Social Media Bible - Everything Legal Professionals Need to Know About the New Media Revolution

High profile cases in almost any jurisdiction have always faced issues in terms of jury selection- the primary concern being the media coverage and how that may influence a potential juror's views and opinions. Media coverage is also playing a big role in the legal services marketing arena. In the past, legal marketing revolved around the predictable avenues including newspapers, radio and television, but that's not true anymore.

Today there is a huge instantaneous mass media system called social media and it's impact on juries, judges and potential clients is only just coming to the forefront. Should lawyers be concerned? You bet. But one thing's for sure you must first be aware of this phenomenon and get up-to-speed on this new way of communicating. Lawyers must ask themselves if blogging and consumer generated media has the potential to affect their the Transformers even the potential to affect their reputations.

Media Masters has broken down the elements of social media important to the legal professional in easy to understand terms of: What is it? Why Captain America action figure I need to know about it? How does it work for me? The answers are critical for lawyers to understand as they communicate with a 21st century world about their cases and their profession.

BLOGGING
CONTENT
ONLINE NEWSROOMS
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
PUBLISHING TO SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
TWITTER
WIKIS

BLOGGING

What is it?
Blogging: The word blog is a short form for the term web log. A blog has traditionally been a journal or diary with dated entries. Law "blawgs" are rampant online.

Why do I need to know about it?
Think of blogging as educational-marketing. It drives people seeking information about a particular area of law to you as the expert n the subject. That, in turn, leads potential clients to buy Linden dollars cheap website.

How does it work for me?
By sharing your expertise online, not only are you providing Internet users valuable legal information, you are driving traffic to your website and improving your search engine optimization.
1. Visit blogger.com to set up your own blog. Make it look as much like your owe website as possible.
2. Try and create a blog short version of what is on your website homepage in the blog header.
3. Be sure and add a social bookmarking widget to the page, visit addthis.com
4. You will need a strong appeal to get people off your blog and onto your website- so make the link easy to find.
5. Offer fresh content as often as possible, twice a week at least.

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
Make sure anything you post is in easily digestible bites of info- like top ten lists- not a long-drawn out synopsis. The key is to update postings early and often. Make sure the information posted answers the "What's in it for me?" questions for the reader.

ONLINE NEWSROOMS

What are they?
A page online where you can post all the news about your firm, case, or yourself.

Why do I need to know about them?
Journalists rank online press rooms as their first stop when looking for information about a firm, or a company and keeping the content fresh improves your search engine optimization ranking.

How does it work for me?
Online newsrooms don't have to be fancy endeavors. Simply designate a page on your site as a "newsroom". Make sure your newsroom includes contact information, firm background, announcements and accolades, a multimedia gallery and a search capability to allow journalists, consumers, investors and other visitors to easily find information they need.
Post news releases on the page on the firm website. Be sure and make the newsroom RSS compatible. Offer users news alerts via email updates or RSS feeds.

If your IT department can't do this for you: vocus.com is a good resource.

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

What is it?
Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more popular. They allow the user to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorites list of the user's browser. These sites enable users to share their favorite website content with other users in their network. Here are some brief descriptions of the most popular bookmarking sites:

Del.icio.us
del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us users can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

Digg:
Users share interesting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages.

Why should I know about it?
Social bookmarking is a great way to bypass the traditional media gatekeepers when it comes to getting your information to the people who want to know about it on a very large scale. Because people vote on their favorite posts, traditional media is starting to use their sites as barometers of what people are interested in. Sometimes the popularity of certain posts on these bookmarking sites can influence traditional media to pick up the story.

How does it work for me?
Visit some of the sites provided here. Create an account. Then bookmark interesting and useful things in the areas of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a useful Feed. Once you've done that you intermittently, (or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, you can also submit your own content that could use additional exposure.

Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact that when you share links to other's resources, you're also effectively promoting their content as well.
1. Sign up for a free account
2. Some social bookmarking sites offer tag buttons so all you have to do is tag your favorite sites to add them to your online social bookmarking page. (The site will instruct you on how to do this)
3. When you tag a page a window will pop up asking what tag words you want to use to describe the content. This is important as later when you go back eventually you will find you have bookmarked 100 webpages or more. To sort through all of the content all you will have to refer to is your list of tags which will have numbers next to the words indicating how many pages you have bookmarked with that particular word in it.
4. Here is the social aspect- these bookmarks are public that means your friends can see your bookmarks and your tags just like you.
5. Bookmark your own post on your website
Search Engine spiders will go into these sites and recognize posted items as highly valuable so it increases your post's ranking in search engines.

Tags:
A tag is simply a word you use to describe a bookmark. Unlike folders, you make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like. The result is a
better way to organize your bookmarks and a great way to discover interesting things on the Web.

PUBLISHING TO SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES

What is it?
Opening accounts at a number of social bookmarking sites and posting your own content to reach a wider audience of people.

Why do I need to know about it?
Publishing your own content to a number of social bookmarking sites disseminates the information to a large number of people and greatly improves the search engine optimization of your content.

If you have written a good article or your client has a press release everyone should know about, consider publishing it in this way.

