Feeling blocked? Follow these steps when content ideas are scarce.

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

In addition to writing for my own blog, I help law firms keep up with the demands of their own blogs. That might mean anything from planning a blogging calendar to create content that conforms to their legal PR aims to writing drafts of blog content.

But even as a professional legal content writer there are occasions when I find myself blocked as I’m trying to come up with content ideas.

Here are three approaches that help me get unstuck and back on the writing track.

1. List Frequently Asked Questions

When I speak to prospective clients about law firm website writing, blog writing or legal PR work, the questions I’m asked tend to be similar despite differences in practice areas and geographical locations.

When a lawyer meets with a client or conducts an initial telephone consultation, the concerns raised are rarely novel. Clients want to know about their legal rights and options, legal procedures, the scope of the representation and the law firm’s fee structures.

I find it helpful to make a list of questions frequently raised in the initial consultation and use them to plan upcoming blog posts. Try writing down the initial questions a client raises during the meeting.  If you use  your client's terminology to frame your questions, you may improve the chances that a search engine query will lead to your blog post.

2. Use Keywords Identified by Google Analytics

Everyone should have his or her law firm’s website or blog configured with a program that measures traffic. One of the most popular free programs is Google Analytics. (In “How to install Google Analytics to measure your marketing campaigns,” Enrique Serrano provides step-by-step instructions explaining the process. )

Review the keyword phrases that are bringing visitors to your website. You can sort the phrases in a number of ways — for instance, identifying the most frequently used phrases that bring people to your site and the phrases that have received the most page views on your website. Consider writing a blog post that capitalizes on those keyword phrases.

3.  Set Up Google Alerts

If you scour the Internet in search of mainstream and legal media articles highlighting the latest news touching on your practice area, let Google Alerts do your Web surfing for you. You can enter your search parameters into Google Alerts, another free service, and receive a daily or weekly update highlighting the latest Google results on the basis of your topic or search terms.

The e-mail roundup is an efficient alert that pulls together late-breaking news and recent legal developments. Because you’re able to find out about it early, you can use the opportunity to weigh in or explain the debate on your legal blog.

These are just a few of my tried-and-true methods. Do you have any suggestions for overcoming legal content writing block? If so, I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to leave a comment to this blog post or email me at geri@legalmediamatters.com.

For our follow-up post on additional ways to generate story ideas, read "Blawg Topics: 3 More Brainstorming Tools."

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

A professional design and typo-free, frequently updated legal content top the list

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

What makes a law firm website a good one from the perspective of a potential client?

In 2002, the Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab released the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.  Based on three years of research involving more than 4,500 subjects, these guidelines are useful not only when it comes to planning a website but also in measuring the effectiveness of your firm’s current website.

Here are the guidelines, adapted for use by law firms.

1. Make it easy for people to gauge your website’s accuracy. Provide third-party links to support your information.
2. Demonstrate that there’s a real law firm behind your website. Include your phone number, a physical address and representative client lists or links to news articles about your firm.
3. Highlight your law firm’s services and the expertise of your attorneys. In addition to providing information on undergraduate and law degrees, include the honors and awards an attorney has received and the articles he or she has written.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people are affiliated with the firm and its site. Use the attorney profile page not only to highlight a lawyer’s expertise but also to allow the potential client to connect with the lawyer as a person and a problem-solver.
5. Make it easy to contact your law firm. Is your contact page clearly visible? Do you provide multiple ways for clients to contact the firm?
6. Does your law firm’s website appear professional? Forty-seven percent of website visitors base their evaluation of a site’s credibility on its appearance. A poor visual design, bad layout, formatting errors, typographical errors and amateurish images can hurt a website’s credibility.
7. Provide a website that is both useful and easy to use. Are your pages informative? Will potential clients find them educational? Can potential clients find the information they’re seeking easily?
8. Frequently update your law firm website’s content. Offering outdated content is like showing up in court wearing a tomato-red polyester suit and your best pair of white dress shoes: Your law firm’s website will stand out, all right — but not in a good way.
9. Use restraint when offering promotional content. Prospective clients don’t expect to see third-party advertising on an attorney website.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how inconsequential they might seem to you. Does your website contain typographic errors, grammar errors or broken links?

At Legal Media Matters, we use our know-how to help your law firm’s website get positive notice. We create attorney bio pages; provide fresh, useful, easy-to-understand content that will attract the attention of potential clients and keep your website current; and offer copyediting services.

