I’m often asked how to develop a successful social media strategy, and it’s a lot easier than you think it is. Firms of all sizes and budgets can do it if they are resourceful and creative.
Here are some ideas on how to use social media for revenue generation and lead generation.
- Define your target audience(s) and set clear, measurable goals for your content/social media efforts, including what “ROI” – return on investment – actually means and make sure your lawyers are on the same page here (social media is a long-term effort and while you may see wins right away, it often takes awhile to truly make an impact with your social efforts)
- Select the right social platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube – maybe you do all of them, maybe you focus only on some of them and incorporate others later on) – remember that you must go where your clients are or you are wasting your time
- Create and share timely, client-centric, educational content based on your business development goals
- Adjust the content for each medium – don’t post the same content to each platform or it will look like you do not have mastery of the social channels
- Use an editorial/content calendar to track the mix of posts
- Train your employees on how to use social media and teach them how to share content on LinkedIn to tap into their valuable networks (remember it’s not enough to rely on your company page followers – if you do, you’ll miss out on reaching many of your lawyers’ connections
- Explain and anticipate what developments mean to your audience in their language and in a way that will most resonate with them – each client alert, thought leadership piece and social post should be written with your target audience in mind
- Effectively use visuals (here’s my JD Supra article on low-cost and free tools you can use to help you create visuals), hashtags, calls to action (CTAs), videos and podcasts
- Reuse and repurpose your content to make it work harder and smarter for you
- Incorporate paid/sponsored content to highlight important content
- Learn how to use hashtags effectively on LinkedIn
- Use analytics to help refine your content strategy – this will give you powerful information to create more of what works and less of what doesn’t
- Understand how SEO works and use it to your advantage – the better your SEO results (use relevant keywords to describe what you do), the more prominently you will appear in important search engines Google and Bing
For more tips, take a look at my JD Supra article, “The Secret Sauce to Effective Social Media Marketing for Lawyers and Law Firms.”