Social media has become widely accepted as a way for most businesses to promote their services. This is true for any industry since it brings your prospective audience to you. For a law firm, this means you can connect with potential clients, engaging with them so that when they do need a lawyer, they are more likely to think of you first. Here some things to consider when you begin thinking about social media for your legal practice.

SETTING GOALS

Using social media for your law firm can be intimidating at first, so the first thing you should do is come up with some reachable goals for what you want your social media presence to accomplish. Make your goals simple at first, and make sure they’re measurable in some way.

Instead of saying you want to increase your social media followers, say you want your followers on Facebook to increase by 20 percent over the next two months. This is a measurable goal with a clear end to it, and if, after those two months, you only increased your followers by 15 percent, you now have something to measure to determine why you didn’t get the last five percent.

What are you hoping to accomplish with your social media presence? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Set your firm up as experts in a specific field of law? Increasing your exposure to help new clients find you?

With work, you can reach any of those goals.

PLANNING YOUR CONTENT

Determine what kind of content you want to share to build your social media presence. If your firm practices specific types of law, think about what kinds of content your clients would find interesting or helpful. In order to be effective on social media, you need provocative content that will make your readers want to share it with their friends or engage with you.

This content can be blog posts, news articles, videos, and more; it can be related specifically to your industry, or sharing things others have posted, but you need to make your own content too, in order to really succeed. It helps to make your brand more relatable to your potential clients, and it shows you are knowledgeable in your field.

Adopting a strong stance on your content is a good idea. If you seem on the fence about the content you’re sharing, you can lose authority on the topic, which can, in turn, make you lose authority with your audience.

Because of the legal nature of your practice, it is important for you to distinguish between the insights you share and actual legal advice. Adding a disclaimer to your profile to explain this is important.

DETERMINE WHICH SOCIAL PLATFORMS ARE BEST FOR YOUR FIRM

You’ve got your content planned and your goals set, but now the question is, what social media platforms are best for your firm? This can be determined by who your target audience is and what platforms they spend more time on.

If you practice family law, Facebook is the best platform for you to use. You can still use others, but Facebook should be your priority. People on Facebook are on there to connect with their family and friends, so family law is more appropriate on the more family-oriented platform.

For a more business-centered practice, LinkedIn is a good platform to use, since it is more business-centric. This is especially true if your practice is related to technology, because many technology businesses are on LinkedIn.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

There are tons of companies on social media, trying to promote their businesses. Some think that a good strategy is to post tons of things, to keep their name out there. The problem with that is that if you post too much, your followers will end up getting frustrated and stop following you. Doing the exact opposite of what you’re aiming for.

Instead of trying to post three times per day, every single day, just to get content out there, focus on creating good, engaging content. Even if you only post once per day, if your content is interesting and engaging to your audience, you will still gain followers and shares. What you post becomes your brand and your voice, so your content needs to reflect that.

CONCLUSION

These are just a few of the important things to keep in mind when marketing your law firm on social media. What it really comes down to is determining what is important to your firm and what you want to accomplish.