It’s important to get your client reviews on attorney review sites that your prospective clients know about and visitHigher web traffic suggests that the site has lots of users.

And this suggests that it would be quick and easy to leave a review—having no need to go through a lengthy registration process.

Avvo

Average Monthly U.S. Visits: 4,897,796

You’ve heard of Avvo. And while you may not have the happiest of feelings about the site, your clients use it. And you should too.

Avvo also makes leaving reviews really easy—no registration is needed.  And the site also has attorney endorsements.

Lawyers.com

Average Monthly U.S. Visits: 1,209,218

Lawyers.com boasts having over 1 million lawyer reviews—they combine these reviews with our number five pick, Martindale-Hubbell ratings. The site also has a an easy-to-use “Ask a Lawyer” section where local attorneys answer user’s legal questions.

FindLaw

Average Monthly U.S. Visits: 6,905,129

FindLaw is a resource for both clients and legal professionals—helping clients not only find a lawyer, but also providing content from them to learn about the law.

Legal professionals are also able to search for cases, contracts, and articles on the site’s “For Legal Professionals” area.

LegalMatch

Average Monthly U.S Visits: 679,680

LegalMatch works a bit differently from the previous three listed. LegalMatch has the user post about their case, answering various questions based on the category of law of the case.

Leaving a review is not as easy on this site, as you have to go through the entire process in order to leave a review.

Martindale-Hubbell

Average Monthly U.S. Visits: 382,308

Martindale-Hubbell is considered by some as the “gold standard” in attorney ratings. Martindale-Hubbell provides potential clients peer and client review ratings, and they make it easy to do so. Potential clients can also chat with attorneys directly while perusing reviews.

As a lawyer, you will want to have reviews on some platforms so that you can reach as many people as possible who may need your services.

Google Reviews

First, what is the number one search engine on the internet? You’ve guessed it – Google, which means that you want to have a positive Google reviews that can help you build your client base. Local business ratings are the first thing that shows up when you do a search for businesses on Google.

Facebook Reviews

Facebook is the largest social network in the world, so you will want to make sure that you have an online presence there as well. 

Yelp Reviews

You are probably also familiar with Yelp reviews. They are extremely common for reviewing a restaurant, but they are also great for law firms that need to bolster their review site presence.

Other Lawyer Review Sites

Finally, there are lawyer specific directories like FindLaw and Avvo which are online marketplaces that are designed specifically for lawyers to build their client-base.

Can reputation be managed? It’s clear that you cannot control what people think about you or your business

The word “managed” conveys a greater degree of control than most reputation management practices can truly effect. Much of what reputation management attempts to do is to adjust a very small scope of reputational issues. Most of these issues are online.

Here are some of the sources of reputation problems that reputation management does attempt to deal with:

Negative news articles

News articles are often the first thing that people see when they Google your business’s name or peruse their news feeds. Even though people are aware that fake news exists, we still tend to believe what we read in the news.

Negative online images

Celebrities and ordinary citizens alike have been the subject of leaked photos. Thankfully, there are legal guidelines that stipulate when such images may be removed from search indexes.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the cultural default for information on virtually every conceivable subject. Reputation management must pay close attention to this site that consistently ranks high in the search engines.

Blog posts

Anyone can write anything they want about anyone they want. The result is a riot of misinformation and confusion. This is another arena in which reputation management can and does exercise substantial impact.

Ripoff reports and scam sites

Like malicious blogs, some review sites are nothing more than conduits of complaint for disaffected consumers.

Review sites

Review sites like Yelp exist to help the consumer make guided choices based on what other customers have experienced. In an ideal world, the number of good reviews would counteract the outlier, but sometimes a single negative review can shutter a business for good.

Social media

Social media has a shorter shelf life than anything else in this list, but it still matters. Social media is the method of choice for people recommending brands, spreading gossip, airing complaints and criticizing public figures.

Reputation management is the effort to influence what and how people think of a brand or person.

In this section, we’ll build out this nascent definition of reputation management by explaining seven critical aspects:

1. Reputation management happens mostly online

A vast amount of communication happens online. We meet friends, we solve disagreements, we discover new businesses, and we read the news.

2. Reputation management empowers your sales and marketing

Reputation management lives within the wide world of sales and marketing, and though it can be described as a “tactic,” it’s hardly negligible.

When people already believe in your company’s mission your content will reach more of its readers.

3. Reputation management is essential for a business’s survival

We’re not overstating the case when we write that reputation management is essential for a company’s survival. 

 Other companies — smaller ones, or less capably equipped ones — would simply crash and burn in the wake of this kind of reputation disaster.

4. Reputation management is important both for personalities and businesses

We’ve mostly focused on reputation management as it applies to businesses thus far, but it’s important for individuals too.

5. Reputation management is a fast growing industry

As we’ve pointed out, if your reputation is down the tubes, so is your business. In fact, 87% of customers will reverse a purchase decision after viewing negative content about a brand or product online.

