How to Establish a Realistic Law Firm Social Media Strategy
Date: March 5, 2024
Today’s hustle culture has got us constantly on the go, so no one can fault you if your law firm’s social media strategy has fallen a bit on the wayside. Managing all the moving parts of a social media campaign can feel overwhelming at best, despite its critical role in any marketing plan.
If your firm is ready to get serious about social media despite its busy schedule, incorporating a well thought out strategy will not only save you time, but allow you to better understand your audience and what they’re looking for from your business. We’ve compiled a list of the top tips and tricks for crafting an effective strategy that maximizes your results and allows you to reclaim your time.
Define Your Goals
Before you can craft a strategy, you must first define what goals your firm is hoping to achieve through social media marketing. This will ensure your whole team is aligned on the direction of the campaign and the efforts needed to get there. Making SMART goals is the best place to start.
Identify some key wins you’d like for your firm and configure them in a way that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. An example of a SMART goal for generating more leads for your law firm would look like this:
- Specific: Generate growth for my law firm.
- Measurable: Track the number of new client leads that come in.
- Achievable: My firm normally brings in around eight new client leads per month, so with a new social media marketing campaign, we should see an increase in this number.
- Relevant: My firm is hoping to expand its practice areas, and bringing in more clients and revenue would assist with this goal.
- Time-bound: Bring in ten new client leads every quarter.
This goal is well-defined, relevant to your firm’s growth, and has a set end date. Beyond being a motivator for your team, a SMART goal also makes it easier to determine whether your goal was successfully reached, or if the campaign fell short.
Consider Your Audience
Now that you’ve defined your goal of bringing in more leads for the firm, it’s time to consider who you want these leads coming from. To understand this, you must learn more about your target audience. With this new information, your team will gain clarity on what sort of content should be created for which platforms.
Some key details to gather about your audience include demographics such as age, location, and occupation. These answers will guide your strategy; an older audience will most likely utilize Facebook over Instagram; location data can assist with targeting paid social media ads; identifying common job roles or career paths can help spark content ideas.
A simple and passive way to obtain these details is through surveys or alert signups for your firm’s blog and newsletter. This allows you to gain critical information for your strategy without taking up too much of your time. Your strategy won’t be successful if your content is reaching the incorrect audience, so putting in the work to gather this information will set your campaign on the right path. And, the more demographical data you gather, the more niche you can make your content, and the more leads you should receive.
Create Your Content Calendar
Choosing which social media platforms to target is dependent on a couple of factors. As mentioned, the age of your target audience is a huge part of this, but you must also consider the type of content you’re realistically able to create. If your firm doesn’t have the bandwidth to design visual content, it might be best to avoid platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which have algorithms that reward captivating photos and videos. Facebook and LinkedIn however, are ideal for link sharing and text-based posts.
From there, it comes down to planning. Try to work at least a month in advance, taking into account upcoming holidays/national celebrations and the resources your firm already has: knowledgeable senior partners, educational blogs, and happy customer reviews. These are all topics that can be turned into social media copy and used as posts. Plus, highlighting the expertise of your partners and referring to your educational blogs emphasizes your firm as a trusted and respected business that potential clients can rely on in their time of need.
Your social media accounts should be posting frequently enough to please the platform, but not so often that your audience is overwhelmed with content. Stay consistent with your schedule while providing a variety of posts. To make this easier for your team, who are probably strapped for time, consider implementing a social media software that allows you to schedule your posts, so that the process is automatic.
Track Your Success
With all this information sorted out, it’ll be that much easier to determine what social media KPIs are key for your upcoming campaign. To create an effective strategy that’s realistic for your firm to keep up with, we recommend focusing on metrics that track visibility, engagement, and customer conversion and satisfaction.
With social media KPIs, you can see the growth of your LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook profiles by watching your number of account followers, identify what content performs best by inspecting your post reactions, and attribute new leads to your social media efforts by tracking conversions. Over time, you will see the full-picture performance of your campaign, and understand which strategies are working and which need adjusting.
Review Your Progress
With your social media strategy in place, your firm is one step closer to reaching their marketing goals. Your original campaign isn’t the end-all-be-all though. Continually tracking, researching, and updating your plan, copy, and audience will ensure you get optimal results for your efforts.
If you’re still not sure where to start, or feel overwhelmed taking on new tasks, there are other resources that can help. From content creation to tracking metrics, our law firm digital PR and SEO services will ease your workload with proven results. Contact us today to learn more.
