Social media marketing is networking online. Having fans and followers without engaging them would be like going to a networking event and not talking to anyone.
What do you do when you don't know what to post or you don't have time to converse with your fans and followers?
A recent survey by Roost, a social marketing platform, has the answer. They evaluated more than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter posts by small businesses from over 50 industries and determined which posts yield the highest levels of interaction. It turns out the activities with the highest levels of engagement happen to be the simplest and most accessible.
According to blogger TJ McCue who wrote about the survey, "the best way to achieve Likes is through photo posts, quotes and status updates, with photos providing 50 percent more impressions on average than any other post type, and quotes providing 22 percent more interactions when compared to all post types."
That's good news. Photos and quotes are already streaming through your feed. All you need to do is is share the ones you like.
More good news: links are 87 percent more likely to be shared than any other post type. So, as you go about your daily reading of blogs and articles, find the ones you like and share them.
The bottom line is that you don't need to spend a lot of time engaging your followers, nor do you need to have original content, although in my opinion that can only help. Unless, of course, you want to share all 187 photos of your family trip to Disneyland.
Social media is networking online and sharing of content is part of the conversation. But just because it's easy to share everything doesn't mean you should. Share content that you like, but even more, share content the people who follow you will Like (with a capital "L").
Filed under Client relations, Social media, Social media marketing by 
I've represented thousands of clients in my career. As far as I know, only one prospective client interviewed me and chose not to hire me. The rest I either signed up or I chose not to.
I say "as far as I know" because there may have been others who interviewed me and I wasn't aware of it. But the woman who thanked me for my time and was never seen again stands out in my mind because the experience was so unusual.
New York criminal defense lawyer, Scott Greenfield, says that in the Internet age, things are different. People read articles and blog posts that provide lists of questions a well educated consumer should ask lawyers before retaining them, and that's what they do. Questions like, "how many cases do you have," "how many have you handled in the past," and "how many have you won?" are now common.
The problem, Greenfield says, aren't the questions but the prospective client's inability to interpret the answers. Greenfield quotes Matt Brown's original post at Tempe Criminal Defense:
They want numbers about my experience, my practice, the system, and their case. It’s because numbers make an unscientific decision like hiring a lawyer seem somewhat scientific. It’s a complex decision, and the idea of boiling the process down to comparing statistics comforts some people.
Unfortunately, a little knowledge can be a bad thing. A numbers-obsessed prospective client can easily end up worse-informed than someone who doesn’t ask any questions. The problem isn’t the information, but their perspective. Information, especially numbers, can be misleading without context.
Greenfield says this is a relatively recent phenomenon, and I agree. "Rarely did people run around interviewing a dozen criminal defense lawyers whose names they found online. They sought recommendations and then acted upon them. Weeks and months weren't lost to interviews, not to mention many hours of both lawyer's and potential client's lives, in this strange new process."
Matt Brown wrote about the challenge of being interviewed by a prospective client with a list of questions:
They wanted an exact number, so I told them. At the time, the number was fourteen. I immediately realized they weren’t going to hire me.
The number startled them. They asked me how I kept them all straight. Fourteen seemed like a huge number to them. Without a frame of reference, I might as well have told them I was too busy to handle the case.
One client hears "fourteen," thinks that's a big number and that you won't have time to handle their case. The next client hears "fourteen" and thinks, "that's all; you must not be very good." This is an issue you must be prepared to deal with, but it's not a problem. It's an opportunity.
When a prospective client comes to see you, armed with a list of questions, it is an opportunity for you to educate him and give him the context they lack.
Show them what the numbers mean in the real world. Explain how attorneys work and how you are different. Tell him what he needs to know and give him credit for being intelligent enough to make the right decision. And ask him questions to find out what he wants and to make sure he understands what you are telling him.
You see, it's not his job to interpret the numbers, it's yours.
Most attorneys provide a proforma answer to these questions and cross their fingers. Some attorneys get frustrated and wish people would stop asking. Smart attorneys are not only prepared for these questions, they welcome them.
