Tag Archives: social media

The dangers of social media

In this article, we look at the dangers of social media for mental health, at the legal and criminal dangers of social media, and at the risks posed by misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda.

People love social media. They allow us to stay in touch with family, friends, and acquaintances. They also allow us to interact with suppliers and customers. Lawyers, too, can use social media professionally. (See our past articles on social media for lawyers, on why they matter for lawyers, on how they can be great marketing tools, and on how they can be used for legal research). And let’s admit it, social media can be fun. It is no surprise then that a “typical” internet user spends almost 2½ hours each day using social media platforms. This equates to more than one-third of our total online time. But there also is an often-overlooked dark side to social media, and that is what this article is about.

The dangers of social media for mental health

We all have encountered stories of people taking their lives after being bullied on social media. This is one of the main dangers of social media: it can trigger or worsen mental health problems, such as anxiety, stress, depression, and loneliness. Studies have shown that excessive social media use can also increase feelings of emotional exhaustion, envy, low self-esteem, and dissatisfaction with life: the constant exposure to carefully curated, idealized versions of people’s lives, e.g., can lead to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. People can get addicted to social media. They can expose users to harmful content. Cyberbullying and online harassment are also common on social media platforms. All the above can have severe psychological effects.

Let us have a closer look at some of these in more detail.

One of the most serious dangers of social media is cyberbullying and the accompanying harassment. Cyberbullying can include sending mean messages, posting embarrassing photos or videos, or spreading rumours online. Harassment can range from mean comments to threats and doxing (revealing personal information).

Social media platforms are designed to be addictive. The endless scroll and notifications trigger dopamine releases in the brain, making it easy for users to become addicted and spend excessive amounts of time on these platforms. People who are addicted to social media spend hours each day checking their feeds, and they may experience withdrawal symptoms when they are unable to use social media. This social media addiction affects real-life relationships, work, school, and other responsibilities. Social media addiction is a growing problem.

Social media can also expose users to harmful content, such as violence, hate speech, and sexual content. This content can be particularly damaging to children and adolescents, who may be more vulnerable to its effects.

Social media encourages people to compare their lives, achievements, and appearances to others, leading to a phenomenon known as “comparative stress.” This can negatively impact self-esteem and mental well-being.

Excessive use of social media can lead to reduced face-to-face interactions. These face-to-face interactions are essential for building and maintaining meaningful relationships. A lack of these interactions can contribute to feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Social media also have an impact on youth development. Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of social media. Several of the items mentioned above can affect their self-esteem, body image, and overall development. It can also expose them to age-inappropriate content and online predators.

Legal and criminal dangers of social media

There are several legal, even criminal, issues as well when it comes to social media. Think of privacy concerns or cybercrime (e.g., identity theft, phishing, and hacking). Let us have a look at the most relevant legal dangers social media can pose.

A first group of concerns has to do with privacy and the protection of personal data. Many social media platforms collect vast amounts of user data. These can then be used for targeted advertising (see below) but may also leave users vulnerable to data breaches (see below). Users often share personal information without fully understanding the implications: when you share information on social media, it is accessible to anyone who can view your profile. This typically includes your personal information, such as your address, phone number, and email address, as well as your photos and videos. Even location-sharing features can compromise user privacy. All this information can be used by scammers, identity thieves, and other malicious actors. Clearly, social media platforms are not doing enough to obtain clear and informed consent from users regarding data collection and usage.

Identity theft is another danger of social media. Identity thieves use the information you share online to steal your identity and commit fraud in your name. They may also use your information to create fake social media profiles or send phishing emails. In these phishing attacks, cybercriminals trick users into revealing personal information, which then can lead to (more) identity theft. There also is a risk involved in using third-party apps: users often grant access to these applications without fully understanding the risks.

Social media platforms can also leave us vulnerable to cyberattacks and hacking attempts. The EU faces a surge in cyber-attacks, targeting critical infrastructure, institutions, and businesses. Most of these are ransomware attacks, i.e., demanding ransoms for stolen data. But cyberattacks and hacking attempts can also be used to disrupt the functioning of democratic institutions, political campaigns, and even electoral systems. Such attacks can have serious consequences for the integrity of elections and democratic processes. (See below).

Finally, there are the anonymity challenges which undermine accountability and legal liability. The anonymity and lack of transparency on social media often make it difficult to hold those who engage in criminal, harmful or unethical behaviour accountable.

The risks posed by misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda

Lawyers have been called the guardians of the rule of law and of democracy. We have reached a point where the amounts of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda that are being spread on social media even poses a risk to the rule of law, of democracy and the political process.

Let us start with the spread of misinformation, disinformation (=deliberate), and misleading information. Social media are a powerful tool for the rapid spread of misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories. There are many examples of how false or misleading information can go viral quickly, and of how it can be difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. And the false information often spreads faster than fact-checking can keep up. Given the circumstances, this can lead to real-world consequences, such as public health crises or political instability. The rapid spread of false and misleading information can also distort public understanding of critical issues, including elections. (See below).

Because of the algorithms that they use, social media can lead to filter bubbles and echo chambers. Social media algorithms are designed to show users content that aligns with their existing beliefs and preferences. This creates so-called echo chambers, where people are exposed only to information that reinforces their views. This can result in polarization, intolerance, and a lack of understanding between different groups. It also can hinder productive political discourse.

It should come as no surprise then that social media have been used as a tool for political manipulation. This can be done by individuals, organizations, or by foreign actors to influence public opinion. Tactics include fake accounts, bots, and coordinated disinformation campaigns. All of these can be used to amplify certain narratives and divisive political rhetoric, sway public sentiment, and undermine the integrity of democratic processes, including elections. There are plenty of documented examples where social media have been used to influence voter behaviour by exposing individuals to biased or misleading information. (Cf., e.g., the NYT article in the sources).

