Social media should be a supplementary aspect of your law firm’s web presence.
Yet, we often see attorneys obsessing over their social media sites, or spending lots of time and energy signing up for every social media platform available. Sometimes, they may accidentally use it in ways that undermine the work they’re doing elsewhere on the web.
But, if social media is a supplement to your law firm’s website, why do you need it? In this blog post, we’ll talk about the purpose of social media as it relates to your law firm’s web presence and how to use it effectively to bolster other things you’re doing online.
Why do law firms need social media?
Social media is useful for law firms for several reasons. First, it can help to create consistency for your brand. Potential clients expect to find businesses on social media. Your absence in those places can make potential clients feel suspicious or frustrated because they expect to find you in the places where they’re looking for — and engaging with — other businesses.
Your clients just want to be able to find you — whether that’s on your website or blog, or being able to interact with you on Facebook, or recommending you to someone else on Twitter.
Social media can also be useful for search results about your firm. By claiming social media profiles on useful sites, you can benefit your firm when people search for it — those profiles may be presented higher in search engine results pages.
But above all, when social media sites are used wisely, they can help to drive traffic back to your law firm’s website and blog.
Which social media sites should attorneys join?
Before we get into specifics, it’s worth saying that attorneys should be careful about which social media sites they join. It’s a poor use of your time, effort, and marketing strategy to fill out every social media profile you can find. Much like you should be selective about choosing an online directory, you should also be selective about choosing social media.
For example, sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat may not be very useful for your law firm. However, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more benefits for attorneys and allow you to better connect with potential clients and referral sources.
What happens when attorneys join lots of social media sites?
When attorneys choose to join every social media site they can find, they often spread their messaging way too thin. It also becomes difficult to keep up with posting useful information to that many sites. What ultimately happens is that attorneys who indiscriminately join lots of social media sites dilute their message to potential clients.
It’s a much better choice to select the most essential sites and build a strong presence than it is to take a “spaghetti” approach to social media. It’s important to take a strategic approach to your law firm’s web presence because that’s how you avoid wasting time and money on strategies that you may only later discover don’t work.
How do law firms use social media effectively?
The trick to using social media wisely is to know what works and to use technology that makes it easy for you to manage your social media sites. That way, social media fits easily into the rest of your online marketing activities without causing to you spend unnecessary time or effort.
Choosing the right sites is one part of that battle. Driving traffic from social media to your law firm’s site is another part, as well as making yourself part of the online conversation and generating discussions.
I’ll be discussing how to do these things the right way in an upcoming blog post.
In the meanwhile, we explained these concepts at length in the second part of our “Start-Grow-Dominate” series for law firms. To learn more about social media, law firm SEO, and how to market your law firm effectively online, I highly recommend this three-part law firm marketing webinar.
LawLytics takes the mystery out of social media for lawyers.
Managing your social media sites doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complicated. It doesn’t have to be an added expense that you pay someone else to handle for you. With LawLytics, you can do effective social media marketing yourself. LawLytics makes social media for attorneys easy by natively integrating with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
LawLytics makes it simple to engage your potential clients and referral sources by publishing new blog posts to your social media accounts at the same time in just a few clicks. To see LawLytics in action or get started, schedule a demo.
