Social media is a great entry point for digital law firm marketing. Anyone can make a business account and start posting.
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However, you can’t just make an account and leave it there, nor should you haphazardly post whatever comes to mind. Instead, you need to strategize, plan, implement, and audit your performance for the best ROI. In other words, you need to plan and strategize your law firm’s social media efforts for it to work.
So, if you don’t quite know where to start with law firm social media marketing, here are a few crucial do’s and don’ts to start more smoothly and gain ROI much faster:
Do: Input All Your Information
You should fill in all your crucial information. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, potential clients will want to know where your office is, how to contact you, and what name to use when looking your law firm up on search engines.
After all, some people look up law firms on social media. If there isn’t a landing page or contact information to find more about you, it would be a wasted opportunity.
Don’t: Forget To Update Your NAPs
You should update your name, address, phone (and email!). Every time you move offices, change phone numbers, and switch official email addresses, it should be reflected on the information that shows up on your social media profile.
Outdated NAPs confuse potential clients. People might end up calling wrong numbers, which is—again—a wasted opportunity. You should also apply the same tip across all your online profiles—whether that’s on Yelp, Google Reviews, or online directories.
Do: Experiment With Different Types Of Content
You can try posting different types of content, such as images, videos, and articles. Don’t limit yourself to just posting links to your blogs and quick text posts.
Remember, videos and images do really well on social media. Sometimes, even better than text posts and long captions. You can try making short informational clips on TikTok or Instagram or try your hand at posting infographics on Twitter.
Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the “share” buttons. Most social media platforms allow you to interact with other posts. For example, you can quote retweet someone else on Twitter, share someone else’s posts on Facebook, and duet with other TikToks.
Don’t: Forget To Audit Your Content
Auditing is what makes law firm digital marketing efficient and sustainable. If you’re not editing your content, you won’t know what you’re doing right, what you’re doing terribly, and what you need to change.
So, make sure you’re compiling a report of insights about your social media marketing ventures. For example, you can make a report based on the numbers below:
- Total no. of followers
- New monthly followers
- Best performing post
- Worst performing posts
- Post impressions
- Social shares
Using the data you’ve collected, you can decide which types of content you should keep making and which ones you might want to replace with something else. Your data can also inform you how well you’re doing, how much traffic you’re getting, and how much lead generation potential your posts have.
Do: Post Great Content
Your social media content needs to be helpful, entertaining, or informative. Don’t just post ads and promotional content. Those don’t really attract as many people to your law firm’s social media content.
Since most social media platforms don’t allow for very long text content, your social media posts will be much more condensed than posts on your legal blog. Besides, most social media users don’t really like reading 2000-word text content on social media. Instead, they prefer something easy to consume and scroll through.
Since your social media profiles are better marketing tools with more followers, you need to prioritize building a following first before blasting your pages and timelines with ads.
Don’t: Neglect Marketing And Promotional Content
While you don’t want a wall of ads on your profile, you also don’t want to steer away from the primary goal of your social media pages—marketing. So, make sure you find a happy balance between high-quality content and promotional posts.
You want to make sure you do not just impress your audience; you want to maximize your law firm’s lead-generating potential. After all, the main goal of social media marketing is to find more clients for your law firm.
Do: Post At The Right Times
Not only should you be posting consistently, but you should also consider posting at the right times and days. This is the best way to get the most exposure for your content. After all, you want to get as many eyes on them as possible.
The first step to this is to do some audience research. Consider who your target audience is based on their demographics and habits. This includes when they’re most active during the week or day by looking at the times you get the most traffic or impressions.
Then, you can schedule your social media posts accordingly. Some social media platforms even allow scheduled posts. If not, you can also use social media management tools to automate your postings.
Don’t: Post In One Go
If you have three new posts planned, don’t just dump them all in one go. Many social media platforms and tools let you schedule your posts so that you can space them out between each other.
You don’t want older posts to get buried under new ones. But, again, just blasting them all out there isn’t going to get as many eyes as possible. It would be best if you were more strategic about your postings as much as the actual content you create.
Bottom-line
Social media marketing is more complicated than you think. While some people go viral through luck, it’s not always true for millions of other people on social media. However, many companies and firms are still thriving on social media—all thanks to a proven strategy that works when done right.
More importantly, social media marketing requires as much dedication as any of your digital marketing strategies to work. To make sure you get to the top, you must work on proven tips and strategies that have taken simple law firm social media accounts to effective marketing pages.
Author’s Bio
JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.