Social media platforms allow for highly targeted advertising. This can be used to influence specific demographic groups with tailored messages. While this can be a legitimate advertising practice, it can also be exploited to spread political propaganda and manipulate voter behaviour.

All the above contributes to an ongoing political polarization. Social media intensify political polarization by amplifying extreme viewpoints and creating an environment where moderate or compromise positions are less visible and less appealing to users. Such polarization makes it harder for democracies to function.

As a result of all of this, social media can erode public trust in traditional media, institutions, and even the democratic process itself. When people lose trust in credible sources of information, they may become more susceptible to manipulation. They also become less likely to participate in democratic activities like voting.

Conclusion

Social media are great but pose some serious risks as well. Considering all the above, there is a growing demand for regulation and for a legal framework. But that comes with its own legal challenges. Many countries guarantee a constitutional right of free speech. So, any regulation attempts will have to find a balance between freedom of speech and its limitations. And there is the ongoing debate whether the social media service providers are publishers or merely ITC platform providers. The social media service providers argue that the users are the publishers and that they, i.e. the service providers, only offer a platform.

 

 

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Social media for lawyers

In this article, we focus on social media for lawyers. We start with some statistics about social media that underpin their relevance. Next, we have a look at the different categories of social media that exist. We conclude with a selection of social media that are recommended for lawyers.

Some statistics about social media

In a previous article, we explained why social media matter. They are a valuable marketing tool, even for lawyers, because they provide direct access to your target audiences.  Legal consumers are online consumers and social media allow them to familiarize themselves with the lawyers whose services they want to employ.

And social media are extremely popular, as the following statistics illustrate.

  • In April 2023, there were 4.8 billion social media user identities, which is the equivalent of 59.9% of the global population. If we narrow it down to adults (18 years and older) then we are dealing with a number that is the equivalent of 78% of the population.
  • If we look at the number of people using the Internet, then we find that 92.7% of them are on at least one form of social media.
  • The average time a social media user spends each day on social media amounts to 2 hours and 24 minutes.
  • Demographics: 46.5% of social media users are female, while 53.5% are male.
  • People who are active on social media tend to be active on more than one platform and on average have 6.6 social media profiles.

A key concept in the metrics about social media users is the number of monthly active users (MAU). These are the unique users who use a social media platform at least once a month. Based on these monthly active users, these are the 21 most popular social media platforms.

  1. Facebook — 2.96 billion
  2. YouTube — 2.2 billion
  3. WhatsApp — 2 billion
  4. Instagram — 2 billion
  5. WeChat — 1.26 billion
  6. TikTok — 1 billion
  7. Sina Weibo — 573 million
  8. QQ — 538.91 million
  9. Telegram — 550 million
  10. Snapchat — 557 million
  11. Kuaishou — 573 million
  12. zone — 553.5 million
  13. Pinterest — 444 million
  14. Twitter — 238 million
  15. Reddit — 430 million
  16. LinkedIn — 424 million
  17. Quora — 300 million
  18. Discord — 150 million
  19. Twitch — 140 million
  20. Tumblr — 135 million
  21. Mastodon — 2.5 million

Now, many of those you may not be familiar with because they are mainly used in the Far East, and more specifically in China. Those are probably less relevant for most Western lawyers.

Not yet included in the list is Threads, the new Twitter alternative that was launched by Instagram. In the week after it was launched on 5 July 2023, it already gathered more than 100 million users, which would put it near the top 20. But note that at the time of writing, Threads is not available in the EU.

Categories of social media

There are many different types of social media. To tell them apart, it makes sense to group them in different categories. The Wikipedia uses the following categories.

  • Blogs are informational websites published on the World Wide Web, consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). By now, most law firms have their own blog. (For more information, read our article on starting a blog).
  • Business networks are a type of social network service that focuses on interactions and relationships for business opportunities and career growth, with less emphasis on activities in personal life. LinkedIn is an example of a business network. Most law firms also are on LinkedIn.
  • Collaborative projects like, e.g., Wikipedia.
  • Enterprise social networks focus on the use of online social networks or social relations among people who share business interests and/or activities. Enterprise social networking is often a facility of enterprise social software. Yammer and Socialcast are examples.
  • Discussion Forums
  • Microblogs are a form of blogging using short posts without titles. When Twitter, e.g., launched, the size of a message was limited to only 140 characters. Other examples include Tumblr, Mastodon, Post.News, Threads, Spoutible, et. al.
  • Photo sharing websites like Instagram, Flickr, Photobucket, etc.
  • Websites with crowd-sourced reviews of products and/or services. Sometimes these focus on specific market segments like, e.g., Tripadvisor, while others are more generic, like Yelp or Amazon.
  • Social bookmarking are online services which allow users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. Delicious and Pinterest are two examples.
  • Social gaming (ex. Mafia Wars, World of Warcraft).
  • Generic social network sites like Facebook.
  • Video sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, etc.
  • Virtual worlds are computer-simulated environments which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities and communicate with others. (We discussed virtual worlds before in our article on Web3).

Note that in this overview the Wikipedia did not include messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, while most other overviews do include them. Not included either are websites where people can ask all kinds of questions, like Quora or Reddit.

It is also worth pointing out that the boundaries between these categories are fluid and that they often overlap. Videos, e.g., are not only shared on video sharing sites, but also on virtually all messaging apps, as well as on most other popular platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

A selection of social media for lawyers

The annual reports by the American Bar Association and Good2bSocial reveal that by now most law firms are active on social media. Many are present on the most popular platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, and most have their own blog. The most important current trends are that a) more and more law firms are discovering short form video and start using those, and b) that firms who cater to multiple audiences are seeing the importance of market segmentation. In other words, law firms are learning it pays off to target different audiences on different platforms.

