This is a great guest post from Andrew Flusche, where he discussing blogging and other tools an attorney can use to market and promote their practice.

Your law firm cannot exist in a vacuum. You need clients to work for. To get those clients, you must market your practice and network with people. Social media and blogging can go a long way in your overall marketing plan.

Start a blog

Starting a blog is the single best thing you can do to market yourself online. Don’t think of it just as a diary or personal journal. A blog is simply a website that you update periodically. Blogs have several advantages over static websites:

• Everyone loves new content. Readers (i.e. potential clients) like to see current, updated information. Search engines also value content that is updated, versus a stale page.
• Adding new information is easy. If you can operate email, you can add new posts to your blog.
• Blogs attract links. Since blogging is a roving conversation, bloggers link to each other. This raises your visibility with potential clients and search engines.
• Blogs are fluid. When you setup a static website, you have to plan for all the content you want. But blogs allow you to sporadically add new content easily, letting you cover topics that you never crossed your mind six months ago.

When you start a blog for your law firm, I suggest replacing your old website. You can have a blog and attorney profiles, practice areas, etc all on the same domain. Potential clients will appreciate having an integrated online experience.

Try social networking

If you want to go further online, venture into social networking. This isn’t a blatant marketing technique, but it can be crucial in developing relationships with fellow attorneys and people who might be clients in the future.

Twitter provides a fascinating social networking platform. You can think of it as a giant conversation with people all around the globe. But you get to pick who you talk with and who you listen to.

You can send short little updates (up to 140 characters) about what you’re doing, something interesting you read, or whatever is on your mind. You can also respond to things that other people say.

Twitter can be a great way to get to know other people better. And it can be a useful tool for meeting new and interesting people. Isn’t that what networking is all about?

To get started on Twitter, sign up for a free account. Then you add people to “follow.” These are people that you want to receive updates from. Here are some notable attorneys on Twitter:

• Lisa Solomon - Awesome legal research and writing at Question of Law
• Susan Cartier Liebel - Guru on going solo: Build a Solo Practice
• Grant Griffiths - Attorney and blog expert from G2 Wed Media

Also, you might be interested in meeting some local Twitter people. You can enter your location on TwitterLocal and find people near you. This is a great way to find future potential clients in your local area!

So what are you waiting for? Get started blogging and Twittering. You really can leverage online tools to build your practice!

Andrew Flusche is a Fredericksburg, Virginia lawyer who runs his own solo law firm. He helps with small business issues, trademarks, estate planning, and criminal law.