Researching your competitors is an important aspect of both the website design and marketing process. Keeping an eye on what others in your field (and locality) are doing helps provide important insight as to what works and what doesn't. It also helps you avoid making the mistake of marketing your firm in a way that is too similar to that of other attorneys in you area. If your website looks...
Dec 5
Do not let outdated advice stand in the way of good website design
Old web design advice is everywhere. You can tell a lot about the age of a list of website design tips is by what is being recommended. This, of course, is not the fault of the original author; screen resolution and browser usage statistics, along with programming languages, are constantly changing. At some point down the road, this post, like others before it, will be obsolete. When sifting through the plethora of...
Nov 30
The Law Firm Website Disconnect
Attorney websites have come a long way in the past few years. Lawyers are catching on to false marketing prophets and looking beyond cheesy and ineffective SEO tricks. Websites are becoming more helpful, more well-designed and more relevant to people seeking legal help. This is a good thing.
However, it is a big Internet, and there are still too many firms that fall victim to the lawyer website disconnect. To demonstrate this problem, Tech4Law created a law firm...
Read MoreNov 28
Pinterest Makes Sharing Easier with New Business Accounts
Businesses have been setting up presences on Pinterest and integrating the network into their marketing for some time, but until now the site's terms have explicitly limited activity on their boards to “personal, non-commercial use.” Because the network was created for individuals, developing a consistent professional presence was not entirely easy. You can, of course, pin your own content and prompt others to pin it as well. While this...
Nov 20
Practice simplicity in your articles and marketing materials
Keep your audience in mind when writing articles, blog entries and other social content.
Every profession has own language and jargon – a collection of terms that are used predominantly only by those within the industry. Some industries have more (and more obscure) jargon than others, and attorneys are one group of professionals who have acquired a reputation for being some of the worst offenders.
It is easy to succumb to the idea that using big words will make you...
Read MoreNov 7
Instagram opens new doors with web profiles for users
Responding to its growing popularity and requests from users, the photo sharing service Instagram has announced the arrival of online user profiles. Instagram has always allowed users to share pictures through email, text or across other social networks, but the service has until now not provided a single location on their own network for people to showcase their pictures.
Instagram profiles will be different from those on other social networking...
Read MoreNov 2
Focus on benefits when communicating with prospective clients
Marketers like to talk about positioning, unique selling propositions and differentiation. Differentiate or die! is a common refrain heard among marketing gurus young and old.
Given the sheer number of firms competing within the same geographic areas, attorneys certainly face a challenge when attempting to set themselves apart from their competition. The reality of the legal profession is that it is not possible for firms to offer a service...
Read MoreOct 26
Visual marketing is gaining steam with the success of Instagram
Visual social marketing is creating buzz due to the rapid growth of companies like Pinterest and Instagram. Instagram is unique in that it is both a photo sharing application and a social network. People who take pictures with Instagram can share them across the app’s native network as well as other social networks like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter.
Instagram is young, even by web standards, especially considering the amount...
Read MoreOct 24
YouTube shifting focus to reward time watched in video rankings
YouTube is changing the way videos are ranked in an attempt to promote more quality content. This month, the YouTube Partners and Creators Blog announced an adjustment to the YouTube search algorithm that moves away from a system rewarding clicks toward one rewarding time spent watching videos. The new algorithm replaces view count with watch time.
This shift in focus began in earnest earlier this...
Read MoreOct 19
Align your social media activity with user expectations
Attorneys who use social media as a part of their marketing efforts face challenges that are exclusive to the legal industry. Professional services marketing in and of itself is very different from product marketing. Added to this are restrictions on what attorneys may or may not be able to say according to ethical guidelines, which can vary from state to state.
Since it is not efficient for attorneys...
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