For any lawyers contemplating starting a social media marketing campaign, one online marketing channel that you must seriously consider is social media. In recent years social media has got to the point that, for many individuals, it has a greater influence on their life than traditional media does.
You just need to consider that more than 50% of the world’s population uses social media and that social media has now overtaken traditional online advertising, such as paid search ads, with an annual spending of over 180 billion dollars. If you focus on the local area that you might wish to target using social media, it follows that the majority of your audience loves social media and that much of your competition will already be harnessing the marketing power of social media.
Business owners in general, and lawyers in particular, often cited as a reason for them not yet adding social media to their digital marketing armoury their lack of know-how in terms of the best way to start using social media as a marketing channel. The key point here is that social media can be used in so many different ways. There is no single way. Instead, several best practices can maximise returns from social media.
We obviously cannot go through every one of them in this article, but instead will highlight five key steps that every law firm, including yours, can use to create a social media marketing campaign and, in doing so, make social media an essential part of your client acquisition efforts.
Establish Your Objectives: Before any type of digital marketing campaign can start, including one using social media, you must first outline what the campaign’s objectives are. The goals may differ from law firm to law firm and can include building a huge following, using social media ads to drive traffic to your website, or boosting trust and authority, for example.
Research Your Competition’s Best Practices: One of the best ways to create a successful digital marketing campaign is to emulate what has already proven to be successful. In this case, we highly recommend you research your local competitors and identify if and how they are using social media. Look at their platforms, the content they publish, and how well they engage with their followers. Do not copy anything, but look to improve upon their successes.
Plan, Schedule, And Create Your Content: Once you have established what platforms you will use and the best practices for content, you next need to plan that content, have it created, and then schedule it. The best option is to outsource content creation to one or more talented social media content creation freelancers who can ultimately manage all your entire social media content if you wish.
Ensure You Engage With Followers: Engaging with your followers is essential to your social media marketing. Whether you do this yourself or outsource it, engagement can be the difference between having an effective social media campaign or one that produces only online tumbleweeds.
Assess And Tweak Where Necessary: One of the huge benefits of using social media is that most platforms provide excellent analytical tools. These allow you to ascertain what is working and what is not, such as the level of engagement and the number of shares. This all goes to an even greater level if you use paid ads on social media. Your analysis can help you make adjustments and improvements to bolster your campaign’s success.