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Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing for lawyers is not a vanity metric. I know you’re probably rolling your eyes right now because you heard that song and dance before. You’ve probably wasted a lot of time and money investing in to social media only to see it do well, nothing. Trust me. I used to have those same doubts.
Until I figured out what makes social media marketing tick. If you want to know how to make social media marketing actually work for your practice, then you’re reading the right article.
Too many lawyers I work with will openly tell me they don’t think social media marketing works. And they’ll tell me flat out, it’s a losing strategy. If you’re reading this article and you’re in that boat, well be prepared to have your bubble burst. Because you’re wrong.
Here my top five strategies for using social media marketing to build a following and a sustainable and thriving practice.
Strategy #1: Lawyers should start using video.
Video is becoming ubiquitous among professionals. As we’ve become accustomed to using video in our daily interactions, we’re going to become more accustomed to video marketing as well. Video is so powerful. I have clients who’ve literally paused all of their marketing efforts in favor of video and their slaying.
Let’s be real. There’s a pandemic going on and there’s no safer and easier introduction to you and your prospective clients than video. Video marketing is a great way to not only display your expertise, but also establish rapport and put down the first building blocks of relationship building with your perspective clients.
So, pull out your ring light and start polishing your ideas into great content because you’re ready to be on video. That leads me to strategy number two.
Strategy #2: Revamp your social media content for your audience, not your accolades.
One of the most common questions I get asked when it comes to social media marketing is how to increase engagement. Engagement is defined most commonly as likes, comments, and shares.
I follow the 80 / 20 rule outlined in Social Media Success for Every Brand by Claire Diaz-Ortiz.
The rule is simple. 80% of your content should be focused on delivering value and 20% should be focused on promotional content. In other words, if you’re writing content for your audience, it shouldn’t just be focused on you. That includes your video content.
A simpler way to say this would be, if you post content five days per week, one post per week can be about you. The other four days, your country, it should focus on industry insights, sharing content from your network, or commenting or providing a unique perspective on something taking place in your practice.
It’s important to remember that social media marketing is not about you. It’s about your audience and your followers. You want to create content that resonates with them, not content that serves you and your self-interest. When you create great audience-focused content, you’ll establish your credibility and trust with your audience.
Once you’ve established that credibility and trust with your audience, they’ll come knocking on your door. You won’t have to knock on theirs.
Strategy #3: Plan your social media content before you post.
Before writing a social media post it’s so important you do your due diligence to plan out your content. One of the fastest ways to ensure you’re delivering what your audience wants is to research the most common questions your clients are asking. Each time you go into a consult, write down the questions being asked of you, compile a list and then use it to draw inspiration for your next social media post.
And if you don’t have a well-established library of questions that you’ve been compiling, use Google.
Start by typing in your practice area and see what Google includes and its people also ask section on the search results. This is a great jumping-off point for you to start discovering what your audience is looking for.
Once you have a list of questions, see if you can draw a common theme from those questions. I recommend that my clients then plan out content around those themes.
Example:
An estate planning attorney may have a theme around will disputes another around special needs trust, and another round COVID related estate planning. Armed with these themes this lawyer can now draft social media posts that resonate with their audience tackling questions like:
“How to avoid a will dispute?”
What makes it work will dispute more likely?”
“Will my children fight over their inheritance?” and
“Can an ex-wife dispute a will and win?”
This is the power of planning your content before you create it.
Strategy #4: Build an email list to help promote your social media content.
Now that you’ve built a following on social media. It’s time to entice those social media followers to get to know you even better. The best way to do this is through email marketing. Now you may be wondering what does social media marketing for lawyers have to do with email marketing?
Social media marketing is a gateway to your prospective client’s eyes. Whereas email marketing is a gateway to their minds.
The truth is you and I are not Zuckerbergs. We don’t own any of the social media platforms that we use daily. We cannot control when Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or even Google changed their algorithm and leave us scrambling to find a way to reach our audience.
But we do own our email lists. This is why using email to market to your ideal client can be such an effective and necessary next step in your digital marketing strategy.
Strategy #5: Be overly generous with your knowledge on social media.
I once had a lawyer tell me he was never going to post on social media because he felt his prospective clients should have to pay for all the knowledge he learned over his 30 year career.
He wasn’t wrong. But he also wasn’t entirely right either.
Being generous with your knowledge is a differentiator and an authority builder. There are plenty of lawyers out there thinking exactly like that lawyer. But those who take the time to share their knowledge in a generous way end up demonstrating their expertise and building their authority instead of hiding from the world.
I’ve never met a lawyer who has successfully marketed his or her practice on social media without demonstrating generosity. Those who generously share their expertise in a valuable way with their audience. Those are the ones who really reap the benefit that’s from social media and their marketing efforts.
