Five Social Media Platforms from Which Any Law Firm Can Benefit

1. Stay positive. All messaging via social media should be positive and uplifting. No complaining, no sarcasm, no schadenfreude, no joking around. It might be tempting to complain about the pace of the TSA airport lines, but it's much better to commend your local TSA for doing their jobs as best they can. A sarcastic comment that may be funny in person often looks rude and cold in the social media world. The same with a joke that went over well at the law firm cocktail party ' usually it won't be (as) funny online. That another celebrity has fallen from grace is best left to the noisy social media crowd.

2. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The best social media “voice” or “style” is one based on a “thank you” concept, popularized by Gary Vaynerchuck, author of The Thank You Economy. In short, social media allows us to go back in time to a small town like economy, where we knew all of our customers and even potential customers. It permits us to be personally grateful when our customers visit our “shop,” whether they buy something or are just browsing. It gets us involved in dialogue, part of the conversation, and makes us real and relevant.

3. Embrace your community. The best content for effective social media is what is going on inside your community. Your community can be the city in which you work, or communities of customers, regardless of geographic location. Discover daily what these communities are interested in and join in the conversation. If the local high school football team wins a big game, make sure you take the time to send out your congrats, as well as thanking the coaches, parents, etc.

4. Have a conversation. Use social media to be social. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But many companies are not social. They are overtly and loudly commercial, and thus uninteresting. You can push your commercial message far more effectively if you do it via a relevant conversation. Remember, a conversation involves more than one person.

5. Mind your “storefront.” Your website is a critical piece of all that you might do with social media. It is the ultimate landing place for people who like what you are saying in social media and who want to learn more about you. You should drive people to your website. If your website does not match your social media, you will lose most of these people. So take a look at your site. Compare it to others you like to visit or admire. Keeping a contemporary look is really important if you want to hold onto a site visitor who just might be your next client.

Now let's look at the highly reliable social media tools for you to leverage, in order of importance. All of these tools are free to use, with some insignificant exceptions.

Twitter

Twitter is the quickest way to reach your audience. Hashtags are key. Use trending hashtags (the # symbol) as part of your 140-character limited tweet; create our own or follow specific hashtags in which you are interested. Let's say you are a tax attorney and you desire some year-end tax planning business. You might use #financialcliff as a hashtag and couple it with some sort of useful business insight or call to action. One tweet might be: “Not too late for critical tax planning to avoid #financialcliff.” It could be followed by this tweet: “Sell stock or hold ' what are your smart options for avoiding possible higher capital gains tax rate in 2013 #financialcliff.”

Blogging

Some attorney bloggers are either using older blogging platforms or their website as the place for their blogs. It's time to switch to Tumblr. Tumblr is the fastest growing blogging platform, and highly optimized for all the search engines. Using a Tumblr blog as its own, separate place on the Web, while linking it to your website gets you the double-relevance whammy ' when consumers read your Tumblr blog and then “read more” by clicking on a link to your website, your search rankings get organically enhanced, making you a credible source of vital information. Posting (at least) weekly blogs that might interest your clientele and Internet users searching for more information will give you the aura of being an expert in your topic subject matter (without calling yourself an expert). Using Tumblr also gives you a second place on the Web for clients to find you. Particularly effective is a mix of original content on Tumblr with “read more” links to your website, and vice-versa.

You should have a blogging content plan in place that schedules content at least a month ahead. You should anticipate things you know will be occurring in the next month ' CLE events you are attending or at which you are speaking, community events of interest to you, calendar-specific events like Groundhog Day (have some fun, too), and even planning for unforeseen events that might happen in your law practice, community or spheres of interest. With a content schedule in place, blogging is less like work and more like the simple execution of a marketing plan.

YouTube

Every law firm should have a YouTube channel (Vimeo is good, too, but we like the higher audience numbers on YouTube). YouTube is rapidly becoming its very own search engine as more and more people are simply looking for video content on the Web, as opposed to print content. The best way to teach someone how to do something is to show them. Consequently, YouTube is a first place for search, especially among the age 20-30 demographic, many of whom are making professional services decisions for the first time in their lives. Video is the most powerful way to make a connection with a person in search of legal services; it personalizes you, removes obstacles, creates excitement and builds brands. The better the video, the more likely someone will share it with a friend or family member (aka, free “viral” marketing).

