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Free Webinar to Unveil Latest Research on How Consumers Search for Attorneys

Rocco Impreveduto — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:22:00 GMT

Most attorneys recognize that the consumer of the 21st century has access to a much wider range of information than the consumer of the last century, but it's not as obvious which specific sources of information have the most influence on people when it comes to searching for a lawyer.

On September 25, 2012 at 12:30PM ET, LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® will host a free webinar that will share the results of some new research on this topic. The one-hour program, "How Today's Consumers Search for Attorneys," will present some of the key findings from this new study, including how consumers gather information about their legal matter, find a lawyer, validate a lawyer's credentials and ultimately select a lawyer to represent them.

Here are some of the questions we'll address during the webinar:

What are the primary ways that consumers search for attorneys?
How important are law firm websites, blogs and legal forums to consumers looking to find lawyers?
What value do social media sites — such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — have for consumers when they're searching for a lawyer?
Are online legal directories still relevant to today's consumer?
How much attention do consumers pay to peer and client ratings of a lawyer's skills?
What role do mobile devices play in consumer research and what does that mean for attorneys?

It's my privilege to co-host this free program, alongside Larry Bodine, editor in chief of Lawyers.com^SM. Larry is also a former lawyer and a former law firm marketing executive, and is now a widely respected author and speaker on the topic of online marketing for law firms.

Our goal with the webinar is to provide you with the latest market intelligence about how your prospective clients find attorneys so you can make sure that your marketing efforts are aligned with today's consumer. I hope you'll join us on the 25th!

To attend the webinar, please register here.

New Video Highlights Value of Presence on Lawyers.com

Rocco Impreveduto — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:06:00 GMT

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Once upon a time, there were really only two resources that the average American had at his or her disposal when looking for a lawyer: referrals from friends and the good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Those days are long gone.

To help attorneys and legal marketers better understand how consumers go about finding a lawyer in today's digital culture, LexisNexis® has produced a brief video.

The video, containing data taken from published reports and scientific surveys, walks viewers through a few key facts:

3 out of 4 consumers seeking an attorney over the last year used online resources at some point in the process.¹
With over 28 million visitors annually,² Lawyers.com^SM is the top cited online legal resource mentioned by consumers who sought an attorney in the past year.¹
Roughly 70% of Lawyers.com visitors come to the site to find an attorney.³

We're working hard to build on these numbers, with a singular goal of bringing high-quality visitors to Lawyers.com. We're continuing to improve the breadth of the content we offer to consumers; we're entering into new partnerships to expand the distribution of our content to more sites on the Internet; and we're making deeper investments in social media channels for Lawyers.com.

Of course, the purpose behind all of this is simple . . . to deliver more clients to your doors. As you can see for yourself in the video, the testimonials delivered by other law firms validate that a presence on Lawyers.com should be a key ingredient in any law firm's modern-day marketing strategy.

Learn more about how to build your firm's presence online.

¹ Based on a survey of 4,000 adult Internet users (Internet users comprise 78% of the U.S. adult population** and the U.S. adult population comprises 235 million according to the U.S. Census 2010) conducted by The Research Intelligence Group (TRiG), March 2012. ** According to The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project's Spring Tracking Survey conducted April 26-May 22, 2011.
²Self-reported LexisNexis Web Statistics, 2011
³Self-reported LexisNexis, 2012

New App from LexisNexis Syndicates Legal News to Drive More Consumers to Lawyers.com

Rocco Impreveduto — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:03:00 GMT

In an effort to reach as many consumers as possible while they’re online and seeking legal information, we’ve created a new Lawyers.com^SM Legal News Headlines application that can be downloaded and easily integrated into the 54 million websites that use WordPress.

The new widget can be used to immediately enhance and enrich the content offered by any site owner (mainly news aggregators) or bloggers. It allows anyone who uses WordPress to display a stream of legal news articles on their own blogs or sites, at no charge. If a visitor to the site sees a headline of interest, he or she can easily click on the link and go directly to the full text for that story on Lawyers.com.

WordPress is the largest self-hosted blogging application in the world, used on millions of websites – including CNN, TechCrunch and CBS Radio – and seen by tens of millions of people every day. This new widget from Lawyers.com is another investment we’ve made to syndicate our unique content in order to drive more traffic to the Lawyers.com site, increasing visibility for the attorneys listed on Lawyers.com.

The content we use for this continuous stream of articles is the Lawyers.com blog, which contains original articles posted daily by a team of independent journalists headed up by Larry Bodine, a nationally known legal blogger and law firm marketing consultant.