For more information, contact us by filling out our online contact form, e-mailing geri@legalmediamatters.com or calling 314-520-3897 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              314-520-3897      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Use legal PR to reach your clients’ trusted advisors

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Yesterday I gave presentation to a group of students enrolled in a mediation training course offered by St. Louis attorney and mediator Marta Papa. The topic: how to promote your mediation practice.

In addition to volunteering information, I came away with some new ideas.

One of the PR ideas I highlighted is the importance of promoting one’s mediation practice to referral sources — trusted advisors whose recommendation carries great weight when it comes to the selection of an attorney or mediator.

As I discussed in my YouTube video, traditional marketing involves the attorney using PR efforts to reach the client directly.

But referral marketing is a three-step approach, best exemplified in this diagram.

Papa took it a step further and shared one of her favorite referral marketing strategies. She makes it her goal to meet three referral sources each week for lunch. A problem that has legal ramifications also often has a financial, medical or emotional component.

A family lawyer, Papa had an extensive list of professionals whose work complemented her practice, including:

• Certified public accountants
• Mortgage brokers
• Physicians
• Psychiatrists
• Financial advisors
• Stockbrokers
• Insurance agent
• Real estate agents
• Clergy
• Business evaluators

She approached the professionals not from the standpoint of how they could send cases to her but instead in terms of how the professionals could help her clients. Some of her clients needed the services of professionals, and they looked to Papa for recommendations.

Take-Away Tips:

1. Identify professionals outside the legal community who also help your clients deal with the underlying issues that gave rise to the legal problem.
2. Meet for coffee or lunch as a way to introduce yourself, learn about a professional’s business and describe your practice.
3. Remember that referral marketing must be a two-way street. Don’t ask for help without offering assistance.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Our weekly roundup of legal news links, legal PR client news and story ideas

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

There are several ways to promote your practice. On Monday I discussed why you should include your referral base in your firm’s PR outreach efforts. On Wednesday I noted that legal press releases are a good way to reach out to clients, add fresh content to your website and get inbound links.

Seminars, honors and awards are another way to increase your visibility, strengthen your firm’s brand and generate publicity for your firm.

In this week’s roundup I want to take a moment to congratulate three law firm clients for their recent achievements and outreach efforts.

LMM Client News

The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis recently bestowed on John Campbell of The Simon Law Firm the John C. Shepherd Professionalism Award, which is given each year to a young lawyer who exemplifies the tenets of the profession.

David Zevan of Zevan & Davidson received the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys’ Thomas G. Strong Trial Attorney Award, which is given annually to an attorney whose advocacy skills in difficult cases demonstrate great skill and passion for the injured, who has handled complex cases with some frequency and who has a reputation for professionalism, ethics and integrity.

Marta J. Papa is offering her 40-hour divorce mediation training course. It began June 23 and will wrap up on June 27.  The training includes demonstrations, lectures, role-play and coaching.

Notable Links for Lawyers

The Right PR Strategy for a Company Crisis

Against the backdrop of the Toyota and BP meltdowns, three PR veterans interviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Henry Unger weigh in on the best practices for companies facing crises. In addition to the need for crisis-simulation exercises and clear designation of who is authorized to deliver a unified message, the experts emphasize the need to bring PR experts to the table alongside operations, legal and financial advisors.

At Buffalo News, New Rules for Online Comments

This week, The Buffalo News announced that it would require everyone who posts a comment on its website to first provide his or her name, place of residence and phone number. Jeremy W. Peters of The New York Times reports that similar information is required of people who submit letters to the editor to the Times. The commenter’s name and hometown appear along with the comment.

Twitter Lets You Automatically Follow Facebook Friends

Twitter has announced two major upgrades to its Facebook and LinkedIn applications, Mashable’s Ben Parr reports. The apps allow you to see which of your friends or connections are on Twitter. However, the Facebook Twitter app wasn’t working properly on June 24; according to the last available information, Facebook was working to resolve the problem.

How to Get Started Blogging

Grammar Girl has a great post filled with useful blogging tips. She walks the reader through the important process of defining the audience and discusses how to build confidence as a blogger.

