Reviews in Google maps

Your Google maps listing can help you draw traffic to your website or generate phone calls directly to your office. To make your listing more visible (rank higher) it is important that you complete the entire profile. This includes adding pictures/videos and having reviews from happy clients. I recommend that you have 4 reviews for your listing.

The best way to get a review is to ask someone to write a review for you. Ideally the review should come from a happy client. (or colleague outside your firm/group)

A review is usually a couple sentences long up to a paragraph in size and is easy to write. The tricky part comes in actually finding the spot where to write the review. For most people you will need to give them some guidance on where to go.

Guiding the reviewer

The reviewer should do the following:

- Go to http://maps.google.com/ and click on the sign in link in the upper right corner

- Enter a username and password.

- If they don't have a account with Google they will need to create one.

- Then they should do a search in Google maps with the exact listing name:

- Then they should click on the more info link (it is in a tiny font next to the listing name)

- Then click on the write a review link (located in the middle of the page on the right

- Write the review

If you have a client that is knowledgeable in Google this will be a peace of cake. However, for many people, they will need your help.

Where is the traffic going?

Google continues to be a dominant player on the Web. But there is dominant shift underway. Social media sites like Facebook are growing to the point where they are likely to surpass Google in terms of overall traffic. According to the analysts at Hitwise, Google currently receives 9% of all the Internet traffic. While Facebook receives 7%. Google still has the lead but the gap is rapidly closing. In the United Kingdom, Facebook traffic now exceeds the traffic to Google.

How does this affect Family Law attorneys? The traffic numbers give us an indication of where the action is. There is still a lot of action in the search area, but it is clear that social media is growing at rapid rate. To have marketing success, as a Family Law attorney, it is critical that you become comfortable with Social Media and in particular Social Networking. (Facebook, LinkedIn)

I spend most of my time with LinkedIn because of it's concentration of business users. However, Facebook is the market leader and should be considered in your Social Media strategy. The key is to get comfortable and competent with social networking. Social Networking is not expensive but it requires that you participate in the game. With old school marketing and advertising you just had to Pay to Play. With Social Networking, you have to Play to Play.

Not in our blood?

Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist at Google. Listed below is quote of his from a recent speech.

"The Web has been around forever and yet it is not in the blood of the executives who staff the top echelons of companies. Make no mistake, they are smart, they are successful and they want to do better. But the web is such a paradigm shift that if it is not in your blood it is very difficult to imagine its power and how to use it for good. How do you demand innovation & creativity & radical rethink if you can't imagine.

This is not just a problem for executives. It affects most of us who are over 40 years in age. We were born into an analog world and the web is forcing us to change in a way that does not feel natural. However, if we are willing to take the plunge into the digital world, it will creep into our blood as well.