Social Media Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Looking for an edge for your growing law firm? Social Media Marketing can give your law firm an untapped platform for brand awareness, exposure and networking with other professionals in your industry. The issue with Social Media Marketing in the Legal industry, is that many firms, have no idea how to use the platforms of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google + effectively!

In the legal marketplace, effective Social Media Marketing, will give your law firm an edge over larger competitors. Studies show that most law firms are not yet adopting social media. Their lack of adoption of this opportunity to connect , leaves a sweet spot for your law firm to enter and fill that space. Thus providing a competitive advantage that your firm needs in the highly competitive field of legal marketing.

Lawyers Have to Be Tactical With Their Approach. Social Media Marketing is No Different.

Follow these simple tips to create your own strategy for Social Media Marketing success:

Sketch Out Your Social Media Tactical Plan

What is it you most expect to accomplish with your social media marketing plan? What response do you anticipate from your target audience? Ideas to think about in your overall objective might include:

  • Marketing
  • Networking
  • Exposure
  • Relationship Building

Network with Your Target Audience

Get a picture of your ideal customer or website visitor clearly in your mind. Who are they? What are they searching for? What do they want and need the most? What do you feel they expect from you through social media communications?

Consider what they experience on their end in all you do. They are the person that you prefer to attract into your funnel, so want wish to make a great impression, as well as include a strong, specific call-to-action.

Offer High Quality Content Both Helpful and Relevant to Your Brand

The content that you post to social media properties should be both consistent as in regular updates, as well as consistent with your overall message or objective.

If you are a plumber for example, provide information about weatherization or an answer to a “common” plumbing issue that most homeowners experience. If you own an eCommerce coffee website, offer coffee brewing or coffee buying tips. Whatever your message, you want to make certain that you have a clear and consistent message across the web.

Maintaining a consistent brand message, not only helps you to achieve your branding objective but also allows you to create the perception that you want people to have of your company. Any customer or anyone for that matter who follows you online should easily be able to communicate who you and what your company represents in the marketplace.

When you are consistent with your message and your branding follows, you are more able to achieve your goal of ultimately being seen as an expert in your niche. Accomplishing that increased level of relevance, helps with your overall Search Engine Optimization objectives. If the search algorithms pick up that you’re an expert in your industry, your brand will achieve higher organic rankings in the search engine results.

Lawyers Get Paid to Say the Right Thing. Social Media Marketing is No Different.

Concentrate on Content, Not Marketing
Most people get this backwards. If you concentrate on valuable, high-quality content then that content will do the marketing for you.

Your job is to write, and provide easy access to your company via social media channels where your readers can share your content with their families and friends.

When past, present or future customers like what you want to say, they will share the content. When they share your valuable content, again, the search engines will take notice. So be sure to place your focus on writing quality, valuable content and relevant updates, and the rest happen naturally.

Do Not Over Optimize

Social Media Marketing can help you achieve top search result rankings in Yahoo, Google or Bing for specific keyword phrases. However innocent your intentions, using the same anchor text everywhere that you link to your site leaves a “digital footprint”, throwing up a warning that you may be attempting to manipulate the search results.

Avoid this by using natural variations in anchor text for the links that point back to your primary website. You need a certain number of “click here” or similar links to give balance to the optimization strategy for your law firm.

Don’t just link to your home page

Social media is just another form of blogging. It’s often referred to as “micro blogging”. So think about how you can use the opportunity to introduce internal offers or pages of your site into new conversations with current or potential customers.

Doing this will keep your groups and followers engaged in the topic at hand, and provide higher value to your readers. These deep links, or links pointing to internal articles on your site or blog, help it gain authority in the online search engine also. All other things being equal between two identical websites, the one with more deep links will outrank the other. This also gives you more exposure in the search engine results, since your internal pages will begin ranking for specific relevant keyword phrases.

Lawyers Are a Trusted Resource. Social Media Marketing is No Different.

Act as a Valuable Useful Resource for Information
Keep that in mind when you consider your social media marketing plan, that it’s very easy to become a part of the “noise in the news thread” and ultimately be tuned out by your target market. They may not unfollow, but they will begin to scan over your posts or tweets without even knowing they’ve done so.

You can eliminate this by becoming a valuable resource in your niche. Share links to domains that you don’t own. Provide value to your groups by sharing relevant links and resources that your followers may fine useful. Don’t be afraid of posting a competitors content, it’s OK. Your goal is to be seen as a competent, unbiased resource that provides useful and relevant information that your followers will not only love, but will appreciate the additional resource. That helps in gaining credibility with your followers.

Social Networking

To truly achieve your Social Media Marketing objectives, you ought to do some social networking simultaneously. Forget the word “competitor”. Other publishers or webmasters in your niche will be your best buddies in the social media landscape!

Locate competitors on your level and create an “inner circle” of friends or business peers. These are people you can interview or be interviewed by, exchange links with, joint venture with, etc. Stop looking at them as competition, and start taking a look at how you can leverage each others’ position in the marketplace!

Be Engaging

Get engaged in discussions, respond to blog comments, inquire about feedback (and then respond to it and act on it!). People want to know that you’re a real person, and not just “a company”. Remember, when it comes to social media, first and foremost, you must be social! The purpose of social media is to be social!

Don’t be afraid to have an opinion or to express your thoughts on hot topics within your niche. Your unique voice in the marketplace will attract your ideal visitors and customers.

Social Media Marketing for the Legal Profession is not a numbers game or a vanity contest. Social Media is a means of syndicating, socializing and connecting in a professional yet personable way. Have a clear objective, be a valuable resource, and use social media properties in the way they were intended to get used. Social Media Marketing, done right, following these tips, can currently grow your online marketing efforts faster than any other means. And can be done so both efficiently and effectively.

At the end of the day, as a law firm, it makes sense to outsource your social media marketing to a social media marketing consulting agency, a company like Ratel SEO.