We recently interviewed some great candidates for a summer internship at Moore Legal Technology and as part of this, we invited the candidates to write a blog post regarding online marketing and the challenges faced by law firms today. We thought it would be useful, given the amount of work they put in, to share their posts here and give each of them some well-deserved recognition and appreciation for their posts.
This blog, by Ryan Buckfield, discusses social media strategy for family lawyers.
Social Media Strategy for Family Law Lawyers
If the early 1800s are famed for the industrial revolution, and the early 1900s for the technological revolution, then the early 2000s are fast becoming famed for the gargantuan rise of social media. Twitter users (or ‘tweeters’) make around 40 million tweets per day, whilst Facebook is fast approaching 1.2 billion users. Throw in the fact that anyone and everyone appears to own a Smartphone or tablet, packed with the latest must-have apps, and the social media market is the perfect platform for those looking to expand their business and client base.
Yet for some law firms the step into the ever-expanding world of social media is not always a particularly easy one. So here are some tips to succeed when entering the social media market for the family law lawyers amongst you.
1. Ensure you reach your audience
It is important to make sure you reach your target audience, and one way to do this is through social media advertising, which allows you to select the traits of those who see your advertisement, such as relationship status and geographical location. This ensures that your services are advertised solely to your target audience (which for family law firms can be a particularly helpful tool given that at times you need to be slightly more specific with who your target audience is) and, with the existence of ‘pay-per-click’ advertising, can be a relatively inexpensive option for growing your client base.
2. #KnowYourHashtags
Hashtags, the staple of Twitter, are also set to make their way into the world of Facebook. Similar hashtags are grouped, meaning social media users can search for a hashtag and view all recent posts containing it. If certain hashtags are highly trafficked they will become ‘trending topics’, featuring on the site’s home page and generating added exposure. Whilst #divorce is perhaps not the most appropriate hashtag for a family law firm to use, effective hashtag utilisation could help to spread your firm’s name throughout the world of social media.
3. Get Appy
Apps are a great way of providing users with useful information and, in the process, promoting your firm’s brand; good, simple and useful legal information can go a long way in the app world.
With legal aid recently being removed for divorces in England and Wales, there could well soon be a gap in the market for the ‘DIY’ divorce app. Take into account that competition amongst legal apps is still relatively small and the potentially large audience for a family law app, and a well-delivered app could make a big impression.
4. Stay updated
If you’re going to enter the world of social media, then you have to commit! Venturing online only once in a while will reap no reward, and it won’t be long before people forget that you were ever part of the social media world. More worryingly it will make you appear out-of-date and, in the ever-changing world of law, that can be fatal.
5. Be Social!
With social media the clue is very much in the name. Posting links to useful sections of your website, or to your latest blog post on adoption laws, may show off your skills as a firm, but it alone will not engage your target audience and you’ll fail to build important relationships with other firms and clients. Whether re-tweeting a post, crediting another firm or an employee or simply asking your audience how their day has gone, engaging with others on social media will help you to build positive relationships, make your firm seem more accessible and ultimately promote it in a positive light. Building such a reputation is particularly important for family law firms due to the often delicate nature of their casework, whilst it can also help to spread your brand via word-of-mouth from one family to the next.
This is not an exhaustive list, and for a family law firm’s social media strategy to be truly successful there are more considerations which must be made, but the above is a good place to start. The most important thing to recognise, however, is that a social media strategy needs to be thorough and effective if it is going to successfully exploit the market. Any law firm can enter the world of social media, but it takes a much more concerted effort if you wish to make an impact when doing so.
