Leadership In Law Podcast

01. Unlocking the Power of Social Media for Law Firm Success

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Join host Marilyn Jenkins in exploring Social Media Marketing for Law Firms to build your consistent referral channel!

Can social media become your law firm's secret weapon for client referrals? Tune in to uncover how turning your social media channels into a powerhouse of credibility and trust can transform your practice. We'll break down the essential elements of effective social media marketing tailored for law firms, from platform selection—like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok—to understanding the unique benefits each offers your practice. Learn why social media marketing is not only more cost-effective than traditional advertising but also a game-changer for increasing exposure, driving website traffic, and boosting your SEO.

Consistency is key to conquering social media algorithms, and we'll show you how to keep your content in the spotlight. Discover the 80/20 rule for balancing self-promotion with educational content, crafting a strategic posting schedule that resonates with your audience. We’ll share practical tips on leveraging automation tools and batching content for efficiency, and debunk the myth that high-quality videos require expensive gear. Plus, actionable strategies to understand audience preferences and repurpose content across multiple platforms will ensure your law firm's social media presence is both impactful and sustainable. Get ready to elevate your social media game with these expert insights!

Watch the full webinar here: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/LMZ-SMMWebinar



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Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leadership in Law podcast with host Marilyn Jenkins. Cut through the noise, get actionable insights and inspiring stories delivered straight to your ears your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of law firm ownership. In each episode, we dive deep into the critical topics that matter most to you, from unlocking explosive growth to building a thriving team. We connect you with successful firm leaders and industry experts who share their proven strategies and hard-won wisdom. So, whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

Speaker 2:

Hi everyone and thank you so much for joining me for today's session. Today, we're going to be talking about social media marketing for law firms and I think you're going to find this really valuable, so we'll just get in. What we want to talk about is making your social media channels your new consistent referral source. So what we're going to talk about today is how social media boosts your credibility and your trust, the key aspects of social media marketing, the best platforms to post content and the types of content to post. Think about why social media and I know a lot of you don't want to do social media. You're shying away from it, and whether that's imposter syndrome or you're just not comfortable getting out there. Let me just say people do business with people they know, like and trust. So put a one in the chat. Whoever here is using different kinds of networks for get referral business Are you doing BNI, chamber of Commerce, rotary? What types of networking are you doing? Just put a one in the chat if you are doing any of these. If you want to put the type of network in type that in the chat, I'd love to see what's going on here. Yep, I'm seeing a few ones. So of course you guys are doing networking for referral.

Speaker 2:

Business Law firms use social media for the same reasons. So social media this is from Hoops Week. You want a definition. Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms and tools to promote a business and connect with existing and potential customers Is want to choose the right social media platform. Okay, who's your audience? What's your practice area? Where is your audience spending time? How can you reach them? What are your goals with social media? So obviously, the first thing we think of with social media is going to be Facebook, not so much Twitter for lead generation and growing, but you certainly can. It's more of a news and article kind of conversation, public relations. But when it comes to building brand loyalty, for building relationships, facebook is going to be the place to do that. If you're doing videos and anything for Facebook, you definitely want to have a YouTube channel for your firm. You know YouTube is owned by Google, so it is one. It's the second largest search engine on the internet.

Speaker 2:

I don't put a lot into Pinterest. You could. There's a few different opinions on Pinterest, linkedin, of course, especially depending on your practice area, you're going to find B2B very big on that platform. So think about who your ideal client is. Is LinkedIn the best place to reach them? It's also a good place to network with other attorneys. Instagram, clearly, building relationships and conversation. It's a lot about entertainment, but it does work for bringing in leads. I've got a client just in the last couple of weeks on a new Instagram account that got three leads just from his Instagram posts. So that could be something you can do.

Speaker 2:

And, of course, tiktok. I've had some clients that have tested with TikTok. I'm running some tests on TikTok For service-based businesses. It doesn't seem to be as good unless you're like selling a product. So that's just our experience with TikTok. But the jury's still out on that one. We're still doing some tests to see if brand loyalty, if that sort of thing, is going to be working on TikTok. But ideally you want to make sure that you're doing Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and potentially LinkedIn as well. Ok, because YouTube is just a place where you're going to bank your videos so that it's going to be future, it's always going to be available and with good description so it can be found at any given time.

