What’s the Best Social Media for Attorneys? How to Conquer the Internet
Companies of all sizes have been using social media to broadcast their message, should you do the same? Of course yes. We’ll guide you through choosing the most appropriate social media platforms for attorneys to further your marketing efforts.
Why Use Social Media?
Social media platforms changed the way people interact with the world. It’s changing the information flow and allowing individual messages to get further than ever before.
We all have seen its power. Maybe you recently have made a purchase influenced by a digital influencer or even a friend who recommended some product or service on their social media. Besides that, social media is where people look for information before making a decision.
People spend around 2.5 hours per day on social media
A strong social media presence puts you in front of your potential clients at a cheaper cost than traditional means. It’s also easier to reach your target audience through advertising and posting content.
The Most Popular Social Media Platforms
You don’t have to be on all social media platforms. But our advice is to at least create an account to have control over your name as well as your firm’s name. To choose the platform that will work best for you, consider where your ideal client spends time and how their decision process works.
Facebook is a social networking giant. It has the most active users — 302.28 of US adults. If the only feature you use is the Facebook timeline you are leaving a boatload of opportunities on the table.
Groups are good for the strategy of building communities. Pages are a great place to be in touch with your audience. The ads can be highly targeted and can be a powerful tool in your marketing strategy.
On the other hand, it can be hard to get engagement if you work only with organic traffic (no ads).
To get started the best content to produce is videos, either live videos or the ones you post directly to the platform. Posting links to videos outside the platform (e.g. YouTube) will lower your impressions.
Known as a visual platform, it has grown to far more than that. Having features like live videos, stories, IGTV that allows posting videos on the feed, the reels feature for quick videos have all evolved Instagram to a social media powerhouse that is also used to build brands and create relationships.
40% of US adults are on the platform and this number is growing fast. Instagram is great for engagement because people who come there are willing to engage with content. The not-so-bright side of it is that there’s too much content and you have to be outstanding to be noted.
Instagram is extremely visual which means you should focus on posting visually appealing content. Beautiful pictures, with or without text overlays. Many social media managers claim that if you share an image with someone on it you’ll get more engagement.
The idea of this platform is for the user to create boards that are composed of pins (images shared by other users and saved to the board). Is a visual platform like Instagram, but it usually redirects the user to a blog post and isn’t too focused on the social aspect, rather it’s organized by topics and personalized for each user based on their interest.
This is a very aspirational platform, people go there to find out new places to go for food to eat, for example. This means the content there should follow these lines and you should be very active to get traction to your account.
Focus on producing images that fit the site format and remember to be aspirational on them. What can you help your clients with?
It’s worth mentioning that Pinterest may not be the best option for the legal market. It works better to businesses with inventory or even travel where the benefits can be conveyed with video.
Snapchat
Is only available for mobile and is a social media to share instant stories that won’t last long. Everything shared there disappears within 24 hours. The user can also set the timer to last even less. 27% of US adults use Snapchat and 61% of them are female.
Even though the first thought on Snapchat is that it’s a social media mostly used by younger people, some campaigns tailored to other audiences can get great results too.
In lawyer marketing, this can be a good option for the embarrassing types of law, such as divorce, DUI, bankruptcy ….where people don’t want too much of a history of the conversations.
Snapchat is a place to be authentic and to share what’s going on in the moment. Planned content doesn’t work so well.
Youtube
The second most used search engine and the most popular video-sharing platform is a place to upload videos, watch and comment.81% of American adults are there and is a great place to be if you’re willing to put in the effort needed to grow.
A good content strategy is created to answer the questions people would look for in Google and the most common ones you hear in your practice. To power up your content, be consistent on your posting schedule.
Is a platform designed to build professional relationships. People can create professional profiles for themselves and their businesses, share their experiences and create a powerful network.
LinkedIn has 25% of US adults as users and people who go there are interested in building their career, marketing their services, and building networking.
The downside of LinkedIn is that people don’t spend a lot of time there and the posts there usually don’t get a lot of engagement.
You can post different types of content, but videos are usually what increase engagement.
Is structured as a microblog and the timeline changes really fast. People use it to get news beforehand, to engage in conversations with their friends, and on hashtags that are relevant to them.
Twitter also has the sharing image and video feature and can be a good place to build relationships. On the other hand, you need to spend a lot of time there to build a community.
Just like LinkedIn, Twitter allows you different types of content, but to get better results, post visual content and strategically use hashtags that are relevant to your clients.
It’s worth mentioning that if your strategy is more local Twitter may not be your first choice since it’s mostly national.
TikTok
TikTok has been around for a while now and its user base is increasing exponentially. Despite its reputation as a social media platform mainly for young people, 11% of its users are 50+ years old. A number that is growing and gaining momentum.
The format is short videos that can be produced as your creativity allows. It’s a good place to spread your word and get visibility.
The algorithm is tailored to get you in front of the right audience for your message. This may be worth a shot if you’re up to do something different and test some strategies.
Social Media for Lawyers
If you’ve read this far you already know that social media is powerful and you may be trying to understand how to use its power to promote your law firm.
The point is that digital marketing is much more than just managing social media sites, and you’ll need an effective social media strategy combined with other elements such as your website and the content on it.
You should also consider your state Bar’s regulations for advertising and communication. If you’re from Florida, read this post and learn more about it.
Now that you know how people use social media you’re ready to get out there and start building your brand awareness and better relationships with current and prospective clients!
