If your serious about having a greater impact with your legal marketing, it’s time to start gathering the right data so you know what’s working and whether you’re on the right track.

To do this effectively, your receptionist should be asking every person who calls the office how they heard about you. Keep a record, either a spreadsheet or in a database, and document if they are coming from the internet, an advertisement, a particular referral source, the yellow pages, etc.

Many of us know this is important, but it’s a marketing task that easily falls by the wayside when the office gets busy or if you are a solo and doing much of the administrative work yourself. These numbers are critical though, so for the next 30 days, make a commitment to track all calls.

If you don’t have Google Analytics on your website, now would also be a great time to get that installed. You can set up an account and follow the directions to put the tracking code on your website here: http://www.google.com/analytics/ This will help you discover how many people are visiting your website so you can watch for improvements in the future.

Finally, I want you to start tracking your conversion rates. This is the percentage of prospects you are able to convert into paying clients each month. If you are only engaging a small percentage of the people inquiring about your services, this will help you to quickly identify a disconnect in your presentation or procedures in your office where potential clients are falling through the cracks.

You’ll get a birds eye view of where you might be leaving money on the table, and where the majority of your business is coming from so you can continue to nurture those sources. Be sure to discuss these numbers during your staff meetings.

So I encourage you not to go any further into the year without collecting these critical stats. You can’t improve your business if you don’t have an accurate baseline from the start. Put someone from your team to work on this and be sure to keep in touch with us if you have questions about any disconnects you immediately identify in your firm.

We’re going through the analytics on our client’s Facebook pages today and we’re really excited about the impact changing over to timelines has had. Everyone’s reach is up exponentially, just by making great use of the new features on the page. With that said, it’s important to be getting your content out there on social media.

Amber recorded quick video to show how to easily sync your existing blog with your facebook page. I highly recommend you or someone on your team take 10 minutes to watch this and set it up on your page!

You can view the video here: http://www.screencast.com/t/IaRu0WDcoYAk


Laura Lee

PS: We had a great response to our April marketing campaigns that will help you reach families with children in your community. I know this is such an underserved market and and their planning is so important! If you haven’t checked it out you can do that here. And since here at LM2 it is ALWAYS Be Kind to Lawyers Day – we have extended the $50 discount on each campaign through this Friday, April 13th. Just use the coupon code “BeKind” at check out!

If you have a Facebook Fan Page, tomorrow it will convert over to the new Timeline for Pages. This is something that will require your attention (or the attention of someone on your marketing team!) to ensure it’s set up right and best representing your firm.

To make things as easy as possible for you, we’ve put together a comprehensive article highlighting the new features below. We’re really exited about the changes, as we’ve personally seen a huge increase in reach and engagement just by transitioning over to the new timeline.

Of course it may not seem like a huge deal, but your reach on social media matters! Even when you’re not immediately getting huge exposure or ROI, if you keep doing it, you’ll get noticed at just the right time!

In fact, our COO Amber, (whom many of you know as my right-hand gal) got an email today from an editor on Facebook asking her to write an article for a large New Jersey family magazine. And just last week, one of our LM2 clients landed her very own blog within a huge family magazine in her area because of a connection she made on Twitter.

It goes to show that there are people out there interested in your expertise, so stay consistent and active in the social media space! Get your timeline updated, make it look wonderful and fully utilize it as a tool for marketing your firm!

In other exciting news, I’ll be a guest teacher at a class at Suffolk University Law School next week called the Business of Practice. It’s a practical course designed to help students run their own successful law practices after they gradate. Many thanks to attorney Andrew Garcia for the invite. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity!

Have a great week , and do reach out to us if you have any questions about social media or converting your Facebook page over to a timeline this week.

Laura Lee

What Attorneys Need To Know About Facebook’s Timeline For Pages

For attorneys who use Facebook as a marketing tool, you’ve likely heard that your page will be convert into a public timeline on March 30th.

Besides learning how to manage the new layout, we’ve heard from many lawyers who want to know how to best utilize these changes to expand their reach and maximize social media ROI.

After converting our client’s pages and keeping a close eye on the stats, we are excited at possibilities Facebook is now giving to business owners to better connect with their target market. Social media marketing is about building relationships, and for us, the changes make reaching and engaging with prospects easier than ever.

If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, or you simply want to know how to leverage your new timeline to the fullest, here is an overview of 10 key changes to your Facebook fan page and easy ways to use them as part of your overall marketing strategy:

1. No default landing tab- If you were using a custom landing tab to encourage people to like your page and engage with your content, you may be disappointed to find out that your tab is now gone. Well, it’s not entirely gone, but it’s no longer the default landing tab for your page. Instead, visitors will be taken directly to your timeline where they can see all of your posts and interact with your content without having to become a fan first. Don’t worry though, as you utilize some of the other tools we’re going to discuss and post great content, people will naturally be inclined to hit “like” and follow your updates!