Speaker 2:

Benefits of social media marketing. So you might know this, you might be afraid of what it's about, but basically it's exposure. That's exactly what you're doing. When you're networking, you're getting exposure for your law firm. You can also get website traffic. These are great citations back to your website. Build loyal fans. And then also you can get audience insights of who your fans are obviously getting leads, the links from your posts are great SEO to your website. So it keeps building the citations. So Google, yahoo and Bing see that you are valuable, that you're engaged and you can find partnerships and, of course, reduce expenses by not having to pay for paid ads.

Speaker 2:

And we want to look at the difference of what you can get on social media compared to traditional advertising. So if we look at the right here, traditional advertising, you look up telemarketing, tv, radio, print just to get people aware of your brand and interest. Then you have events and direct mail and then face-to-face meeting when they're ready to buy. Well, if you look at social, you can actually reach all of these people with each social media platform. Ok, you can hit a broad audience. You can get them engaged the conversion type people. And then, of course, they they can online inquiry, you know, reach your Web site and fill out a contact us form, send you a message, any of that sort of thing, and even set up appointments to go ahead and hire you all from your social media. So you can see the big difference there.

Speaker 2:

Look at the cost compared. So we looked at the number and the audience, right. So let's look at the cost compared to reach 2,000 people. If you wanted to send direct mail, it's going to cost you about 900 bucks Maybe, and that's if you send like bulk mail, so magazines, 500 newspapers. So these are just the cost of actually reaching just a few people. Where, if you look at social media, you're talking that you could actually reach 2,000 people with $50 in search or social networking, around $75. We're talking expenses all in for you to do this. It's not that expensive.

Speaker 2:

To reach people on digital it is a long play, but, yes, social media marketing matters and what types of content should you post. So this is the biggest stumbling block that I find attorneys that I speak with have run into. So the easiest thing is I'm going to show you some examples of each of these so that you can get a bit clearer idea. But legal tips, you know, think about the fact that a lot of people don't think lawyers are very approachable, right, you guys have all of this knowledge. You sell your time, so you want to be approachable. You want to give legal tips, and videos are a great way to do that. Case studies or you know client case results, legal news and updates. Whatever you're doing in the community Are you sponsoring a t-ball team? Any of those types of things, charities you're working with? Explainer videos explain how your part, a particular piece of your practice area, works. Q&a sessions are great.

Speaker 2:

Doing videos that answer your standard question that people get, that's great Legal myth debunking and, of course, resources. So let's get some examples of this. Okay, introduce yourself. Now. If you've got a cell phone which I'm assuming you do you can simply set your phone up on a little tripod and record an introduction video of yourself talking to your client or talking to potentially a client, and introduce who are you, what do you do, what do you do for clients and how can they reach you. Simple 45 second video. 30 to 45 seconds Doesn't have to be that long. So the one on the right is the one the client submitted to us. The one on the left, we went in and we added captions, we added logo and the phone number. So you can do that and it's very simple. You can do that on your own with software that's available on the internet Explaining FAQs.

Speaker 2:

Now this is I'm using the same example of videos, but this client actually asked questions, like in an interview type style. She was asked questions that clients typically ask. So that's a really, really good way of building that know, like and trust factor. Show that you're the expert in your field and people will see okay, you know what they talk about. You know what they're talking about, that you can help them. So that's the kind of thing we want to do there.

Speaker 2:

And then reviews you can take a review and type it out on a graphic like this using Canva, screenshot it from Google whatever you'd like to do and put your branding on it and post that. That's your social proof that people like you and you know. So every five-star review or high-star review, you definitely want to make a social post about that. Show behind the scenes what do you do? Do you do office parties, birthday parties? Is there anything that makes your team feel like us? Right, feel like an everyday person? The dispel myths. So if you have a, okay, people believe this about me, it's incorrect. Or about law. Do that, make a post about that and, of course, explain the value of a lawyer. Some people don't realize why they need an attorney to do certain things. You know NOLO sells me the form, so I could just buy that book. Explain why they would need you to work with. It's a great, great post.