Questions from prospective clients open the door for you to demonstrate your knowledge, your experience, and your compassion. In teaching prospects what the articles do not, with patience and respect, you provide value to the prospective client that he doesn't get anywhere else. That value fosters trust and ultimately, clients hire attorneys they feel they can trust.
That's why referred clients ask so few questions. Because a friend referred them, they already trust you.
Yes, it takes effort on your part to earn that trust when a client finds you online. If you want their business, if you want them to choose you instead of the many other attorneys they find online, you need to give them a reason.
Take a few minutes to teach them what they need to know, answer their questions, and make sure they understand and are satisfied with your answers. The extra effort is worth it. Once they trust you and hire you, they will refer other clients to you and you won't have to work so hard.
Filed under Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Referrals, Salesmanship by
Marketing legal services on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform, begins with your profile. This is the first thing prospective clients and referral sources see.
Here are five tips for making a good first impression:
- Your account name. Ideally, this should be your name, not your firm or practice. Social media is about people engaging with other people. You may "like" or "follow" a company or product page but you can't talk to that product, only to the people behind it. The ultimate purpose of social media marketing is to expand your "warm market," i.e., the number of people who know, like, and trust you. YOU, not your firm. Brand yourself, not your firm. Your firm can also have a page or profile, but this is not a substitute for your own personal profile.
- Your profile photo. This should be a photo of you. Not your firm logo, not a group shot, not a sunset, not your dog. People want to see who are they are friending/following/engaging with/thinking about hiring. Anything other than your photo puts distance between you and them. Use a professional looking head shot. It doesn't have to be a professional photo, but you must look "professional". No mugging. Clients don't hire clowns.
- Your bio. Don't make it all about your work, include personal references. This invites conversation. The first step in any networking conversation is the "search for commonalities," so if you like to play chess, as I do, include it in your bio. Also, your bio is not a resume. (If you're looking for a job, include a link to your resume or linkedin profile). Therefore, don't make your bio about your work history. Nor should it be an ad for your services. Talk about how you have helped clients in the past, so that prospective clients can see what you can do for them. One more thing: include your location. People hire local attorneys.
- Link to your web site and other social media accounts. Don't rely on one account, give people as many ways to read about you and engage with you as possible. Someone may find you on LinkedIn, for example, but converse with you via Twitter. Also, I just updated my Twitter profile to include a link to my web site, even though I already had it in the box Twitter provides for that purpose. The reason: when you first look at a Twitter profile you don't see the web site link until you click through to the actual profile. This post says that making this change increased the number of clicks from Twitter to her web site. Make sure to include "http://" to make the link clickable.
- Include keywords. Social media profiles show up in search results on the site itself and via search engines. Include your key words throughout your profile, so someone looking for an estate planning attorney in Tampa can find you.
Go take a look at your social media profiles. Can people find you? Are you making a good first impression?
Filed under Networking, Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing by
Do you have more than one Twitter account?
This author thinks we should have several, for each of the many roles we play in life. Inasmuch as we cannot "group" our Twitter conversations in the same way we can on Facebook or Google+, he may have a point.
I have two accounts and was contemplating consolidating them. Now, I don't know.
What do you think? Should we have an account for our practice, professional relationships, personal friends, and other roles? Add your comments, and tweet your thoughts.
Filed under Productivity, Social media by
Larry Bodine said goodbye to Facebook and Twitter; he's now a "plusser". Jennifer Golden is fed up with Google+ fanatics; she says Google+ doesn't do anything you can't already do on Facebook. And with the recent growth of Linked In, Steven Fairly notes the increased opportunities for lawyers to meet new referral sources.
So who's right? Which social media is best for marketing legal services?
I think this is the wrong question.
If you're going to incorporate social media into your marketing, why would you want to ignore Facebook, for example, with 750 million users, or Twitter, with it's preponderance of influential Twitterati?
Social media marketing is time consuming. Checking in, following, commenting, posting, sharing, finds most people spending way too much time relative to the return on that time. And so most of us do have to pick and choose what we do with social media. But that does not mean we have to give up one platform in favor of another.