The new Lawyers.com-powered Legal News Headlines app is available now in the WordPress gallery for news aggregators to easily download. Within the first two weeks of availability nearly 200 site owners downloaded the application.

This new offering is part of our ongoing strategy to engage consumers earlier in the lifecycle of their legal need and make Lawyers.com the only online destination they think of when they seek legal help. We’ll continue to expand our digital footprint and diversify our marketing channels in order to reach as many consumers as possible.

Legal Analyst Dan Abrams Publishes Latest Column on Lawyers.com

Rocco Impreveduto — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:25:00 GMT

Dan Abrams, one of the most respected legal analysts and broadcast journalists in the United States, has published his latest exclusive guest column on Lawyers.com^SM: "Social Media Makes It Tougher to 'Speak Out of School'".

Earlier this year, Lawyers.com reached an agreement to add links to legal content from Abrams Media Network properties — including Mediaite.com, Styleite.com, Geekosystem.com, SportsGrid.com, TheMarySue.com, TheJaneDough.com and TheBraiser.com - as well as from GossipCop.com, co-founded by Dan Abrams. Part of the agreement includes an original, monthly legal column for the Lawyers.com blog from Dan, founder of Abrams Media.

This new relationship is an example of the kind of creative strategies we're deploying to expand the library of legal resources available at Lawyers.com. Our goal is to continue growing the breadth and depth of unique content on Lawyers.com so we build on our position, following Google, as the top cited online legal resource mentioned by consumers who sought an attorney in the past year.*

A former practicing attorney, Dan is currently a legal analyst for ABC and a substitute anchor for "Good Morning America." Previously, he was the general manager of MSNBC — where he led the network to its most significant ratings and national attention — and was the host of "The Abrams Report," a nightly legal affairs program. He has also hosted a variety of other legal television shows and has served as a legal news commentator for national television networks.

Dan's first column published on Lawyers.com was regarding the John Edwards criminal trial, in which Dan accurately predicted Edwards' acquittals on charges of violating campaign finance laws. A second column focused on the notion of "celebrity justice" influences in criminal trials. Both were circulated widely in the social media and generated significant traffic to Lawyers.com.

Dan is a respected legal analyst and nationally renowned commentator, so we're excited to share relevant stories from the Abrams Media Network — and Dan's column in particular — with the visitors to our site.

You can read more about Dan and his exclusive column on Lawyers.com by going to http://blogs.lawyers.com/author/dan-abrams/.

*Based on a survey of 4,000 adult Internet users (Internet users comprise 78% of the U.S. adult population** and the U.S. adult population comprises 235 million according to the U.S. Census 2010) conducted by The Research Intelligence Group (TRiG), March 2012. ** According to The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project's Spring Tracking Survey conducted April 26-May 22, 2011.

Social Media Visibility Drives SEO

Rocco Impreveduto — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:15:00 GMT

The digital marketplace continues to evolve at an extraordinarily rapid pace and Lawyers.com thrives because we remain at, or ahead of the market. Whether we're finding innovative ways to leverage "old" digital channels like paid search or building an industry-leading presence in emerging platforms like social media, Lawyers.com remains at the forefront of digital marketing in the legal industry.

While we value our position as an industry leader, we know it's not enough to rest on our laurels. We're constantly seeking advancement, testing cutting-edge marketing tactics, and analyzing the latest trends to decide on which path we should next blaze a trail.

As such, the relationship between social media and search engine optimization (SEO) has been an issue that's garnered our attention lately. We already know that high organic rankings on the major search engines are crucial, but how can social media help us drive even greater visibility in natural search?

Searchmetrics, a global expert in search analytics, recently conducted an analysis of 10,000 selected top keywords; 300,000 websites; and millions of links, shares and tweets. Their analysis (go to http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2012/06/07/us-and-uk-seo-ranking-factors-2012/) compared potential ranking factors and website characteristics with corresponding Google rankings in both the U.K. and the U.S. by assessing their statistical correlation.

The study confirmed that a strong social media presence shows an extremely high correlation with SEO performance. The aggregated data illustrated that social signals from Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are frequently associated with good rankings in Google's index. More specifically, Facebook "shares" appeared to have the strongest association — while Twitter engagement was also a leading metric in their analysis. And, as we all know, Google+ will only continue to impact site ranking for consumers who conduct searches while signed into Google.

