At this point, it should be pretty clear that your law firm needs to harness the power of social media across all major digital platforms in order to build your brand, establish yourself as a subject matter expert, and engage with and nurture an audience of current or potential clients.
In 2018, it was reported that 85% of law firms now use social media as a part of their marketing efforts — a number that has continued to increase year over year.
However, as marketing efforts continue to move more and more into a primarily digitally-based world, many law firms have struggled to discover the best content for their social channels — the content that moves the needle toward achieving their business goals.
Ideally, when tracking the performance of social media posts, the success metrics you should focus on are:
- Audience Engagement: The number of comments, likes, shares, and interactions your social media posts receive from your audience.
- Reach: The total number of individuals that have seen your posts.
So, the question is: How can a law firm go about successfully executing a social media strategy that achieves these goals? What content works best on which platforms?
Plus, what further adds to the confusion is the fact that no two social channels are the same, leaving many attorneys wondering what, when, and where to post in order to remedy this technological growing pain.
We’ll let you in a secret — it doesn’t have to be that way!
To help you better understand how you can best use social media marketing to your law firm’s advantage, we’ve compiled the best practices for the four main platforms your business should be using:
- Best practices for Facebook content
- Best practices for Instagram content
- Best practices for LinkedIn content
- Best practices for YouTube content
Best Practices for Facebook Content
Ah, Facebook. The bread and butter of social media and most likely the channel your firm is already using, which is great! However, even the most straightforward platform of them all still comes with its challenges and caveats that determine which posts perform best.
BuzzSumo performed a study that reviewed the performance of 777 million Facebook posts and discovered that videos received 59% more engagements than other efforts.
Diving deeper, it’s also reported that the sweet spot for videos on Facebook is between 3-5 minutes in length.
With this in mind, Facebook Marketing Expert Mari Smith suggests users should aim for a mix of 70% video posts, followed by 20% image posts, and 10% link posts for optimal performance.
These posts can be memes, quotes, holiday greetings, special announcements, your legal brand video, blog posts you’ve written, “meet the team” videos, or giveaway contests, just to name a few.
Here’s an example of a post that performed well on personal injury firm Stephens Law’s Facebook Page.
People love to root for good news, so anytime you have something big to share, don’t keep it to yourself; Share it with your audience! His post included a personalized caption, a clear image, and a reason to celebrate — a perfect storm for maximum community engagement.
Here’s another example taken from the Alexander Shunnarah Personal Injury Attorneys Facebook page. The trick is to require participants to follow, like, comment, or share the post before qualifying for the contest, which makes it easy to increase engagement and broaden your reach.
Now, let’s talk about posting frequency. Although it may seem like the more you post, the better your success metrics will be, unfortunately on Facebook, that’s not the case.
It is important to find a happy medium to inform and garner interest without annoying your audience — or the Facebook algorithm. A study done by Track Social suggests posting fresh, compelling content anywhere between 1-2 times a day for optimal results.
As far as figuring out what time to publish content on Facebook, BuzzSumo reports that prime posting time is between 9-11 PM EST. However, it’s important to note that this is a recommended time, you may have to do some trial and error experimenting to figure out what works best for your own page.
Best Practices for Instagram Content
We like to think of Instagram as Facebook’s cool little sister. With it being the youngest of the social media channels and entirely visually-based, it can be trickier to master for non-retail brands. However, conquering Instagram is totally possible if you follow these best practices.
By maintaining an engaging Instagram presence for your law firm, you have the opportunity to really hone in on your visual identity and further build your brand, so first things first: you can’t get away with posting schlock.
Like Facebook, we suggest posting content that is fun, shows the personality of the firm, and give your audience a glimpse into the “human” side of your firm. As a bonus, you can even double your content by reposting content from your Facebook to Instagram, and vice versa.
On Instagram, you must post high-quality, colorful images and can be easily discernible to the viewer. To amp up a drab photo and give it posting potential, we suggest using a simple photo editing app like VSCO, Lightroom, or InstaSize.
To increase your arsenal of high-performing content, we suggest taking advantage of photo opportunities for events, fun day-to-day happenings, company-wide meetings, new team member introductions, etc.
We’ve included an example from our own account here to give you an idea of what it could look like. This is from our recent Crisp swag giveaway. As you can see, this post captures a fun, candid moment and gives our followers a taste of what goes on behind the scenes.