Social Media Risks

Over at Slaw, business lawyer David Canton lists the factors that lead to bad social media policy decisions and writes that some forget that the old rules still apply to new media. A comment that shouldn’t be made in person or in an e-mail is also likely to be inappropriate as a blog post. He also notes the powerful role of perception: People tend to underestimate the risks associated with familiar technologies and processes and overestimate the risks associated with the unfamiliar — such as social media.

Story Ideas for Business, Consumer and Law

Reporters, Writers and Bloggers

Legal Liability for Online Comments

The announcement by The Buffalo News that it would no longer accept anonymous comments is the latest chapter in the vigorous debate over liability concerns stemming from unfettered speech.

Those worried about curbs on speech oppose any comment restrictions. Media outlets report that some attorneys are also advocating against controls because poor controls might expose a paper to greater defamation and slander liability than no controls at all. (This is similar to the legal reasoning applied to the dilemma of removing snow from a business parking lot. It is better to let the snow accumulate than to do a substandard job of trying to remove it, or so the reasoning goes.)

On the other side are journalists who believe that the old standards that required the newspapers to verify information submitted with a letter to the editor should apply. There are also many who are weary of reading racist, inappropriate, flamethrowing or rage-filled missives.

The tensions between these points of views and how media outlets are handling them could be a good subject for exploration.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

For most lawyers, referrals from other attorneys continue to be a major source of new business. So when you’re developing a legal marketing and public relations campaign, it is important to identify your referral base and include the audience in your promotional efforts.

For this blog post, I’ve uploaded and narrated a short PowerPoint presentation that explains how to reach your referral base.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Our weekly roundup of legal news links, legal PR client news and story ideas

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

The law and advanced tools for communicating continue to converge — and collide — on the Internet.

In this week’s roundup I’ve highlighted several stories that demonstrate how lawyers are leveraging the Internet, social media and emerging technology in their legal PR and marketing efforts.

In some cases, it is the Internet or tech companies who are using the law as a tool.

But first, client news.

LMM Client News

A sex discrimination class action lawsuit against Roto-Rooter has been allowed to proceed. Last week, a federal judge denied the company’s motion to dismiss the$5 million case, which claims that the plumbing giant denied promotions to women. The Simon Law Firm represents the plaintiffs, and one of the firm’s lawyers, Erich Vieth, was quoted in this article in Law 360, reprinted on Forbes.com.

Notable Links for Lawyers

Amazon Patents Social Networking System, Winks at Facebook

The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has awarded Amazon a social networking-related patent. Mashable’s Stan Schroeder writes that if you replace the word “system” in the patent language with “Facebook” it reveals “how flawed the U.S. patent system is.”

Dallas Divorce Lawyer and Dallas App Developer Team Up for iPhone DIY Divorce Apps

A Dallas divorce lawyer and an app developer have teamed up to offer two divorce-related apps, each priced at $9.99. One tracks the cost of divorce and helps track key information. The other helps create an inventory of assets and liabilities. The story, by Victor Godinez, originally appeared in The Dallas Morning News and was highlighted on Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites.

Quebec Bar Association Redesigns Its Website – Adds Virtual Tour Guide

Slaw’s Michel-Adrien Sheppard reports that the Quebec Bar Association has revamped its website. The site, which features a virtual guide tour, aims to provide information to both lawyers and the general public in clear, simplified language. Sheppard says the bar association is also active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and co-produces a TV show.

Using Social Networking as Legal Tool

The Wall Street Journal’s Nathan Koppel writes that law firms are devoting more resources to cultivating an online presence. In addition to traditional websites, firms are also developing niche websites and sites that have the look and feel of forums and news sites.

How to: Build a Twitter Strategy for Your Business

When it comes to leveraging social media for business purposes, a clear strategy makes sense. Writing for Mashable, Megan Berry outlines the five questions every business should ask and answer before  developing a comprehensive Twitter strategy.

Story Ideas for Business, Consumer and Law Reporters, Writers and Bloggers

Pet Provisions

Certainly, there are people who prefer the companionship of their pets over relatives. But can a dog, cat, horse or snake — the reptilian sort, that is — inherit property?

With the recent news that Conchita, the beloved Chihuahua of Miami heiress Gail Posner, who, with two other dogs  has been bequeathed the right to live in an $8.3 million mansion and a $3 million trust fund was set aside to take care of her needs, the question becomes, “Is that legal?” If it isn’t, are there any steps a pet owner can take to ensure that an animal is provided for in the event the owner dies?

