Social media has grown exponentially in the last few decades to where we are constantly bombarded by total strangers, anonymous friends, and digital advertisements. Even with all of this noise, many people know how to navigate and find success in this space.
Attorneys and their law firms are no exception. When litigators know the do’s and don’ts of social media, they can connect with more people who need their help in less time while mitigating costs. Understanding what makes social media such an important tool for the modern world will do wonders for your practice.
DO: Know the Platform & Guidelines
Knowing what social media platforms you want to utilize and their ethics guidelines is essential before growing your brand. It’s important to follow a site’s user terms and conditions to ensure you reach more people. These guidelines may be how you should portray yourself, appropriate content, and restrictions on copyrighted material. Consider the benefits of using this website and any potential risks or concerns about the usage. This thorough exploration of each platform you use is crucial in order to grow your brand effectively.
DON’T: Post Irrelevant Content
It’s never a good idea to post content irrelevant to your audience. While it can be tempting to post the hottest trends on anything and everything you want, making posts not relevant to your audience can be unprofessional and may damage your reputation as a credible source. Remember social media provides you with the unique opportunity to target a specific audience with tailored content. Disregarding their relevant interests will ultimately lead to less engagement.
DO: Plan Ahead
You’ve chosen your platforms and reviewed their guidelines. Now you need to consider what you want to achieve with your social media presence, both long and short-term goals. Of course, your first goal is to increase followers, build a community, and create impactful content for your target audiences. A calendar to regularly post will keep account activity up and show up more regularly in search results consequently. Measuring these results to improve performance over time and adjusting your strategies to focus on your unique selling point can significantly grow your reach on social media.
DON’T: Borrow From Other Accounts
This should be a given rule, but don’t plagiarize from other works or accounts. It’s an ethical concern and causes social media platforms to flag your account for copying others. Additionally, if you plagarize from a third party or copyrighted material, you risk retaliation from the original sources through taking down the stolen content or fine. Don’t poke the bear; create original content or cite your sources to avoid these repercussions.
DO: Engage With Your Audience
The best thing you can do to find success on social media is to engage with your audience by building trust and encouraging interactions. This can be done through relevant hashtags, keywords, and video, image, or audio content to further your engagement uniquely. It’s also important to have an authentic personality for an audience to constantly interact with, whether that’s a spokesperson or you being your true self. All of these tactics, paired with providing useful information, can boost your online presence immensely and see more people flock to your accounts.
DON’T: Offer Explicit Legal Guidance
As a litigator, it’s your job to know what to say and not say on social media, especially when engaging with your audience. Offering legal advice on specific cases to your followers requires careful consideration and knowledge of relevant laws in order to provide accurate, reliable advice and is treading on ethical grounds. This goes double for an ongoing litigation. Even if something is publically closed, it’s best to avoid details regarding parties involved, settlement amounts, or the arguments used.
DO: Give General Advice
While you can’t talk about specific cases, but that does not mean you can’t talk about legal matters at all. In contrast to explicit guidance, generalized legal advice is meant to educate and inform people on legal topics rather than provide specific aid. This distinction is important when interacting with your audience or making content, and any misstep can lead to serious consequences for you, your accounts, and your law firm.
DON’T: Just Sell Your Services
It can be tempting to center your entire social media presence on selling yourself and your services. Doing that is a grave mistake. Audiences don’t want to interact with a brand–they want to speak with a person being themselves. Don’t focus on what telling someone what you can do for them but reach them through genuine interactions where you are yourself. Focus on the connections you make with your audience, not just the services you can provide for them.
When to Expect Results
Now with all of your work, you’re probably expecting results sometime soon, right? Well, here’s the thing: building a successful, well-recognized social media brand takes time and consistency. How long that takes is determined by multiple factors both on your part and outside influences. You may not see immediate success, but with patience, consistent effort, and quality content, you’ll eventually see progress as more people follow your page, engage with your accounts, and share it with their networks. With the right strategies and perseverance, you will be rewarded for your efforts with a dedicated audience who will regularly employ your services.
Why Social Media Presence Matters
If there are still doubts about why you need a social media presence, these platforms are the best ways you can reach the largest audience in the least amount of time, providing ways to build relationships with potential clients. Social media lets you promote your services directly and powerfully while allowing you to address feedback and monitor conversations. It builds trust with your customers, increases brand awareness, and encourages loyalty in a cost-effective way. It is one of the most powerful tools available for boosting your law firm and will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future.
What Broughton Partners Can Do For Your Law Firm
You now know how to build your law firm’s social media presence, but advertising specific services or cases you represent can be another beast entirely, especially if you are in the mass tort space. Thankfully, Broughton Partners makes mass tort marketing easy.
We build connections between you, referral firms, and claimants with several consumer-facing channels such as television, radio, and, of course, social media. We reach out to potential through these advertising avenues and they, in turn, contact our in-house 24/7 call center. Once they are screened for eligibility using criteria created with leading litigators, these pre-qualified retainers are then delivered to partnered firms without any additional work on their part.
Broughton Partners can help you find more clients without adding to your workload, both on and off social media. Our process lets you help more people in less time and gives claimants more power to find the legal aid they need. To know more about our services, complete our online contact form or call us at (800) 949-8904 today.