Online articles that recommend lawyers which social media to use are fairly consistent in their recommendations. The selection below is limited to those social media that are most relevant for lawyers, topic-wise and geographically. For most of the ones listed below, we have discussed them before in our blog articles.

When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn is the platform of choice.

When it comes to general social media, Facebook is the most popular choice. Recent statistics show that in the US more law firms are advertising on Facebook than on LinkedIn.

When it comes to messaging apps, there are more options. WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, and Signal are all popular. Because of privacy concerns, Signal is probably most recommended for lawyers. Note that most messaging apps now also allow to create groups which can function as mailing list for updates as well as short newsletters. A WhatsApp group can currently have 1 024 members, whereas a Telegram super group can have up to 200 000 members.

Because online consumers like to know in advance who they are dealing with, photo sharing apps can provide them with a more human side of a law firm. Instagram still is the most popular platform, followed by Snapchat, Flickr, and Photobucket.

Up until recently, the platform of choice for micro-blogging was Twitter. But since Elon Musk took over, many users and advertisers have turned their back on Twitter. Several alternatives are available, like Mastodon, Threads, Tumblr, Bluesky, or, e.g., Post.news. Threads seems to be positioning itself as the main alternative but is not available in Europe.

For video sharing, there again are several options. For longer videos, YouTube and Vimeo are the platforms of choice. For short-form videos, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are currently most popular. Note, however, that for lawyers TikTok is not recommended because of serious privacy concerns. Several governments worldwide have ordered officials to remove TikTok from their smart phones.

Pinterest still is the recommended platform for social bookmarking.

When it comes to question-and-answer forums, Quora and Reddit are the two main platforms.

That concludes our overview of recommended social media for lawyers in 2023.

 

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Pinterest for Lawyers

Some weeks ago, I was asked by a lawyer whether Pinterest could be useful tool for him as a lawyer. In the past, we have already given introductions to other social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for lawyers. Pinterest can be a useful addition to that. So, in this article, we will look at Pinterest for Lawyers. We will answer questions like “What is Pinterest?”, “How does Pinterest work?”, “What are the benefits of Pinterest for lawyers?”. We will explain how to get started and what to post.

What is Pinterest?

The Wikipedia describes Pinterest as “an image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically “ideas”) on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards.” It has also been described as a social networking tool for visual bookmarking. One author called it a visual Twitter.

Pinterest was created in December 2009 and has its headquarters in San Francisco. Like several other social media, it is a free website that requires registration to use. The service is currently accessible through a web browser, and apps for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 and 11 PCs. In February 2022, it had more than 430 million global monthly active users. (That is approximately 100 million more than Twitter at that time). Interestingly, over 60% of its global users are women.

How does Pinterest work?

So, how does it work? What is the philosophy about it? Think of digital pinboards that you can pin your interests on. (Hence the name). Pinboards are collections of pins. You can create multiple pinboards, all dedicated to different topics that interest you. Say you are browsing the web and find an interesting article, then you can save it as a pin to one of your pinboards. The pinned article will get a thumbnail image that is presented along with the title of the article on your pinboard. All your pins are visually displayed on your pinboard. By default, pinboards and pins are accessible to the public. Just as is the case with other social media networks, you can follow other Pinterest users or just individual pinboards. Pins that are saved on one users’ board can be saved to another user’s board. Pinterest uses advanced keyword analytics to recommend pins and boards on topics of interest to its users.

Pinterest uses its own terminology. The article by Allison C. Shields on LegalEase provides the following mini glossary of Pinterest terms:

  • Pin:An image or video posted to Pinterest by a user.
  • Pinboard:A collection of pins created by a Pinterest user, usually organized around a particular theme.
  • Pinner:A Pinterest user.
  • Pinning:The act of posting content to Pinterest.
  • Repin:Users can share others’ content on Pinterest by “re-pinning” (the equivalent of “re-tweeting” on Twitter). When content is re-pinned, the original “Pinner” receives a notification from Pinterest.

What are the benefits of Pinterest for lawyers?

There are two main areas where Pinterest can be useful for lawyers. These are legal research and social media marketing.

Research: The description of Pinterest as a visual bookmarking tool is quite apt. As lawyer, you can create different pinboards to organize information on the topics that you specialize in. It is possible to create sub-boards, which helps to structure the information. As a family lawyer, e.g., you could create boards for marriage, adoption, divorce, child custody, etc. And as you come across relevant information, you can save it to the appropriate board or sub-board. Keep in mind, though, that Pinterest is not a reference tool like Mendeley or Zotero. But it offers a very easy way to keep track of information: with the Pinterest browser add-on, it is as easy as clicking a button and then choosing the board you want to pin the information on. Also worth knowing is that there is such thing as collaborative pinboards, which means you can give other people access permissions to your pinboard, so you can collaborate with them.

Marketing: like all social media, Pinterest can be a useful marketing channel. Pinboards and pins can be viewed by the public. So, you can create pinboards to provide information to potential clients. And any content you create – blog, podcast, videos, infographics – should also be shared in pins. In other words, your pins and pinboards offer yet another way to attract potential clients to your content. Pinterest therefore can be a useful content marketing tool and can have its place in your content marketing strategy.

Noteworthy is that if you have a Pinterest business account, you have access to analytics. So, you can verify how your pins are performing and whether your content strategy needs fine-tuning.

Getting started with Pinterest

If you haven’t used Pinterest before, it may be useful to use it for a while as a non-professional user first to familiarise yourself with it. Pinterest also has business accounts. One of the advantages of a business account is that it offers analytics and metrics. You can choose a business account when you set up your profile, or you can later convert your private account to a business one.