Once you’ve got your pictures ready to post on Instagram, it’s time to get the creative juices flowing to come up with a catchy caption that sparks your audience’s interest. To further improve engagement and reach, try incorporating relevant hashtags! This great article from Hootsuite suggests using no more than 10 to ensure your post doesn’t look spammy.
Here’s another example from personal injury firm Tork Law’s Instagram page. This post has fantastic audience engagement and features a unique, high-quality photo paired with a strong caption that showcases one of their latest accomplishments.
While there is no magic number for how often you should post on Instagram, as it varies from business to business, a study done by Union Metrics reports that a typical brand page on Instagram posts on average 1.5/day.
Sprout Social has even taken the guesswork out of figuring out the best time to publish on Instagram with this handy resource below that shows which hours yield the highest engagement depending on the day of the week.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Content
As the number one social media platform for professionally relevant content, LinkedIn has incredible untapped potential for a law firm to grow their social media presence. With the goal of connecting you with other professionals in your industry or area, publishing regularly on LinkedIn is the easiest way to establish your law firm as a go-to subject matter expert.
According to the platform’s Marketing Solutions Blog, video is once again your best type of content on digital channels, stating the medium is 5x more likely to start a conversation among members over any other.
However, do make sure to vary the content types you post on LinkedIn to include static images as well, which according to LinkedIn Business Solutions garner 2x more comments than a simple text post.
Since LinkedIn is a hub for thought leadership, we’d suggest your posts focus on just that — think about how you can add your voice to specific industry topics and conversations to provide value to your audience.
This can be done by posting articles your firm has written, your own video blogs, downloadable ebooks, or videos from speaking engagements. Here’s an example taken from our own LinkedIn business page that serves as a resource for attorneys to improve their hiring process, and establishes Crisp as a subject matter expert for smart law firm hiring.
We’ve also included another example from personal injury firm Flood Law Firm’s LinkedIn page. As a personal injury firm, they do a great job of pushing out informational content such as blog posts that give insight on matters relating to their practice area that could be helpful to their audience.
When it comes to deciding when you should post, LinkedIn is different from the other social platforms because its algorithm favors high-quality posts, regardless of when they were originally posted — this is good news for you.
While time doesn’t necessarily play a large role in your LinkedIn post’s success, it is still important to keep a consistent posting schedule. Hubspot suggests capping your posts at 5 per week (so, once every weekday) to avoid the algorithm working against you. It is reported that after 5, post success and engagement drops substantially.
Best Practices for YouTube Content
Compared to the other three platforms we’ve touched on so far, YouTube is unique in the sense that it lacks many of the social engagement capabilities. This is due to the fact that a video’s comment section is really the only place for interactions to occur on YouTube.
With that being said, YouTube still plays an important role in having a well-rounded digital content strategy. What many businesses don’t realize is that YouTube is the #1 most widely used platform for adults in the US and logs 2 billion users worldwide each month.
When deciding the best content to produce to achieve your law firm’s marketing goals, it’s important to take a look at your audience. According to Think with Google, younger generations like Gen Z are more likely to gravitate towards short-form videos on YouTube, while Boomers and Gen X prefer long-form content.
As a law firm catering towards adults, your content should most likely lean towards the older generation of users on YouTube.
The easiest way to appeal to this demographic would be to post content such as FAQ videos, presentations from speaking engagements, informational videos about your practice area, a tour of your office, client testimonials, and the like.
Once you’ve got your YouTube content ready to go, it’s important to optimize it for maximum reach and engagement. Since YouTube is the largest search engine behind parent company Google, it’s ideal to use relevant keywords and tags that potential users can look up in the search bar.
The idea is to make it so your videos can be found as easily as possible by a potential viewer.
Take these results in the example below. When we search “personal injury lawyer,” the first three videos all appropriately include those keywords in the title and video description.
When considering the frequency of your video posting on YouTube, consistency is your greatest weapon. Try to post at the very least once a month — however, posting once a week is ideal.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there is no perfect formula for digital content success on any of these platforms. Each business’s goals are unique, and what works for one may not work for another.
When creating content for your law firm’s social media channels, consistency and high-quality posts will take you far — ultimately, trust your gut, get creative, and have fun with it.
Happy posting!