While it's easy to set up your own YouTube channel, creating the content is the bigger challenge. The basics to consider are: 1) video tours of your office, from storefront previews to office “insides” with smiling employees who wave; 2) no video should be longer than three minutes, preferable length is 90 seconds; 3) show yourself and talk into the camera about what you do; 4) highlight your community involvement; and 5) talk about the persons who have influenced you in your life; and the like.

Quora

Quora is the best place for any lawyer to establish his or her expertise on the Web. With Quora, not only can you get valuable information from experts on just about any topic, but you can also stake out your claim of expertise and see how the community values your opinions and insights. Quora can be a huge source of new business, especially in highly sought-after topics like copyrights, patents, intellectual property, real estate, tax and other “specialties.” Lawyers are just now starting to see the benefit to being active on Quora ' so ask to be invited today; yes, it's by application and invitation-only giving it a much more exclusive feel.

Wikipedia

Every law firm should have a Wikipedia entry. While Wikipedia is not a social media outlet, it serves as the best place for information on the Web about your law firm. It likely will be the number one or two result on Google or Bing if a person is searching for your law firm. If you aren't there, they cannot find you quickly and your ability to get social with them will be dramatically reduced. Having a Wiki entry is a “best practice” for organic search results. It's your bio without the sales pitch.

Conclusion

While the social media tools discussed above provide a good baseline for getting “social,” what about Facebook? Pinterest? Instagram? LinkedIn? Avvo? And others popping up every week? While all of these are equally important, the five discussed above are to get you started in the shortest amount of time. The rest are essential, too, but take a bit more time.

The best thing to do is commit to these five, establish a social media plan and strategy, and execute. The results will be amazing and you will probably have a lot of fun along
the way.

Leveraging social media is the least expensive way to expand your business and brand your name. Business to consumer (B-to-C) companies long ago embraced the social Web as a way to connect with existing customers and attract new customers. These same methods and available outlets will work for law firms, too. And, you don't have to spend a lot of money with an outside ad agency or marketing firm to get the results you want.

Guiding Social Principals

Before we examine tried and true outlets, a few rules are in order. We have found these to be solid social media guidelines for businesses to follow. There are a lot more considerations, but we believe these are the most critical.

1. Stay positive. All messaging via social media should be positive and uplifting. No complaining, no sarcasm, no schadenfreude, no joking around. It might be tempting to complain about the pace of the TSA airport lines, but it's much better to commend your local TSA for doing their jobs as best they can. A sarcastic comment that may be funny in person often looks rude and cold in the social media world. The same with a joke that went over well at the law firm cocktail party ' usually it won't be (as) funny online. That another celebrity has fallen from grace is best left to the noisy social media crowd.

2. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The best social media “voice” or “style” is one based on a “thank you” concept, popularized by Gary Vaynerchuck, author of The Thank You Economy. In short, social media allows us to go back in time to a small town like economy, where we knew all of our customers and even potential customers. It permits us to be personally grateful when our customers visit our “shop,” whether they buy something or are just browsing. It gets us involved in dialogue, part of the conversation, and makes us real and relevant.

3. Embrace your community. The best content for effective social media is what is going on inside your community. Your community can be the city in which you work, or communities of customers, regardless of geographic location. Discover daily what these communities are interested in and join in the conversation. If the local high school football team wins a big game, make sure you take the time to send out your congrats, as well as thanking the coaches, parents, etc.

4. Have a conversation. Use social media to be social. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? But many companies are not social. They are overtly and loudly commercial, and thus uninteresting. You can push your commercial message far more effectively if you do it via a relevant conversation. Remember, a conversation involves more than one person.

5. Mind your “storefront.” Your website is a critical piece of all that you might do with social media. It is the ultimate landing place for people who like what you are saying in social media and who want to learn more about you. You should drive people to your website. If your website does not match your social media, you will lose most of these people. So take a look at your site. Compare it to others you like to visit or admire. Keeping a contemporary look is really important if you want to hold onto a site visitor who just might be your next client.

