So the conference season is in full swing and the key question on everyone's mind seems to be; "As a law firm, what should we be doing around digital marketing?"
In a nutshell, its simple:
- Social media is a must.
- Mobile optimised site, or at least responsive
- Content, Video and Blogs - Original content is essential and still king
1- Social Media has been paramount within alot of law firms strategies, however it never seems to surface to the top at a partner's meeting. Why is this? Well, I had a great discussion with Clair Watmore, Head of Communications at Morrish Solicitors LLP, whom I met at the recent Legal Support Network regional meeting in Leeds this month. Her opinion was clear cut;
"Without buy in from the very top, I mean managing partner it would never work. This is key, once someone that senior "gets it" then the rest will filter down"..."There is no point in banging the social media drum from the bottom, if the top people have their headphones in. Once you have buy in from the top, then you can start building your strategy.".
So, focus on these areas:
- Target audience - Create twitter accounts for multiple services.
- Key content for each audience - Sending out a personal injury tweet, when your audience is mostly commercial conveyancing, won't work. If you're not getting any replies or retweets from your content, then your content isn't relevant to your audience.
- Look, Listen, Contribute - I know its sounds odd, but social media is a two-way street. You need to listen to what people are saying, contribute to what you are reading. This is a massive part people miss out on. No one wants to sit there and talk for England (well, maybe David and I) but you need to understand not everyone wants to know about legal services. Therefore talk about topical matters which people will engage with.
- Measure - This is the most important of all, if you don't measure your results, how will you know what works? I always have people saying "I tried it but it didn't work". Did you really try it? Or did you send out a few tweets expecting the world to reply and buy your services? It doesn't work like that. Try Hootsuite or Sprout Social for some great time saving tools and more.
2 - Mobile - This is easy, over 2 million legal searches are made each day, around 600,000 are from mobile devices. That's HUGE!!!. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile devices. Most websites will render fine on a tablet or iPad. However there are some sites out there that try and cram all their content into a small device. That's like trying to get a Swiss Army Knife into a pair of skinny jeans. It doesn't look good! Think about it from a visitors point of view, if you were trying to find something on your site, is it easy or frustrating ??
3 - Videos & Blogs - More and more people are creating videos, or micro videos. There are some great tools out there like Vine and Vimeo to help you create videos. Visual content is getting more and more popular. Why? Well you can share visual content more effectively on a social network and it's easy to do. Not just that but visual content increases engagement with up to 3x more visitors! Seems like a no brainer.
Blogs - everyone has been banging the blog drum for ages, but it truly is the best form of sharing your firm's knowledge. If you demonstrate knowledge, you demonstrate expertise. Keep it simple, this blog so far has 608 words, that's nothing compared to some War & Peace blogs I have read. Original content is still king, but if you can't get your creative juice flowing, create a blog rota or here's a crazy idea, invite the juniors to write. Wait we can't have juniors writing content on the website I hear you cry! Instead ask them to contribute each month a paragraph or two. Then show this to a senior partner to read and sign off. Simples!
We have our Marketing in a Digital World workshop coming up very soon, I will be talking about the latest trends for 2015 around social media and what we expect.
See you soon at a conference near you soon.
