Social Media Marketing Tips for Law Firms
Social media has become a popular marketing channel for most modern businesses, including law firms. Companies such as Airbnb have leveraged social media to elevate their presence and reach a global audience. You can do the same for your legal firm.
If you are not engaging your target audience on social media, you are missing out on the opportunity to drive engagement and get high-quality leads. With over 90% of marketers using social media, it speaks to its effectiveness as a marketing tool.
There are numerous social media platforms available to lawyers and other business professionals today. If you are still struggling to use social media as a marketing tool, this guide can help you improve your game.
How To Use Social Media Marketing for Lawyer Firms?
So, are you wondering how you can use social media to market your law firm? Here are some tips to get you started:
Define Your Target Audience
This is one of the most critical parts of your social media marketing strategy. Whether you are writing blogs or posting videos, your social media message should be directed toward your target audience.
Defining your target audience allows you to understand how and where to focus your marketing. Consider their age, profession, marital status, and other important details when defining your target audience to help you speak directly to them.
Researching the ideal client for your firm helps you post relevant content that will resonate with them.
If you have not started using social media for marketing, we recommend using one or two platforms to find out which one your target audience uses consistently.
Identify Your Goals
As you research the ideal client, identify your goals. Social media marketing can help you achieve several goals including:
- Improving brand awareness
- Driving traffic to your site
- Generate leads that could get new clients
- Retaining existing customers
Ensure your social media marketing goals are SMART:
- Specific: Your goals should be clear. Break down bigger goals into small specific goals such as improving brand awareness or growing your audience.
- Measurable: You should be able to quantify your progress, i.e., how many conversions did you make using social media marketing? This allows you to know whether the strategy is working or whether you need to switch to a different platform.
- Attainable: If possible, your social media marketing goals should be dependent on your firm. Consolidate different teams to ensure that they can work together to achieve success. Resolve any obstacles that may prevent you from achieving your goals.
- Relevant: Set goals relevant to your law firm. Identify why your social media marketing goals are important to your firm and whether or not they align with your brand image.
- Time-Bound: Set a time limit to evaluate progress. If you have not reached your goals within this time, consider re-evaluating or changing your social media marketing strategy.
Choose Your Platforms
Once you have identified your goals, the next step is to research which platforms to use to reach your target audience. Choose a platform where your audience is most active and more likely to engage with your law firm.
For instance, if you are looking for professionals, LinkedIn would be the best platform for your law firm. Millennials and seniors are more likely to engage with your law firm through Facebook or even YouTube, while younger audiences prefer TikTok and Instagram.
Many social media platforms now give users a breakdown of the demographics so carefully look through your platform of choice before investing in ads.
Consider checking out the platforms your competitors use, industry surveys, and reports as you make your decision.
While it is recommended that you use as many platforms as possible to reach your target audience, focus on the platforms with the highest return on investment.
Plan Your Content Strategy
All social media platforms have best practices that will ultimately yield better results. For instance, some platforms are visual-heavy while others, such as TikTok, lean more towards video content.
A blog post on LinkedIn might perform better than a long caption on Instagram.
Platforms such as Facebook will yield better results if you make one or two posts per day, while your content strategy on Twitter will perform better with up to 5 tweets per day. It is easy to see why you need to plan your content strategy.
Create a social media content calendar to help you plan your content strategy. Your calendar will help you remember which posts are going on which platforms and at what time. Overall, the best time to post on social media is midweek from mid-morning to early afternoon.
At this point, you can also integrate social media scheduling tools to streamline your marketing workflow and help you meet your deadlines.
Create and Curate Your Content
Create educational and helpful content that is in line with your brand and marketing goals. For instance, consider posting news about current trials, changes in the law, or new legal terms that have been highlighted on social media.
Of course, your content should be centered around your target audience’s needs.
Consider using 70% educational and 30% promotional content. This shows the audience that your law firm is knowledgeable. Use eye-catching visuals, short videos, or even clever captions to draw the audience to engage with the post.
Create Audience Response Policies
All your posts across all social media platforms should have the same writing style, voice, and themes that promote your law firm’s brand image. This makes it easy for your audience to identify your law firm and interact with it on multiple platforms.
Next, create audience response policies such as who will be interacting with the audience. Whether you have one person or multiple people assigned to interact with the audience, all responses should be consistent and unified in promoting your brand image and values.
The responses should reflect the law firm and not the individuals. Your response team should also be equipped to handle negative feedback.
A law firm’s reputation can suffer significantly if the response team mishandles negative feedback. Invest in training where possible.
Is Your Law Firm Using the Right Social Media Marketing Strategies?
There are numerous ways you can use social media to boost the visibility of your law firm. Some law firms use livestream segments where professional attorneys offer consultation to live audiences.
Whichever platform you choose, revise your social media marketing plan to find out whether you are making the best ROI.
You can also hire social media marketing professionals to help you achieve your goals. That way, you can remain focused on staying ahead of the competition by offering the best legal services.
