Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels. Which can be a powerful strategy that can get you links that can increase your organic search engine rankings and potential traffic to your legal web site. Social media marketing for lawyers will only work if you have some kind of useful content and also the time it takes for the "social" part of social media marketing!  If you have good articles that have useful and interesting information, then it is a good idea to promote it via the social media websites. Developing articles and successfully getting them popular on various social media websites like Digg and StumbleUpon will lead to multiple benefits for any website: ·         Primary and Secondary Traffic. Primary traffic is the number of visitors who come directly from social media websites after reading your article. Secondary traffic is referral traffic from websites which link to and send you visitors, after they come across your content through the social sites. ·         High Quality Links. Becoming popular on social news websites like Digg or Reddit will get you a large number of links, some of which may be topically relevant, some not. A good story can realistically acquire a large number of high quality editorial links, most of which cannot be easily bought. Now let’s translate this into tangible benefits for your legal website: 1. Links = Better Search Engine Rankings. When a website receives a large number of natural, permanent links from trusted domains, it develops authority. Search engines trust it. A new website may find it difficult to gain links from a critical mass that is not familiar with it but a trusted social news resource makes it easier for links to come in, because the community and buzz has somewhat ‘certified‘ the value of the site. 2. Primary & Secondary Traffic   General sites or blogs in the same niche will link to a story that’s popular on social sites, because it adds value for their readers or users. This is done naturally on a daily basis for many.  So this is valuable for getting a link but also the visitors that come from those links to your website, will probably be interested in your service. What Makes Social Media Marketing so Important? Social Media connects people through technology, affordably, and comfortably. When people connect, information gets shared! If you have a practice area or legal service you are promoting, you really can’t afford to ignore the potential of social media marketing. Most people think of social networks like Facebook and MySpace and have no idea that they can be used to promote a business or a product. Absolut Vodka has a page called Top Bartender on Facebook. Acura has a fan club, Acura TSX Connect, as well.  If the big companies see the benefit of using social networks, you should, too. Facebook and MySpace aren’t the only social networks. Do you want to connect with the business community? LinkedIn is the site for you. It is the perfect place to promote services and products that meet the needs of business. Would you like to integrate video, pictures, and blog? Then Bebo is a top competitor. All these social internet communities can be tapped to market services and products. Some sites give you exposure because people collaborate on them. The most famous, always at the top of the search engines, is Wikipedia. You may be less familiar with social bookmarking. Delicious and StumbleUpon are the most popular. These bookmarking sites let members store and organize bookmarks to their favorite sites in categories that they choose. These bookmarks can be kept private or made public. Members can give feedback on the sites, too. How do you make social media marketing work? The first thing is to let people know who you are. On Facebook use your profile to say who you are, what you do, and where you are. On a blog, your about us pages tell the story and your posts provide unique content that can then be distributed via social media sites. The main thing is that you have to create good solid content on a regular basis because it can then be used to get more people to your website and as a bonus you can usually get a number of high quality back links pointing to your site, that you normally would have never gotten and this increased link exposure usually will lead to higher organic search engine rankings. Social media marketing offers a number of low-cost ways to promote your legal services. Create a blog, post video clips on YouTube, create articles and submit them to Digg and Reddit and start building your site up through social bookmarking. Social media marketing is becoming very popular and is something that should be part of your overall Internet marketing plan.  Now is the time to start utilizing social media marketing in order to promote your law firm. Contact us today for ways we can help your law firm succeed on the Internet.