Once you registered, you set up your profile. Make sure to mention your business name and include a link to your website. Remember to “verify” your website with Pinterest. Provide a compelling professional bio where you address some of the legal issues your potential clients could be dealing with. Don’t forget to include your location. For your profile photo, it is always better to use a photo of you, rather than a company logo. People relate better to other people than to abstract logos.

What to post?

The rule of thumb that applies to other social media applies to Pinterest as well. You want to post both professional information that is relevant to your potential clients, and personal information. Legal consumers want to know the person they will be dealing with.

As mentioned before, you should always include links to the content you create: your blog or vlog, your podcast, any articles you have published on other media. You also want to provide links to relevant pages in your website. As is the case with other social media, here, too, it is a good practice to include links to content provided by other lawyers on relevant topics.

Other items that are popular on Pinterest include quotes and/or one-liners, and “How-to” posts. You can put up photos from events you attended or spoke at. You could even add photos of clients, with their permission. Your pins should portray what you stand for and represent your law firm’s values and culture. In other words, use Pinterest to show value and earn trust.

To cultivate a following, you should also interact with your followers and your colleagues. You can repurpose your best content. Use hashtags and keywords, so your pins can easily be found.

Finally, use the provided analytics to finetune your strategy.

Some additional remarks

Pinterest has full access to the entire browsing history that is saved on your device. So, there may be privacy and confidentiality concerns. This is especially the case if you are using cloud-based software in your law firm that is accessed in a browser.

Another area of concern is copyright infringement. Does pinning and re-pinning on publicly accessible boards constitute copying and distributing the information, or does this fall under fair use? It is a grey area. As a rule of thumb, if there is a complaint about a copyright violation, Pinterest will remove the pins.

In its default setup, Pinterest tends to be overactive in the notifications that it sends. You may want to finetune what you get emails and notifications for.

One annoying aspect of Pinterest is that it is not possible to exclude certain topics. If Pinterest thinks it will be of interest to you because it is of interest to other people who share similar interest, then you will keep receiving suggestions. There is an option where you can click “I don’t want to see this”, but it is of little help.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Pinterest can be useful for lawyers in two ways. It can be a beneficial additional social media marketing channel. It is also useful for keeping track of your legal research.

 

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The 2021 Social Law Firm Index

Some weeks ago, Good2bSocial published its eighth annual report on how law firms use social media, the 2021 Social Law Firm Index. In this article, we look at its key findings, at social media practices to avoid, and at predictions for 2022.

Key Findings

Some of the findings were expected. As the pandemic endures, everybody is still having Zoom meetings, but as vaccines are rolled out, more and more people are returning to the office. And now that lawyers spend more time online professionally, their budgets for digital marketing are also still increasing with more spent on advertising. The report also notes that by now, all the major law firms are on LinkedIn. Apart from that, there are four key findings.

The number of law firms that are creating podcasts has grown exponentially. In 2020, 38% of the biggest law firms in the US had a podcast. In 2021, that number has grown to 75%, and many of them had more than one podcast. Overall, podcasts are popular, with 40% of the US population listening to at least one podcast a month. For law firms, they are an ideal way to establish themselves as experts in a given field and to attract a new and interested audience. For those law firms who consider starting a podcast, the report points out that it is important to maintain a consistent schedule. (For more information on starting a legal podcast, read our article on podcasting for lawyers).

The use of video has increased across social media. Video content is the most popular content on social media and has become one of the most mediums for law firms too. Videos tend to appeal more because they are more engaging and more memorable. (People are more likely to remember something they’ve seen than something they’ve read). Video also tends to score better when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization). Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are the most popular platforms for videos. The report encourages law firms to produce more videos. It urges law firms to make sure their content is relevant and to include captivating headlines and descriptions. (For more information, read our article on using video in your law firm).

There is an increased focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and corporate activism. Over the last years, there has been an increase in intolerance towards minorities. Law firms have joined the movement to turn the tide. They “issued press releases emphasizing their commitment to improving their diversity efforts, upped their donations to BIPOC causes, increased pro bono efforts, and showed their support for LBGTQ audiences with rainbow flags.” (p. 7). Some went further and created fellowships and/or they created partnerships with racial justice organizations.

Covid-19 resource centres. During the pandemic and its different waves, what people, businesses and organizations were allowed and not allowed to do often changed. Many law firms offered resource centres on their websites to keep their clients and potential clients up to speed with a variety of in-depth information and insights regarding the fast-changing developments.

Social Media Practices to Avoid

Every year, the report also highlights the worst practices that are still prevalent and should be avoided. This year, it lists five of these practices that law firms should avoid in their usage of social media and their website.

Poorly defined target audience: this is one of the most persistent errors law firms keep on making, i.e., they do not target a sufficiently defined audience. Many law firms still seem to cling on to the misconception that they have to target as wide an audience as possible. The opposite is true. If your message isn’t specific enough, it will just get lost in the information overload Internet users are bombarded with. The more specific your target audience, the higher the chance you will stand out for those potential clients that actually need your services. In other words, the more accurately you define your target audience, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Failing to engage in conversations: legal consumers want their lawyers to listen to them. Engaging in conversations demonstrates that you are listening and offers a chance to show your expertise. Respond quickly and consistently to the comments your law firms receive. The report advises to occasionally do a Q&A on certain topics or do an ‘ask me anything’ session.

Poor reporting and analytics capabilities: to know what social media and content marketing strategies work, you need to analyse the metrics. It helps you to evaluate your ROI, and to finetune your strategies and your budget. Unfortunately, most law firms don’t do a great job at regularly tracking the relevant data. (For more information on web analytics and metrics, you can read our article that provides an introduction to web analytics).

Treating all social media platforms the same: different social media attract different user groups with different expectations. LinkedIn has a more professional audience than Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. What works on one platform does not necessarily work on another. It is crucial to understand each platform and to use the correct type of content, as well as the optimal rate of publishing content for that platform. (For more information, read our article on planning your social media activity).