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Seven quick tips to turn seminars into referral and marketing opportunities

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

The start of summer not only means school closings and pool openings; in some states it also signals that the deadline for accumulation of mandatory continuing legal education hours is fast approaching.

There are two different ways to look at seminars and conferences: as an obligation or as an opportunity.

People who view CLE as an obligation likely take the easy approach, coming in just before the first session starts, sneaking out of the lecture to handle a few phone calls from the office and then leaving the seminar as quickly as possible.

But others see seminars and conferences as legal marketing and referral opportunities. One of the best ways to make the most of these opportunities is to plan ahead, developing a strategy and setting concrete goals for connecting with others in a way that fits your own personality type.

Here are seven quick tips to help turn your next seminar into a referral marketing opportunity:

1. Make sure you have plenty of business cards before setting off for the seminar, and be sure to keep them in someplace easily accessible.
2. Introduce yourself to the people seated next to you. If you’re feeling really ambitious, introduce yourself to the two people seated to the left and the two people seated to the right.
3. If you find a session informative, thank the lecturer personally after he or she has finished the presentation. The speaker has put in a lot of time preparing, and a thank-you is always appreciated.
4. Seek out the lawyers you know. Update them on your practice and don’t forget to introduce attorneys you already know but who don’t know each other.
5. Networking works best when it’s a two-way street. Don’t just tell people about your practice; ask about theirs.
6. When you sign in for the seminar or conference, ask whether there are opportunities to moderate or lecture at future CLEs and obtain the appropriate contact information.
7. If the conference includes exhibitors, stop by the booths. In addition to learning about services that might be of use to you in your practice, you can take the opportunity to explain the type of law that you practice.

Missouri Bar’s Solo and Small Firm Conference

One of the biggest bar conferences in Missouri, the Solo and Small Firm Conference, will be held this week at the Lake of the Ozarks. In addition to earning my CLE hours I’ll be blogging and tweeting from the conference, using the hashtag #MoSASF.

If you’re attending the conference — or any other legal seminar — and have networking tips, share your thoughts in our comment section, send me an e-mail or tweet your tip to @legalmediamtrs.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

An in-house lawyer wants to reach executives and explain the services a general counsel offers

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I invited my Twitter followers to pose a question (in 140 characters or fewer, of course) that I would take up on this blog. One lawyer sent a direct message wanting to know the best keywords to attract chief executive officers and chief financial officers who want to learn more about what their in-house lawyers can do for them.

The question is much more complicated than it might seem at first blush.

Here’s a driving analogy. If someone asks how to start a car, the easiest answer is: “Just turn the key in the ignition.” But there’s a complicated assortment of processes going on behind the dashboard and beneath the hood that are responsible for starting the engine.  Even though the key signals to the engine that it is time to start, it is the first piece of a complicated process.

In other words, simply possessing a key will not make a car run — and the same key won’t start every car.

As with cars, there’s often a multilayered process that is engaged in before keywords will work. As with car keys, the keywords that will deliver the best performance are going to vary; one size does not fit all.

Legal Keywords and Problem-Solving

Keywords help people sort through the huge pool of information provided on the Internet and find what they’re looking for. But vague keywords, or inefficient keywords in areas where there is a lot of expert competition, are like replacement keys that are almost exact duplicates: They’re not going to work in the way you want them to.

To discover what types of keywords might attract them to your website or blog, you must first figure out what keeps executives up at night. Once you’ve done that, you can explain how an in-house lawyer is a problem-solver and ally when it comes to providing solutions to those specific problems.

Is an executive looking for loan workout help or bankruptcy reorganization advice? If the company is located in the U.S., does the executive have questions about the new healthcare legislation and how it applies to his or her company? What are the legal pitfalls a domestic company looking to expand abroad must avoid?

Once you’ve brainstormed ideas, it’s time to test them. There are several free tools — among them Google Insights, Wordtracker and Google AdWords — you can use to conduct research. (For more on the mechanical steps of finding keywords used in actual searches and then including them in your content, read “Law Firm Websites: Seven Tips for Legal Content Writing.”)

For a test run, I chose the simple phrase “in-house counsel” to see what would come up.

At Google Insights, a worldwide search of the phrase revealed that the top searches involved finding jobs and salary information.

