Social media has taken the world by a storm, and along with it have come to a plethora of advertising opportunities. Advertising agencies across the country have been taking advantage of the growing social media platforms and can help you better be seen. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best advertising agencies designed for Twitter to help build your brand.

Advertising on Twitter and the Challenges it Presents

There are over 260 million Twitter accounts, and the number continues to grow. But advertising on Twitter yourself can be extremely challenging. Some of the frustrations you could run into are:

• Getting your tweets spread more
• Budgeting to advertise to your needs
• Building up a base of viewers

Although Twitter is a massive medium with great potential, many people find it extremely difficult to advertise their business through tweets on their own. Simply put, it’s tough to get your tweets spread through a wide range.

You’ll also need to consider budgeting when you’re getting your ads out there. Building a base to meet your goals can be difficult, especially when you feel at a loss for getting eyes to see your tweets. In this article, I’ll talk about the growing challenges when choosing an advertising agency for Twitter, and the top 5 to help make that easier.

While advertising your business yourself can feel like a hopeless chore on Twitter, it’s just as challenging choosing an agency to help you. Some of the problems you could run into are:

• Strengths and weaknesses of each agency.
• How much you’re willing to spend.
• Deciding which advertising agency is right for your business.

Which Advertising Agency is Best for Twitter?

While many marketing agencies can feel the same, when you learn more about the details of their strategy, it’s noticeably different. For instance, many agencies will focus on trends and the changing attitudes throughout social media, while others could prioritize awareness in the blogging community.

While each agency will utilize both these strategies, it’s important to know which you prioritize to find an agency that will do the same.

When it comes to budgeting, advertising on Twitter is a great choice. Social media ads are the most cost-effective way to advertise. For instance, you could spend nearly 1000 dollars on a billboard that potentially could only be seen by less than 1000 people. But with social media, you could spend 3 dollars for an ad seen by 1000.

The most challenging part of picking an ad agency for your business is exactly that, choosing. There are so many options that specialize in social media and can meet your goals. So which one works for you? It’s entirely up to you and what goals you have.

To help simplify the process, I’ve made a list of the top 5 advertising agencies for Twitter, in order of best to last, to make it easier for you to decide:

• LYFE Marketing
• Taktical Digital
• Thrive Agency
• Viral in Nature
• Socially in

I’ll explain their strengths so you can decide which one will best help you exceed your goals on Twitter. Advertising can be complicated; these agencies will take the stress away and help you spread your brand.

LYFE Marketing

In my research of the best advertising agencies to choose from, the one that stuck out the most is LYFE Marketing. LYFE focuses on an affordable but goal-driven advertising strategy that stands out from the other options.

They aim to boost the traffic to your site in an exponential way that makes your money worthwhile. They stuck out to me as an agency that you can count on, and while others can meet your goals, LYFE seems to exceed them.

One customer said, “ Anytime I had a question or problem, LYFE knew exactly how to solve it.” LYFE focuses on quality and precision.

They start by launching an advertising campaign. The strategy targets the exact audience that you need to spread your business, including your contacts, website audience, and demographics of the people you advertise too.

They also track throughout your advertising to know when and what to keep. LYFE identifies what is working and what isn’t to make sure they’re advertising the best way to meet your goals. Best of all, they’re low-risk.

Their contracts last three months, and if you aren’t pleased, you can cancel with a months’ notice. With all the benefits available, and the low-risk, this was the best advertising agency I found to spread your business through Twitter.

Taktical Digital

Coming in second through my research is Taktical Digital.  While LYFE specialized in all types of digital marketing, Taktical Digital has a focus on social media including Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Taktical Digital found that Twitter’s large base is why it’s so appealing to social media marketers, including them. Their size alone makes it a prime spot to advertise across the country. Demographics are a big part of their advertising strategy.

They found that African- American and Hispanic users made up 14 percent of Twitter’s base, with over 37 percent of the total base between the ages of 18-29. Taktical Digital uses this data to ensure your advertising is reaching an age that is likely to be interested in your business on Twitter.

This is the type of work you get with Taktical Digital, a specialization of all things social media. According to a poll, “(63.5%) of respondents said Twitter produced the best ROI.” ROI is a return on investment. Taktical Digital knows this and makes social media marketing their primary goal.

They want to provide hard data to back up their success to each of their clients. When it comes to advertising on Twitter, they hold to their promise that the data is accurate, and improves to make sure your business is thriving and meeting its goals.

Thanks to their knowledge in social media advertising, they’ve simplified their strategy into three ways you can advertise on Twitter:

• Promoted Tweets
• Promoted Accounts
• Promoted Trends

The tweets show up at the top; they’re the simplest way to spread to your target audience. The accounts are on the sidebar, and this spreads an entire profile rather than one tweeted product. The trends are when you utilize a hashtag to spread your brand.

And this is just a tiny example of the expertise you’ll get from Taktical Digital.

Thrive Agency

It’s hard to top what LYFE and Taktical Digital bring to the complicated medium of Twitter advertising, but Thrive makes a strong case for why they’re a great choice for your agency.