Too much focus on firm-centric and promotional content: Another big mistake law firms tend to make is to mainly focus on self-promotion. Legal consumers may well be interested in what you can do, but they rather would know whether working with your firm will be a satisfying experience, and whether your firm will meet their expectations. (For more information, read our article on making your law firm more client-centred).

Predictions for 2022

Sticking to tradition, the report also makes some predictions for the year ahead.

Continued increase in paid online advertising: the pandemic more or less forced law firms to spend more on online advertising as the more traditional ways of business development – which for lawyers largely depended on socializing – were not available. Still, compared to regular businesses, law firms tend to spend a far lower percentage of their budget on marketing and advertising. This is especially the case for small and medium-sized law firms who hardly spend any money on marketing and advertising. The report expects that law firms slowly will start catching up with the rest of the market and will continue to spend more on online advertising.

Focus on account-based marketing and related technologies: as we explained in a previous article, the idea of account-based marketing is to identify key accounts and then customize your marketing strategies for each one of them individually, rather than having one general marketing strategy for all accounts. It is more effective, and makes it easier to track and measure goals, and identify a clear ROI. As it focuses on the client’s journey and experience, it also results in a boost in client loyalty.

Evaluation of firms’ marketing technology stack: the report defines the marketing technology (often shortened to MarTecK) stack as “the collection of marketing tools that your team uses to place ads, post on social media, and gather results and analyze ROI.” (p.11) Digital marketing campaigns use several different tools, and now additional tools are appearing that either combine the functionality of those tools or allow them to work better together. It is advisable for law firms to evaluate the tools they are using and see where improvements in the stack are possible.

Exploration of programmatic advertising and intent-based targeting: the report predicts law firms will start experimenting with intent-based targeting. What are we talking about? In a previous article on the digital marketing concepts lawyers need to know, we explained what a conversion funnel is. Intent-based marketing is a type of marketing that specifically targets those prospects who are in the last stage of the funnel, i.e., those who have shown an intention to make a purchase.

The report also expects an increase in programmatic advertising, which it describes as “a way to automatically buy and optimize digital campaigns, rather than buying directly from publishers” (p. 12). This used to be something only the largest law firms could to. But more and more tools are becoming available that allow smaller law firms to use programmatic advertising, too.

 

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Planning your social media activity

In this article, we will look at planning your social media activity, which is an essential part of your content strategy. In a previous article, we explained that your content strategy is the high-level vision that guides your future content development to deliver against a specific business objective. A quick recap: Defining a content strategy consists of three phases: identifying your business objective, identifying your target audience, and identifying the content that your target audience needs. So, the first thing to do is to identify your business objective. What does your law firm stand for, and what do you want to achieve with the content you provide? Be as specific as possible. Then learn as much as possible about your target audience and what you have to offer them that sets you apart from the competition. Analyse what information your clients need, and where they can be found. Researching all of this will provide you with the data that will show you what to write, for whom, how, and where.

Once you have your content strategy, you can start planning your social media activity. In this article, we will look at content plans and content calendars, at tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to help you manage your posting activity, and we will end with some practical tips and reminders.

A social media content plan is an advanced directive on how to manage your content on the evolving platforms in accordance with your content strategy. Once you have set your objectives and identified and located your target audience, you start selecting the appropriate channels where you will post your messages.

Choose your channels: Many people make the mistake of thinking that distributing content on as many platforms as possible is a good thing, but it is not. It does not keep in mind where your target audience resides. So, you are better off first locating where your target audience resides. Also keep in mind that different social media channels have different value propositions, which means you often should use different channels for different purposes: reposting memes, e g., is more appropriate on Twitter or Instagram than it is on LinkedIn or Medium. Posting a bibliography of your articles makes more sense in a LinkedIn profile or business page, or a Facebook business page than it does on Twitter or Instagram.

Choose your messages: Once you identified the channels you plan to use, you can start organizing your content and decide how to distribute it over the different channels. It makes sense to create a content library. If you provide professional content, you can categorize it, and make sure you keep a balance between the different types of topics.

Also keep in mind to not just use social media for self-promotion only. You also want to curate information (i.e., share content from others), as well as interact with other users and their content: like and/or comment on content, etc. The articles listed in the sources mention different ratios you can use for your posts for the ideal blend of content from you, content from others, personal updates, and responses and replies. They all use slightly different ratios. But the only rule everybody agrees on is that number of posts containing your personal content and updates should never exceed the number of posts sharing information from others.

Plan and schedule your posts. For this, you can use a content calendar. You can plan ahead on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and a yearly basis. After all, some information may be more relevant at specific times. Take, e.g., articles on tax returns, or VAT declarations, or on renting out property during holidays, etc. It makes sense to schedule those well in advance, so you won’t have to start reorganizing your schedule later on. But make sure you also leave room for unscheduled daily updates. Create a workflow where you take out the necessary time for your planning activity as well as for crafting your messages.

It is never a bad idea to get feedback from your team members and/or associates on the content you are planning to post before you post them.

You can create your own content calendar starting from scratch, or you can use existing predefined templates. There are several good, free, templates for content calendars available on the Internet.

Planning and scheduling your posts in this way has many benefits.

  1. You save time by being organized.
  2. There is more consistency in your posts.
  3. Experience shows that when you plan your posts rather than make them up at the spur of the moment, you make fewer typos, and reduce the risk of big
  4. You can get more ambitious with your social strategies.
  5. You don’t miss out on relevant moments
  6. You make higher-quality content
  7. You can track what works, and improve it

To make planning your social media activity easier, Hootsuite and Buffer are two very useful tools. They both are apps that make managing your social media activity a lot easier, by allowing you to post your content to the different channels in a centralized way. Their offerings are fairly similar, and you’ll only need one of them to meet your needs. Let’s do a quick comparison of what they have to offer.