Speaker 2:

Break down your practice areas. So this is just an example of a personal injury, but it shows all the different types of things it could be like. In family law, there might be things that you can do to help someone, maybe not going through a divorce but going through other processes, or they have gone through a divorce and now they need some help with their child support or child custody. Break down what you do for people and offer lead magnets. So this is really important. So if you've written a book or a report or a checklist that you can apply and give away for free, put it on your website. Ask for their name, email and phone number, or at least name and email, in order to access the free resource. You'll be building your mailing list at the same time of giving something away, and it could be something as simple as a checklist or a free report. It doesn't have to be, you know a 20-page book or a 100-page book. It can be something quite simple for you to create. It's the added value. That's why it's a lead magnet. It's very much an added value to the potential new client.

Speaker 2:

Making a meme is something a lot of attorneys are not comfortable with, but it can be funny and just see this as an example. Memes are all the rage. You can always do a search on Google for trending memes and see if there's something that would work for you. Settlement alerts is what we do for our clients that are in the personal injury or workers comp type fields practice areas so you can reference case outcomes. We, of course, so you can be as generic about it, but you can show people that what you've done and the success you've had.

Speaker 2:

Of course, answer common questions. This is what I was saying. We make great videos. So if we all have, no matter what business you're in, you all have those three to 10 questions that everybody asks about. Whatever you do, take one question at a time and do a video on it. Answer that question and that's the video, and then that video is like 30 to 45 seconds. If it's really complicated it might be 90, but it doesn't have to be hard at all. This is very easy New staff announcements you get change in staff, someone new comes on, introduce them to your network. And, of course, if you get any rewards, any recognition announcements, you want to do that just to put it out there of what you're being seen for. If you're on any type of interview, whether it's podcast, tv show, anything like that you want to announce that as well. And if there's something unique about your firm so maybe you're multilingual, that you know you have teammates that speak multiple languages or whatever anything unique about you that separates you from the competition announce that, put that out in the video. So, seriously, posting consistently will build your online reputation and will encourage people to use you and refer you.

Speaker 2:

The biggest challenges that people run into when it comes to social media is not responding to comments. So if somebody leaves a comment on an account or on a post, you should reply to them, just like if you get a review on Google or any of the other review platforms, you reply to them. You should consistently, professionally reply to every review. So reply to comments. Instagram is the biggest one about posting on the wrong account. A lot of us have personal accounts and then maybe we set up a business account. So if you're logged into your personal account and you're posting your business stuff there, there's nothing wrong with that, feasibly, but you need to keep the account separate. If you want to keep one strictly business, okay, I wouldn't be putting all my business stuff on my personal account on Instagram unless you just have a personal account and that's the only one you want to use. So then don't set up a business account.

Speaker 2:

Lack of consistency. If you're only posting when you feel inspired, that's not enough for the algorithms to see that you're involved and to suggest you to more people. Okay. And then too much self-promotion instead of educating. These platforms are for businesses, in my opinion and it's an opinion a lot in the marketing world that they are there for you to educate. If you spend 80% of your posts educating people again those are the FAQ posts, the introducing your team, different things like that educate and then, of course, periodically use that 20% to promote what you do right and ask them to always give your phone number, for them to give you a call if they need help, and then not having a strategy in place, I think it's important to have a strategy of posting at least three times a week. It just makes sense. And then decide what you want your strategy to be.

Speaker 2:

Some people do like Monday is a rah-rah, a very happy thing. Maybe it's a meme, it's an announcement. Wednesday would be another type of thing. So you can do something like that. And, of course, ignoring the best network is one of the big challenges. If your network is LinkedIn, then you should go on LinkedIn. If your best network is like, say, estate planning, facebook is perfect for that. It's the sandwich generation is there. You've got the older people, you've got the younger people, you've got the middle-aged people with young adult children. So, and of course, always include photos and videos that if you're ignoring photos and videos, you are wasting. That's a big, big challenge.