I went to Wordtracker and plugged in “in-house counsel” to see what would come up. The most-searched phrase turned out to be the most specific grouping of keywords (a “long tail”): “in-house counsel obligation regarding spoliation.” Several job search-related queries also surfaced. There were two searches recorded for the keyword phrase “evolving role of in-house counsel.”

At Google AdWords, the “in-house counsel” query once again pulled up several job-related searches. However, it also indicated that the phrase “general counsel” is extremely popular and that “attorney client privilege in house counsel” is one substantive area that receives some inquiries.

There are, of course, additional strategies and techniques to sort and sift the information, but this brief exercise illustrates four points:

1. When it comes to keywords, there is no virtual master key.
2. Avoiding certain keyword phrases, such as the ones related to job searches, is just as important as finding the phrases you want to use.
3. The best-performing site will have one page dedicated to each distinct phrase — for example, a page addressing spoliation, another explaining attorney-client privilege and a third discussing the evolving role of in-house counsel. (For more information on how to use your keywords on a page, read “Three Keyword Rules for Law Firm Website.”)
4. You must measure the performance of your Web pages and keywords. Most sites require monitoring and adjustment. Because keyword selection isn’t as straightforward as one might hope, you may find one set of keywords performing extremely well and another set underperforming. (For more information on measurement, read “How to Install Google Analytics to Measure Your Marketing Campaign.”)

Integrate Your Legal Keyword Efforts with Media Outreach

At Legal Media Matters, we research keywords, develop strategies based on the basis of our clients' goals and then write content. We also emphasize the importance of integrating online and traditional public relations strategies.

In addition to your online outreach, don’t forget traditional print publications as a means of reaching out to executives. Some of the best places for this type of outreach are the so-called industry bibles and trusted trade publications that accept guest articles. Review the editorial calendar to find an opening. (For more on this process, see “Writer’s Guidelines and Guest Articles,” and “Editorial Calendars and Guest Articles.”)

Another way to educate your audience is to post comments to articles related to your topics. In both instances, comments and guest articles can serve as the initial means of engaging your target audience. A website address or link back to your blog, if an executive is reading the information online, will allow him or her to continue the conversation — and may also provide valuable inbound links to your site, boosting its performance and the reach of your keywords. (For more ideas on finding your audience, see “Law Firm Marketing: To Draw Clients In, Reach Out.”)

If you need help researching keywords, writing content or devising a print publication placement strategy, contact Legal Media Matters. We can help you with your legal content writing project and tailor a legal marketing and public relations plan tailored to your firm’s unique goals.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Our weekly roundup of legal news links, legal PR client news and story ideas

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Awareness. Engagement. Conversion. When you’re adopting a social media strategy for your legal practice, measure your effort with these three goals in mind, advises writer Brian R. Hook in the article “Climbing the B2B Business Ladder.”

I use the same yardstick to evaluate my own online marketing and social media outreach.

In January, the new Legal Media Matters site was launched. Over the course of five months the number of unique monthly visitors has more than doubled. We’ve received feedback and comments on a variety of articles. Our article providing photo shoot tips generated the greatest number of comments.

Our network on LinkedIn has expanded as well. Not only has our social media outreach on the business sight brought in new legal PR and law firm website writing clients, but it has also resulted in great conversations with people such as Nils Montan, an IP lawyer who owns IPAlly.com and lawandsocialnetworking.com.

Initially a skeptic, I have a newfound respect for Twitter. I joined, tweeted for a few weeks and then ignored the site. Eventually I gave it a second chance and put more effort into it. I’m glad I did. I have thoroughly enjoyed my interactions and learned a lot from a variety of people, from @richardrusseth, a lawyer in Colorado and general counsel for a private company, to @MaxDolotov, a law practitioner in Ukraine, and @dfscot, a lawyer in Scotland.

Through the Legal Media Matters Facebook page I’ve been able to share interesting legal news items and tips with people I know and individuals I hope to get to know better in the future.

So, to our friends, followers, subscribers, readers and commenters:  Thank you!

I would also like to thank Kerry Bailey, a tireless copy editor who helps me dot my i’s and cross my t’s in my posts and in the writing work we perform for our clients. Enrique Serrano, a programmer and designer, helps me keep my site running with style, provides technical insights and conducts important keyword research on behalf of our clients.

We’re heading into a three-day holiday weekend in the United States. With Memorial Day just around the corner, I’d like to issue a final thank-you, this one to our service men and women.