  • Supported Social Networks: both offer access to the main channels, i.e., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Hootsuite also offers access to YouTube, which Buffer, at present does not. Hootsuite also can work with other channels, but typically you have to use paid add-ons for that.
  • Number of social media accounts available: both work with tiers where you pay a higher fee if you want access to more social media accounts, and if you want access for multiple users within your organization. They both have a limited free offer as well.
  • Overall ease-of-use: both programs have been around for several years and by now are both very user-friendly. Most users find Buffer slightly easier to use and get started with.
  • Post scheduling functionality: both offer excellent functionality when it comes to scheduling your posts.
  • Ad hoc posting options: this is integrated and easy in Buffer. In Hootsuite, you will at present need a browser add-on to do this.
  • Conversation management: Buffer has separate tool for this, called Buffer Reply, which costs extra, but it is more intuitive and complete than Hootsuite. Hootsuite has some conversation management functionality built in but is clunky.
  • Content approval features, i.e., where one user creates the posts that another user must approve. Both have the feature built in, but it works better in Hootsuite because it has a better management overview.
  • Reporting and dashboard views: while Buffer’s dashboard is lean and clean, Hootsuite’s dashboard and reporting are more advanced.
  • Content library: Buffer does not have a built-in content library, while Hootsuite does.
  • Tracking and Analytics: Hootsuite gives more analytics features away for free, but Buffer is cheaper for large business needs.
  • Third-party app integrations: both have many, though Hootsuite has slightly more. You will have to check what functionality you want. Some integrations are free, while others are not. Noteworthy is that Zapier has free predefined zaps for each, which can make automation even easier. As of August 2021, Buffer also can directly fetch graphics you created in Canva from your Canva account.
  • Extra products: we already mentioned Buffer Reply higher up, which is a paying app. Buffer also offers Pablo, for graphics, for free, and Analyze, which is a paid app for reporting and web metrics. Hootsuite has its own analysis tool built-in but more advanced features also come at an extra cost. It also has its own -albeit limited – conversation management built-in. It does not offer something similar to Pablo.
  • Team Management: Buffer works well for small teams, but for large organizations Hootsuite is the better option.
  • Advertising: only Hootsuite can create and manage ads.
  • Content Curation: Buffer more easily monitors RSS feeds, but Hootsuite is better at keeping an eye on social trends.
  • Pricing: as mentioned above, both work with a freemium tiered model for their prices. Overall, their prices are comparable.

So, what to choose? For smaller law firms, Buffer is probably the better option, while Hootsuite will generally better meet the needs of medium to large law firms.

Last, but not least, some reminders and tips. We are talking about social media, and it is important to not forget the social in social media! Do not use your social media mainly for self-promotion. And remember that you cannot plan everything in advance. Social media are about interaction, about building trust, about people getting to know you as a person they want to work with. It is also about becoming approachable. Use humour. Show aspects of your personal life. Spend time online daily to like posts, to give replies and make comments… Engage in conversations. Retweet posts you like, as you come across them.

 

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Introduction to Advertising on LinkedIn

This article will provide you with a first introduction to paid advertising on LinkedIn. If you are not familiar with it, advertising on LinkedIn can be at first confusing. The purpose of this article is to provide you with some necessary background on how LinkedIn advertisements work, and what types of advertisements you can use. The first three articles listed in the sources below provide a more in-depth introduction.

Now, why would you, as a lawyer, want to advertise on LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a social media platform that is used by professionals, so it is an ideal way to reach businesses you want to offer your services to. LinkedIn allows you to target very specific groups of individuals. You could, e.g., do a campaign for business owners of small or medium sized businesses in your neighbourhood that specialize in certain products or services. Or you could target the heads of legal departments in bigger companies. LinkedIn also is a good place to advertise job offers. If you are looking for new clients, you can use the funnel approach and create specific ads for specific segments of your target audience based on where in the funnel they are. (More on that later). You can also do something like an email campaign by sending message ads, etc. Add to that, that LinkedIn provides you with the necessary metrics to see how your ads are performing. Given all of the above, it should not come as a surprise that LinkedIn is the preferred social media platform for lawyers to advertise on.

So, how do you get started? Before you can begin to advertise on LinkedIn, there are two prerequisites. First, you must have a company page for your law firm. You cannot advertise on LinkedIn if you only have a personal profile. You need a company page. Secondly, once you have a company page, you need to create at least one account in the Campaign Manager for your law firm. The campaign manager is where you organize your advertisement campaigns. It lets you define your objectives and goals and select your target audiences for each campaign. It lets you set a budget, choose from different types of ads, and set a timeline for your ads. The platform also includes several features designed to help you meet your advertising goals. It is also good to know that you can create more than one account in the campaign manager for your law firm.

Once you have your Campaign Manager account set up, you can start your ad campaign. Typically, this involves seven steps:

  1. Choosing your objective
  2. Defining your target audience
  3. Choosing an ad format
  4. Setting your budget and schedule
  5. Starting to build your ad
  6. If applicable, providing payment information
  7. Measuring and optimizing your campaign

Let us have a closer look at these seven steps.

Step 1: choose your objective. What is your ad for? Is it a job listing? Do you want to attract new clients, or do you want to find people to attend a webinar or seminar you are organizing? LinkedIn uses a funnel approach that is common in digital marketing that involves three stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion. To raise awareness, you typically want views, or impressions as LinkedIn calls them. For consideration and conversion, you typically want people to respond to a call to action, which is measured in clicks. To convince them to respond to your call to action, you may want them to view a video first, etc. The goal you choose will largely determine the rest of your campaign.

