Time is of the essence when taking someone from prospect to client.

Obtaining quick notice about local accidents and injuries and/or defective products can provide a competitive advantage.

When an accident has just occurred and a victim is deciding whether or not to hire an attorney, you want to be easy to find. If you are aware of accidents or defective products and pharmaceuticals early, you may have the opportunity to get the inside track on a case.

Posting alerts and information on your website, blog and Social Media may help your firm be more easily found and give you increased opportunities to get cases.

One tool to identify possible newsworthy topics to post on your site and Social Media platforms is Google Alerts. Every time something new is indexed by Google on your chosen topic, you will receive an e-mail. You can also set Google Alerts to email you a daily or weekly digest that includes either only the best topical matches or everything associated with your selected topic.

There are multiple ways to utilize Google Alerts. You can sign up for your target city/town names, state, etc. for local news. For practice area-targeted news, you can sign up to be alerted for variations of car accidents (and injuries), truck accidents (and injuries, major highways, etc.), train accidents (as well as major train names), hospitals (and hospital injuries, negligence) and drug or product names you wish to target, for example. There are endless possibilities; your usage will depend on what works best for your law firm and schedule. You can even sign up for Alerts on competitors’ names to follow what they are doing. You should set Alerts for your firm and attorneys. Doing this will help you manage your firm’s reputation by alerting you to good and bad news and give you time to respond appropriately.

To develop a list for your Google Alerts entries, ask your attorneys (or have a trusted attorney decide) which topics and locations each person will follow for news or blog information, then sign up for Google Alerts on those topics at http://www.google.com/alerts. When you spread keywords among different people, the time investment is less significant, especially if you schedule a fifteen-minute block each day to read through your alerts.