Social Media for Lawyers

Social media for lawyers – some of you may say “what the heck is the point!? I need to be focused on my craft – social media is a pure distraction!”

And while you’re right in some capacity (scrolling FB, you’re often bombarded by cat videos and that just doesn’t make sense for you). But we’re not talking Facebook, or Instagram or YouTube.

We’re talking LinkedIn.

The reality is LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network and is the digital business card of the 21st century. Unlike other platforms – we advocate for LinkedIn’s use as an aid in business development – not as a way to scroll aimless through content that you don’t care about. Leveraged correctly, the tool is a powerful way to connect with the right people and shape yourself as a voice of authority within your industry.

Like any other industry – lawyers need to generate leads and convert them into business. If you’re a lawyer interested to level up and leverage the power of LinkedIn, follow these 7 steps and watch your LinkedIn become your secret business generating weapon!

1. Tailor to an audience

Like with any industry, it’s imperative you are clear and specific with who you are wanting to target, which will better inform how you craft your profile, the content you choose to publish and the people you connect with. This will ensure you are able to clearly articulate your value proposition to a distinct, well defined audience and add relevant information to their feeds.

It may seem counterintuitive that by narrowing your target audience you’ll have greater opportunity, but think about it, if you were to try and engage a large audience, your messaging would need to become more generic. Yes, you may be successful in building your brand awareness, but the likelihood that you would build a base of raving fans who repeatedly come back to you for the value you add to their lives or careers? Slim to none.

2. Craft a compelling profile

It’s time to demonstrate your focus on a particular specialisation and attract your audience to learn more about you! The opportunity you have here is that it’s easy to stand out amongst other lawyers – most have created their LinkedIn as an online resume, with a focus on education and practice area descriptions. This gives their audience little incentive and inspiration to connect and engage further – instead, be solutions focused and back up your statements with references and referrals from others.

With the target audience in mind, get in their shoes – what problem are you solving that’s going to benefit their situation? What is unique is distinct about your legal service offerings? Speak directly to your audience, and leave the lawyer jargon for the office.

3. Proactively connect with your audience

Once you’ve crafted your profile to reflect your speciality, and that speaks directly to the needs of your audience, it’s time to drive traffic to this online hub.

LinkedIn is a big, powerful search engine for finding your ideal audience. You can use LinkedIn’s Search function to search for people and filter results by factors including job title, geographic location, industry type, company name, and school, among other things. If you know with great specificity who you serve, then the job of finding people with whom to connect using LinkedIn’s tools becomes much easier and more effective.

4. Publish blogs to LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s algorithm favours natively created content – i.e. not externally linked, third party blogs or websites (although these are still good to share if you have a place in creating it).

By publishing your own articles directly on LinkedIn, this will raise your SSI (Social Selling Index). The LinkedIn Social Selling Index was created as a formula to quantify how well your team has embraced social selling on a scale from 1 to 100. According to LinkedIn, social sellers create 45% more opportunities than peers with a lowers SSI, and they are 51% more likely to achieve quota. LinkedIn also states that 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.

5. Engage with other people’s valuable content

Like other forms of social media, the more you actively engage with others relevant content, the more exposure you’ll get to your target audience. This will help you develop relationships with key influencers within your space.

6. Stand out from the crowd – use video!

We’ve all noticed the proliferation of video across other social channels, but video on LinkedIn has been a little less slow in gaining popularity. This is a perfect opportunity to capitalise on this tool that, for the time being, isn’t widely utilised and therefore will cut through the noise of other forms of content.

7. Take it offline

Like the traditional sales process, the opportunity to really build a strong relationship exists in the real world, where face to face interactions occur. Just as you would in any networking setting, suggest an introductory phone call, coffee meeting, or other meet-up outside of LinkedIn. Strike while the iron is hot.

By following these steps, your LinkedIn game will be raised to another level, which means you’re likely go to grow your network, connect with your target audience more easily and become someone who has influence within your target specialisation. All of this will ultimately help with the generating new business opportunities. This takes time of course, so patience is integral but with persistence, you’ll add a powerful tool to your arsenal to help you stand out from the crowd.

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
-Joshua J. Marine