Social Media for Law Firms

While it was still just in its infancy a decade ago, it’s hard to imagine a world without social media today. Social media has quickly evolved beyond being just a mechanism for sharing cat videos and clever memes and is now one of today’s biggest marketing tools.

Attorneys who want to reach clients in today’s digital age need to get on board with social media and work on creating a full-fledged social media marketing strategy. Not every platform will be the right fit for every business, so it’s important to take a thoughtful approach to social media in order to get the most benefit out of it. While this may be new territory for your law firm, getting started doesn’t have to be challenging if you follow these basic steps for creating a marketing plan.

Identify Your Target Audience

Who is your ideal client? That’s who you should be trying to reach on social media. It might be your current clients and similar companies, or it might be potential new clients in areas where you want to expand and grow your firm. Either way, knowing who you want to reach is important before you decide how you want to reach them and what it is you want to say.

Review Your Social Media Presence and Choose Your Platforms

Social media is not one-size-fits-all. There are several social platforms out there, and new ones are emerging every day. Today’s most popular platforms for businesses include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, though there are many others available as well. Not all platforms will work well for every business, and no firm should try to jump in and master them all. Instead, decide on a few that you think might work best and put your initial efforts into those – ideally the ones your identified target audience is most likely to use. If you already have some accounts, you should consider whether you want to keep them or focus your efforts on new avenues of marketing.

Decide on Your Message

Now that you’ve identified your audience and the platforms you plan to use to reach them, what do you want to say? Although social media is a powerful marketing tool for law firms, that doesn’t mean you’re limited to traditional advertising content. Social media has become a powerful vehicle for circulating thought leadership content and other impactful information. Posts on social media can help drive traffic to new practices or other areas where you’d like to see your business grow. It can also help reassure your current clients that you remain on the cutting edge of the areas of law where you’ve already proven your expertise.

Implement a Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve set up your social media accounts, it’s crucial that you actually use them. While that may seem obvious, lawyers are busy, and when caseloads become particularly intense, social media posts will be some of the first things to fall by the wayside. A successful content marketing strategy should involve a commitment to posting a certain amount of varied content on a set schedule, so that you always remain engaged with your audience and are consistently bringing them new insights.

Make Sure Your Strategy Is Working

The good thing about social media is that it allows for constant change. After your initial strategy has been in play for a while, take a step back to see if it’s achieving what you set out to achieve. As with all technology, social media allows you to track performance. You should set key performance indicators (KPIs) and then continually monitor how your social media activities are meeting them or falling short. Many social media platforms have analytics built in, which makes monitoring KPIs even easier.