Are you making it difficult for people to find your law firm on your social media profiles?

Social media has become one of the most popular avenues to promote your law firm. Smart marketers are adding social media (more than using social media exclusively) to their marketing plans.

There are a few common mistakes on these sites that may be working against you instead of supporting your law firm. Interestingly enough I seen social media "experts" and "strategists" making some of these same mistakes, which means they may be missing great tools to assist their clients.

There are many social media sites, including some niche exclusive legal sites, which can be a great addition to your marketing, however, my next two blog posts will focus on your attorney and law firm listings on Facebook and LinkedIn.

FACEBOOK:

Setting up a profile and a business page is easy. You can choose to use your profile to chat with friends or business associates or both.

Separate from your profile is your business Page. Hopefully your business Page is set up as a page and not a profile. Facebook T&C disallows using a profile as a business, and can delete your account and all your hard work if you violate this. This point is addressed is a separate blog post.

When setting up your profile, the info section asked for your Education and Work.



If you have a Custom Business Page set up, the system will attempt to connect you to your page. Otherwise it will create an empty placeholder page. You will not be able to edit this placeholder page. You can "like" this page, and also have others "like" it, however, as it is has no value to your marketing.



It is at this point that many people set up a business Page.

When you have a business Page established, the system will attempt to connect you to your page. It is not automatic. If your Page was set up after you initially entered your Employment, you will need to go back and manually change the link.

When logged into your Profile, go to your "Edit Profile".



Click on the section Work and Education as shown in the above image.

Begin typing your law firm or business name EXACTLY as you named it when you set up the page. Here's where many errors take place. Facebook can only find your correct page when you enter the EXACT name you gave it. Sometimes it may be the same name as you previously entered, however this time Facebook will attempt to find your new correct page. Sometimes it will be the same exact name you originally entered, however, Facebook assigned numbers after the name and your correct page has different numbers which has created a completely different URL.



When you see your correct law firm name in the drop down list, click on it.This will add it to your Employment section.



Fill in the remainder of the information and be sure to click "Save Changes" before exiting.



When you next see that both your correct Business Page and the placeholder page are listed, you can delete the one that you don't want.



If you have other company's you are affiliated with or employed by, you can add them here as well the same way. Note that the first one you add will be the primary one shown at the top of your profile and top of the list under your Work and Employment tab.


When you have a set up a Business Page, you are designated as the "owner" and you maintain the ultimate control. You can add administrators through your manage permissions and these Admins are limited to posting and editing. They will not have access to your profile or any other pages you own. I am an "Admin" for several client Facebook Pages, and my clients have the control to change that permission at any time.

When you attach your Business Page to your profile, it has the potential to extend your marketing reach. If you are using your profile for personal communications, you may consider setting up a different profile for profile for professional use and make sure your Business Pages are linked.

Someone from your personal profile may be able to visit your Business Page from your personal or professional profile, however, they will only find your profile if you have it listed as owner of your Business Page. If you are keeping personal and professional separate, then your professional profile should be listed as page owner on the page. You also have the option of not posting the page owner on your page.

Remember to set and monitor the security settings of your Business Page so you control if users can post content, versus only being able to comment on your posts.

Check back for a follow-up post on how to get the maximum exposure for your business on your basic LinkedIn profile.

Happy Networking.

About the Author:

Sumner M. Davenport is a Solutions Consultant. More than general answers - SOLUTIONS! As there is no one-solution-fits-all, when appropriate, she suggests her clients add social networking to their marketing mix. Among her services she offers creation of standard as well as custom Business Pages, plus management of content and exposure. For more about her services, follow Sumner M. Davenport on Facebook.

Security on Facebook - app to scan and protect your account

Yesterday a number of people found malicious and offensive posts on their profiles and pages. Unfortunately these posts were not from the persons indicated. Some form of hacking had taken place.

An excellent article was written in March on PCMag.com on two apps that can protect your Facebook account.

One app, Norton Safe Web for Facebook  is bundled with the Norton products, but anybody can use it for free. It scans your Facebook page's links and reports any bad ones.

If you're concerned about dangerous links (and you should be), there is also another app recommended and more info in this article at PCMAG.com .

Happy and safe networking

How important is your email address?

Companies spend thousands of dollars making sure their logo, company colors, message and image are consistently and professionally represented.

One area that seems to be overlooked is the importance of your email address being consistent with your firm. New lawyers and lawfirms starting out are signing up for free email accounts, (ie:Gmail,Yahoo, etc.) as their business email, instead of using an email address with their firm's website name. Many people will add a second “business” email to an existing personal account. Free email addresses say: I’m new, I’m small and I’m cheap; which is usually not the image a law firm wants to project. 

Websites mirror the image of a law firm; many times with the firm name as the website and/or domain name. To maintain a consistent professional image of your law firm, your email address should be the same as your website address. Christine@mylawfirm.com, has a more professional image than mylawfirm@gmail.com. 

Spammers have software that crawls websites searching for email addresses, and "contact" and "info" and two used most often and receive the highest spam.  Select a name for your catch-all email address to be something less common, and use a alias email address on your website to deter spam.

This shows not only a level of professionalism, but also assures your client on a subliminal level, that you really are with the firm. With growth of email scams, this one little area may make a huge difference to the very prospective client you are attempting to reach.

Most website packages come with a minimum of at least one email address, which your webmaster could have forwarded to your free or aol address if you only want one area to check emails. This way it can still be convenient for you, yet show the most professional image for your law firm, large or small.