Step 2: define your target audience. Selecting the criteria to determine who should see your ad is the same across all objectives and ads that you choose. You have more than 20 different criteria that you can combine, which allows you to be very specific in who you target. These criteria include profession / job title, company size, company name, interests, skills (including languages), seniority, etc. Reaching the correct target audience is one of the most fundamental pillars of success for an ad campaign. In the sources, listed below, you will find an article to assist you in the process of targeting the audience that is right for your campaign.

Step 3: choose an ad format. LinkedIn uses different types and formats of ads that you can choose from. You can use Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, or a mix of all four. Sponsored Content appears directly in the LinkedIn feed of people you want to reach. They come in three formats: single image ads, video ads and carousel ads. As the name suggests, message ads send messages directly to LinkedIn Messaging. Dynamic ads are individualized ads that use data that are available in your target audience’s profile. They are available in three formats: follower ads, spotlight ads, and job ads. Text Ads are simple but compelling pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) ads (see below, in step 4).

All in all, this means that at present, LinkedIn offers the following ad formats:

Step 4: set your budget and schedule. You determine the amount of money you want to spend. The cost of the campaign consists of three possible options:

  • Cost per Impression (CPM) refers to the cost of advertising where you pay for each time an ad is displayed. These ads are typically used to raise awareness.
  • Cost per Click (CPC) is where you pay for each time a person responds to a Call-To-Action by clicking on a link. These ads are typically used in lead generation or event registration.
  • Cost per Send (CPS) is used when you do a campaign with message ads, where you pay for each message that is sent. You only pay for messages that are successfully delivered.

Along with your budget, you can also determine the schedule of the ads. Keep in mind that setting your budget and schedule is an interactive process, called bidding, where LinkedIn will, e.g., offer a bundle of ads in a schedule at a certain price, and you can then modify that offer to better suit your needs.

Step 5: start building your ad. LinkedIn provides you with some tools to build your ads. For some ad formats, previews are available. For message ads, it is possible to send yourself a test message. Typically, though, you will want to build your ad outside of LinkedIn first, with professional tools.

Step 6: if applicable, provide payment information. If you are organizing a seminar, webinar or other paying event, you will have to provide payment modalities and information.

Step 7: measure and optimize your campaign. The Campaign Manager offers you a dashboard where you can follow-up on each one of your campaigns. You can review performance metrics, access charts and demographics, etc. It is possible to export these data as a CSV report.

With this information, running an ad campaign on LinkedIn should be less overwhelming.

 

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Instagram for Law Firms

In today’s article, we have a look at Instagram and at how it can be useful for lawyers and law firms. Surprisingly, only 25% of lawyers use Instagram for marketing purposes, even though for most young adults, it is the most important social media network.

Let us start by explaining what it is, for those of you who are not familiar with it. Instagram is social network service for sharing photos and short videos (of up to 60 seconds). It was launched as an app for smart phones in 2010. What made the app stand out, was that it allowed users to easily apply predefined filters to photos they had taken, and then share them either publicly or with their followers. It works with hashtags and locations, and users can browse other users’ public content via these hashtags and locations. Just as is the case with Twitter, hashtag topics can be trending. Users can like photos and videos, and they can comment on them. The app quickly became very popular and was bought by Facebook in 2012.

Why would a law firm consider having an Instagram account? The main reason is for marketing purposes. Instagram is the world’s third most used social media network, with over one billion monthly active users. (Only Facebook and YouTube have more, with 2.8 billion and 2 billion respectively). To put things in perspective, LinkedIn only has 260 million monthly active users, while Twitter has 187 million. More importantly, Instagram is the most used social media platform for consumers between the ages of 18 and 35. And with geolocation tagging, it is an easy way to reach local target audiences.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which are text-based social media, Instagram is primarily a visual medium. And that is one of the main reasons for its popularity: visuals are more appealing than text. And they also tend to evoke more responses: Instagram posts get more engagement than any other social media platforms. Furthermore, it is possible to link your Instagram account to your Twitter, LinkedIn and/or Facebook account, so photos on Instagram are shared on those platforms as well.

Also worth mentioning, is that Instagram can effectively be used as a recruitment tool, as well. (As mentioned above, young adults are far more likely to be on Instagram than on LinkedIn).

So, what services does Instagram offer? It started as a service to share photos and short videos, and that still is what it is mainly used for. But it offers other services as well. Let us start with Instagram Stories. In his article for rankings.io, Chris Dryer explains that “Instagram Stories are photos and videos that you can share throughout the day in a vertical, slideshow format. Unlike regular photo and video posts, these do not appear in the regular Instagram newsfeed or in the grid on your Instagram profile. Instead, they appear at the top of the newsfeed for those who follow your Instagram account.” Important to know is that stories remain available for only 24 hours.

Next, we have Instagram Live. Instagram Live is technically a part of Instagram Stories, and allows you to broadcast a live stream from your phone. These livestreams can last up to one hour. Mind you, as they are a part of the Instagram Stories, they are by default only available for 24 hours after the livestream. It is however possible to save a livestream as a ‘highlight‘, which means it will be added to your user profile.

Another video service Instagram offers, is Instagram TV, usually shortened to IGTV. Whereas Instagram Live videos do not appear in a newsfeed and do automatically disappear, Instagram TV videos are posted to your newsfeed, where a copy of them – with its own URL – remains available. Videos of up to one hour can be uploaded if done so from a web browser. If directly uploaded as a video recorded on your phone, the length is limited to 15 minutes of video.

Instagram also offers Business Pages / Business Profiles. For these, a professional account is needed, but that is as simple as activating the account as a professional one in the settings. Once that is done, the option to fill out a business profile becomes available. Now, if your law firm already has a page on Facebook, it is possible to link your Instagram Business and Facebook pages. This has to be done from within Facebook and will make the information you have on your Facebook page available in Instagram too. It is also possible for the two to automatically share posts, meaning if something is posted on one, it appears on the other as well. So, this is the place to add all the local business details of your law firm. Especially if you know that more than 200 million Instagram users visit an Instagram Business Profile at least once a day.

