Legal Marketing: Optimize your law firm’s YouTube content in 7 easy steps

Optimizing your YouTube content will allow more for more people to find your videos. Follow the steps below to get the most out of your YouTube content.

According to the YouTube Blog, over 35 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Start doing some math, and you’ll quickly see that this translates to millions of hours of video content.

So, as a follow up to my last video marketing post, here is a way to get past the clutter and make sure your firm’s videos get seen by the right people.

The first step, of course, is to upload your video. This video might be a training session, or maybe it’s just some relevant law information you want to get out to your intended audience. Believe it or not, when most people visit YouTube, they are not looking for a specific video, but something that covers a topic that interests them. Most visitors type a few key words into the search box and then scroll down the list of options available on that topic. So you have to make sure your video stands out.

Key words are the words people type into the search bar, and therefore very important in the search process. Choose them wisely. If you aren’t sure which to use, or you can’t decide which are best, YouTube provides a Keyword Tool. This tool gives you suggestions on what key words you should use, so it’s a good starting place if you are stumped.

Below are 7 easy steps to optimize your law firm’s video content:

1. Title. Your title must be straightforward – nothing too funny, witty or clever – and in 66 characters or less. (Google will truncate your title if it’s any longer than this, so do your best to keep it at 66 characters or less.) Include key words in your title and make sure it accurately describes the video content. For example, if I were to upload a session on social media for legal marketers, I’d want to make sure my title correctly utilizes the key words social media and legal marketing. In this case, I’d call it something like “Social Media Tips for Legal Marketers and Attorneys.” I know, it’s rather boring, but this isn’t where you need to get creative.
2. Description. Once your video is uploaded, there is a section below the video that allows room for a description. This is another perfect place to utilize those key words.  Describe what the video is, whom it is intended for and the benefits of watching it.
3. Category. Select the category that is most relevant to your video.
4. Tags. This is another place to use key words. You can type in your law firm’s name, what the video covers, who would likely want to watch it, and anything else you think would be helpful for visitors to find it. Separate each tag with a comma and make it as descriptive as possible without going over the 120-character limit.
5. Create a YouTube Channel. Creating a YouTube channel is quick and easy. This allows you to index all of your videos in one place, and makes it for people to find your videos.
6. Video Reply. This is an easy way to increase your video viewership. To do this, type the title of your video into the search bar on YouTube. Next, click “Video Reply” to the videos that come up in this search. This creates “link juice” which in turn brings people to your video. (See my post on Link Juice to learn more about this.)
7. Blog. Write a blog about your uploaded video and post the YouTube URL into that blog. This creates even more link juice and brings people to your video.

To learn more about YouTube, check out their blog

Legal Marketing: Using Direct Marketing Strategies in Social Media Campaign

Direct marketing isn’t always considered a very effective marketing tactic by law firms and their clients; but applying the same strategies used for direct marketing campaigns to your social media efforts will definitely help you see more value and ROI.

When devising a direct marketing campaign, what are three things you must consider before spending any money?

1. your audience
2. your offer
3. the medium used to send this offer

You have to make sure these three things are identified before moving forward with any direct marketing campaign. If you don’t, you are wasting your time and money, and can be hurting your firm’s reputation in the process too.

While most legal marketers understand why these strategies are important to direct marketing campaigns, many haven’t yet realized how these same tactics can be – and should be – used for their social media campaigns too.

Your Audience: These are your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog subscribers, email list, etc. To determine their demographics and psychographics, send out the occasional survey and regularly review your site analytics. This way you will know who you are reaching and can provide appropriate content and valuable offers. 

Note: Even though these people are subscribing to your blog, friends with you on Facebook and following your tweets, it doesn’t mean they are going to your website and creating ROI. This is why the offer is important.

Your Offer: To start seeing some ROI on your social media efforts, it’s important to drive people to your site, where you can really showcase your practice and expertise. Offer them something of value. This could be an article on a hot topic, a white paper on the latest legal trends, or even an invitation to register for an upcoming seminar at your firm. Make it valuable enough that they are happy they took the step to come to your site. 

Note: Make sure you understand what your audience needs and wants. You can get a better understanding of these needs when you survey your followers. Include a question or two on what they would like to see, then tailor your offer so it’s in line with what they say.

Your Medium: Once you have your audience identified and your offer established, you need to figure out the best way to send your message. Are you going to use LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? Your blog? An email campaign? All five?

