Why Do Any Social Media Content at All?
You might be asking yourself, why should I be on social media at all? There’s so much I am doing to try and market my firm and bring a new clients, why should I make time for that? This is a valid question and should be thought through carefully before answering it and making a decision.
What Is Your Competition Doing?
The first thing I would look at is whether your competition is using social media and how they’re using it. What you may find out is that most law firm social media content is boring. If you scroll through their Instagram or Facebook feed, the content that you’re most likely to find falls into one of three categories:
- Tips for handling [whatever kind of case we handle]
- Humble-brags about a lawyer award
- Generic graphics celebrating a holiday
Unfortunately for your competition, no one who is on social media is looking for any of those things. In fact, they probably aren’t looking for law firm social media content at all. This is where your competition is failing, and where you can gain an advantage.
Two Reasons for Doing Social Media Marketing
When you come right down to it, there are only two reasons to be creating content online:
- As a pure branding play, or
- To provide social proof
Regarding the former, branding is not something small or solo firms should be spending a lot of money on. Unless you are Morgan & Morgan or Rand Spear (Demand Rand!), firms with recognizable names and revenue, branding is accomplished through other marketing. You build name (brand) recognition through building authority. So a social media presence is a much cheaper alternative (in terms of money) for doing this.
As for the second reason, your potential clients (especially Gen Z) are checking social media for social proof. More and more people are relying on social media and online content as a substitute for real, in-person relationships. As such, your social media offers them an opportunity to start a relationship with you before you even know it. In other words, that’s how they would get to know you and see if others know you and like you (social proof).
Each generation has fewer in-person, real relationships than the one before. Because of this, they are substituting real world experiences with you with what they “know” about people from social media. This is important even if your main source of business is referrals because most people are receiving more than one referral, doing some research online, and only then reaching out. This is the essence of social proof; some lawyer, other professional, or former client, thinks you’re great, but what about everyone else?
Be Social on Social Media
Do some research to determine what platform your ideal client is using. Where are they hanging out, and as such, where will you encounter them? Then, when you become active on that site, be friendly! Be social! Don’t offer legal tips or brag about your accomplishments or post lame memes or holiday graphics. Tell your story. Pretend you’re at a cocktail party trying to get to know people by striking up a conversation. Certainly tell them you’re a lawyer, but don’t make that the biggest thing.
If you do that, you will beat your competition hands down!
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