I am not a social media power user. I'm still trying to figure out Facebook fan pages, but I do have one. Twitter seems like the place to go if you like lots of noise, but I do regularly post. I have accounts with Linked In and Youtube. And I have a Google+ account which I haven't spent much time on yet. So I am "connected" via social media, at least insofar as the biggies are concerned, and you should be, too.
But here's the thing: I'm not connected via social media because I am "social," I'm connected because that's where the people are. I may not be very active on any one social media platform but many of the people who follow me are. When I share something they like, they share it with their followers. And that's the point.
If you want to do ANYTHING with social media marketing, here's what I recommend:
- You should have business accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and, probably, Google+. Youtube is the only other option, if you produce videos. Don't worry about the hundreds of other social media platforms, stick with these, that's where the big numbers are. You will have to add/follow folks so that there is someone to talk to, but this can be done late at night, and will grow, over time. A few will lead to a few more and if you regularly post good content, this will occur (to some extent) naturally.
- Connect your social media accounts to your web site or blog. Encourage visitors to follow/friend you and to use the social media badges on your site to share your content with their friends and followers.
- Use software that allows you to post/update on all platforms simultaneously. If you have a blog, your RSS feed should post to your social media accounts; when you tweet on Twitter, your Facebook friends and fans should see the update.
- Share your good content or somebody else's, once or twice a day. Check your emails and direct messages, reply if warranted (this is networking, after all), but unless you are very good at growing your social media network and it is resulting in clients, and thus, is a significant source of growth in your practice (or you want it to be), you don't need to spend more than 15 minutes a day on social media.
- As for your favorite platform, the one where you focus a bit more of your time and energy, just pick something. It doesn't matter which one. As the social media world grows, Facebook may wane and Plus may wax and many things will change. Nobody knows where social media will be in five years, let alone five months, so don't sweat it.
- Lastly, if you don't understand social media (and don't want to) or you don't enjoy it, if you have more money than time, I give you permission to disengage from all social media and do something else to grow your practice. Life is supposed to be fun, and that includes business, and if it's not, do something that is.
Filed under Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing by
A new study, reported by Mashable, finds that while nearly half of Americans use Facebook, only 7% use Twitter. So, is it safe to ignore Twitter in marketing your law practice? The answer lies in an understanding of who uses Twitter.
According to the study, Twitter usage is dominated by "power users," (approximately 22%) who are responsible for the majority of Tweets (approximately 90%). While these probably don't reflect the target market of most lawyers, it's logical to assume that this group of regular Tweeters is comprised of well-connected, avid communicators who could turn out to be a great source of referrals for lawyers.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by suggesting that the frequent-tweeter club includes a lot of professionals, many of whom have followers in your target market. The numbers may be small but the influence is great. These are the folks you want to meet–and network with–and Twitter is a great way to find them.
Twitter is also continuing to grow and enter the mainstream. Those of us who have staked a small claim will benefit by that growth.
I don't consider myself a power user of Twitter or any other social media tool. Far from it. But through Twitter, I've been able to meet some power users. And that's the point. Networking is not about meeting everyone, it's about meeting a few of the right people.
Filed under Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic by
"I'm a busy lawyer. I don't have a lot of time to write a newsletter or blog."
Good. If you have time to write a lot, your clients and prospects might not read what you send them.
While frequency of contact is important, quality is far more important. Instead of writing low-quality weekly messages, you'll do far more to strengthen your relationships and build your reputation by sending a high-quality missive once a month.
I am subscribed to hundreds of blogs and email newsletters. My email inbox and RSS feed reader are inundated. Several times a day I peruse these offerings. I spend most of that time skimming the headlines and deleting or archiving nearly every article. I may scroll through ten or twenty percent but I probably read no more than two percent. The ones I read (and, often save) are where the real value for me lies.
I stay subscribed to this multitude of newsletters and blogs because they give me a sense of what's trending in my areas of interest. I also find articles I can share with my Twitter and Facebook companions. And, I do find articles worth reading. If I don't have time to read them on the spot, I save them to read later. Many of the publications I follow publish several times per week; some of the bigger publications publish twenty or thirty articles per day.