Your connections on LinkedIn may be very different from your blog readers, so match the offer with the audience that will value it most. (A great tool for keeping up with what your various audiences are saying about your firm is SocialMention. It aggregates all mentions of your firm, or individual partners, in one place. This can help you get an idea of who is following you in each place too.)

So even if you aren’t sending out many direct mail pieces any more, those same strategies are vital for  you to get the ROI you want from your social media efforts.

Legal Marketing: Consider Archiving Your Tweets

Archiving your Tweets from Twitter is important because it allows you to reference old articles that you have Tweeted as well as other Tweets you found interesting.

So you’ve been on Twitter for a while and want to go back and see what you said six months ago about a particular topic. Guess what? You can’t. When Twitter first started, this was possible. But now that it’s become so widely used and the  number of tweets is surpassing 90 million a day (gasp!), they simply can’t keep them for long.

Therefore, it’s a good idea for you to consider archiving your tweets, so you can easily go back in time and review what you’ve done, repost a particularly interesting article or just get an idea of your communication history via Twitter.

If all you want to do is keep a history of articles you’ve posted, then a tool like bit.ly may be sufficient. By now, most people are familiar with bit.ly, but for those that aren’t, it takes really long URLs and shortens them so they can used on Twitter. Some URLs can be more than 140 characters on their own, so this is a great tool for getting the most out of the few characters you have to work with on Twitter. The beauty is that your bit.ly links are saved on your page, and therefore the articles that you shorten and post can be searched and reviewed whenever you want.

But bit.ly isn’t able to archive all your posts. If you are posting anything more than article links – and you should be – you need another tool. Here are a few we have found that may work for you.

The Archivist: This is a Windows desktop application that allows you to create Twitter searches and archive them on your PC so they can be reviewed and researched at a later date. It also allows you to review who is tweeting about particular topics over time.

Twapper Keeper: This online application can archive tweets based on a hashtag. Once you set it up, and define the hashtags you want kept, it starts archiving them for you. You can then analyze the information it finds and organize tweets into the categories you want.

Twinbox: This Outlook plugin allows you to receive tweets in your inbox from the people your designate. Once it’s set up and activated, you can search, archive and group your tweets the same way you do your email. This is a nice way to get notified about important tweets. However, if you work in a corporate environment where the size of your inbox is limited, this will fill it up rather quickly.

Evernote: With iPads and other PDAs growing more popular every day, Evernote has risen in popularity too. It allows you to access notes and information from whatever device you happen to be holding at the time, regardless of where it was created originally. It also offers a feature that allows you to save your tweets into Evernote so they can be stored and searched whenever you want. For it to work though, you have to add “@myEN” onto the tweet you want to save, so it does take up a few valuable characters and may be best for only certain tweets you really want to save.

There are a variety of other options for archiving your tweets as well, so do your research and choose the one that is best for you.

P.S. By the way, in researching for this post, I discovered that the Library of Congress is archiving every tweet ever sent. While this doesn’t help you find your old ones, it is an interesting fact. See CNN article on it here. Library of Congress

Legal Marketing: What is Link Juice?

Link Juice is a term used to refer to the ranking of your website in Google. Every website needs link juice in order to gain more viewers because it is how Google determines which site is “better.”

It sounds silly, but link juice is very important. It’s similar to search engine optimization (SEO), in that every website needs link juice in order to gain more viewers. The more link juice you have, the higher  your listing on a Google search. So instead of having your firm’s website on page 5 of Google’s search for “law firms specializing in employment law,” you can be on page 1 if you have enough link juice.

Link juice is how Google determines which site is “better.” For example, if your law firm’s site is linked to popular sites like Legal Marketing Reader and/or Law.com, and your competitor’s site isn’t linked to any other sites, your site will be higher in the rankings due to its link juice.

This is important for every social media network you use at your law firm as well. Make sure you are linking your site to your YouTube videos and the other way around too. Make sure your Facebook page has your law firm’s website linked to it. Also, another great way to gain more link juice is to comment on LinkedIn discussions. Make sure your comments are linked to your LinkedIn page–BUT don’t spam!

Note: Google also uses SEO or “keywords,” in addition link juice, to determine rankings.

Legal Marketing: Are you ignoring your “Contact Settings” on LinkedIn?

Make sure your “Contact Settings” can be easily found on your LinkedIn account.

