Facebook and Twitter: Essential Social Media Tools For Your Law Firm
We speak at several Legal Web Marketing Conferences each year to discuss new trends and opportunities for law firms on the Web. The Internet is continuously offering innovative and affordable ways to promote our Clients’ practices and generate quality leads. The basic idea is to find cost effective strategies that produce high-end results.
Law firms, especially, have been hesitant to jump into the world of Social Media. Generally, when we ask the attendees at the legal conferences, “Who has a personal Facebook account?”, more than half of the room raises their hands. When we ask, “Who has a professional Facebook account for their firm?”, substantially less hands are raised. To promote your law firm through Social Media, like Facebook or Twitter, it is important that you understand the facts behind Social Media.
Many lawyers will tell you today that the majority of their business is generated from word-of-mouth referrals (I couldn’t agree more and can say the same for our business). However, word-of-mouth has evolved and spilled over into Social Media. People are recommending products and services each and every day to their friends and family through their Facebook and Twitter pages. And, when I say “people”, I am not referring to the teens and tweens of our society. I am referring to a staggering percentage of the American public, of all ages, who are now using Social Media.
CNN Tech recently reported that the percentage of Social Media users, 50 and older, had increased from 22% to 42% since last year. The 65 and older crowd reported a 100% increase in their usage of Social Media sites. This illustrates that the fastest growing demographic for Social Media right now is people 50 and older! The younger demographic has already saturated the Social Media environment with 86% of 18 to 29 year-olds reporting they regularly use Social Media.
Although we have heard several lawyers claim that “Facebook and Twitter are not for them”, allow me to point out a few important benefits that Social Media will provide your law firm:
- Real-Time Voice – An established social media campaign will allow you to quickly respond to events as they hit the media and have a real-time voice in regards to online discussion(s);
- Reputation Management – Social media today is taking the place of traditional word-of-mouth referrals. If you are not utilizing social media to help promote your firm, you are leaving a large, quiet void that can easily be filled with your competitors’ voices and/or negative chatter about your firm;
- Improve Web Conversions – One of the most important factors in conversion rate is confidence. How much confidence does your visitor have that you care? That you can deliver results? That you are trustworthy? A properly managed social media campaign will help communicate the personality and culture of your firm to potential clients, and help bolster their confidence in you – improving overall inquiries over time;
- SEO Benefits – Social Media marketing also generates incoming links for your firm’s primary Web properties, and provides additional Web profiles that can rank in the search engine results. These two benefits alone help support an existing SEO campaign and secures broader online visibility overall.
In the end, if you want to build relationships with your prospective clients and ultimately increase your caseload through word-of-mouth referrals from the Web, the Social Media platform is the ideal solution. For examples on how we maintain and update our client’s Professional Social Media accounts, visit our Houston Personal Injury Lawyer’s Facebook Page, our New York Personal Injury Attorney’s Facebook page, or our West Virginia Veteran Lawyer’s Twitter page. Each of these platforms continually improve their design and programming features as evidenced by pages such Munley, Munley & Cartwright’s Facebook page, Consultwebs’ Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn sites.
Contact us at marketing@consultwebs.com or 1-800-872-6590 to learn how Consultwebs.com can manage your Law Firm Social Media Marketing.