2. The Timeline Cover Photo- Your landing tab may be gone, but the new cover photo gives you significant real estate to showcase your firm. The dimensions for your new cover photo are 851 x 315 pixels. There are some limits to what you can put in this space, however. According to Facebook, your cover photo can NOT contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

In other words, you cannot use your cover photo to ask for “likes” or overtly promote your business. You can’t even include your phone number or URL! You can, however, use this space to display a little personality and use a tagline or bullet points listing the types of matters you handle in your firm.

3. Small profile picture- In addition to your cover timeline photo, you’ll also have the opportunity to upload a square 180 x 180 photo to use as your profile picture. For attorneys, it’s a great idea to use a picture of your face here instead of a logo. The reason for this is that your small photo will show up next to your updates in the ticker on the right hand side of the page. People are more likely to pay attention to your posts if they appear to be coming from a friend, rather than a law firm marked by a logo or cartoon.

4. About Section- What you can’t promote in the cover image can safely be promoted in the new About Section, which is the box located below your small profile picture. You have 130 characters to tell the public who you are, what you do and leave a live URL back to your website or blog.

5. Custom Apps- A great feature of the new Timeline For Pages is that you can now install custom apps on the top right side of your page that help people connect with your other content, free reports, event page signups and even subscribe to your mailing list–right from Facebook! There are also apps that display your most recent blog posts, YouTube videos and updates from other social media accounts. Some apps are push-button, while some do require a little html know-how to set up. If you can’t do it yourself, get help and leverage this space to introduce people to more resources offered by your law firm.

6. “Pinned” Posts- If there’s a post you want to draw more attention to, you can now “pin” it to the top of your timeline for up to 7 days. To do that, hover over any post, click edit pencil and pin to top. This is a great feature if you’re promoting an upcoming event or have a great article you want to be highly visible to your fans.

7. Private Messaging- In the new timeline format, fans and visitors can now send private message to page administrators. Prior to this, communication with a company or brand could only be done publicly on the wall. This feature can be turned off, but why do that when you can spark more communication with prospects? Remember, legal questions are often private matters and people are hesitant to call law firms. Private messaging gives people another non-confrontational way to inquire about your services easily thorough Facebook!

8. Starred Posts- Similar to starred posts on personal profiles, you can highlight a post and have it feature across the width of your timeline. This is a great feature if you have an image or video you want to showcase prominently on your page.

9. Milestones- Milestones are another way to highlight significant events and important moments for your firm. Milestones will also be shown across the entire width of your page, making them impossible for anyone to miss!

10. Preview feature- If you’re overwhelmed by these changes and afraid you’re going to mess up your page, take comfort knowing Facebook has a preview feature so you can see how everything looks before you actually go live. Just look for the preview link at the top of your Fan Page in the old design.

Finally, as an additional resource, Facebook has a great video tutorial that you can watch highlighting these changes at http://www.learnfacebookpages.com. Use this free tool to get up quickly up to speed and put your team to work creating a Facebook presence that’s actively promoting you!

PS: Be sure to check out and “like” our Facebook Page where we share tips additional tips and resources.

Targeting the right keywords on your law firm website or blog is a critical step in attracting clients who are looking for legal services online.

But how do you know if you’re using the right ones?   How do you know that you are using the same language potential clients are typing into Google?

The only surefire way to tell is research.

Many times in the legal world there is a huge disconnect between how attorneys describe their services and what an average person would search for online.  For example, an estate planning attorney may call their services as such–but an average person unfamiliar with that term may simply look for an attorney who specializes in “wills and trusts”.

That’s why it’s so important to do the research and find out what your prospects are actually searching for.  Here are 3 easy ways for you to do this:

1. Ask Google- Google has a great keyword tool that you can use for free here.  Start by typing what you think someone would search for, so you can see just how accurate your hunch was.  Then check out the related keywords Google provides for a better understanding of how people are finding you in search.

2. Ask Your Family and Friends- Talk to people who aren’t familiar with the jargon and formalities of the law. Ask them to describe what you do and how they would search for you in Google if they needed your help.

3. “Spy” On Your Target Market- If you are a bankruptcy lawyer, check out online forums of people who have bankruptcy related questions and see what they are asking.  If you are a divorce attorney, spy out popular books on Amazon related to divorce and see what real people are saying in the comment section.  Pay close attention to the language they are using and how they are framing their questions so you can target them on your site.

So get researching and in the next article, we’ll tell you what to do with your top keywords once you’ve identified them!