We placed a poll on a previous blog and the results seem to say the same thing:

How important is it to your professional image to have a business email address (yourname@yourbusinessname.com) instead of a free email address.

Essential 48%
Very Important 25%
Not Important 7%
No Difference 11%
Don’t know 9%

This is something to consider in your overall branding plan.

A Little Humor

"Hello, thank you for calling Computer Repair."


Caller : "Hello, our printer is not working."


Customer Service: "What is wrong with it?"


Caller : "Mouse is jammed."


Customer Service: "Mouse is jammed? Printers don't have a mouse!"


Caller: Mmmmm??.. "Oh really?... I will send a picture."


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Apps for Attorneys

iJuror - For use during voir dire and jury selection. Features allow you to quickly enter basic information, plus enter your notes to flag jurors for peremptory challenge or dismissal for cause. At the end of the day this application will compose a complete report of everything you have entered and with a tap of a button, email it to your office. Much more fun than sticky-notes. ($9.99)

Dropbox - A free file sharing system that allows users to share files (photos, documents, videos, etc.) from one device to another, whether it be multiple computers and operating sysgems (Windows, Mac, Linux), iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry devices. Dropbox makes sharing easy when working with other attorneys by inviting them to any folder in your Dropbox, and it'll be as if you saved that folder straight to their computer. Available basic (free account) up to 2 BG space and pay plans for larger usage. 


Documents To Go by DataViz - Store and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe pdf files on your SmartPhone or PDA. Prices vary on type of device.

JuryTracker- Note juror observations, keep notes tied to a specific juror, have those observations and notes time-stamped. ($4.99)

FastCase gives you free access to primary law from all 50 states, in addition to federal law. (free)

iPleading- The iPleading allows attorneys, paralegals, and law students to easily create litigation documents on their iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.($9.99)

Billing Timer by iPunchclock. - When you initiate a task, just hit start and the timer begins recording that shift. It allows you to keep multiple time sheets open.  ($4.99)

Court Days -- Day Calculator For Lawyers. Court Days allows you to quickly calculate the number of court days or calendar days (or a combination of the two) before or after a given date. ($.99)

Popular Design Mistakes on Websites & Social Media Pages

The importance of having a professional internet presence grows each day as more attorneys place their law firm profiles and websites on the internet.

Designing a productive website and social media image is more than just putting text on the internet. Effective web designers and internet marketers have experienced why certain components are important in making your sites both visitor and SEO friendly.

Some of the glaring errors that show up too often, which make your website or your social network pages appear to be unprofessional, include:

(1) Using text in your images, or using images only instead of text. This makes your text hard to read on certain browsers and your content cannot be indexed or searched, therefore not search engine friendly.

(2) Using text that is under 9pt in size. If its too hard to read – people won’t even try.

(3) Your links aren't clearly labeled, don't tell your visitors where they'll end up. The only say "Click Here."

(4) Inconsistent navigation. Different navigation layout on every page simply confuses your visitor.

(5) Too many colors, too many sizes and too may font designs in the same text area.

(6) Too many typos. An occasional typo is usually accepted, however, having someone other than the designer proofread for spelling, grammar, capitalization and content is time and money well spent.

(7) Background graphics or solid backgrounds that don't contrast well against the text, making it hard to read.

(8) Dead links, link rot and/or no 404 pages. Custom 404 pages help you to maintain visitors that typed one of your page names in error, or clicked on a dead link in your site. Your custom 404 page should appear consistent with your site image and have the same navigational links to help your visitor find their way to the live page they are looking for. 

(9) Contact pages without live email addresses or contact forms. If you visitor is looking to contact you via email, make it easy for them by making your email a live link, instead of text in a static graphic. Fill in forms are handy to help them tell you what they need, and to protect your email one more level away from being harvaested by spammers (this is no guarantee however and spammer software continues to get more sophisticated.)

10) Low content. Original content and content that answers your visitors questions will set your website above the rest. If your website is a simple one page bio, then it still needs to answer the question - why the visitor should contact you. 


Plan your branding strategy. Design your website from the perspective of your prospective client and their needs. You can have a simple design and still deliver a professional image.

No opt-out from your address & phone number being given to Facebook apps

Your friend just suggested that you join them in a new game or accept a hug, a card, a link to your photos and activity or some other Facebook app. It may look like harmless fun, but is it worth it? 

Last Friday, Facebook rolled out new permissions that give applications access to individuals’ addresses and phone numbers.  In a Facebook developer blog post, they announced that it is adding it to the company's "User Graph object," or the permissions required to install an app.

Surprisingly many people still give out their home addresses and phone numbers on their profiles.  This makes sense for businesses who want their location known, but for individuals who are constantly finding their privacy invaded, placing your home address on any social network can be too much exposure.

When you agree to an app, a window pops up where you must click to allow it access to your profile, so you can use the app. Now these apps get more personal info about you than ever before.

Come apps require access to your friends information, through your profile and others access your data whether you re online or not.

It is important to review the terms and privacy policy of the app before clicking approve. Check to see if this app will openly share your information with their affiliates or 3rd party suppliers.  

Facebook can be a platform to boost your business connections, or a place where you chat with your friends. In either case you should select the apps you agree to with case and make sure your privacy settings are current. 

If your spam has increased in your inbox, you may want to check your apps and your privacy settings.

Happy networking...

Original post date January 17, 2011