Choose Social Networks Wisely for Law Firm Marketing

If you are in your 40s or older, you remember a tie when the Internet was simply a nerdy form of entertainment. If small businesses had a web presence before the year 2000, it was mostly for bragging rights; the ways to reach the greatest number of prospective clients were television, radio, and print advertising. Today, the Internet is with us everywhere, for work and play, in virtually all industries. As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, many lawyers are doing 100 percent of their work online.

Of course, if you are anything older than a millennial, you probably think that “the Internet” is one thing and “social media” is another; the former is a serious vehicle for reading news, paying bills, and communicating about the legal profession, while the latter is a wild frontier full of silly young whippersnappers spouting conspiracy theories and incomprehensible slogans and mugging for the heavily filtered camera.

It is true that some social media platforms attract a younger audience, but wake up, Grandpa! It’s 2021, and millennials are plenty old enough to need the services of your law firm. People in their 30s sign prenuptial agreements, sue for negligence and breach of contract, get divorced, and act as personal representative of the estates of deceased relatives. You could be missing a great opportunity to engage with prospective clients if your law firm does not have a social media presence. It is best to get started by publishing your legal marketing content on one social media platform and to decide later which others, if any, you want to add.

Pros and Cons of Some Popular Social Media Networks

To get the most out of social media marketing, start by creating an account for your law firm on a social media platform with a wide audience. None of the big four social media networks was originally designed to help law firms engage with prospective clients (Facebook was originally a vehicle for college gossip), but they can all be useful for that purpose if you proceed wisely. Here is how you can use popular social media platforms for law firm marketing:

· The good news is that Facebook has the widest audience with the widest age range. It also, for better or worse, collects tons of data about its users, so it can easily direct your marketing content to the users most likely to be receptive to it. The bad news is that Facebook content requires constant updates in order to avoid getting buried under your competitors’ new content.

· Twitter is great for sharing links to your other content, such as blog posts and podcasts, but because of the character limits, you can’t say much more than “Check out this post about premises liability by Bloggins and Associates.”

· Instagram is all about visual content, and law is an eminently text-based profession. (No one reads 500-word blog posts about earrings or pizza.) Therefore, Instagram is a great place to share infographics about your practice area.

· You probably already have a LinkedIn account, and you probably don’t think of it as a marketing tool, but it is. Prospective employees of your law firm are not the only ones that visit your LinkedIn page; so do prospective clients.

Your Blog Can Add Value to Your Social Media Content

One way that lawyers can use social media effectively is to share their blog content on social media sites. Law Blog Writers employs legal content writers who create blog content that you will want to share on social media in addition to posting it on your blog.

Not All Catchy Headlines Lead to Clickbait

The ability to focus on facts and minute details is a valuable talent when your aim is to graduate from law school and be a successful lawyer, even if it means that other people think you are boring. For every lawyer with pharmaceutical rep good looks and fashion sense, and for every charmingly eccentric lawyer who wears cowgirl boots in the courtroom or meets clients in an office full of model trains, there are ten who have never been the subject of an anecdote told at a party.

If you are one of those competent but uninteresting lawyers, writing splashy blog content might not come naturally to you, but does it need to? Don’t they say that content is king and clickbait is an unenlightened despot, soon to be deposed? This is true, but in order for people to benefit from your informative content, they have to click on it first. The best legal blog content has an eye-catching headline, followed by straightforward, readable content that addresses readers’ questions directly.

Style Over Substance: The Trouble With Eye-Catching Headlines

You know clickbait when you see it. The headline promises to surprise you, blow your mind, or change your life. It is full of modifiers like “awesome,” “insane,” and “unbelievable,” and unbelievable it usually is. Once you reach the content, usually after scrolling past numerous ads, it is underwhelming and lacks credibility. Unfortunately, clickbait generates clicks, and that it its purpose; it makes money for advertisers, so that is why it has yet to go away.

Realizing that you have clicked on clickbait is such a demoralizing experience that it has eroded people’s trust in the Internet in general.

Too often, lawyers at small law firms take the advice that any blog on your website is better than no blog. They regularly update their blogs with posts that contain little more than enough platitudes to meet the word count. Just as often, the headlines on these flimsy posts look like something you would want to read. They make people click, which boosts the site’s SEO rankings, but they are not effective at winning people’s trust enough to turn them into clients.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back?

In your blog posts, you should be your fact-driven, straightforward self, but your headlines should be interesting enough to make people want to click. If you feel inspired to do so, you can lead with the interesting ironies that one only finds out when reading all the way to the last page of an appeals court’s decision. “Do You Have to Pay Alimony If Your Ex Burned Through Two Thirds of Your Savings?” is a more clickable headline than “How Does Financial Misconduct Affect Alimony?” even if you make no changes to the body text of the post.

Clickable Headlines and Readable Content Are a Perfect Match

If you can’t think of clickable headlines for your content, trust the pros who can. Law Blog Writers employs legal content writers who create blog content that makes readers want to click and then keep reading.

Your Blog Could Be Your Ticket Out of Practicing Door Law

One of the most common mistakes lawyers make, especially when they are just beginning their careers at a very small law firm, or even a solo practice, is trying to be all things to all people. In some industries, being willing to take on projects outside your comfort zone and to view them as learning experiences is a plus. For example, you might know someone who graduated with an MFA, determined to make a living writing various iterations of the Great American Novel and nothing less; that person probably now has an impressive resume as a freelance writer, having written product description, mercenary guest posts on someone else’s lifestyle blog, and whatever the clients at the content mills were requesting.

Saying “yes” to every request for a task that requires legal expertise is not a good idea for lawyers. It means you are always learning to do your job from square one, and the more negative reviews your customers write, the more burnt out you feel. Marc Cerniglia of the Legal Marketing Blog calls this practicing “door law,” meaning that you jump at the opportunity to take on every client that walks through the door. You need to develop a brand identity to help you attract the kinds of clients you most want to work with. Updating your website with high quality legal blog content is one of the most effective ways to do this.

How a Blog Can Help You Find the Client Base You Want

You probably already know which cases you like working on and which ones you only accept because they are better than nothing. You also already know that it is not possible for one person, no matter how knowledgeable about the law, to be a first-rate lawyer in multiple practice areas. (It is possible for each lawyer in a small law firm to focus on a different practice area, but that is not the same as practicing door law.) Once you have decided which practice area you find the most rewarding or which one is most conducive to reaching your career goals, you should focus your marketing efforts on that practice area.

A blog is a very cost-effective marketing tool. Regularly updating your blog shows Google that your website is active. The frequent updates, the contact information that indicates your practice area and geographic location, and the density of practice area-related keywords in your blog content create the perfect storm for making your site rank highly for the kinds of searches that will turn into leads. (Don’t stress about the keywords; they will write themselves if you write blog content about your practice area.) Even better, other law firms will begin to associate you with your chosen practice area and refer clients to you, so that the other law firms can focus on their own practice areas.

Who Has Time to Write in These Circumstances?

Even if your marketing budget is modest, the legal content writers at Law Blog Writers can produce custom-written, engaging content for your blog at an affordable price.