Thrive runs off a single monthly price, a price they don’t think you’ll regret. On their website, they state, “A shiny new website is worthless if it doesn’t help you reach your goals.” They understand that flashiness isn’t everything. You have goals in my mind, and that’s their priority.

This is why Thrive steals my #3 spot of the best agencies available. They don’t try to sell you on a flashy lie of what you’ll get from them. If you have a goal and revenue in mind, that’s what they’ll get you. Twitter’s ad revenue reaches upward of 600 million, and it’s on the rise. Thrive is a great choice, you want profit, and they do too.

They start with increasing your Twitter following to make sure you’re getting the eyes that you need. Their goal is to add followers by the hundreds across the world to make sure your business spreads on Twitter the way you want.

They’ll then focus on locating your ideal customer. They don’t want to spread to a few eyes across the world. They want to locate who is interested in your product and bull’s-eye that demographic to make sure you’re spreading your business.

 Viral In Nature

“Capturing the POWER of SOCIAL MEDIA for the benefit of our clients.” This is Viral in Nature’s mission statement. Located in Calgary, their goal is to spread your business through Twitter and social media sites across the globe.

The awards speak for themselves. They’ve won numerous awards for social media marketing from GoodFirms and Clutch awarding them the top digital marketing company.

This is why Viral in Nature made the list, simplicity. With all the other options you will get results much like this one, but not with the simplicity Viral in Nature can offer. They want to give results with as little or as much input you feel like giving.

They start with the usual. Identifying your specific goals and finding a strategy to meet those goals. Then content is the priority. For Twitter, they strategize the best way to advertise on the site to best spread your business.

One customer said, “They’re great at listening and executing what I ask them.” Although a simple review, I think it sums up perfectly what Viral in Nature is all about. They’ll listen to your requests and make sure you’re getting quality results.

The best results will come from their “Monitor & Engage” section of the partnership. They analyze what worked and what didn’t. They analyze this from 9 am – 9 pm, 7 days a week.  There is a sense of dedication that I felt like Viral in Nature deserved to make this list.

They seem to be a great option for advertising on Twitter, and their awards echo volumes what they bring to the table. For Twitter, a personal medium, Viral in Nature might just be the person you need for your business.

Socially in

While this wasn’t the best option I found available on the market; they were a close second due to their exceptionally creative team. If creativity is your #1 priority on Twitter, Socially it may be the best choice for you.

They’re staff consists of artists, designers, writers, and photographers; all lead by professional strategists guaranteeing you quality results. They focus on passion; your passion. The creative blend of their staff with your goal in mind makes it easy to answer if this is the right agency for you.

Socially in follows a motto; “Ideas + Execution = Connection.” And they stuck by this motto and managed to stretch across companies including Birmingham Business Journal, ADWEEK, and Chief Marketer. The downside is their lack of experience compared to the other companies.

What they shine on is passion, what they lack are clients and experience. This may not necessarily be a bad thing; you could get a more personal relationship with working with them. But it may not be the right choice for you.

However, if you’re looking for a smaller team of dedicated creative members, Socially in could be your agency. They may not have as many numbers to show, but they have a commitment; a commitment that might not be matched with the other choices.

Final Thoughts

By now you might feel how complicated it is to advertise on Twitter. The best results require professionals, and professionals require an agency.

Twitter is growing and growing, along with ad revenue. And agencies are capitalizing on this. If they succeed, you succeed. Their strategies are all unique and bring different expertise to the table.

This will be the most challenging choice for you, what do I go with? It’s important to remember the stress you have when deciding is nothing compared to advertising your business on Twitter by yourself. Advertising agencies make it their priority that you succeed stress-free.

They’ll find exactly what strategy will work you to ensure you’re getting your business out there to the over 260 million Twitter accounts.

Whether you want a guaranteed large group of professionals with LYFE Marketing, or a more personal approach with Socially I, there’s an agency out there to suit everyone’s needs.

Advertising is complicated and hard to achieve correctly. But the good news is the market knows this and benefits from it. Twitter’s popularity is only benefiting the number of choices you have for which agency you can choose from.

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Snapchat, founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, is known as a young person’s app. Why should you take this app seriously if you’re a business owner? Last quarter, Snapchat brought in $298 million in revenue. Snapchat currently has about 186 million daily active users. Snapchat earns about $1.60 per quarter in revenue per daily active user.

Like other free social media companies, Snapchat earns revenue by advertising to its user base. The average Snapchat users open the app over twenty times per day and spend about thirty minutes on the app. The daily average of total Snaps created by users is around 3 billion.

As users spend more time on computers and mobile devices each year, companies are spending more money on digital advertising. According to a recent report by MAGNA, online advertising sales now account for 51.5% of all U.S. advertising sales. Digital advertising allows companies to obtain better data on return on investment (ROI), and precise demographic targeting.