I will not be posting an entry on Monday but will resume Wednesday. In the meantime, you can still find me on Twitter. (@legalmediamtrs)

LMM Client News

Consumer attorney John Campbell, of St. Louis-based The Simon Law Firm, was recently highlighted in Missouri Lawyers Media. Campbell appeared before the Missouri Supreme Court and argued that class action waivers contained in arbitration agreements are unenforceable. The case is Beverly Brewer v. Missouri Title Loans Inc.

St. Louis divorce lawyer and mediator Marta J. Papa is offering her 40-hour divorce mediation training course June 23-27. The training includes demonstrations, lectures, role-playing and coaching. I’m delighted to be a guest speaker during the training session in which I’ll discuss ways to market your mediation practice.

Notable Links for Lawyers

Victims Allege Man Posing as Attorney

A fugitive felon who is supposed to be serving a 10-year sentence for stealing sets up shop in downtown St. Louis as a bankruptcy legal representative. Fox 2 investigative reporter Chris Hayes confronts Richard O’Donnell, the man posing as attorney who opened up Bankruptcy n’ More, whose clients allege he took their money and provided less than nothing.

Do You Comply with the FTC’s Red Flag Rule?

On June 1, the federal government’s so-called Red Flag Rule that requires businesses to spot red flags to prevent identity theft, goes into effect. In this Inc. article, Courtney Rubin notes that small businesses, including law firms, may be subject to the law.

Majority of Adults Now Google Themselves

More online users are taking online reputation management seriously, according to a study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove notes that young adults are becoming more aware of the information they post online and how it can affect their careers. As the article, “Do You Google Yourself,” explains, lawyers also need to monitor their virtual images.

Make Marketing a Habit

On Slaw.ca, Allison C. Shields reminds lawyers that marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and offers five excellent marketing habits lawyers should consider establishing.  For more PR and marketing ideas, read “Is Your Marketing Resolve Slipping?”

Climbing the B2B Business Ladder

To survive and thrive, all businesses will eventually need to adopt a social media strategy, Brian R. Hook writes for E-Commerce Times. Hook explains the options available to businesses and discusses the three ways to measure efforts:  awareness, engagement and conversion.

Twitter Guide for Writers

Want to get the most from Twitter? Don’t be obsessed with the number of followers you accumulate, advises writer and cartoonist Debbie Ridpath Ohi, also known as Inkygirl. Instead, use it as a place to network and a source of support and encouragement. Although the tips are aimed at writers, the advice holds true for lawyers as well.

The Most Ridiculous News Typos Ever

If you’ve been reading my blog posts regularly, you know that I preach the gospel of a good copy edit. The reason? To avoid embarrassing mistakes like the ones the ones highlighted on the Huffington Post. (The menu item “honey mustard chicken diapers” is thoroughly unappetizing, and that’s just one of the tamer typos.) Want to ensure that your website doesn’t contain similar gaffes? Read “Editing Web Content for Law Firms.”

Story Ideas for Business, Consumer and Law

Reporters, Writers and Bloggers

Moral Turpitude Clauses

The latest issue of The Civil Litigator highlights a jury verdict for a football coach and social studies teacher at a Catholic high school in Iowa. When the teacher remarried without getting his first marriage annulled, he was fired for violating the moral turpitude clause in his contract. The teacher sued for breach of contract, and a jury awarded him more than $600,000.

How common are moral turpitude clauses? Can schools and businesses enforce them? If so, how can they do it without exposing themselves to liability?

Fireworks and the Fourth of July

We’re heading into the first U.S. holiday of the summer, and the second major American holiday, the Fourth of July, is just around the corner. That means we’ll soon be hearing the whistle of fireworks and the pop of firecrackers in our neighborhoods — even when they’re technically illegal.

A few possible story ideas:  If you set off fireworks and they end up damaging your neighbor’s property, are you liable? Does it make a difference from a liability standpoint if you shot them off legally or illegally? Are laws banning fireworks enforced? If you need legal experts to talk about these issues, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Have any links to suggest? Give them a mention in our comments section. And if you have any recommendations for next week, feel free to e-mail them to me. geri@legalmediamatters.com

Have a safe Memorial Day weekend!

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

By Enrique Serrano

For law firms, an online presence is essential: It is a marketing tool for building your firm’s brand, a way to attract new clients, improve your reputation and ultimately expand your practice. Once your website has been set up, you may be tempted to judge its performance simply by the way your business improves or in terms of the number of new clients who tell you that they found you through your website.

