Legal Commentary

21 Tips for Legal Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

I published an article in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly (October 5, 2009) on social networking. The electronic reprint will be available in another week or so and I will link to it then. In the meantime, here is the start of the article:

Twitter, LinkedIn and other forms of social networking are getting a lot of attention these days. But if you are not sure how to integrate these tools into an overall marketing strategy, you are in good company.

Social networking is such a new phenomenon that the rules of engagement are still being written, tested and rewritten. In the meantime, if you care about building your law practice, you don't want to be sitting on the sidelines. Getting involved online should become part of your overall marketing effort.

So how can you make effective use of these tools? For starters, it is important to understand that the fundamentals of marketing professional services have not changed.

In order to lay a good foundation for generating work for your firm, you still need to:

? develop a niche;

? find ways to build your reputation around this niche; and

? spend time building trusting relationships with potential clients and referral sources.

While Web 2.0 can help in this effort, it is no substitute for getting out of your office. Web 2.0 does not obviate the need to pick up the phone and find out what your existing clients are up to; rather, it is a way to extend the conversation and keep it going over time.

Blogging and tweeting alone will not establish you as an expert, but these tools can help reinforce your reputation.

Here are 21 tips to get you going: [stay tuned for a link to the reprint or go to MLW, October 5, 2009 to read the article now]

Full post as published by Counsel to Counsel on October 13, 2009 (boomark / email).