Expose yourself – it’s okay!

Poor old contact settings.  Relegated to the bottom of your profile.  Often ignored.  But did you know that with a few minor tweaks, contact settings could make your profile exponentially more accessible on LinkedIn?

The trick is adding your contact information (an email address or phone number) to this section – usually found at the bottom of your profile.  Once you do, your contact information becomes exposed to your entire network – not just your first level of connections. This way clients are more likely to find you. And not just find you, but contact you. If it’s too hard for a client to find your contact information, you might lose them to your competition.

I know this will make some people nervous.  I have many people in my network. I’ve had my contact info in this section for years, and I rarely get unsolicited spam as a result. Optimizing my contact information has only benefited me, not hurt me.

Caveat:  The more you expose yourself on social media, the more exposed you are to people who might abuse the system.

You can always create a “social media email account” that you use strictly for your social media communications:

• Keep your legal social media email and “real” email separate
• Build your lists
• It gives you a “throw away” option if your account gets usurped or ‘phished’

That should keep you relatively safe.

Expose yourself!

Legal Marketing: Best Practices for Connecting on LinkedIn

Interested in learning ways to connect to more people in the legal marketing network on LinkedIn?

You can only make your LinkedIn network so big with people that you know. So if you want to grow your network, you will have to start adding connections in the legal marketing field that you may not know. When inviting people to connect on LinkedIn, there are limited options to show your relationship:

• Colleague
• Classmate
• We’ve done business together
• Groups
• Other
• And I don’t know…

Obviously if any of the first three options apply, use them.

• You can use the “friend” option without knowing the other person’s email address if you haven’t been “dinged” (reported). Many people don’t realize that if you try to connect to someone you don’t know, and they say they don’t know you, LinkedIn will eventually require that you enter an email address for every connection request you send. You don’t want this to happen. So if you can use the “friend” option, (or any of the other options) make sure you create a personalized message. Let people know why you are connecting with them. How did you find them?  What about their profile intrigued you?  You have a much better chance of getting your invitation accepted, or at the least, not tagged as an “I don’t know” (IDK) or spam if you tell them why you want to connect.

An option I will often use, if it is available, is the “group” option.  As long as a LinkedIn member has joined a group that you also belong to, and has not turned off the ability to connect through a group, you can reach out to them this way.

Invitation using “groups” option

• Once you join a group, you might have to wait to be “accepted” by the administrator. After you get “accepted,” you can then send the person you want to connect with (in that group) a message asking them if they will accept an invitation. This is a great way to grow your network. This is more time-consuming, but will not cost you an “InMail” or an “Introduction.”   If you ask them first to connect before you send the invitation, you will also be less likely to get spammed or IDK’d.

Your other option, of course, is to use one of your introductions.  Take the time to fully explain why you want to connect, not only to the end party, but also to the person connecting you.

Introduction on LinkedIn

If you have a paid account, you can use an InMail.

• Some people will put their contact information in the “Contact Setting” at the bottom of the LinkedIn profile – and you can either use that information to contact them directly, or to get access to them as a “friend.”  (Once again, be aware that you have a higher chance of getting IDK’d or reported as a spammer if you do.)

Use common sense.  The Golden Rule applies to LinkedIn as well.  Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.  I am a LION, and I will accept your invitation.  Others might not.  But usually, with the courtesy of a well-crafted introduction letter and a genuine desire to connect, most people will grasp your outstretched hand and connect.

Legal Marketing: 10 Things NOT to do on LinkedIn

When LinkedIn tells you that your profile is 100% complete, don’t believe them.

Here are the top 10 things to avoid to get your LinkedIn profile optimized and ready to go:

1. Don’t put anything in the name field other than your name

Thinking they will stand out from the crowd, some people add email addresses, phone numbers and group affiliations into the name field (when editing Basic Information on LinkedIn). They think that:  John A. Smith  (Johnasmith@gmail.com) LION will get them more hits than a simple: John Smith.

The problem is that LinkedIn will categorize you incorrectly, which means you’ll be harder to find when someone types your name in.  It also means you will be harder to find in the contacts list, especially if you have 500+ contacts. Harder to find means less business.

Keep your name clean: John Smith.  You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to put your contact information in your profile (headline, summary, or contact me sections to name a few).  And in those other sections you can always use CAPITALIZATION and special characters to make YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION jump out at the reader.