Speaker 2:

And if you don't understand what your target market, target audience, wants and so that's one of the things you can also do on Facebook is running polls, asking people. Once you have a small audience, ask people what they want to learn, what would they be interested in, and then align the content with that channel. So, again, not acknowledging mentions you want to reply to mentions as well, using automation. That is a huge challenge. If you use automation, you can make this so much simpler and save you so much time and be able to track your metrics and know what's working and what's not. Using automations is what's going to make this so much easier for you.

Speaker 2:

Automation is a huge lifesaver because you can schedule everything. There's tools online so you can say you know, preload it up for what you want to do for a month. It also helps you to plan out your long-term strategy and many of the platforms will tell you the most optimal time to post on. Specifically, like Instagram, it'll say you know, the best posting time is 11 pm or whatever, and you can do that. There's many platforms online to actually do the automating and they'll have different metric reports built in so you can see what types of posts are getting more engagement, more likes, that sort of thing. One of the platforms is my own platform. It's caseloadamp. Then you've got Metropool, hubspot, latercom, social pilot the list goes on and then, of course, facebook social planner. Now, a lot of these have reports built into them, like I said. So you can see some of them have a limited number of posts. You can do a month or limited number of posts you can do before your next renewal and then, like Facebook social planner, you can post all that you want this month, but you can only do it 29 days at a time. So you know, have a look at what the limitations are on each of these.

Speaker 2:

If you're looking at using a platform, let's talk about how to make this content easy. Okay, so now you understand how to do it. You understand what to do and now you're kind of like overwhelmed of how do I do it. We batch content. That's what I coach my clients to do. I coach anytime I'm talking to someone batch content. So it's going to save time.

Speaker 2:

You just kind of get all your tasks listed out, so have a bunch of ideas of videos you're going to do and then just shoot them all and maybe change your shirt. If you're going to do six videos today, do it in three different shirts. Okay, so you can mix up the videos and it doesn't doesn't look like you did six at one time. Okay, it gives a lot more content so you can repurpose, repackage. You can take a long video, cut it up into smaller videos so you put the long one on on youtube. You use the smaller ones on social media. So think about that kind of thing, and it also allows you to do cohesive marketing, because you're sitting down at one time and doing all of this in the same look and feel and you just change your shirt, change your jacket, something, so you look like you did it on different days. And it also allows for an active news feed without being a lot of pressure on you. And then, of course, use AI for ideas and captions pressure on you. And then, of course, use AI for ideas and captions so you can actually it's very simple to write a AI prompt asking for AI to help you with a compelling caption for a particular video If you're running into a writer's block. Use AI for these ideas. You take what it gives, you read it, see if it makes sense and and go from there. Okay.

Speaker 2:

Now the other thing is people don't do it, don't do social media videos, because they're so worried about the equipment. You'd have to go buy new equipment. Well, you don't. You've got a mobile phone. You've got a. All you need is a phone holder. You can get something as simple as a desktop tripod Good lighting, you know, with social media being so popular, ring lights are super inexpensive, so are lavalier microphones, so you have good audio and you can video sitting at your desk If you've got a conference room table, sitting on an office couch, walking around your office is great, interviewing your team or even at your front desk right, I've seen videos of them in front of their sign in the front of the building, so you can do that, do it anywhere, just be comfortable.

Speaker 2:

And this is the type of microphone that I use and I suggest for clients. It comes two microphones with one little thing that goes into your phone that makes it wireless and that way if there are two of you talking at one time, you're both recorded in the video, and a ring light. This ring light is like $26 on Amazon and it can sit on your desk or it can extend to, I think, something like 62 inches so you can even stand up and record. It'll hold your phone in the landscape or the portrait direction so you can record for Facebook Reels, which are very popular. But this microphone, those microphones, work really, really well. Don't forget to turn it on.

Speaker 2:

I did record a video one time. I forgot to turn it on. So there you go. I got a blank video, so it doesn't have to be difficult, so don't make it seem difficult just to procrastinate. I hope you see throughout this how easy it can be. And remember social media isn't a competition with your local rivals, it is a very important referral source. You want to build that low like and trust factor.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. Remember you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at lawmarketingzonecom. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.