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    The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers
    The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers
    The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers
    Ebook194 pages1 hour

    The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers

    By Anthony A. Marrone II

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever wanted to get started using social media to market your law practice but didn’t know where to begin? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, these platforms can all be very overwhelming. With The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers, approaching social media is simplified and broken down into practical, actionable steps you can take to implement social media marketing in your firm today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateAug 23, 2016
    ISBN9781483579610
    The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers

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      Book preview

      The Social Media Marketing Blueprint for Lawyers - Anthony A. Marrone II

      support.

      Introduction

      I was recently describing to one of my staff members the day I remember being notified of the existence of a new website called theFacebook. That’s right, I was lucky enough to be in college at the same time Mark Zuckerberg and his crew were first rolling out the newest social media platform to campuses across the country. The staff member was shocked when I told her that I had to sign an online petition to try to get our campus access to theFacebook. She was even more shocked it was called theFacebook. I should probably mention that the staff member is 20 years old. That means she was probably seven or eight years old at that time. For those of us who recall the early days of any social media platform, or the early days of email, or maybe even for some of you who remember the early days of the Internet, this can be a humbling experience.

      What struck me most about this conversation was not how old I felt, but rather how far social media has progressed in such a short amount of time. There was a time when I was 20 years old when young kids were clamoring to get onto this cool, new website, theFacebook. Now, some 12 years later, the youngsters seem to have moved away from Facebook (they dropped the from the name about 11 years ago) in favor of hip, new photo-sharing platforms including Instagram (smartly purchased by Facebook in 2012) and Snapchat.

      We have come a long way in social media development to be sure. When I started practicing law, I wasn’t allowed to even post on Facebook at work, Instagram was not around yet, and I was discouraged from posting to LinkedIn because of a fear that doing so we could create an attorney-client relationship with everyone who viewed my page.

      If you’re like me, a practicing attorney, you might not necessarily be concerned with what the youngsters are focused on in the social media world today. You might be solely looking to gain exposure on a platform that will bring you more paying clients. Believe me, I understand. I have been in your shoes.

      When I opened my own law firm, my sole focus (and worry) was acquiring new clients. Every time I posted to social media, I kept waiting for the phone to ring. Boy, was I initially disappointed. What I learned, and what I hope to teach you, is that using social media successfully first and foremost requires good storytelling. As lawyers, this should come somewhat naturally to us. We are constantly weaving the narrative tapestry of our clients’ businesses or estates, or writing a persuasive brief to a court to present our client’s case in a favorable light. Successful social media marketing is not altogether that much different.

      What is required primarily in the context of building and growing your own social media following is patience. You will not build a following of 25,000 devoted fans overnight. Your Facebook post about how you achieved a six-figure settlement for a personal injury post will probably not go viral. You know what goes viral: cat videos (I may or may not try to work some cats into my next video posts).

      I want to provide you with the tools I have acquired and am developing to assist you in cultivating your social media garden. This is not the type of garden that will produce fruit the day after you plant the seeds. Rather, you (or one of your employees or someone you outsource this task to) will have to water this garden daily. That’s right, daily. You will have to pull the weeds out on occasion. You will have to get your pants dirty and make sure you are giving the garden the attention it deserves.

      Essentially the gardening is your engagement both with your social media, and with the social media of other businesses and individuals in your community. Only celebrities and athletes get to post things on social media and never interact with any other people on those platforms. Conan O’Brien has 21 million Twitter followers, but only follows one person (her name is Sarah Killen and he followed her at random saying, I've decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.) You aren’t Conan O’Brien. This is going to take work, but the good news is it is mostly fun work. Nothing beats killing time while you’re supposed to be drafting legal documents better than liking and commenting on your friends and local businesses photos posted on Instagram. If you must know, my normal routine is to pop on Instagram around 11:45 A.M. to see what the local restaurants are dishing up for lunch before I head to lunch outside of the office. See, social media marketing is already fun and rewarding!

