The Free Online Marketing Solutions for Law Firms – Websites, Blogs, Mailing Lists, Directory Listings…

Hi Friends, Do you have time but no marketing budget? Well here is a set of solutions for online marketing of your law firm for free! These free services are especially valuable to lawyers that...

Approximate Read Time: 2 Minutes

Hi Friends,

Do you have time but no marketing budget? Well here is a set of solutions for online marketing of your law firm for free!

These free services are especially valuable to lawyers that are just starting a practice, such as those by recent law school grads, or attorneys leaving larger law firms to start their own firm. And of course even established firms can use some free services once in awhile.

I will quickly run through the free marketing solutions list today, and then over the next few days, I will walk through exactly how to set each of these solutions up, as well as show examples of how they are being successfully used by law firms right now.

Some of the step by step setup examples I will be doing in the next set of posts might seem simplistic or obvious to Internet veterans, but “how do I do this” is the question I am always asked, and simply pointing to a URL often doesn’t seem be enough how-to. So look forward to some step by step screen shots.

And I will also explain the differences between these free services with some higher end custom non-free services (like custom Justia Web sites or highend LexBlog Lawyer Blogs), but with a real focus on the free :). So let’s start…

Free Online Marketing Solutions for Law Firms

1. Free Search Engine Optimized Web sites from Justia

These template Web sites are search engine optimized for one locality and one practice area. You can make a free Web site even if you already have a paid Web site.

2. Free Blog from Google’s Blogger

A Blogger blog and BlogSpot hosting are free, and relatively easy to setup. One downside with the hosting service is that the “Next Blog” in the blog NavBar will sometimes link to a blog that would best not be seen by… clients. One of the hidden risks of free.

3. Free Mailing List from Google Groups

Google Groups is now in beta, but it provides easy administration of a mailing list, does not have annoying banners on every page, and your posts will get archived in the Google Groups database, which includes an archive of Usenet.

4. Free Web Directory Listings in the Open Directory and Washburn Law School’s WashLaw Legal Web Directory

The open directory listings are used by 100s of Web sites, including Google. Washburn’s WashLaw.edu is the best law school Web directory of legal resources. Justia is listed the Open Directory and WashLaw.edu so should your law firm. And both are free listings.

5. Free Website tools and clip art/photos from numerous sources

This post will include some links to good free tools and art Web sites, as well as to directories that have lists of the free tools and resources.

While I have focused on what I believe are the best free services for law firm marketing, I will also mention some others along the way.

Peace – Tim

:: Big Bang Baby, Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop by the Stone Temple Pilots