It's important that we remain at the forefront of understanding trends such as this because 82 percent of consumers search online before meeting with an attorney.¹ As the media landscape continues to move at a breakneck pace, we'll stay on top of it, forecast what's going to happen, and act, because we need to be there — helping consumers, guiding them through their legal need until they find resolution. It's a responsibility we take very seriously.

SEO and social (some people are already talking about SMO — Social Media Optimization) remain critical channels, and their relationship will only become more meaningful in the coming months and years — and we'll be there, helping consumers who have a legal need and leading our industry in the next great digital evolution.

For more information about digital marketing on Lawyers.com visit http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/portal/lfmc/resourcepage.aspx?PostId=203252.

¹ SearchEngineWatch.com

New Content Distribution Partnerships for Lawyers.com

Rocco Impreveduto — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:42:00 GMT

We've just completed two new deals with strategic partners that will allow us to make Lawyers.com^SM content more visible to millions of consumers.

The idea behind both of these agreements is simple. We provide content from Lawyers.com — such as articles about timely legal news stories, tips for hiring a family law attorney or commentaries about personal bankruptcy laws — and these partners syndicate that content to key sites all over the Internet. As a result, the Lawyers.com brand is more visible to millions of consumers. More importantly, by engaging with consumers during the early stages of their search for legal information and resources, our site will be "top of mind" when they're ready to take action and seek resolution of their legal issues.

Our new content distribution partners are:

NewsCred licenses full-text articles, photos and video from sources like The Economist, The Guardian, Reuters and Forbes. They are now actively shopping legal news and information from Lawyers.com to a wide range of Web sites and portals that might be interested in licensing our unique, valuable content.

Topix is the leading news community on the Web (more than 6.5 million unique visitors per month generate nearly 17 million monthly visits), connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city. They are now receiving our RSS feed and are placing Lawyers.com blog content on their site where it's applicable.

The purpose of these new content distribution partnerships is to expand the digital footprint of Lawyers.com and make our content more ubiquitous on the Internet. Our approach is to be proactive and engage consumers in the online environment where they're most comfortable with news and information they'll find interesting, relevant and timely.

For more information regarding Lawyers.com marketing strategy, go to http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/portal/lfmc/resourcepage.aspx?PostId=203252.

Lawyers.com Profiled for “Social Media Smarts”

Rocco Impreveduto — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:19:00 GMT

The Lawyers.com team continues to make waves in the world of online marketing with the publication this week of a profile article in PR Daily, a respected online publication for public relations and marketing professionals.

Lawyers.com was featured in the third article of a 10-part series in PR Daily regarding "Unified Marketing," which seeks to illustrate collaborative marketing principles and successful strategies from the disciplines of marketing, branding, public relations, social media, mobile and other digital practices.

"LexisNexis' Lawyers.com uses social media content marketing as a part of its unified marketing strategy," PR Daily reports. "Weaving links through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, it drives traffic to a content-heavy website and blog, and creates communities on law-related topics for laymen. The ultimate goal is to bring business to lawyers through the [Lawyers.com] website."

I was fortunate to be interviewed at length for the story. It's flattering to be profiled as a company that exemplifies the leading-edge of online marketing, but it's really just a reflection of all the work we've put into building a cohesive social media strategy — one that is designed to drive results for Lawyers.com and our customers.

The article also reports on the successful partnership between Lawyers.com and Definition 6, our social media agency, who help us conceptualize and execute our social media strategy, encourage online discussion, drive traffic to our site, and leads to our customers. PR Daily also notes that "the social media efforts have helped boost Lawyers.com" in popularity on Facebook and the site now has the largest legal consumer following on Twitter.

To read the entire article, please go to http://prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11766.aspx.

HubSpot Salutes Lawyers.com for Facebook Creativity

Rocco Impreveduto — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:44:00 GMT

Early in April we were excited to see the innovative online marketing firm HubSpot give a shout out to our revamped Lawyers.com Facebook page.

The HubSpot blog saluted us as one of 17 Examples of Creative Facebook Page Cover Photos and congratulated Lawyers.com for our ingenious workaround to Facebook's new restrictions governing cover images.

HubSpot's blogger noted:

Lawyers.com has gotten around the call-to-action restrictions of the new Facebook design by including an image of their latest piece of content. When you click into the photo, they include a link to the post which then takes you to the full piece of content.

Here's a recent example (complete with some strikingly appropriate content: "What Happens to Your Facebook Account When You Die?"):

Among the 16 other leading brands the HubSpot Blog cited for "making the most of their new Facebook cover photo real estate" are marketing heavyweights Old Spice, McDonald's, Verizon, and Zipcar.

Pretty good company!