Social Media
Legal IT

An Introduction to Facebook for Lawyers

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A while ago we wrote an introduction for lawyers to LinkedIn. In today’s article, we’ll focus on Facebook, and how it can be useful for lawyers. From a professional content marketing point of view, both LinkedIn and Facebook have similar offerings. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. When something works well on one platform, the other is likely to implement it as well.

Let us first, in the unlikely event the reader isn’t familiar with Facebook, shortly explain what it is. The (Dutch language) Wikipedia defines it as follows: ” Facebook (formerly Thefacebook) is the name of an online social networking site and the eponymous company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. After registration, users can create a personal profile, add friends (contacts, contacts), send messages, post statuses, post photos, share videos, and receive notifications from ‘friends’ who update their profile. Users can also join different groups and categorize their ‘friends’ into groups, such as ‘Friends at work’ or ‘Good friends’.”

When it comes to using social media for professional purposes, Facebook is the second most used website among lawyers. LinkedIn, with its focus on professional connections, is the most used. It’s worth noting, however, that smaller firms and firms that offer their services to individuals rather than companies, tend to prefer Facebook over LinkedIn. (People used to joke that mainly personal injury lawyers were advertising on Facebook).

Why would you, as a lawyer, choose to use Facebook for professional reasons? Carolyn Elefant gives 5 reasons:

  1. Everyone’s on Facebook. As Lexblog’s Kevin O’Keefe also points out, Facebook is by far the largest social media website. Whereas LinkedIn may have 260 million active users worldwide, Facebook has an estimated 2.38 billion active users worldwide. If you want to meet people online, Facebook is good place to start.
  2. Users on Facebook are engaged. Online legal consumers love engagement, and Facebook thrives on engagement: messages are liked, shared, commented upon. Many lawyers first meet their clients through social interactions, and Facebook is designed for that.
  3. Facebook is mobile. Online legal consumers love their mobile devices, and Facebook accommodates them.
  4. Facebook is the most versatile platform, that offers the most tools to interact with people in different ways. And that includes tools for advertising to very specific target audiences.
  5. Facebook isn’t all about the law. Legal consumers prefer to work with people they know and feel they can trust. By having a glimpse at lawyers’ personal lives, relationships and trust can be developed.

 

So, what does Facebook have to offer? As mentioned above, it’s similar to what LinkedIn does, i.e. personal profiles, company pages, groups, advertising & metrics. Apart from those, it also offers Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and chatbots. Let us have a closer look.

 

Personal profiles: the first thing you do when you sign up to Facebook, is to create a personal profile. Where on LinkedIn your profile is more of a résumé, your Facebook profile is more personal. You can post messages, add photos, videos, etc. You also want to connect with other people by asking them to be your ‘friend’. Once people are part of your friends you can start interacting with them in several ways. It is possible to post entire blog articles as messages on Facebook.

 

Company pages: Facebook also allows you to create pages. These aren’t just company pages but can also be dedicated to certain causes, or even certain products or services. As a law firm, you’ll want to make sure your law firm has its own company page where you can provide information about the firm and interact with anyone who decides to interact with you through the page. What makes company pages even more interesting, is the metrics Facebook provides for them (see below). Facebook also offers chatbot functionality, and it’s fairly easy to add a chatbot to your company page.

 

Groups: Facebook also uses groups, where people discuss the topics the group is dedicated to. If you want to build a positive online reputation for yourself, actively participating in groups in a helpful way is recommended. You may even consider starting your own group and inviting people to it.

 

One of the points where Facebook excels is advertising and metrics. When you post a message, photo or video on your company page, Facebook offers you metrics on how many people saw them, shared them, interacted with them, etc. When you sign up to advertise through Facebook, it opens up a whole new world of metrics, and it allows you to use different criteria to target specific users. Say you have published a book, and created a page for it, you could have Facebook show ads to people within your geographical area that have interacted with the page in some way (liked it, commented on a message, etc.) But you could even be far more specific and use anything Facebook knows about its users to target them with your ads. If you’re a divorce lawyer, you could, e.g., target anybody in your geographical area who changed their marital status from married to it’s complicated.

 

Facebook also offers secure communications through Messenger and WhatsApp, which are more secure than non-encrypted emails. Worth noting is that chatbots can be integrated into these, too.

 

How do you get started? Tammy Cannon of the Social Media Examiner suggests the following three steps.

  1. Support your business with a Facebook personal profile.
  2. Market and advertise your business with a Facebook Business Page.
  3. Engage a narrow audience with Facebook Groups.

In follow-up articles, we’ll explore more in detail how you as a lawyer can use Facebook, including how you can effectively market yourself on the platform.

 

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