7 Mistakes Attorneys Make on Social Media — and How to Avoid Them
Across America, attorneys are increasingly taking advantage of social media platforms to market their services and network with other professionals. Social media is a great way for attorneys to engage an audience, demonstrate value, and begin conversations with potential clients.
On the other hand, a poorly executed social media strategy can just as easily get you nowhere — or worse, harm your reputation and credibility.
Here are some common mistakes to avoid so you get the most out of your social media presence.
1. Not Using Social Media
Social media can offer quite a few benefits for any law firm, such as:
- Maintaining a professional presence on major social media networks
- Creating awareness and building the brand
- Staying in touch with contacts and prospects
- Publishing authoritative content to establish trust and grow your network
- Driving traffic to your website
- Having your social media profiles show up in search engines
- Attracting clients and referrals
- Humanizing your firm and brand
Obviously, if you’re not on social media at all, you’re not going to be reaping those rewards. If you are on a few networks, you might consider signing up for others where referral partners or potential clients might be present.
Keep in mind it’s better to maintain a few strong social media accounts where you are more active, than to have several inactive campaigns that look dated or abandoned.
2. Not Engaging With Other Users
In order for your social media pages to benefit your firm, you’ll need to build an audience.
You build an audience in several ways depending on the platform.
- For example, if you’re on LinkedIn, connect with some people you already know. Then, find profiles of other professionals that might be interested in networking with you and send them a message. If you see a post you like, drop a comment, even if it’s just, “Great post. Thanks for sharing this!” That way, you’re putting yourself on other users’ radar.
- On platforms like Twitter or Instagram, find hashtags and trending terms relevant to your practice, and try reaching out to other people you see using them.
- On Facebook, you can join groups full of your peers or other professionals and start forming mutually beneficial relationships.
One way or another, go out and find your crowd. Don’t wait for them to find you.
3. Ignoring the Target Audience
The goal of social media marketing is to connect with your audience. But how can you hope to do that if you don’t even know who they are? Social media is always a conversation, and to use it to its full potential, you need to listen as well as talk.
Ask yourself questions like:
- Who am I trying to reach?
- What age group (or groups) do they tend to be in?
- Am I serving a particular industry or perhaps people with a very specific problem?
- How do they communicate?
- What sort of “voice” are they likely to respond well to?
- What problems do they have, and how can I help solve them?
By understanding who you’re talking to, you can learn what you need to say to reach them. Walk a mile in their shoes. Once you have a better grasp on your target audience, start crafting content that will appeal to them, hold their attention, and get shared with people they think may benefit from your content or services.
4. Not Being Human
No, I’m not accusing anyone of being a Martian in disguise. I’m talking about robots — the kind of robot that goes around shouting preprogrammed phrases like, “Are you facing a civil lawsuit? I can help!” or “Call me if you’ve suffered an injury. You may be entitled to compensation!”
In order to really reach anyone through social media, you need to build trust. And the key to building trust is being an authentic human being. At Let America Know, we always see stronger email open rates from attorney-to-consumer emails than firm-to-consumer emails. That’s because people would rather talk to another person than a business.
So make sure you’re being a person on your social media profiles and feeds, not a faceless firm or marketing department. Don’t just throw sales pitches around like darts and hope one hits a target. Inject a little personality by mentioning your family or your hobbies or how much you love oolong tea.
Write your posts, comments, and messages as if you were speaking to real flesh-and-blood people standing right in front of you. You can’t shake their hands through the screen, but you can at least try to be personal.
5. Posting Inconsistently
You’re not always going to feel the motivation to post or interact with anyone. But motivated or not, it’s still important that you stay consistent in order to maintain your brand and grow your influence. You want to stay top-of-mind with prospects and potential referrers, and if you’re away too long, they might forget you.
Regularly post interesting or useful information from your accounts. Comment on any posts you can, and say hi to that attorney you met at a cocktail party. Give people a reason to interact with you or visit your page.
6. Not Using Images, Graphics, and Videos
Visual elements are always more attention-grabbing and interesting than plain text. By integrating photos and graphics into your posts when appropriate, you can get more eyes on your content and make a bigger impact.
Videos are an especially useful tool for reaching people. Research has shown that marketers who use video obtain 66% more qualified leads per year.
With that said, remember that what you’re actually saying is still the most important part of any post. Even if you have great graphics or a well-filmed video clip, you still have to have a point worth making.
7. Expecting Results Without Effort
The hype surrounding social media can give the impression that it’s a marketing silver bullet, just waiting to generate immediate results with minimal effort. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even on social media, doing the bare minimum won’t get you far.
Running successful social media platforms and seeing serious results takes time, effort, and patience. But if you can stay the course, the benefits will more than make up for the headaches.
If you’d rather pass those headaches on to someone else, though, we’d be happy to help. Let America Know helps attorneys across the nation with their social media and email marketing strategies, making sure they get the best results while saving tremendous time and energy.
Discover our done-for-you social media program specifically for trial attorneys.