If you are a business owner over the age of 34, chances are you do not personally use Snapchat. But that’s no excuse for dismissing or not understanding the app. 85% of Snapchat’s users are between the ages of 18-34, with just 15% over the age of 34. On a given day, Snapchat reaches 41% of 18-34-year-olds in the United States.

Plenty of Snapchat users are age 25 or older, meaning they have real purchasing power. Snap’s fastest-growing demographic is 25 and up, with more than 50% of Snapchat’s new daily users coming from this group.

If you’ve never used Snapchat but want to reach Snapchatters through advertising, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Luckily you don’t need to become a Snapchat user in hopes of learning the app, because you can hire an agency who has experience in Snapchat advertising.

In this guide, I’m going to teach you everything you need to understand about Snapchat advertising and how to find the perfect Snapchat advertising agency for your needs. I’ve also combed through hundreds of websites and user reviews to bring you a top five list that has the best of the best agencies, so you don’t have to spend hours of your time comparing them.

What You Need to Know About Advertising on Snapchat

If you aren’t already a Snapchat pro, you need to begin by learning the basics about how Snapchat advertising works. Once you grasp the fundamentals of Snapchat’s advertising services, you will be better able to choose the right agency to run a successful campaign on your behalf.

What Does a Snapchat Ad Agency Do?

The best Snapchat advertising agencies bring years of experience, knowledge, and insight to help you choose which type of campaign to launch. You will set goals together, and discuss budgeting. Depending on whether you already have a marketing department, the agency may or may not assist you with branding. Then they will create a branded ad to run on the platform.

A good agency works with you to determine goals, adjust existing marketing materials for Snapchat, and adjust and optimize your ads over time to meet your goals. They will use Snapchat’s metrics as well as their tools to report results to you on a regular basis, so you can understand your return on investment (ROI) and make important decisions with confidence.

What Can a Snapchat Ad Agency Achieve for You?

A Snapchat ad agency can achieve a plethora of different marketing goals for a business. Some business owners have false assumptions about the limitations of digital advertising on Snapchat, but in reality, the platform is a great place to achieve various desirable outcomes:

• Increase in-store sales
• Increase online sales
• Promote new products
• Lead generation
• Promote your app
• Promote videos

At its core, Snapchat advertising is about forming relationships with dedicated daily active users. The platform is conducive to creativity, and a good agency will offer up their creative skill set, paired with an analysis of your needs, to create a vision together with you.

Snapchat can make it easier for users to find out about your business and share what they’ve learned. It can help you find new online or in-person customers or leads, and create deeper relationships with existing customers, improving your conversion or sales rate.

The app is also great for creating excitement and momentum around the launch of new products, services, and even apps. If you design and launch a great app, Snap is the perfect way to keep users engaged and telling the world about your app.

Precise demographic targeting on Snapchat helps to ensure that your target audience views your advertising videos, and the built-in metrics (as well as in-house ad agency tools) allow you to customize further and target the appropriate demographics, building on your success.

Options for Advertisers

Snapchat offers different options for advertisers, so another reason you probably want to go with an agency is that the various options can get a little bit overwhelming. There are three main types of ads:

• Snapchat Ads
• Lenses
• Sponsored Geofilters

All Snapchat advertising is interactive to varying degrees.

With Snapchat Ads, advertisers get to decide between Web View (also known as interactive Discover Ads), Long-Form Video (used to drive traffic to trailers, for instance), Articles, and App Install (a short video with a call-to-action to install an application at the end).

Snapchat Lenses are a perfect example of Snapchat’s innovation. Users taking selfies use lenses a LOT. They are a visual overlay of an image or animation that shows up on the phone screen of anyone viewing an image, and they have shown excellent results for increasing brand awareness and purchase intent. Snapchat Lenses can reach about 16 million users per day.

Geofilters are similar to lenses but linked to a specific place or cause. If you run a restaurant, for example, an ad agency could create a geofilter campaign to help promote brand loyalty among existing customers when they visit and increase brand awareness among their friends. National delivery campaigns have resulted in exposure to 40-60% of daily users!

3V

Snapchat’s 3V philosophy, or “Vertical Video Views,” is another feature that sets it apart from other social media platforms. Because most users capture and view the video in a vertical or portrait (as opposed to conventional horizontal or landscape) orientation, Snapchat has embraced this tendency and applied it to advertising.

Native Snapchat ads are vertical-made and mobile exclusive, filling up the whole device screen. Short video ads are perfect for telling your company’s story. The ads are always full-screen with the sound on, and Snapchat’s internal studies show that vertical ads perform up to nine times better than traditional mobile video ads!

3V means your company probably can’t use its existing videos for Snapchat advertising, but a good Snapchat advertising agency will set you up with everything you need to understand and meet Snapchat’s unique creative requirements for future ad video submissions.

Ad Pricing

Snapchat offers advertisers daily, weekly, and annual rates and their minimum daily spend budget is $100 to get on the platform.

Snapchat uses a pricing approach called goal-based bidding (GBB). The pricing structure varies depending on what type of ad you purchase (Web View, Long-Form Video, App Install, Article, Lenses, or Geofilters).

Goal-based bidding is offered by cost-per-thousand, which is called “CPM” for short. You can place CPM bids for swipes (which are like clicks), impressions, or app installs depending on the type of ad. The CPM price will vary with different kinds of advertising and different user actions.

You can also purchase each type of ad several different places: from Snap Ad Manager, Snap Ads API partners, the ad auction, or direct from Snapchat via an Insertion Order. If you hire a professional Snapchat advertising agency, they’ll help you decide the best strategy to use, and the best place to buy your ads.

Demographics, Targeting, and Metrics

Snapchat features excellent built-in demographic insights and targeting techniques, which makes it a capable platform for precisely targeting your advertising to the appropriate user and getting a good ROI.

Here are some ways Snapchat allows you to target user demographics:

• Interests – Snapchat has 60+ interest categories including topics like festivals, news, politics, and parenting, all based on users’ actions on the app
• Classic demographics – based on factors like name, age, language, household income, and education
• Location
• Device Attributes – device, OS, carrier, and network
• Snap Audience Match (SAM) – Create a custom list, discover a new audience similar to your current audience, a list of all customers who have engaged with your content, and more.

An agency that specializes in Snapchat will know the ins and outs of running a targeted Snapchat campaign with these built-in features and pass the savings on to you, the advertiser.

Snapchat’s metrics allow for instant feedback on the effectiveness of an ad campaign. An agency will share these metrics with you, and work with you to apply the valuable lessons contained within the data.

There are five significant metrics Snapchat uses to verify your ads’ effectiveness:

• Reach – users reached by the ad, and their demographics
• Viewability – the number of users who have viewed your ad
• Resonance – information on people’s thoughts and feelings about your brand derived from Snapchat and partner polls
• Reaction – the impact of the ad on driving purchases or other actions
• Verification – the number of times Snapchat has attempted to serve your ad

With dozens of ways to target demographics and numerous ways to verify the effectiveness of an ad campaign, Snapchat can be a treasure trove for advertising just like Facebook advertising or a complicated nightmare, depending on your comfort level with the platform.

Instead of trying to learn from the ground up, most businesses looking to advertise on Snapchat or advertise on Twitter should choose from among the top ad agencies that specialize in Snapchat.

Top FIVE Snapchat Advertising Agencies

Take the guesswork and anxiety out of winning customers on Snapchat by going with a proven ad agency. If you haven’t already gotten an idea of what you want out of an agency from the previous sections, here are our top picks.

#1 Firebelly Marketing

Firebelly Marketing is a social media marketing agency initially founded in 2007 in Indianapolis, IN. Their singular mission is making brands more likable and profitable via social media. Firebelly is our top pick for Snapchat advertising; they offer social media audits, social media management, ad management, blogging, community management, and influencer marketing.

The marketing director of a rug and furniture company hired Firebelly to increase the growth of their audience. Their customer base and traffic grew throughout the social media campaign, and Firebelly was able to deal with any conflicts that arose. The client was impressed with the way Firebelly exceeded expectations in a tight and competitive market.

Firebelly is the 2018 winner of Sprout Social’s distinguished CULTIVATE award for going above and beyond in providing excellent social media services to clients. They aren’t cheap, but their premium services are of great value.

#2 Media Bounty

Hailing from London, Media Bounty is the U.K.’s leading social media marketing agency. They focus on long-term growth through deep insights, outstanding strategies, and “kick-ass creative.” Media Bounty only works with bigger companies with an ad buy budget of at least $10,000 per month.

The marketing manager of Cellar Trends, a beverage distributor company, hired Media Bounty for SMM and digital branding. They say that the “number of video views has increased markedly since Media Bounty was first engaged” and find the team’s exceptional understanding of marketing technology to be “a hallmark of their high-quality work.”

Media Bounty isn’t an inexpensive agency, but they regularly handle campaigns in the millions of dollars, so you know they’ll bring a winning perspective to meet your advertising needs. They have received three awards from The Drum’s Recommended Agency Register, and two awards from RAR Digital Awards.

#3 Viral in Nature

Viral in Nature, based in Calgary, Canada, is multiple award-winning ad agencies entirely focused on SMM. Three different market research companies have selected Viral in Nature as one of the top social media and agencies in the world.

The owner of an outdoors lifestyle brand hired Viral in Nature to increase his company’s social media presence. The agency oversaw social media campaigns and created relevant video content. The owner says Viral in Nature were excellent listeners, and the campaign went smoothly with excellent results.

If you run a smaller company with a tight budget, Viral in Nature is a good choice. Their relatively low cost per hour makes them attractive for smaller organizations, and they will bring you a good return on your investment.

#4 AdvertiseMint

Based in Hollywood, CA, AdvertiseMint is another agency that focuses exclusively on social media marketing. Depending on whether you have other needs, that could be a pro or a con. Some companies choose to merge their Snapchat advertising into their overall marketing campaign, but others benefit from allowing an SMM specialist to manage their social channels (Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads).

If you need a new perspective on digital marketing via Snapchat or need a campaign rolled out ASAP, you can’t go wrong with AdvertiseMint. They pride themselves on their agility and fast-paced ad campaigns.

#5 i76 Solutions

When i76 Solutions began as a digital marketing shop in Philadelphia, PA they were tightly focused on strategy, execution, and analytics. They later grew into a full-service marketing agency that delivers their customers results in all areas of marketing, but they maintain a strong focus on digital marketing and social media marketing.

AAA Mid-Atlantic, a car insurance and emergency roadside assistance provider, ran a seven-figure campaign with i76 Solutions. Within six months, they had earned significant upticks in brand awareness and membership rates. AAA says that the i76 team was “innovative, detail-oriented, and knowledgeable.”

I76 is a top marketing agency in Philadelphia. Their skilled team of designers and developers can work with you on every aspect of the digital process.

Wrapping Up

In the world of Snapchat advertising, the learning curve is long, but you shouldn’t let that discourage you from targeting customers through the platform. Unlike the old days of digital marketing when a company could handle everything in-house, the current climate dictates that it is wiser to delegate.

If you are willing to look for an agency outside your company to run your Snapchat advertising campaign, you can reap all the rewards offered by Snapchat: innovative features, relationship-building with a loyal user base, precise demographic targeting, extensive metrics, and enough options to suit nearly any type of advertiser.

If you’re having trouble deciding which agency to go with, we recommend Firebelly Marketing as the overall top pick. They’ve been around a while, but they know how to adapt to new trends. Because they focus exclusively on social media marketing, Firebelly brings the depth of knowledge you’ll require to run a successful Snapchat campaign.

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Lately we have received several questions revolving around the difficulty of maintaining a consistent marketing presence without having to spend all day doing marketing instead of client work.

Most attorneys have heard the advice that they need a consistently updated marketing presence, but you’re already busy with your client cases and maintaining the business. Taking time away from the work that pays the bills to “work on marketing” is a tough ask without even considering that most of the time, it’s not always clear what needs to be updated or how often.

Here at AmazeLaw, we’re trying to take the generic guru-ish marketing advice that experts spout like gospel, and deconstruct it to teach attorneys what it really means and how they can use that advice to grow their firm.

The point of this post is to show you what consistency really means and how mastering it can benefit your business. Not only will we tell you what consistency online can do for you but we will also help you to keep up online while you keep up with your busy schedule.

What does it mean to be consistent?

What it means to be consistent varies depending on the activity, but the general goal, is that any time a prospective client stumbles upon your firm, either through your website, a facebook page, a tweet, etc, it needs to look like you’re on top of your marketing.

There are some technical reasons why this is beneficial, but let’s focus on the feels.

As a prospective client of your firm, I want to know that I’m going to be working with someone that I can relate to. Someone that’s on top of the latest trends in the area of my problem. And having marketing that’s up to date checks both of those boxes for me. And as a tip, another signal it sends, is that you’re not an overwhelmed solo. It shows a position of friendly strength. That you can afford to spend time teaching people about your craft because you’re good at what you do and you’re confident in it.

Consistency online helps to build professionalism, clarity, and trust from your viewers while also boosting your google standings. When your viewers are on your pages and you have only updated some of the content or haven’t updated in a really long time it looks as if you don’t care about the details.  As a solo the details can make or break a referral so keeping up online sends a message to your current and potential clients.  Your viewers will respond well to your commitment to be consistent online and take it as a sign that you are willing to commit to their issues and build a bond of trust.

So now you know you have to be consistent but you need to know how consistent do you need to be with each avenue that you have online. Does that mean every day? Every week? Every month? Well, it depends on the activity, so let’s break it down.

Social Media

Putting content on your social media posts can be simple and easy. An original thought everyday. Do you have more than one? Post it! Do you want to promote something more than once? Schedule it! Social media is a way to draw the attention of everyday viewers into things that you are mutually interested in. The idea behind social media is to constantly be grabbing the attention of  people online. Social should be part of your everyday morning routine. Get up, stop at Dunkin Donuts, get to the office, POST.

But it’s easy to say “Do social media every day!” That’s where most gurus stop. We put together a detailed 20-minute daily marketing plan, so check it out and commit to it for just one week.  

Blogging

Ah blogging, ranking second just behind social media for the buzzwordiest marketing advice that never gets into the details.

We’ll cover a simple plan to get you started in a few seconds, but let’s talk about what consistency means when it comes to blogging.

First off, the idea isn’t necessarily to drive a ton of traffic to your site today (though it’s possible and can be a nice side benefit), the idea is to build up your blog like a long-term savings account. And the easiest way to do that, is to make small weekly deposits. Over time your bank account (your website) will grow enough to the point that it has a large number of pages. And just like compounding interest, as a site grows and ages, it’s ability to attract more traffic increases as well.