But that's a narrow approach. Your website can generate valuable information if you install a statistics tracking program.

Why do you need stats tracking on your website?

Stats tracking is more than a traditional hit counter or a graph with the number of visits. It’s vitally important because it:

• Allows you to determine the most interesting content for your clients
• Helps you discover new business opportunities, keywords and markets
• Is a reliable way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns
• Removes the guesswork from website-improvement tasks, making website optimization a scientific process

Your stats will give you new ideas about how to improve your site. They provide a reliable measure of what is working and which web pages are underperforming. In short, stats tracking allows you to experiment, measure and optimize.

Why should you choose Google Analytics?

I prefer Google Analytics as a stats tracking tool because:

• It’s completely free for traffic volumes of fewer than 5 million page views per month
• Google Analytics features an easy-to-use customizable interface that allows you to find the most important information, such as traffic volume, top performing pages, visitor locations, traffic sources and most effective keywords, at a glance. This is a straightforward way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
• It contains advanced stats tracking features such as dynamic graphs, site overlay reports displaying your most interesting links and Google Intelligence, which highlights important changes in your traffic. All of these tools are great ways to understand how is your site working and find opportunities to improve your public relations strategy.
• Google Analytics is easy to install. You just need to copy and paste a small piece of code inside your pages. You can even install it yourself, saving your time and your budget — which are better invested in understanding your reports and improving your website marketing.

How to install the tracking code of Google Analytics in HTML pages

Follow these steps to install the newest and fastest version of Google Analytics code on your website:

1. You need a free Google Account to create a Google Analytics account. You can create a Google Account here.
2. Access Google Analytics (or sign up for Google Analytics here if you’re a new user) through your Google Account.
3. Select your new account and create a new website profile, clicking the Add Website Profile link in the lower left corner of your account overview. You will need a profile for each site that you own.
4. Fill in the fields of your new website profile form. (Be sure to check 'Add a profile for a new domain'.) Type in your domain name and pick your country and time zone, then click Finish.
5. The next screen displays your Google Analytics tracking code. Your default options should work for this kind of installation. Copy the tracking code, which you will need to paste into all of your pages, and click Save and Finish.
6. Download your web pages (HTML files), using FTP. A variety of free FTP clients, such as FileZilla, are available. (Windows comes with a built-in FTP client.) You can use the Add Network Place Wizard in Windows, or just type ftp://yourWebsiteAddress.com into your Windows file explorer bar and then provide the user name and password given by your web hosting company. Once you’re logged in, copy your HTML files to your hard drive.
7. Edit your original files, pasting this stats tracking code just after the opening <body> tag. Any basic text editor (e.g., Windows Notepad) will work. (Be sure to keep the original file extension — .htm or .html. Finally, upload your files by way of FTP, overwriting the old ones.

How to install Google Analytics in WordPress

Not all websites are composed of HTML files. Many legal websites use content management systems. With a CMS you only need to paste your Analytics code in one place. If you are using WordPress, you can either install a Google Analytics plug-in or do it manually, following these steps:

• Access your site by way of FTP and go to yourWordpressFolder/wp-content/themes/yourChosenTheme/.
• Locate and download the file called header.php.
• Edit the file, pasting the Analytics tracking code just after the <body...> tag.
• Upload the new file, overwriting the old one.

How do you know if Google Analytics code is working correctly?

Once the setup process is complete, you only need to verify that Google Analytics is working as expected:

• In the overview page of your Analytics account, you should see the status of your tracking as an icon. Click the edit link in the right edge to check it again.
• In the upper right corner of the Analytics Profile Settings, click the Check Status link.
• In the Tracking Status section, confirm that your Google Analytics code is working correctly, displaying a Receiving Data message.
• If you still get an “Analytics code not installed” error message, confirm that the time of the last code check is the current time.
• You can also make sure that your Google Analytics code has been pasted properly. Navigate to your site and use the View Source Code option in your web browser (Page > View source code in Internet Explorer, or just press CTRL+U in Firefox or Google Chrome).

That's it! Now you only need to wait till the system gathers some statistical data. Use Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and to improve your public relations strategy through the process of experimenting, measuring and optimizing.

Enrique Serrano is a telecommunications engineer expert in online marketing and website development.

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