I filter through a large quantity of articles looking for the few of high quality. Sometimes they come from the multitude. More often, they come from the handful of sources that consistently provide high quality material. They may not post frequently and not everything they post is golden, but the most useful material (for me) usually comes from the same sources. Those are the ones I look forward to and make sure I read.
So, if you write a newsletter or blog, you don't have to write every day or three times a week or even weekly. Write when you can but make it worth reading. Your clients and prospects will appreciate it.
Apparently, uncle Google agrees. Carolyn Elefant writes that while in the past, quantity of keywords and links to a web site determined primacy in search engine ranking, Google has modified its algorithm to better reflect the quality of those keywords and links. You don't need everyone linking to your site, so long as you have the right ones.
Filed under Blogging, Client relations, Communication, Email, Productivity, Relationship marketing, Social media, Social media marketing, Writing by
Attorneys carry business cards. Always have, always will. Today, attorneys also need a virtual business card, a web page displaying their basic contact information and links to their social media accounts.
I published a video about the virtual card I created, using a wordpress plug-in. But what do you do if you don't have a wordpress.org-powered site? This article has some great alternatives.
I opened an account at card.ly. Unfortunately, as the article notes, the skin customization preview isn't working.
I also downloaded The Digital WordPress Business Card Theme, to try out on my site. I'll update this post if I wind up switching.
With the continued growth of Internet usage in general, and social media in particular, attorneys need to make it easy for people to find them. Virtual business cards and personal social media "hub pages" are a simple way to do that.
Filed under Blogging, Online Marketing, Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic by
Okay, this first video isn't specifically about legal marketing, but I've got a youtube channel now and will be posting videos you can watch while sorting email or having your morning coffee.
Actually, I've got some good things planned and when you subscribe to my channel you'll be notified when there's a new video posted. I also added social media badges to the blog for youtube and linkedin.
What's this first video about? Well, social media. I wanted to have a simple page where people can find the links (badges) to all my social media accounts so they can friend/follow/like me. Since I have another business and blog, this was even more important. I was getting to the point where even I couldn't remember how to find me. Anyway, this short video explains what I did in case you want to do the same.
Please leave your comments (or questions) below. Since this is my first video (imagine that), I've probably left out something important and I'm sure you'll want to mention it (as my wife just did when she poked her head in the door to tell me about how I messed up "attorney marketing".)
Oh, please also use the share button or tweet button to tell people about this post. They might want to show their spouse that they aren't the only ones who can't speak proper English.
[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhZEpFTg8XI" type="youtube"]How to create a personal social media hub page[/mc]
Filed under Blogging, Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic by
Lawyers are usually not early adopters. Although more and more lawyers are using social media for marketing, many others feel constricted by their employers' policies (i.e., firms that insist the attorney promote the firm instead of themselves), by concerns about ethical issues, or, simply, by their natural tendency to "play it safe".
Many attorneys who have no objection to using social media but are either overwhelmed by the myriad of choices or (believe they) just don't have the time.
I see social media as nothing more than an electronic extension of the "real world". It's still just communication with people you know and people you want to know. We've been networking all our lives; why should networking online be any different?
True, the Internet provides reach and permanency that do not exist at a Chamber of Commerce dinner, although the presence of cameras on our phones tends to blur that distinction. But if we mind our P's and Q's (does anyone use that expression anymore?) it isn't difficult to stay out of trouble. And let's face it, it's a lot easier and less time consuming to interact via your iPhone than it is to press the flesh, although, arguably, not as effective.
Whatever your viewpoint and experiences with social media, one thing we can all agree on is that it's here to stay. Like any trend that changes the way people communicate, we ignore social media at our peril.
Social media is starting to be used as evidence, for example.
So, like it not, use it not, we all have to pay attention. Experts say, "lawyers already tuned into social media are not only on the right track, but will have a head start on the competition."
How about you? How are you using social media in your law practice? Please add your comments below.
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