has adopted it.  So is it a waste of time?

Article:

I don’t think so.  This blog post automatically gets posted to my Twitter account.  I don’t even need to go there.  Because of the type of content I post, I mostly get requests from followers interested in social media and legal marketing and practice issues.  I spend a couple minutes a day reviewing potential followers and selecting those people I think make sense for my niche. 

I have more than 250 followers and I’ve done virtually nothing except stream these blog posts to my Twitter account.  Do I use Twitter to its fullest?  No.  But at no cost to me except the time it takes for me to blog and review followers, I have developed a niche community.  A few times a week I look who I am following and get ideas and useful links from them that I can use to further develop my expertise and share with my followers. 

So I have a small community and a basic familiarity with the service and if and when I decide to expand upon my Twitter presence, I will be able to do a lot easier than someone who has rejected it out of hand.   FYI: a good resource for attorneys who tweet is:

Lextweet

Top iPhone apps for lawyers

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) published a list of the following five apps that show what the iPhone can do for attorneys:

1. DataViz‘s DocumentsToGo allows you to edit and change documents, as well as email them over Exchange to other team members. While not a replacement for desktop word processors, this app makes document editing at least moderately feasible.

More here:

FTC says supplements don’t cure cancer

Shocking!

“The FTC ordered the makers of two diet supplements – “Supreme Greens” and “Coral Calcium” – and telemarketers to pay nearly $70 million for claiming that the stuff can cure cancer, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and other ailments. It also froze assets of some of the defendants.”

Article: