9 Ways To Enhance Your Law Firm’s Brand On LinkedIn

Published on 29 July 2009 by David Weil in Blog

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When it comes to creating a presence for yourself or your practice using social media, LinkedIn is one of the most important tools you can use. By using LinkedIn, you can connect to over 43 million professionals in over 200 countries around the world. Whether you run a small firm, are a partner at a large practice, or anything in between, LinkedIn can be an incredible asset for your career.
You might be thinking that LinkedIn is just a virtual resume but in reality it’s far more than that. Instead it is a resume, cover letter, references document, a phone directory and a place where you can professionally interact with others in the legal industry.
The hardest part about using LinkedIn however is there is a lot less upkeep compared to networks like Facebook or Twitter so you may not spend as much time on it as you should. This makes your profile useless and devalues your virtual presence. With that said, here are 8 things to keep in mind that you can do to enhance your brand on LinkedIn and transform your profile into a very effective element of your lawyer-marketing repertoire.

1. First Impressions - Like it or not, first impressions have a huge impact on our personal and professional relationships. Good first impressions can seal the deal and bad first impressions can kill all the potential. Your headline and picture are your first impressions on LinkedIn and they can greatly affect your prospects of building a strong network. So make sure you have a professional looking picture and a headline that represents your current position in the legal industry. If you are looking for lawyers to join your firm, looking to catch on at a firm, or looking for advice on a case then put that in your headline.
2. Be Accessible - Most people are not going to work at trying to find you or connect with on LinkedIn. So if connecting with you is easy and associable it makes you more attractive to others. Most of the time, to “link” with someone you need his or her e-mail address. To make things easy include your e-mail on your profile or at the end of your summary or experience so it can be easily seen.
3. Create A Custom URL - If you don’t have a custom URL for your LinkedIn profile then you’re missing out another critical opportunity for people to easily find you. Furthermore, a custom URL will cause your profile to rank higher on Google. So if your LinkedIn URL doesn’t appear as www.linkedin.com/in/yourname then you should absolutely change it.

4. Promote Your URL - Now that you have a custom LinkedIn URL it is imperative that you promote yourself. Include your URL on your resume, blog, Twitter and Facebook profiles and even on your business card.
5. Keywords – You should inundate your entire profile with key words because other lawyers or other industry professionals will be using LinkedIn as a talent search engine. Find keywords that are in your headline and scatter them throughout your profile so you will have a better chance of showing up on “people searches.”
6. Ask and Answer Questions - If someone in your network asks a question that relates to you or your practice then you should answer it. By participating in discussions like these, you show others that you a valuable contributor with a strong skill set. Asking or answering questions will certainly increase your stature and build up your brand.
7. Add Your Websites and Company Links – On your profile page, you have three opportunities to add websites. I would suggest that you add an official company website, a blog, or possibly a link to another social media network. Moreover, you should customize the names of each link so your experience and affiliation standout more. Google will rank your other websites more often as well.
8. Link Yourself With Yourself - Like I said before, LinkedIn is a very important piece of your social media portfolio, but it is still just that, a piece. You’re going to want to complement your LinkedIn profile with a presence on Twitter, Facebook, a personal blog or website, and other sites that deal with the legal industry. The whole point of building up your brand is to make sure it is unified and concise over all platforms and mediums.

9. Utilize The LinkedIn Groups - LinkedIn offers a wide array of groups you can join to interact with like-minded lawyers and legal professionals. You can search for groups with the LinkedIn search feature and join relevant ones for your interests.

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