Enhance and Protect Your Online Reputation

How to Monitor & Enhance Your Reputation on the Internet as a Lawyer Larry Bodine Material in this seminar is for reference purposes only. This seminar is sold with the understanding that neither any of the authors nor the publisher are engaged in rendering legal, accounting, investment, medical or any other professional service directly through this seminar. Neither the publisher nor the authors assume any liability for any errors or omissions, or for how this seminar or its contents are used or interpreted, or for any consequences resulting directly or indirectly from the use of this seminar. For legal, financial, medical, strategic or any other type of advice, please personally consult the appropriate professional.

About Larry Bodine, Esq.
Editor in Chief of Lawyers.com
2.5 million visitors per month
Top online destination for consumers seeking a lawyer or an answer to legal question
Business development Advisor for 20 years
Former Marketing Director at Sidley Austin
Practiced law as a litigator
908.771.8639 [email_address] www.linkedin.com/in/larrybodine Slide How to Monitor & Enhance Your Reputation on the Internet as a Lawyer Larry Bodine www.ExecSense.com © ExecSense, Inc.

Overview
You already have an online reputation
Track your online reputation
Get more clients, generate more income
Fighting bad information with good information
Blogs
Websites and SEO
Profiles on Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, online directories
Twitter
YouTube
Slide How to Monitor & Enhance Your Reputation on the Internet as a Lawyer Larry Bodine www.ExecSense.com © ExecSense, Inc.

New Business with Reputation Management
Establish a solid online presence – a great way to generate leads and new files
There are 194 million US Internet users
2/3 of the US population
85% of executives consider law firm websites important sources of information in their search for lawyers - Greenfield/Belser
82% of the consumers who use local Web search sites follow up with in-person action - comScore
Slide 4 How to Monitor & Enhance Your Reputation on the Internet as a Lawyer Larry Bodine www.ExecSense.com © ExecSense, Inc.

Why should lawyers engage in social media? Source: HubSpot Online Marketing Opportunity Report: Social Media, Blog, and Search Engine Activity by Industry Overall Online Activity Social Media Activity
Search engines are top priority
Blogs 30%, social media 30%
Analysis of online activity of 33 top keywords related to law

Online Dangers to Reputation
70% of employers do a Web search on job applicants as part of their hiring procedures
Online reputation as important as credit score
Trolls and stalkers – it happened to me…twice!
Competitors and online bullies
Losing litigants writing on Wikipedia
Facebook and Twitter imposters
YouTube attack videos
Employees - NLRB rules employees can call you a**hole and scumbag online so long as they are discussing a term or condition of the workplace

Monitoring Your Online Rep
Search and inspect the Web
Google yourself
Start a Google alert on your name and firm
Search Facebook & Twitter with www.bing.com/social
Set up RSS feeds -- visit FeedBurner.com and click the Register link at the top of the page.
Download TweetDeck or use search.twitter.com to monitor conversations about your company in real-time.

Careful Counter-insurgency
If you see a problem, deal with it quickly.
Don’t respond to the bully directly -- “You can’t win a pissing contest with a skunk”
Google and ISPs very responsive to © violations
Impersonation is a crime
Defamation claim ineffective
Throwaway email address
IP address - useless
Reputation.com, Optimum7, Reputation Hawk – paid services
Unfortunately, they are no help with YouTube

Overwhelm the “bad” with good
Pay for SEO services to rank as high in Google as possible
Get 1,000 inbound links to your website at www.therainmakerinstitute.com
Buy additional domains – make each one a micro site for each area of law
Register your own name as a domain
Also register “www.yournameSUCKS.com”

Blogs Most Effective
Google indexes blogs quickly and ranks them highly
Best platform: Wordpress.com
An analysis of 33 keywords for the word "lawyer“ found that 30% of all online activity is in blogs – Hubspot.com
Publish, publish, publish – blitz the Web with new content
Hire someone to write dozens of blog posts
LexisNexis writes 70,000 pages of blog content for thousands of lawyers each year

Start with a Google profile
https://profiles.google.com – obviously ranks high and it’s free
Anchor of Google search and your Gmail, calendar, Docs & YouTube accounts
Create Google Reader page - www.google.com/reader
Constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content
Google+ is new social network - www.google.com/ +
Built-in search feature
Republish all your blog content

Facebook
More time is spent on Facebook than any other website
More than 800 million active users, and +50% log on daily
Average user has 130 friends
Rampant attacks by employees, and workers fighting with each other
Open multiple accounts – it’s free
Republish your blog content
Ask people to “like” your page
Get fans talking by asking questions – interaction ranks you higher

LinkedIn
It’s free
Profile may rank higher than your law firm profile
1.5 million lawyers
120,000,000 users in 200 countries
Accept and invite connections – increases visibility
Make and request recommendations
Subject to ethics rules
Link to your blog, Facebook Page, etc.
Join groups and become a known quantity
Can flag inappropriate comments

Twitter
One billion tweets are posted on Twitter each week -- Kissmetrics
A time-waster unless you have 10,000 followers…but tweets and retweets improve your Google search rankings
Open multiple accounts – it’s free
Hire a marketing agency to tweet your blog posts
Rainmaker Institute can get you 5,000 followers for a fee
Send me your verdicts and settlements in consumer cases
Lawyers.com gets 2.5 million visitors per month
Blast out new content on @Lawyerscom to 15,400 followers every day

YouTube
The future of law firm marketing
Know, trust and like
Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day
It’s the wild west
Attackers set up fake accounts and YouTube does nothing about defamation
Copyright violation is another thing
Hire a videographer or build your own studio
Post one video a day
Call Gerry Oginski - http://lawyersvideostudio.com

Online Directories
Yes people and companies still use them
They turn up in Google searches
Lawyers.com, Martindale.com, Avvo, Findlaw, Best Lawyers, online Yellow Pages, Superlawyers
Lack of a profile raises doubt to 50% of legal service buyers
For your info:
Martindale.com gets 900,000 visitors/month
Lawyers.com gets 2,500,000 visitors/month

Action Plan
SEO
Blog
Google profile
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
Online Directories

Questions for Larry
Editor in Chief of Lawyers.com
2.5 million visitors per month
Top online destination for consumers seeking a lawyer or an answer to legal question
Business development Advisor for 20 years
Former Marketing Director at Sidley Austin
Practiced law as a litigator
908.771.8639 [email_address] www.linkedin.com/in/larrybodine Slide How to Monitor & Enhance Your Reputation on the Internet as a Lawyer Larry Bodine www.ExecSense.com © ExecSense, Inc.

Enhance and Protect Your Online Reputation

by Larry Bodine on Nov 03, 2011

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Enhance and Protect Your Online Reputation — Presentation Transcript