Now let's look at the highly reliable social media tools for you to leverage, in order of importance. All of these tools are free to use, with some insignificant exceptions.

Twitter

Twitter is the quickest way to reach your audience. Hashtags are key. Use trending hashtags (the # symbol) as part of your 140-character limited tweet; create our own or follow specific hashtags in which you are interested. Let's say you are a tax attorney and you desire some year-end tax planning business. You might use #financialcliff as a hashtag and couple it with some sort of useful business insight or call to action. One tweet might be: “Not too late for critical tax planning to avoid #financialcliff.” It could be followed by this tweet: “Sell stock or hold ' what are your smart options for avoiding possible higher capital gains tax rate in 2013 #financialcliff.”

Blogging

Some attorney bloggers are either using older blogging platforms or their website as the place for their blogs. It's time to switch to Tumblr. Tumblr is the fastest growing blogging platform, and highly optimized for all the search engines. Using a Tumblr blog as its own, separate place on the Web, while linking it to your website gets you the double-relevance whammy ' when consumers read your Tumblr blog and then “read more” by clicking on a link to your website, your search rankings get organically enhanced, making you a credible source of vital information. Posting (at least) weekly blogs that might interest your clientele and Internet users searching for more information will give you the aura of being an expert in your topic subject matter (without calling yourself an expert). Using Tumblr also gives you a second place on the Web for clients to find you. Particularly effective is a mix of original content on Tumblr with “read more” links to your website, and vice-versa.

You should have a blogging content plan in place that schedules content at least a month ahead. You should anticipate things you know will be occurring in the next month ' CLE events you are attending or at which you are speaking, community events of interest to you, calendar-specific events like Groundhog Day (have some fun, too), and even planning for unforeseen events that might happen in your law practice, community or spheres of interest. With a content schedule in place, blogging is less like work and more like the simple execution of a marketing plan.

YouTube

Every law firm should have a YouTube channel (Vimeo is good, too, but we like the higher audience numbers on YouTube). YouTube is rapidly becoming its very own search engine as more and more people are simply looking for video content on the Web, as opposed to print content. The best way to teach someone how to do something is to show them. Consequently, YouTube is a first place for search, especially among the age 20-30 demographic, many of whom are making professional services decisions for the first time in their lives. Video is the most powerful way to make a connection with a person in search of legal services; it personalizes you, removes obstacles, creates excitement and builds brands. The better the video, the more likely someone will share it with a friend or family member (aka, free “viral” marketing).

While it's easy to set up your own YouTube channel, creating the content is the bigger challenge. The basics to consider are: 1) video tours of your office, from storefront previews to office “insides” with smiling employees who wave; 2) no video should be longer than three minutes, preferable length is 90 seconds; 3) show yourself and talk into the camera about what you do; 4) highlight your community involvement; and 5) talk about the persons who have influenced you in your life; and the like.

Quora

Quora is the best place for any lawyer to establish his or her expertise on the Web. With Quora, not only can you get valuable information from experts on just about any topic, but you can also stake out your claim of expertise and see how the community values your opinions and insights. Quora can be a huge source of new business, especially in highly sought-after topics like copyrights, patents, intellectual property, real estate, tax and other “specialties.” Lawyers are just now starting to see the benefit to being active on Quora ' so ask to be invited today; yes, it's by application and invitation-only giving it a much more exclusive feel.

Wikipedia

Every law firm should have a Wikipedia entry. While Wikipedia is not a social media outlet, it serves as the best place for information on the Web about your law firm. It likely will be the number one or two result on Google or Bing if a person is searching for your law firm. If you aren't there, they cannot find you quickly and your ability to get social with them will be dramatically reduced. Having a Wiki entry is a “best practice” for organic search results. It's your bio without the sales pitch.

Conclusion

While the social media tools discussed above provide a good baseline for getting “social,” what about Facebook? Pinterest? Instagram? LinkedIn? Avvo? And others popping up every week? While all of these are equally important, the five discussed above are to get you started in the shortest amount of time. The rest are essential, too, but take a bit more time.

The best thing to do is commit to these five, establish a social media plan and strategy, and execute. The results will be amazing and you will probably have a lot of fun along
the way.