Social Media – Huge Time Suck
Social media is often a huge point of frustration for a lot of attorneys I work with.
I get it: you’re busy. You spend your day meeting with clients and creating legal documents.
You probably don’t have the time to engage MULTIPLE social media channels (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin…OH MY), let alone keep up with your own personal Facebook page.
The good news is, a lot of the “grunt work” of social media can either be outsourced to your marketing team or automated using apps or tech platforms.
That frees you up to just focus on engaging with your clients and friends and posting personal content when you have some time, without your firm’s social media presence being neglected altogether. Here are 5 ways that it can happen:
- Have your marketing or social media team draft content for you in 30-day increments. They should then present the content for you to approve and edit once a month, which should take you no more than 15 minutes to review. When we handle social media for attorneys, we provide them with a word document that includes a mix of practice-area specific news articles with engaging text to go with it, links back to the client’s website and blog, and custom-designed graphics (pictures get more engagement—don’t leave them out!).
- Once you approve the content, have your social media team pre-schedule the posts using a platform like Hootsuite. This will ensure you have content going out daily without having to think twice about it.
- Use your newsletter to get more followers to your social media channels. You are already investing time creating these essential marketing pieces—so utilize your newsletter to kill two birds with one stone. For example, with Halloween around the corner, we recently drafted an email newsletter for one of our clients encouraging readers to like their page and to tag the firm in pictures of their kids and grandkids going out Trick or Treating. If you are doing a raffle, let clients and prospects know that you will be announcing the winner a day early on your Facebook page—so be sure to like it! I’m sure you can think of many other creative ways to build followers using the content in your newsletter.
- Have your team post pictures to the Firm’s page and tag others in attendance when they are at community events. This is a great job for the millennials in your practice who can look up any relevant businesses who are also attending and tag them into your pictures for more exposure and to create new relationships.
- Utilize Paid Ads. We mostly recommend using paid ads when they drive to a FREE offer, as it can help to build goodwill in your community, get you in front of new people in with very little effort and ultimately grow your client base. For example, a client of ours was recently holding a free workshop on Veterans Aid and Attendance Benefits. The ad was written in such a way that the firm wanted to give back to the veterans in the community by hosting this event—which was free with no strings attached. The ad was placed on facebook and was shown to people within a 20-mile radius of the office. It was very well received with people thanking the firm for caring about local veterans, tagging their loved ones and ultimately, they got a bunch of new followers and attendees to the workshop. NOTE: Paid ads should be done with caution and careful copywriting, because putting your firm in someone’s feed can backfire if done incorrectly or in a way that feels pushy or slimy.
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing, social media tasks, and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.