How does it work for me?
First set up free accounts at each of these social bookmarking sites:

Stumbleupon.com
Reddit.com
netvouz.com

1. After you upload content Go to : socialmarker.com/
2. All you need to do is simply drag a button see homepage under "how to use it" to your bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.
3. Go to the section on the homepage that says "select the Social Bookmarking sites you want to submit to"
4. Click the word "Best" under that title.
5. It wll take you to Bookmark Details box at the top- type in the Title of the Article- the link of the blog posting, a brief description of the article and the tags- these are very important- they tell the RSS feeds and search engines what to look for.
6. Social marker will take you to each of the sites checked where you will enter your username and password you've set up- click "remember me on this computer" and you'll only have to type the whole thing in once.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

What is it?
SEO ranks your site higher in search engine listings when someone searches for your practice area, your firm or you.

Why do I need to know about it?
Because the higher your site is listed on search engines the more people will visit it.

How does it work for me?
Meta tag every page of the website up to 250 words per page. A content management system is good for this or the IT department can do this for you. Also- by adding RSS feeds and encouraging others to link to your site via social bookmarking your site will rank higher in search engines.

TWITTER

What is it?
Primarily designed for mobile devices, Twitter or "tweet" is a micro-blog for people who want to write about the little things that happen in their life. Twitter's greatest asset is its mobility as it is optimized for Blackberrys and other PDAs.

Why should I know about it?
Twitter pages look like blogs with very short posts. Twitter is a useful tool for groups that need to easily stay up to date with daily events when they are on the go. This is a very useful tool for ongoing trials and settlement agreements that can change from minute to minute. Twitter is full of influential bloggers, as well as people who pass along meesages

How does it work for me?
For lawyers- Twitter can be very beneficial during trials to keep the legal team updated as to minute to minute proceedings during trials and settlement discussions. Click follow on the friends you want to keep up with and all day- your page will be updated with the minute details of your friends on your page. Posts are under 140 words

WIKIS

What is it?
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.

Why do I need to know about it?
Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. For example, the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.

How does it work for me?
Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".
Sign up for free WIKIS at pbwiki.com

AbAbout The Author: Miranda Sevcik is a former television journalist and current principal of Media Masters, a Houston-based litigation communications and legal PR firm that caters exclusively to lawyers and legal professionals. Contact her at: href="mailto:miranda@mediamastersonline.net">miranda@mediamastersonline.net

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The Best Long Shot Bets in Horse Racing Handicapping and Betting

In case you missed it, and I don't know how you would with all the media coverage, Big Brown, the favorite to win the Belmont, didn't win, in fact, he didn't finish the race. The horse who was the longest price on the board won the race. In Remco Movieland Drive-In words, the biggest long shot. Many people were shocked by the results, but for professionals who make a living at horse Blythe doll handicapping, it was no big surprise.

Long shots win all the time, why should a big race like the Belmont be any different? Perhaps all the media hype about the favorite had something to do with the shock, along with the fact that there were many casual race goers who played the race. Many Viagra cocktail them thought they were betting on a sure thing. Welcome to the world of horse racing. It isn't that easy as any one who has been horse racing handicapping and betting for very long can tell you.

Favorites win about a third of the time. Many of the races that aren't won by the favorite are won by a horse that is considered a contender and is going off at reasonable odds but isn't considered a long shot. The rest of the races are won by long shots. When a long shot comes out of the clouds and beats the horse you have bet on, it comes as a shock and is an unpleasant feeling. But when you have bet on the long shot and win big money, it is another story. That is one of the best thrills in horse racing betting.

Now all long shots are not created equally. The horse that won the Belmont, Da'Tara, was a well bred horse, trained by a great trainer, Nick Zito. But Da'Tara had only won one other race in his very short racing career and the favorite, Big Brown, had won all five of his races including two legs of the triple crown. How could you possibly bet on a horse like that against such a prohibitive favorite? Well first of all, no one said you had to bet on him, but there were some very compelling reasons if you dug deep enough.

First of all, the favorite had never raced that distance. The favorite had been in two very hard races within a matter of weeks. The favorite had hoof problems. The Belmont is famous for burying favorites. Nick Zito is famous for winning the Belmont with a favorite. You see, there are long shots and then there are long shots. The important thing to ask yourself when considering a long shot, is this, "If this race was run 100 times, how many of those times would the favorite win and how many would some other horse in the race win?" Then ask yourself this, "If some other horse in this race is going to beat the favorite, which horse in this field has some factors that indicate it has a chance?" Finally, compare the number of times you think the other horse, the long shot, could win and compare that with the odds. At 38-1, the odds on Da'Tara, the horse would only have to win 3 races out of 100 to show a profit.

The odds on Big Brown were 1-4. That means that Big Brown would have to win the race 81 out of 100 times to show a modest profit for anyone who bet on him. Do you now see how a long shot can become a good bet and a favorite, despite the hype, can be a lousy bet? Horse racing handicapping and betting isn't rocket science but like many things in life, with a good system and some common sense, you can be a winner if you don't mind bucking the crowd and thinking for yourself.

Longshots are the best bets when you know how to rate them with Bill's Longshot Rater at williewins.homestead.comwilliewins.homestead.com - Bill has been around Horse racing for 50 years and knows how to spot a good bet and loves to teach others. He is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, "Horse Racing is in my blood" To see all Bill's horse racing material go to williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.htmlwilliewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html - Bill's handicapping store