Succeeding on Social Media: A Lawyer’s Guide

Social media is a tough cookie to crack. On one hand, you have business pages and accounts talking about their product, services, legacy, and commitment to quality for decades with just 5 people actually reading all that. And on the other hand, you have chic brands and hip products that build a cult following within 6 months.

What’s that about?

Well, ultimately, the platform prioritizes brands and pages that add value to the platform. And of course, spending big bucks on ad budgets is a shortcut to success. But what if you don’t have the big bucks? Is there a way to do it right but organically?

Yes. And that’s precisely what we’ll be talking about in this guide.

Know Your Social Media

The first step is understanding social media channels and how they work. What sells more where — Knowing this is going to solve a bunch of your initial problems. Here are some guiding principles. But these are not rules set in stone. In fact, it’s only experimentation with your audience in your industry and region that will give you the data you can act on.

  • Stylish, modern, vibrant, and colorful image shots work well on Instagram. Ideas? The happiness of your customers, the work desk in your office, a client meeting, the new decoration in your conference room, a plant, anything you can think of. Don’t put up images with text on how your legal advice is what a random Instagram user needs right now. That’s never going to work.
  • Facebook is more of a mixed bag. Try something of this and something of that, or just copy your Instagram strategy. Facebook stories and videos are a waste of time initially, you might not want to spend a lot of energy there.
  • Publish long-scroll infographics style advice on Pinterest. Make those into PDFs and publish them on your LinkedIn company page too. Whether it’s the best free legal tools or the top 5 tricks for doing your taxes—The content needs to be 100% awareness and information oriented, and not sales-y.
  • If you have the bandwidth, creating quick informative videos for YouTube shorts, TikTok, and Instagram reels can do wonders. Video naturally has a higher reach than normal posts. You can answer legal questions using these videos. The more controversial, sensitive, trending, or pressing the issue is, the better. Your content should not violate any community guidelines on good ethics.
  • Find out what’s trending and publish your take on it when you’re on Twitter. As a lawyer, we’re sure you understand the importance of being neutral here. Don’t try to promote your skillset over here, as it can quickly backfire. Publish a neutral, well-rounded take and play it safe. Share content that you like too, including what you like personally like NASA’s moon pictures or Elon Musk’s latest eccentric tweet.

The top marketing agencies in US have an unspoken rule. A business going for a cookie-cutter approach and publishing the same content on a bunch of different platforms will need to stick to buying likes with money, selling their service through ads only, or remaining a low-engagement mess.

What’s Trending?

The next step to succeeding once you know the right type of content to create is to always be in the know, at least for topics cared about in your industry.

Capitalize on what’s trending by covering it extensively and spreading the word. You can use many channels if you have a social media team.

This includes not only the well-known platforms but also running Medium, Stack Exchange, Quora, and Reddit accounts that are active. There are so many platforms to be active on and get leads from. Each platform likes a specific type of content on it.

You can publish list articles (called listicles) on Medium on a hyped-up topic, answers on Quora, posts on Reddit, and run a whole Telegram channel.

You can use tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard to make your job easier. Just remember—Whatever content you create must add genuine value to people’s lives in some capacity.

Most digital marketing services and practices worth their salt swear by the importance of following community guidelines and creating content that speaks directly to the audience without selling anything.

Build a Brand

Always think brand. It could be a full-on business with corporate branding or a personal brand of 1 person—You. But it has to be a brand.

  • A good brand has consistency in its colors, fonts, layouts, design, and communication tone.
  • It’s also regularly active on social media.
  • A brand also cares about its audience rather than just being worried about selling its product.
  • Good brands have good-looking websites. Look at the best law firm websites to get an idea of what works today and then create your own.

Wrapping Up

Earning the top lawyer salary isn’t easy. It takes time and patience. More importantly, it takes money. But social media can be a tool for organic growth where you can cut down on at least the money part.

And once it starts paying off with quality leads and conversions, you can invest in running ad campaigns on the very same platform with a pretty good cost-to-performance ratio.

Keep in mind that different platforms like to see different types of content but they all care for one thing above all: are you adding value to their users’ lives or are you just after your own promotion? If it’s the latter, any sensible social media platform will push you right into eternal obscurity.