We recommend weekly blog posts, mostly because it makes it easier to keep up with. Two weeks in between posts and you’ll get out of the groove, and blogging will remain that “activity I’ll get to later when I have lots of free time.” Twice a week can work even better, but we’re also trying to be realistic. It’s hard to set aside that much time every week.

Pick your slow day of the week if you have one. Friday is my favorite. Make a recurring weekly appointment on Friday morning (avoid the afternoon because we all know what happens to tasks relegated for Friday afternoon) to draft a blog post.

I would allocate an hour.  And all you do is spend one hour answering one common question you get from clients in the simplest terms possible. It might feel like you’re giving away your secret sauce. You’re not. The clients that take your info and try to run with it on their own, were never going to be clients anyways. The clients that look at it and say, “Whoah, she knows what she’s talking about and I really don’t have the time or the expertise to handle this on my own” are the clients you’ll love.

Alright, back to it, spend one hour answering one of your common client questions. The headline can be verbatim what clients usually ask, i.e. “How often should I update my will and what should I be looking out for?”

If you’re happy with the post after that hour, go ahead and post it you’re done. If you think it’s a bit rough, put it away and schedule 20 minutes of time on Monday to edit it.  You’ll find that having a weekend for the thoughts to settle in your head can really add to the clarity of your answers.

There’s no rocket science to blogging, and we could go into all sorts of advanced advice, but that plan will make it easy to get started, and could provide you many months of great blog posts.

Email Marketing

There aren’t many firms out there that are using email marketing to their advantage. And in an industry where you’re typically not needed until you’re really really needed, having a medium that puts you in front of prospective clients on an ongoing basis can be key to making sure that you’re top of mind when they do have the need.

We’ll be posting an epic email marketing tutorial soon that will go over all of the how’s and why’s of email marketing, but for the sake of completeness, we recommend that you’re emailing your list anywhere from once to twice a month.  More than that, and it’ll be tough to keep your newsletters stocked with great content, and any less and your list will go stale. Meaning your readers will start ignoring your emails, or perhaps even forget why they’re getting the email in the first place.

Don’t have an email list yet? Don’t worry, we’ll get to that soon. Better yet, sign up for our marketing bootcamp and you’ll get a weekly email that explains the whole process.

Consistency Is The Golden Ticket

It really is. Over time a consistent marketing approach will be out the best marketing campaigns or PPC ads, or TV commercials. So look at your schedule and see where you can add those small marketing nuggets to your daily, weekly, and monthly routine so that you never have to think about what to do next.

And if you need help, sign up for our Marketing Bootcamp,  and we’ll walk you through the basics and turn marketing your firm into a habit.

Hi, I’m Katie.  I’m an employment attorney.  I like what I do, and I’m good at it.  Oh, you want to hire me?  Great!

If only it was that easy.  I’ve been a solo attorney for a little more than a year and a half.  I’ve learned so much about attorney marketing, especially marketing online.  I know I’ve probably only scratched the surface of everything that I should know, but I’ve made huge strides.  I get calls from other attorneys telling me how much they like my blog.  Clients find me online.  Am I always on the first page of for the search terms I want?  No.  But I’m getting there.

I was lucky that I have a husband who understands all this stuff, but I still had to learn a lot of it myself, and I had to make a ton of mistakes along the way.  If you’re reading this, you might be where I was when I first started.  Let me help you by sharing a few of the lessons I’ve learned.

• It’s hard and it takes a lot of time.  Sorry.  I know you were looking for lessons that are going to make your life easier, but let’s start with the principle that’s going to carry you through all of your marketing endeavors.  No one teaches you how to do this in law school.  If you started your career at a firm, the firm paid someone else how to do this.  So now not only are you starting a completely new business and lifestyle, but you have to learn another skill.  But that’s okay, because you can do it and there are ways to make it easier, but let’s just all accept that as lawyers, marketing is a skill that does not come easily to most of us.

• Take time to figure out who you need to reach.  When I first started out on my own, I felt like I needed to get in front of anyone and everyone.  What if I missed out on an opportunity?  I need blogs that reach every audience.  I want to send my email updates out to everyone and their brother (and somehow find a way to be interesting to everyone on that list).  Then I realized that I only have so many hours in the day, and that I need to be efficient, effective, and focused.  Who are your best referral sources?  For me, it’s HR professionals and other attorneys who don’t do employment law, so my marketing efforts need to be specific to those groups.

• Figure out the best way to reach them.  The people you want to reach may not always keep you top of mind, but your online presence can help with that.  I try to write blog posts and email newsletters that attract HR professionals (day-to-day information that helps them do their job) and other attorneys (legal changes/important cases).  I also only send my email newsletters to people who have expressed interest.  And it works.  I’ve actually gotten emails back from readers thanking me for putting the email together.  How often do you get a mass email and decide that want to thank the author?

• Find the right tools to help you.  Everytime I write a blog post (shameless plug – it is so easy to do this through AmazeLaw), I make sure to put it out on social media.  I use Hootsuite and autoschedule.  I don’t have to think about the best times to post, and I only have to post once for it to go to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook.  I also use Mailchimp to manage my email lists (more shameless plugging – AmazeLaw integrates with Mailchimp).  Yes, it took a little for me to learn how to use these early on, but now I cannot imagine marketing without them.