Ladies- LinkedIn finally has a field for your maiden name. They took far too long to resolve this issue, but now both your old colleagues and your new friends can find you!

2. Don’t create your LinkedIn profile in LinkedIn

Create your LinkedIn profile in a Word file, then cut and paste it into LinkedIn. This will help prevent spelling and grammatical errors, make it easier to get word counts, and later you can be easily copy it into other social media platforms to keep your branding consistent. It will also save you a boatload of time.

And if for some reason LinkedIn ever suspends or shuts down your profile, or you simply want to try out another legal networking site, having a fully formed profile already in a Word document is a huge time saver.

3. Don’t use boudoir shots or your business logo for your LinkedIn photo

This is a BUSINESS NETWORKING site. Keep your photo professional. Head shot only, so they can see your trustworthy eyes and kind smile.  And for those of you with new babies, yes your kids are adorable, but you can show them off on Facebook.

4. Don’t Ignore the Update function

Similar to Twitter and Facebook, the LinkedIn update can be a powerful tool to keep you top of mind.  You will show up on your connection’s homepage and even their email, especially if your connections don’t know they can turn this off.  And a few a week is just fine. I recommend people Tweet hourly, update Facebook daily, and update LinkedIn one or two times a week.

Like the other updates, you can post links to interesting articles, let people know about upcoming legal events or promote speaking engagements.

5. Don’t leave your public profile unedited

How useful or memorable is this public profile URL:  Linkedin.com/in/23h9il?  How about this one?  http://www.linkedin.com/in/legalmarketingexpert

Your public profile can be a powerful way to optimize your brand, raise your Google rankings, increase connections and position yourself as an expert.  Many people simply miss the fact that you can customize your public profile URL. You can use your name, your company name or your personal brand.  Just remember it has to be all lowercase, one word and no special characters.

6 . Don’t ignore your website link and make sure to customize it

First of all, if you have a website, blog site, or even another social media address, make sure you have it in your LinkedIn profile.  You can include THREE sites, so use them all! Every time someone jumps from a mega site to your website, your Google rating climbs just a bit higher.

Higher rating = more hits = more clients! And really, isn’t that the reason we are on LinkedIn in the first place?

7. Don’t populate the Experience section with a simple copy of your resume

Hey, you can now use box.net to upload your resume into LinkedIn.  So while you certainly want to use Experience to list your current and previous jobs, really take advantage of this section by filling it with all that stuff you wish you had room for in your resume.  Did you work for/with any Fortune 500 companies? Did your legal advice save the day?

You can always use this space to showcase wins, different companies you have helped, seminars or workshops you have presented or a mini-shot of your personal website.  And fill it with keywords to increase your changes of showing up in searches too!

8. Don’t limit the Education section to just your traditional education

Certainly you are going to want to list all the degrees you have managed to accumulate.  If you have a PhD from Harvard, by all means, let us know.  But you can also use this section (once again, using that magic tool called other ) to list certifications, licenses and other nifty specialties that make you stand out in a crowd. Once again, use your keywords!

9. Don’t ignore the Summary section

The Summary section is probably one of the most useful and overlooked tools on LinkedIn. You have 2000 characters – that’s 2/3 of a page – to tell people who you are, how to contact you and why they should hire your firm. This is also an EXCELLENT place to capitalize those things to which you want to you want to DRAW attention.

And for the search engine spiders, use your keywords. The more you say something about yourself, the more true it is on LinkedIn.

Remember to use white space (it only takes a character to break that clump into nice readable paragraphs,) CAPITALIZATION, special characters and key words. And as mentioned before – CREATE YOUR SUMMARY IN A WORD DOCUMENT FIRST.

10. Don’t forget to use the applications

LinkedIn finally has some pretty nifty internal and open source applications to make your LinkedIn profile even more effective.  Some of my favorites are:

• Events
• WordPress
• Slideshare.com
• Box.net
• TripIt.

Check them out and utilize them!

Legal Marketing: Track Social Media for your Law Firm

Tracking activity and response rates is key for law firm social media ROI.

Want to know what law topic is being tweeted about? Want to know if your law firm’s tweets are creating any buzz? Curious what others are saying about your law firm and attorneys?