6. Reputation management is abused for nefarious purposes

Like nearly everything in life, reputation management has an ethical dark side. One Business Insider article takes a bazooka shot at reputation management, starting with the headline: “Inside The Sleazy World Of Reputation Management, Where People Pay To Control What You See On The Internet.”

7. Reputation management is a legitimate and effective practice

Reputation management exists, in part, because people are more likely to believe, share and spread negative news than they are positive news. That’s why a single misstep can snowball to have lasting effects on your reputation.

Businesses can take advantage of a bevy of methods to manage their online reputations, including:

• Search engine optimization
• Technical optimization
• Social response tools
• Reputation monitoring
• Link portfolio management 

Knowing how to respond to online reviews both effectively and ethically is key. Here are some concrete steps you can take to help you do just that

STEP 1: Follow What’s Being Said About You and Your Firm

Monitor online chatter by creating Google alerts for discussions about you and your law firm. Once you create the alert you’ll receive emails whenever new matching results are located.

STEP 2: Be Aware of What’s Being Said on Online Review Sites

The sites clients use to find lawyers are often the same sites where they later leave feedback about their experience. That’s why it makes sense to track what’s being said about your firm on those sites.

STEP 3: Request and Track Feedback

One way to manage online feedback is to encourage positive comments from happy clients. Then, at the conclusion of each case, consider including a request for positive comments in your closing communications. Make sure to include a link to relevant sites to make it easier for your clients to leave comments – and for you to track them.

STEP 4: Augment Positive Reviews

When your clients leave positive reviews about your law firm, make the most out of them. Highlight them by adding them to your law firm website’s client testimonial section.

Sharing good reviews engenders trust and encourages potential clients to retain your firm’s services.

STEP 5: Manage Negative Reviews

Hopefully, you’ll never receive a negative review. But if you do, you need to carefully and thoughtfully respond to the former client’s feedback. And finally, counteract the negative review by encouraging other clients to leave positive reviews on that site.

Here are some best practices and techniques to help you achieve the best results and optimal response rates.

Request reviews via email

One of the most effective ways to generate new reviews is through review request email campaigns.

The campaigns usually take on the form of customer feedback surveys; other times, the email message is much simpler and more straightforward, containing a link to a page where the recipient can write a review.

Review request templates

Not sure what to write in your review request messages? Here are some subject line and message ideas that hopefully will give you some inspiration for your review request templates.

Review or feedback SMS templates

Here are some actionable feedback SMS templates to inspire your text surveys and review request campaigns via SMS.

Design landing pages for collecting reviews

In order to generate new reviews and collect valuable customer feedback, more and more businesses and marketers are creating their own dedicated landing pages for reviews.

It’s a great way to encourage customers to be more vocal about their experiences.

Get reviews at the point of sale

A more immediate, personal, and direct way to ask customers for reviews is to make the request at the point of sale or care.

Use review request or review generation tools

If you’re managing a business with multiple locations, an efficient way to ask customers for reviews is by using review request or review generation tools and software.

The Ask Tool from ReviewTrackers, for example, allows you to generate new reviews through email campaigns, SMS, on-site kiosks, and customizable landing pages.

Automate your review requests

For the efficiency-minded, a little automation can help get more review generation work done faster. Customers who automate their review requests can often double or triple their review volume — minus the time and resources spent on manual work.

1)    Do your homework. 

Make sure your retail store has a presence on all of the major social sites that shoppers look at to read reviews – or create reviews – of your business. Beyond Google, consider obvious sites like Facebook, Yelp, and also Bing and Yahoo.

2)    Make it easy for them. 

As I left Heathrow airport customs, they had this simple machine which sought to easily let them know customers’ experience. In an email to your customer, you can do the same.

3)    Reward them.

Zappos hands out 100 points or about $10 credit to those who write a review. Offer incentives to gather reviews – especially at the start. Consider offering points in your customer loyalty program or entries in a quarterly drawing.

4)    Send a follow-up email. 

Etsy sends a text message or email asking buyers to write a review. They reported to the WSJ that 25% of purchases result in a review as a result.

5)    Ask quickly …but not too quickly…after purchase.

Those online, post-checkout popups are annoying. Imagine leaving the counter of a store with your purchase and someone jumps in front of you to ask you for a review.

6)    Ask for help. 

In your email newsletters, you can add a Help with a Question section to get purchasers to respond to your most popular shopper questions. Highlight these answers on your store’s homepage next to the product.

7)    Survey them. 

Three to five simple questions is easy. Stars as answers are also easy. A blank text box will seem like work, and you won’t get any responses.

8)    Tell reviewers exactly what you want.

If you want longer answers rather than stars, give a 2-point review worded exactly like this, “Please review your purchase and:

1.     Tell shoppers why you bought the product
2.     Did it do what you wanted and would you shop with us again?”