I know that I’m not an expert on marketing, but I’m learning and finding a way to make it work for me.  As a solo attorney, I can’t justify spending money on marketing consultants when I know I’m smart enough to figure it out for myself.  I became a solo attorney in part for the flexibility, and I’ve built my firm so that I can make time for marketing because it’s worth the effort.

If you’re looking for more information on marketing, AmazeLaw has a great email marketing bootcamp that you can sign up for at  amazelaw.wpengine.com/#newsletter.  And if you have any questions about your firm’s marketing efforts, you are always free to email me with questions at info@amazelaw.com.  Good luck!

You are not a law blogger. Go ahead, say it out loud if you’re not at a coffee shop where people would look at you weird. It’s that important.

So much of the advice bandied about on the internet regarding how attorneys should blog, is for lack of a more-perfect term, crap. It simply doesn’t apply to you as a solo or small-firm attorney. Here’s why.

Law Bloggers use their blog to increase their status and credibility among other lawyers.

When you’re just starting out, this seems like the easy, logical place to start.

After all, you know the law, you can provide deep commentary on the law that other lawyers would appreciate, and that Small Firm Inferiority Complex is a powerful beast that is always thinking of ways to justify to your big-firm brethren that just because you’re small, it doesn’t mean you’re not an expert.

Here’s the thing though. Your clients don’t care. If they were interested in learning the nuances of law, and could understand that deep analysis, they wouldn’t need your help.

They want to know how the nuances of law affect their daily life. How do they solve that one nagging problem that they’ve ended up at your site trying to solve? And can you explain that problem, that pain, to them better than they could explain that pain to themselves. That’s how you win a client’s trust. Not, by being the most vocal fish in a small pond of blogging lawyers, but by doing the legwork to convey true understanding of your clients’ day-to-day problems.

Now, I won’t deny that there’s certainly value in convincing other lawyers that you’re worth a referral, and sometimes it’s valuable to provide a unique insight and circulate it among your peers. But make no mistake about it, writing for lawyers should be considered a rare guilty pleasure, not the focus of your firm’s marketing plan.

Law Bloggers consider their blog to be a separate entity from their firm.

Law bloggers often see their blog as an extension of their personal brand; a sort of hedge against becoming too synonymous with their parent firm lest they decide one day that they want to move on. That’s a great strategy, and I’d recommend that strategy to any associate (or partner) at a big firm.

But you’ve already taken that leap. There’s nothing left to hedge against. Your blog is the marketing arm of your firm, and they should be so intertwined as to be indistinguishable to any potential clients (and Google). Worrying about driving visitors from your blog to your firm website is a fool’s errand. Your blog is your firm website.

What’s more, if you were to separate your firm website from your blog, you’re effectively making sure that none of the SEO value generated by all of that effort is transferred to your firm. Having them both under the same domain is critical to ensuring that your firm and its blog rank well in Google.

Blog posts don’t pay the bills, clients do.

Your blog isn’t about you. It’s about your clients. Everything you do needs to be geared toward their needs, their desires, their pains. Every marketing activity you spend time on need to be focused on one of two things. One, getting more prospective clients to your site. And two, convincing them that you’re so deeply in tune with their problems that they absolutely can’t afford to not contact you for your expertise.

In short, you need to focus on blogging to get business, not being in the business of blogging.

To that end I would strongly recommend looking outside the law industry and into small business marketing for your marketing advice, as your small-firm’s marketing is much more closely related to that of a pool salesman* than a law blogger.

Everyone knows Google is the ruler of the roost when it comes to search. In this guide, we’ll take you through the steps to make sure your firm’s Google setup is a firm foundation for the rest of your marketing efforts.

What a lot of small law firms miss out on is the fact that Google provides a number of free tools to help site owners (that’s you) adhere to best practices that can help Google better understand what your content is about. And when you make Google’s job easier, it can only help your prospects of ranking for important search keywords.

We’re going to walk through the setup of each of these tools to make sure you’re taking advantage of all the free stuff.

Your Google Account

First thing’s first. You need to have a Google account. If you use gmail, you’re probably familiar with all of this, but I would highly recommend setting up a separate Google account specifically for your firm. It’ll make things much easier down the road.

If you use Google Apps for your firm’s email, awesome, you already have a Google account, and you can use that email and password to sign in.

If you don’t use Google Apps, you can still create a Google account using your business email address, just use this form.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a tool that keeps track of who’s visiting your site and when. It’s a very powerful tool that we’ll get into in more detail at a later time, but for now, let’s just get your site set up and verified.

First, log into google analytics by going to http://www.google.com/analytics. Once there, you’re going to create an account by clicking on the “create an account” link in the top right corner.