Here are 3 tips regarding tracking social media:

1. Track your Twitter popularity by using it regularly. Tweet important topics about the legal field by referring to big law sites like National Law Review, American Bar Association, or Legal Marketing Reader. Check to see if people re-tweet it or comment on your posts. If you are not yet familiar with Twitter functionality, you can check to see if people are responding to your comments by checking the @replies on the right side bar.
2. If you don’t have time to maintain and keep up with social media news, then use a program like SocialFlow. This Enterprise SaaS application listens to what your audience is interested in and talking about in real time. They pair your potential Tweets and posts with your audience’s interests in real time, and release the message that is most likely to earn the most attention and action from your audience. From what we understand, those using this application have seen huge increases in their click rate.
3. See which articles are being clicked on most by using bit.ly links. This site shortens URLs so they take up less of your 140 allowed characters on Twitter. And once you have your bit.ly link, you can track how many clicks each article  is receiving, who is retweeting it, and if that reader is actually reading the whole article. If a reader is only reading one paragraph of your article, then maybe the headline didn’t correlate with the actual material in that article. This is an easy way to see what people are reading and relate to them by posting current and popular law articles.

Check out more of their tips by reading Advertising Age’s article, “Five Things you didn’t know about Social Media Tracking.”

Legal Marketing: 5 Tips to Help you Find a Marketing Partner

Some simple recommendations can make selecting a law firm a much easier process and improve your opportunity for a successful relationship.

As a partner of a firm knows, successful legal marketing requires a little more finesse in its approach than a standard marketing plan. With so many talented agencies vying for your business, it can be difficult to identify which one would be the best choice for your law firm.

Next time your law firm is searching for a marketing partner, consider these five tips to help you choose an agency that’s a perfect fit for your firm:

1. Chemistry

That’s right, chemistry, first and foremost. Consider your gut feeling for the personality type of the representative meeting with you and of the agency as a whole. That connection makes a difference in how well you and your representative are able to communicate with each other.

A lot more quality work gets done when the client and the agency genuinely like each other and have similar work styles. People say you can’t choose a vendor based on whom you get along with. All other things being equal, I say, “Yes, you can, and you should.”

2. Legal expertise

An agency may have a dashing presentation and a sizzling portfolio, but if it doesn’t have solid experience in legal marketing, the learning curve may require more time than you are able to give.

An agency that is already well versed in the nuances of legal marketing – and has impressive experience to show for it – will be able to hit the ground running and develop a campaign that hits the target dead on. Ask to see samples of work they’ve done for other law firms and the results their campaign brought in.

3. Knowledgeable about your law firm

Similarly, the agency should have at least some understanding of your particular network, audiences, challenges and competition… or at the very least, have looked at your website  (You’d be surprised how often they haven’t.)

It’s helpful if someone on the agency’s team has legal experience on your side of the desk; someone who can provide the creative team insights and advice as the project takes shape.

4. A leader in using social media

Marketing today is changing quickly, due to the meteoric rise of social media and its increasing importance in communications, and it will likely continue to evolve. For law firms – or any organization – it’s imperative to have an agency that is staying at the forefront of issues and opportunities in social media.

Your marketing partner should be able to recommend the right mix of traditional and new media for your specific needs.

5. Stellar creativity

While legal firms don’t tend to have the luxury of doing campaigns that are highly unconventional, your agency should bring in novel ideas that set you apart from the competition in a fresh, compelling way.

I feel part of an agency’s role is to offer a new perspective; to introduce creative ideas that challenge you to look at your firm’s public image in a new way.

Ultimately, of course, the agency’s work should have your target audience looking at your firm in a new – and favorable – way.

Legal Marketing: 10 Tips to Create a Law Firm Blog for New Business

Your law firm’s blog can make new business easier, not harder, and will help you to better understand how digital and social media marketing works.

You hear everyone talking about blogging and social media, but you don’t understand the relevance for your law firm. As important as a website was for your law firm a blog is now as equally important if not more so. It should become a gateway to your firm.

A personal blog will provide you with a direction, focus and professional enrichment unlike anything you have ever experienced before. Your personal network skyrockets giving you the opportunity to generate the right kinds of new business leads that are a better match for your firm. Plus, you won’t have to be constantly chasing after new business; your new business pipeline will always remain full.

So with those things being said, here are 10 tips to get your attorneys’ blog started and to start turning those blog readers into clients:

1. Before you start to write learn to listen.

Identify and read other online resources that would be important to your target audience. Read blogs of other firms. Subscribe to blog RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds through Google Reader or the feed reader of your choice. Using a feed reader will greatly help you to strategize and organize your online reading. Get a feel for how blogs are written.

