9 quick tips about LinkedIn for law firms

It is changing the way law firms build their practices and if it is not part of your law firm internet marketing strategy it should be, otherwise your competitors will nip away at your potential clients.

There are over than 175 million business people who are active on this site as well as over one million lawyers.

Executives from all the Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn and all the top law firms are there. If you don’t have a company page your individual attorneys will be “orphaned” and you will appear unprofessional. So creating a company page is hardly optional.

An example of a law firm LinkedIn company page is below:

www.linkedin.com/company/baker-&-mckenzie/

When it comes down to it, people are on LinkedIn to do business and that can range from a fellow lawyer referring a case to you or a potential client coming in due to being connected to one of your firms attorneys.

Law firms should have their employees build profiles and make connections as well as give answers and ask questions in groups. By sharing your individual attorney’s knowledge, you show your expertise and make valuable connections with people seeking answers.

LinkedIn is a social network built primarily for individuals but those individual experts are of course connected to a firm. Spreading your informative content helps you get the most out of LinkedIn for both individual attorneys but also the firm as a whole.

You can be even more direct and business orientedthan you can on Facebook and Twitter, so make sure to not only share valuable content but be prepared to give a pitch when you have gotten to know a prospect.

Potential customers are reviewing the credentials of lawyers and law firms on LinkedIn every single day and often are finding individual attorney profiles popping up in Google search results.

Here are some 9 tips to get your law firm started on LinkedIn

1. Sign up and create a complete and compelling profile. Use keywords that people would use when searching for you.
2. Create your company page, again using keywords.
3. Get each of the attorneys in your firm to create a profile.
4. Give a few unsolicited recommendations to get a feel for howrecommendations work. You will likely get some recommendations back as people often return the favor. This helps build your credibility and also is a good way to connect with people.
5. Join several groups and think about LinkedIn groups you would like to start. It is important to just read along with a group’s activity at first to get an idea of how people act. Listen before you speak and aim to be helpful.
6. Answer questions on LinkedIn Answers to share your knowledge to build your brand.
7. Add a dozen new connections using advanced people search with an eventual goal of having 500+. Don’t reach out to many people you don’t know or you could get into trouble. LinkedIn prefers that you connect with those you don’t know by asking someone connected to them for an introduction. You can also meet people by answering questions or through groups. Join an open networking group like Top Linked if you want a paid way to quickly build connections. It is 49.95/year or $9.95 a month.
8. Ask several connections to introduce you to new people.
9. Use Google Analytics to track referrals from LinkedIn to your website and note the levels of engagement like time on site, pages visited and if any visitors turned into leads.

I hope these tips help get you started on a long and successful LinkedIn networking campaign and as usual comments and ideas are welcome.

Here is my LinkedIn profile is you would like to connect!