Google analytics is structured by accounts and then by property. Accounts act as a grouping of websites (properties). For most firms, you’ll only have one property, but if you have a law blog on a separate domain, like blog.myfirm.com, or myfirmblog.blogger.com, you may want to manage multiple sites.

Let’s start by following Google’s instructions for setting up your firm’s account.

Click on the ‘Admin’ link at the top of the page. From here you should be able to create a new account. Fill it out as follows (let’s assume your firm is called AmazeLaw Firm and your website is amazelawfirm.com):

Account Name: AmazeLaw Firm
Website Name: Main Website
Website URL: http://amazelawfirm.com
Industry Category: “Law and Government”
Reporting Timezone: Select your timezone
Data Sharing Settings: It’s ok to leave the defaults here, but for the paranoid, you can uncheck “Anonymously with Google and others” and “Account specialists”.

When you’re ready, click ‘Get Tracking ID’ and accept Google’s Terms & Conditions.

Congratulations, you’re now staring at a rather techy looking page that contains the code you need to add to your website in order to get tracking up and running.

If you use a content management system like WordPress, Drupal, or AmazeLaw, all you need to do is authenticate with Google Analytics and it will suck the code in for you. For example, on WordPress, if you go to Plugins > Add New and search for “Yoast Google Analytics” you can install a plugin that will allow you do suck in your code. There’s even a nifty video over here that will show you exactly how to set it up.

If you use AmazeLaw, just log in and go to your dashboard, there should be a giant button asking you to authenticate. Clicking that will automatically suck in your tracking code.

Now if you don’t use WordPress or AmazeLaw or if you need a developer to add the code for you, here’s a sample email you can send your developer that will instruct them on how to add it to your site. By the way, this should be an amazingly simple task for any competent developer so don’t let them charge you for more than an hour’s time to do it (it’ll likely take less than 10 minutes depending on how they’ve set up your site.)

That’s it! You can verify whether the tracking is installed by going to Admin > Choosing your account and property, and then .js Tracking Info > Tracking Code. Next to your Tracking ID, you should see “Waiting for Data” or “Tracking Installed”.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google doesn’t provide much direct control when it comes to how your site appears in search, but what little control it does give you is controlled from webmaster tools.

In order to log in to Webmaster Tools, just visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home. From there, you’ll be able to add your site and verify ownership.

When you log in, if you don’t have any sites set up, you’ll see a welcome video and a simple text field where you can put your domain to add your site. Simply enter your domain, and click ‘Add Site’.

If you followed the steps in the Google Analytics section above your site should already be verified. If not, follow one of the procedures Google outlines in order to verify your ownership of the site. Unfortunately, it may require help from your developer.

Google+ Authorship

Google+ may not be poised to take over Facebook any time soon, but it’s generally accepted that having a Google+ profile set up (if not actively updated) is a best practice for SEO. Google has indicated that going through the process of verifying the authors of content on your site will act as a quality signal in search algorithms. In other words, set up a Google+ account for yourself, and link it to your website.

If your email uses the same domain as your website (it does right!?) then the process is simple. Just log into Google+ using your firm email address and then go to this link and submit your website.

If you don’t have an email address for your domain, something like myfirm@gmail.com or awesomelegalsolutions@hotmail.com, then it requires a bit of effort to get authorship set up, and honestly, your time would be better spent signing up for Google Apps for business and moving your email over there. After all, bill@awesomelegalsolutions.com is a lot more professional than awesomelegalsolutions@hotmail.com.

Google Places

And finally, it’s time to get you on the map. This is absolutely key to making sure your firm is available for Google to list at the top of localized searches. You know, the ones that show a map and a list of 5-10 businesses.

Signing up for Google Places is quick and easy as well. Go to the Google Places signup page and click “Get on Google”.

In the map that appears, search for your business, either using the name or your office address if you have one. If it appears in the search box, click on the business to claim it. If not, just select the “None of these match. Add your business” link at the bottom of the search results to create yours in the system. Now, if you don’t have a Google+ page for your firm, this will go ahead and create the page for you as well.

There are a few fields worth noting when you get to the point that you need to enter your address information. The first is, well, the actual address. Many solo’s don’t actually have a physical office, and even if you do, it’s likely that you want to serve an area larger than the city in which you live. If you don’t have an actual office, enter your home address (you’ll be able to hide the address later). But whether you have an office or not, make sure you check the box that says “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location.”

And finally for the “Category” field, you could put the general “Legal Services” or if you have a specialty try that. Search along the lines of “Family Law Attorney” or “Employment Attorney” to select your specialty.

Once you have filled out that information, it’s time to let Google know where you operate. If you checked the box above, you’ll be given the option to list out cities, or choose a radius around your office. I would suggest a radius, but that’s entirely up to you. If you want your office to also appear on the map, just check the box “I also serve customers at my business address”.

When that’s done, you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ page for the business and sign Google Terms of Service.

You’ll be asked to verify your business by mail, and you can then go ahead and edit your Google+ business page.

Whew!

That’s it! Take a break. Now you can edit your site knowing that you’re all set with Google.