      Successful social media marketing mostly entails engagement. You will need to not only engage with your followers and fans, but you should (and should want to) engage with other businesses, including other law firms, in the community. If you do not want to engage in this way, find someone who works for you or outsource these tasks to someone who does (but be sure to read my later chapter on outsourcing!)

      This book is not a philosophical tome on social media and its existence, and it is not a giant sales pitch for some other service I am trying to sell you. I really want this book to serve as a manual for how you can implement successful social media marketing strategies for any and all of the social media platforms you want to be a part of and where you feel your presence or that of your law firm will add to the overall quality of that community.

      I want to leave you with a quick note and then a final anecdote before we get down to business.

      I think it is necessary to understand all the relevant and upcoming social media platforms if you want to position yourself and your firm to have long-term success using social media marketing. I am not going to suggest that you use every social media channel described in this book; however, I want to provide you with the tools, the nuts-and-bolts on how each platform works, and how I think you can implement certain strategies on each platform to bring you increased exposure, new clients, and new sources of revenue.

      I have structured this book to explain various social media platforms by chapter. Each chapter will look at how the social media platform functions; how I believe lawyers or law firms can position themselves on that social media platform, including any and all ethical considerations for each platform; and real-life examples of highly successful marketing campaigns on each platform, including some of my own successful social media campaigns.

      We will also consider some digital marketing options outside of the traditional social media platforms, including online legal ranking websites, blog services, and website design. I will show you how to utilize all of these services and integrate them with your social media marketing to give you extended marketing reach without needing to create unique and new content every time you want to post online.

      Really where I feel the book provides the most value is when we discuss clearing ethical hurdles. Most lawyers dread the ethics debates. Every continuing legal education seminar I attend sticks the ethics portion at the very end when the seminar is usually running out of time and everyone is ready to hit the road. But it is important to address the practical ethical concerns related to social media marketing upfront so that we can maximize the value of our efforts. I have too often seen social media posts from other lawyers that clearly violate ethical regulations, simply because I know they have outsourced their marketing to non-lawyers who have no understanding of the ethical regulations governing lawyers. That’s why we will also address the outsourcing of social media marketing to non-lawyers and how you can make it work for your practice.

      Perhaps the most useful section of the book addresses how to wrap all of the working parts of this book together and create a social media marketing plan. When I first started posting to social media for my law firm, there was no plan or agenda. I knew I wanted to post to Facebook at least once daily and other social media as I got around to doing it. At one point, I had a goal of posting to Twitter ten times a day. There was no theory or logic behind any of these plans, and they were inconsistent with each other.

      Once I hired someone to assist with social media marketing, we sat down and hammered out a strategy to approach social media platforms on a regular basis. We included ping-pong type strategies where our social media posts on one platform would direct someone to look at some of our posts or our page on another platform. This type of strategy lets you push your followers to other platforms to not only increase their engagement, but also to utilize the platform where you are strongest (Facebook for my law firm) and draw in new followers.

      Additionally, the plan allows us to create interesting videos and images, even though neither I, nor anyone on my social media team, has any substantive graphic design or videography experience. Planning in advance allows us to use other resources to develop this type of content or to create some basic images on our own. To create our visual content, we typically use Photoshop or a free online service like Canva.

      The best part about writing this book has been the evolving nature of our own social media practices in my law firm. For example, while she was proofreading this text, one of my social media interns decided to check out Canva because she was used to using Photoshop to compose images for social media. Within a few minutes she was able to produce this image, which became part of a weeklong series introducing all of our staff members on Instagram:

      Following a blueprint on social media allows us to not only plan ahead and eliminate the daily scramble to come up with content and promote engagement, but it also let us take a step back and look at our content in a macro way. We can now analyze what type of content is really working with our audience. We now have time to spend (and a forum to discuss it in—our planning meetings) on reviewing the demographics of our followers, brainstorming content around our most popular demographics, and dreaming up ways to increase engagement on platforms where we did not have a lot of followers, but wanted more in a particular demographic.

      Having an overall

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