It’s been interesting that lately I’ve seen a fair amount of activity occurring on LinkedIn within the ranks of the people in our industry that happen to be in my network. That’s why I thought it might be helpful to post a link to an informative video from Lee Lefever over at Common Craft. It really sheds new light on the value of the connections on LinkedIn.
Findlaw is undergoing serious scrutiny because of their search engine marketing service. I read reports from two reputable sources this morning indicating that Findlaw may have been selling links - which violates Google’s guidelines. If found guilty, this could be a disaster for law firms that subscribed to this service. That will depend on whether or not Google decides to penalize the law firms along with Findlaw. As SEO expert Todd Friesen said “It’s been nice knowing you Findlaw.”
I am writing this post from Coeur d’Alene in Idaho. The M&L group has just finished the first day of their 3 day conference at this beautiful lakeside resort. I haven’t been to M&L for a few years, and it has been so nice to see friends that I haven’t seen for quite some time. Of course, Bill Berg is one of my favorites. Bill is the one that first took a chance on me when I left my position with a Philadelphia law firm and ventured out as a consultant. My friend and client Terry Bryant is here. I always get such a kick out of Terry. We share a thing about time. I had to laugh yesterday when I was leaving the Spokane airport for the 40 minute trip to the resort. Terry and a few other attorneys were waiting to get on a shuttle to make the trip. As I walked by Terry heading towards my rental car he was looking at his watch saying that the shuttle was not meeting his time schedule. So Terry and 4 others jumped in the rental car with me and we had a fun trip over. I’ve been working with Rainwater, Holt & Sexton for quite awhile now but we had never actually met in person until yesterday. Mike is holding down the fort back in Arkansas but both Stephen Holt and Bob Sexton are here.
A couple of my Atlanta clients came in this afternoon - Tom Ashenden and Bruce Millar. Greg Stokes, also from Atlanta will be here tomorrow. Greg has a terrific marketing director, Melanie, and I was so glad to get to meet her this evening. Melanie gets things done. It’s great. She is a mover shaker!
I could go on and on but the hour is late and I want to wrap this up. I do want to mention one resource that I discussed during my talk today and that is www.ustream.tv. I have a test site set up and it’s at this link: www.ustream.tv/channel/legal-marketing-cafe.
Las Vegas attorney Richard Harris and I chatted at the cocktail party tonight and we set Richard up on UStream.TV. If you want to take a look, here is a link to his show site: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/las-vegas-personal-injury-lawyer. Obviously he hasn’t done a broadcast yet but my guess is that he will before long!
If you’d like to know more about UStream.TV, feel free to email me at cindy@cindyspeaker.com and I’ll help you get started!
Ustream.TV is catching on like wildfire. It’s a technology that allows virtually anyone with a $100 webcam to broadcast a live TV show over the Internet. And that’s exactly what I did for the first time tonight. You can see the rather rough and raw video at the link below:
Don’t be too critical - I wanted to capture my first attempt so that hopefully we will witness a progression as a better understanding of the interface emerges!
If you’d like to know more about Ustream.TV, check out this 6 minute video with the vision of the two West Point founders.
I’ve been hearing about a web 2.0 site called “Twitter.” When somebody uses twitter they are said to “tweet.” I have to tell you that this terminology really didn’t strike me as anything that I would ever be involved in. However, tonight I signed up for my own twitter account and now I tweet! As a matter of fact if you go to the calendar page on my website you will be able to follow my twitter account.
Here’s why I did it. I continue to study and explore social media and tonight I am listening to a series of videos, one of which is about www.twitter.com. The forecast is that this is a rapidly growing phenomena and I so I want to understand it.
Recency often replaces authority. Google is giving us an in to page one as they continue to change the rules. How is it affecting media? When I search for something that is current, I see results on news from places like PR Web. How do we get there? We do a press release. If we want to dominate and play with the big boys we need to write content and do media everyday. It’s pretty intense. Twitter will track you as you do that.
I am now set up to syndicate my twitter updates on facebook, my space and my website. I can simply send a text message and all 3 places will be instantly updated so that anybody that wants to know what I am doing can quickly see that.
Web 2.0 is an exciting arena. Twitter is just a small part of it. If you want to try it, go to www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account.
Last month I held a teleseminar for my Inner Circle group of attorneys on the web. One of the hot topics that we discussed was pay per click advertising. I believe pay per click can be a very effective strategy when done based on careful research, ongoing testing and tweaking.
Today I want to share a video with you that gives detailed steps for an optimized pay per click campaign. You will learn how to determine decisions such as:
Do I turn off the content network or not?
How do I decide how much to bid?
What position is best for my ads?
Do I use standard delivery or accelerated delivery of my ads?
What do I do about ad scheduling?
Should I enable position preference?
Should I rotate my ads equally?
This video was done by an online marketing organization called Stompernet that I have been involved with and think very highly of. They are a real quality organization and I think that this video will be valuable to you if you are involved with pay per click advertising or intend to be in the future.
The meat of the video starts at 8 minutes. Here is the link:
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 92% of Americans ages 18 to 29 use the Internet; 85% of those 30 to 49; 72% of those 50 to 64; and 37 percent of those65-plus.As I look at these statistics I am reminded of a recent analysis Speaker Media and Marketing conducted on the average age of a personal injury client.Although the average age was about 40 what we found is that only a small percentage of clients are between 38 and 42.What we also found consistently across the country is that the ages of personal injury clients criss cross every age category with statistical significance between the ages of 25 and 60.And this study clearly indicates that the clients we serve are on the Internet.
It is no longer true that our clients “just don’t use the computer very much.”In fact studies show that a full 85% of our primary age demographic is on the Internet. Hmmm, maybe we should be putting more of our resources on the Internet and less on yellow pages…
Vivaty is a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif. An article in the New York Times today talked about their developing 3-D virtual chat rooms that can be added to web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time. They are apparently planning to test the new technology on Facebook this week and then release it in wider form this summer.
The reason this article captured my attention is because of the following statement:
“…The company plans to make money partly by allowing companies to start their own virtual rooms on their own Web sites, where they can control the decor and their marketing messages.”
One more avenue for interaction on the web. Why is it important that we evaluate these types of opportunities? As I continue to conduct both quantitative and qualitative market research on Client Advisory Panel members in law firms throughout the US, I am finding a clear trend. These participants, who generally represent a firms best clients, are very heavy internet users. A vast majority spend 2 or more hours on the web daily, and state that they research everything on the web. Approximately 1/3 of these individuals state that their friends often refer to them as “computer geeks.”
In light of these findings I believe it is imperative that we continually evaluate new web based marketing opportunities. Vivaty is simply one of them.
