Thursday, October 27, 2011

Social Media, By Spencer Aronfeld, Esq.

Social Media is an inexpensive and cutting-edge way for lawyers to connect with clients, other lawyers and even potential jurors.  In my book, “MakeIt Your Own Law Firm,” I describe how Social Media can be a platform and be used to promote ideas and concepts that will show the world that lawyers are about more than just money.  I have used Social Media to organize charitable events like silent auctions or networking events. 
One starts simply by creating a profile.  It should be consistent with your other on-line identities in color, tone and content.  You can and should link your website with Social Media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.  It will provide an easy way to provide up-to-the-minute information. 
Organic Traffic and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can also be enhanced with your Social Media presence. Every time you create Social Media content, search engines “see” or “read” the content and create a virtual connection to your site.  The more links there are to your site, the more valuable your ranking becomes.  This is called “back links.”
Accordingly, the most important thing one can do is to carefully choose the words in your Social Media.  For example “personal injury lawyer” is a phrase that is commonly used.  If this phrase can be linked to your site it will increase your site’s visibility.  The phrase “personal injury lawyer” is called anchor text.  To even further increase your visibility adds your location to the anchor text.  For instance “Miami Personal Injury Lawyer” will increase my SEO more than just “personal injury lawyer” because there will be fewer people searching for that phrase and fewer postings.
Every time you link your website or Social Media make sure you are using the appropriate key phrase as an anchor text. 

There are many different Social Media opportunities and different ways that anchor texts are activated.  Some will permit it in the HTML or by code others will require that you use the raw URL. 

There are many tools and software available now to automate your Social Media presence.  There are also a number of research tools to help identify what words to use and when. 

Whenever you send out Social Media always make sure to perform a spell check.  Nothing is worse than sending a Tweet to all of your followers with a spelling error or the wrong caption.  It is easy to hit send, and impossible to recall an erroneous Tweet or posting.
I recommend that beginners start with a Facebook and Twitter account.  Become comfortable with the process before expanding to larger and more complex territories. Unless you are completely comfortable with doing you own Social Media, I recommend using one of the companies that have sprung up around the world that provide assistance.

In conclusion, Social Media is an inexpensive and simple way to gain massive amounts of traffic to your web presence.