Successful Internet marketing means creating and leveraging a strong online presence. Your online presence is a combination of all of the ways you are represented on the Internet: your website, online profiles, videos, blog posts, podcasts, social media pages, directory listings, and more. Used separately, each one helps you be found by more prospects and clients. Used together, they will help you get as much visibility online as possible to grow your business. Read my article “Online Lead Generation: Seven Tactics To Grow Your Law Practice” to get more tips about using the Internet for marketing.  

It depends. When in doubt, the most important thing to ask yourself is, “What are my clients using?” More and more of us are signing up for Facebook accounts every year, including users over 65. On the other hand, the only people I know using Snapchat (the photo sharing app) have an average age of 14. Vine (the 6-second video app) is being leveraged by businesses of all types and some consumers. Pinterest (the image sharing website) is huge among women age 35-44. If any of those are your target audience, you might want to at least read the Wikipedia entry to find out more, in case it comes up in conversation. You don’t need to use every tool, but being up to date is

Yes! Video has many benefits for attorneys. Website visitors in general are getting more visual and enjoy viewing video online. It’s a great way for prospects and clients to get to know you quickly and easily. You can share your expertise on a particular topic without having to write a long article. And according to a new study, having video on your website can improve your search engine rankings. In fact, according to Forrester Research, an indexed video has a 50 times greater chance of ranking on the first page of Google results than a text page. Videos can be hosted on YouTube and link to your website, and other online profiles like LinkedIn, AttorneyConnect, Avvo, and Justia. Adding video to your marketing mix is a smart

YouTube is an excellent place for attorneys to promote themselves with short online videos. Videos hosted on YouTube may be embedded or link to your website, and other online profiles like LinkedIn, AttorneyConnect, Avvo, and Justia. A short intro video of yourself can help break the ice for potential clients who may be hesitant to call your office to discuss a legal matter. Videos give folks a glimpse of who you are and can be an effective way to present yourself when you can’t.

Google Places, the online directory of businesses around the world, has been entirely replaced by a new feature, Google+ Local. As of April 30, 2012 roughly 80 million Google Place pages worldwide have been automatically converted into 80 million Google+ Local pages. It’s a dramatic change though it will undoubtedly disorient some users and business owners. Google+ now contains a “Local” tab and static Google Places pages now give way to more dynamic Google+ Local pages. The Zagat 30-point rating scale is also replacing Google’s star ratings. Users will be able to discover the new Google+ Local pages in several ways: through a search on Google.com or Google Maps, in mobile apps or through a search on Google+. Google+ Local pages are much more visually

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+) is one of the newest social networking sites. Launched as a test in June 2011, the site became available to all in September. The New York Times declared it Google’s attempt to rival Facebook, which has over 800 million users. In January 2012, Google+ had surpassed 90 million users. However, these users are reportedly only spending 3.3 minutes a month on Google+ compared to Facebook users who spend 7.5 hours a month using Facebook. Google+ integrates previous social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz and introduces new services such as the Stream, Circles, Hangouts and Games. Circles enable users to organize people into groups (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following) for sharing across