Writing a blog post is much different from writing for print. People tend to scan for information online rather than reading word-for-word. You’ll gain lots of ideas for your own posts from your online reading.

2. Do not incorporate your blog into your firm’s website.

You will need to allow your firm’s blog room to breathe and evolve apart from your current branding. As you interact with your target audience, they will become the decision makers as to what information resonates, what messages are appealing, what their legal challenges and obstacles really are.

You may think you know what your readers want, but you will continually be surprised as you receive their input, reflect upon your blog’s analytics. What you gain from this experience will help you discover an “appealing” position and proper branding for your firm from your prospective clients perspective.

3. Blog posts should be written by the firm’s principals or key attorneys.

Social media is personal and you are the face of your firm. We are in a relationship-oriented business and clients want to work with someone who they know, like and trust. Therefore your firm’s principals should lead the way.

Another reason I advocate that the blog post be written by the firm’s principals is that they are the least likely to leave the firm. Therefore, equity isn’t lost if an associate chooses to leave for another firm.

4. Keep the design simple.

Limit your creative and interactive staff’s involvement in the design process unless you want to greatly slow the process down. The design of your blog should be nice and clean. Here content is king.

I personally recommend using either WordPress.org or WordPress.com as your blog platform. These are simple blog platforms that are relatively easy to use and provide just the right bells and whistles.

5. Own your domain name.

I have seen a number of blogs with a wordpress.com or blogspot.com in their URL (web address). Be sure to own your domain name.  That way, if you ever change blog platforms, you won’t lose traffic to your site.

6. Create a simple written plan for your blog.

From my perspective, the objective for your blog is to generate leads and new business for your firm. To reach this objective you will need to identify your target audience, who you are writing to. What are their legal challenges?  In what ways can you become an invaluable resource and help?

You’ll need a name for the blog. An appropriate tag line that states what this site is about. Identify the categories that you will be writing to. I would suggest limiting the categories to 10 or less.

As you begin your blog remember, you cannot be everything to everybody and the more general your blog is the less traffic you can expect.

7. Keep a list of blog post ideas.

I’m often asked “don’t you run out of ideas when you are primarily writing only to a law firm’s marketing needs and social media tactics?” The answer is no.  Every morning I start the day by opening my Google Reader.

I have RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from about 16 of my favorite blogs and publications. I scan quickly through the list of post titles or headlines, when one catches my attention I open it up and read it. It often sparks ideas for my own posts or is information that I can site and link for my readers.

I use a browser bar tool called “Press This” that allows me to post a draft of that article in my blog. I also keep a list of post ideas on my DeskTop.  I never find myself lacking for something to write about that won’t be of some help to my audience.

8. Set a goal for the number of posts to write per week.

I have a goal of posting 5 blog posts per week-it is very ambitious to think an attorney will have this many posts, but remember, consistency is key. I want to be constantly posting so that I don’t lose any readers. The feedback that I gain is what motivates and excites me.  My readers are very loyal and I don’t want to disappoint them by not having fresh content.

9. Repurpose your blog content.

I have lots of material to utilize through other new media tools. Your blog posts can actually be turned into a book. You can also create your own white papers, e-newsletters, and informational press releases from your content.

I use a tool called Tweetlater, to automate postings on Twitter. You will find all the effort you’ve put forth in your writing for your blog can be repurposed in lots of different ways through a number of different online channels and will have a long, long shelf life.

10. Learn how to generate blog traffic.

The current communication revolution makes it critical that you know this stuff so that can provide better direction for your firm and for your clients. Learning how to generate traffic to your blog is an eye-opening experience. You will better understand SEO (search engine optimization), web analytics (such as, Google Analytics), RSS feeds (reader subscriptions), email campaigns, HTML, etc.

Plus you will know the importance of and learn how to use social media tools like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Delicious, Technorati, Digg and StumbleUpon just to name a few.

Understanding social media is not for just one practice area within the firm. Every staff member needs to understand it. What better way to learn than to use these tools than to generate new business for your firm through social media.

Social media is permanently revolutionizing communication. It isn’t an option to not participate. If your firm is to survive you’ve got to “get it.” Only as a participant will you genuinely come to understand what a valuable tool it is for your firm.