Web 2.0

Marketing for Attorneys and Qassia
Your marketing for attorneys efforts could be expedited through use of a service called Qassia. The service is free, and you share your "intelligence" (e.g., tips, short articles, observations) by periodically posting information on the site. The best part of the service is that you are able to include a quality backlink to your website with every "intelligence" you add. When you share "intelligence" on the site, you also receive credit from Qassia. In theory, the more credit you earn, the more you will help your website rankings. Qassia also has an ad revenue sharing system, meaning you can be compensated through promoting your sites. (…)

Marketing for Attorneys and the Death of Destination Websites
The marketing for attorneys world should take note of a September 30, 2008 TechCrunch article about whether opening up their portals will save and assist Yahoo and AOL. According to the article, AOL and Yahoo changed their home pages in September 2008 to include additional links to such outside services as social networks. For example, AOL's home page now has integration with MySpace and Facebook, as well as links to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail. The article notes that Yahoo is positioning itself to become the leading starting point on the Internet. (…)

The Death of Internet Marketing for Attorneys?
Is Internet marketing for attorneys dead? In a September 25, 2008 article in the Times of London, Vint Cerf, who has been dubbed the "father of the internet," noted that there will soon be no more internet addresses to allow computers to communicate and identify each other. According to Cerf, the pool of unallocated unique IP addresses/numbers has almost been exhausted. When Cerf and others began the current internet in 1977, there was an "internet protocol version four" (IPv4), which allowed for 4.2 billion web addresses. As the number of mobile phones and other internet devices has skyrocketed, under 14% of those web addresses are still available. IPv4 addresses, which each have 32 binary digits, will likely be exhausted in either 2010 or 2009. (…)

Marketing for Law Firms and the Future of Web 2.0
The ABAJournal.com has shown its commitment to Web 2.0 as a model for those engaged in marketing for law firms. I was pleasantly surprised to receive today an e-mail from that publication asking whether I was too busy to go to the actual website itself. The e-mail provided me the option of subscribing via e-mail, RSS, Twitter feed, mobile edition, iPhone application, or Facebook page. I was able to subscribe on my own terms in the way I wanted, and I chose to subscribe via RSS. (…)
Web 2.0 Opportunities in Marketing for Attorneys?
Should marketing for attorneys include a Web 2.0 strategy? According to a nationwide survey of 850 U.S. (…)

Law Firm Websites and Marketing for Attorneys
How do law firm websites affect marketing for attorneys? A recent Am Law Daily article notes that many law firm websites lag behind corporate websites in terms of savvy and effectiveness. The article profiles the Winson-Salem law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. Womble Carlyle's site contains blogs and podcasts, and the firm apparently has approximatley 50 attorneys who blog. The firm also has an Internet marketing manager, even though most law firms ignore the subject of Internet marketing for attorneys. (…)

Internet Marketing for Attorneys and Google's 10th Birthday
The 10th birthday of Google is significant in the marketing for attorneys and internet marketing for attorneys realm. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin on September 7, 1998. Approximately 10 years later, Google has a market value of well over $100 billion and has almost 20,000 employees, according to a September 9, 2008 article in CNN.com. (…)

Marketing for Attorneys using Web 2.0?
Have the fields of marketing for attorneys and internet marketing for attorneys embraced Web 2.0 methods? According to a report in the ABA Journal Law News Now, most lawyers have been slow to adopt Web 2.0 in their practices: http://tinyurl.com/5fwgrv. (…)

Harvard Courses and Marketing for Attorneys
The Harvard Alumni Association announced today that it is again offering Michael Sandel's course entitled "Justice" to alumni around the world via both streaming video over the Internet and via podcast. Thus, Harvard alumni can "take" the course via virtual means. In addition, alumni can interact with other alumni on the course blog and can participate in "online office hours" with Professor Sandel. Last year, over 4000 Harvard alumni participated in the course via podcast or streaming video. (…)

Marketing for Attorneys and Barack Obama, Part II
In a previous post, I wrote about the Obama campaign's plan to individually notify his supporters of his vice presidential running mate via e-mail. Obama ultimately used a text message to alert his supporters that he had chosen Joe Biden to run with him. Although CNN apparently beat the Obama campaign to the punch by first revealing the identity of Obama's vice presidential nominee, a senior advisor to Obama has stated his belief that most of Obama's supporters first learned via a text message about the selection of Biden. (…)

Marketing for Attorneys and Keyword Research, Part II
Although Wordtracker's free keyword search tool is helpful and provides a good start in marketing for attorneys, I recommend - if it makes sense within your budget - upgrading to the paid Wordtracker service. (…)

Facebook for Lawyers
On May 13, 2008, I interviewed Mari Smith in a Utah Bar-sponsored teleseminar about how lawyers can use Facebook as a client development tool; Mari is one of the leading experts on the use of Facebook for marketing and business purposes. If you're not already a Facebook user, I recommend that you add Facebook (www.facebook.com/profile.php) to your legal marketing mix. In the world of social networking and web 2.0, becoming an active Facebook user is becoming more and more important.

Blogging Teleseminar
On Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 1 pm EDT, I will be moderating a teleseminar/webcast with ALI-ABA entitled "Blogging as Client Development: Effective and Ethical." My two interviewees are superstars in the area of attorney blogging: Denise Howell (bgbg.blogspot.com/); and Greg Siskind (blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/). Of course, ALI-ABA is providing 1 hour of continuing legal education ethics credit for the teleseminar/webcast. (…)

Comments On Blogs
One of the best ways to attract more visitors to the website for your legal practice is to have more in-bound links from other websites. If another website contains a link to your website, the search engines will view your website as more authoritative and popular. When a website that is highly ranked for searches in the area you're trying to emphasize links to your site, search engines will give you even more credit. (…)