An additional benefit of setting your Instagram account up as a professional account, is that you get access to Instagram Insights, which provide you with detailed engagement analytics. That makes it easy to follow up on Key Performance Indicators.

As is the case with other social media networks, Instagram also offers the ability to publish Ads. And just like in Facebook and LinkedIn, it is possible to very narrowly define the parameters to identify your target audience.

How do you get started? Setting up an account is easy, and can be done from a smart phone where you first have to download the app. Or you can just sign up using a browser. If you have a Facebook account, you can use your Facebook account to sign up and subsequently sign in. Keep in mind, however, that while signing up can be done from a PC with a browser, uploading photos and videos typically must be done through the app on your smart phone.

Then you start sharing photos. The aim here is to attract leads and to do that, you use your photos to build credibility, trust, and brand awareness among your followers. In her article for Law Firm Ambition, Becky Simms gives the following advice.

  • Build a persona, show your personality and the personality of your law firm. While doing this, focus on approachability.
  • Show the people in your firm, and make sure to post some “life behind the scenes” photographs.
  • Demonstrate community involvement.
  • Look for opportunities to illustrate your expertise, without giving legal advice. Post pictures of articles you have written, webinars you have given, conferences you spoke at or attended, etc.
  • Check whether your colleagues can provide content.
  • Avoid direct self-promotion.
  • Use the Instagram app on your mobile phone to take photos.
  • Aim for a relevant image with every social networking post.
  • Use hashtags on Instagram to make your images more visible / easier to find. Don’t be shy to use many hashtags.
  • Check what other lawyers are doing for inspiration.
  • Keep a watching brief to see how the Instagram platform develops.

In an article in Forbes Magazine, Jenna Gross recommends using the following marketing tactics:

  • Create a plan of action.
  • Elicit emotions.
  • Build a visual narrative.
  • Create conversations.
  • Simplify the path for potential clients to become clients.

Two more practical tips: there are third-party programs like Buffer and Hootsuite that allow you to schedule posts in advance. They both offer free and paying plans. You can start with the free version and upgrade if need be.

As mentioned above, uploading videos and photos must be done from a smart phone. There are mainly two solutions if you want to use your PC or laptop instead. The first one is to install Bluestack which will allow you to run Android Apps on your PC or laptop. Once Bluestack is installed, you install the Instagram for Android app, and you are ready to go. Alternatively, you can use the Vivaldi browser, which allows Instagram to run as a desktop application in a web panel from where photos can also be uploaded. (See https://vivaldi.com/blog/instagram-post-from-computer/ for an explanation).

So, go ahead, and give it your best shot.

 

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Using video in your law firm

Video has become the driving force of the Internet. While the actual numbers may vary from source to source, most estimate that 80% to 82% of Internet traffic in 2020 consisted of video, and that one third of online activity consisted of watching videos. In the US, e.g., 85% of people with Internet access watch videos online on a daily basis. In Saudi Arabia, that number is 98%. Most of the videos we watch are entertainment, which is not really a surprise. People love watching videos, and marketers have noticed. In 2018 already, 87% of online marketers used video content. What is important, is that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. The articles listed in the sources below provide plenty more interesting statistics.

The American Bar Association’s annual Legal Technology Survey Report for 2020 noticed that law firms are hardly using video for anything else than videoconferencing. Only 3% of respondents create videos that provide content, compared to 85% of businesses in general. The report rightfully points out that law firms are missing out on important opportunities by not producing video content.

Because of the pandemic, by now most law firms in the US routinely use videoconferencing. 88% of lawyers have worked remotely in 2020, and for 48% of lawyers working remotely has become their default mode of operation. Rather than have face to face meetings, they will use videoconferencing as long as a physical presence is not required. This sharp increase in videoconferencing also means the most law firms have the necessary setup to start producing videos.

So, what can law firms use video for, other than videoconferencing? Video is commonly used for testimonials, informational videos, explainer videos, storytelling, webinars, and podcast videos. Let us have a closer look those.

Testimonials: legal consumers are online consumers and will check out the law firms online that they consider hiring. Online social proof plays an important part in that. It is the second most important way for legal consumers to decide which law firm they will hire, after direct personal referrals. Potential clients relate to other people sharing their stories and experiences. The Social Media Examiner website suggests the following steps. Start by creating a testimonial questionnaire, with the questions you believe your potential clients would like to see answered. Scout for an appropriate filming location. Set up your shoot and record the Interview. If necessary, edit the video. Put it on your website in a section dedicated to testimonials. Use social media to frequently post links to your testimonial videos.

Informational videos and explainer videos: many law firms already offer a blog or articles on their website that provide potential clients with some free advice on specific topics. This could also be done using video instead of written articles. You can ask local residents to send in some questions, and answer those in short videos, ideally of approximately 3 minutes. You can also create short videos in which you explain some concepts, or how new regulations will affect people. One advantage that these short videos have over written articles, is that they are more likely to be shared on social media. And if you already have a blog, it is a good strategy to repurpose the articles from your blog as short videos. There even are AI solutions (like lumen5.com) available to automate that process.

Storytelling: people like to be able to relate to the people they consider hiring. So, they like to know more about the individuals, and they prefer hearing stories to reading dry exposés. You can create videos about your law firm, the lawyers and staff in it, past successes, etc. Individual lawyers can talk about themselves and, e.g., explain why they chose to become lawyers, or why they decided to specialize in specific fields. The goal of these video stories is to establish a personal connection between the lawyers and their potential clients and to humanize the law firm.

Webinars and video podcasts: whereas webinars are educational workshops on specific topics, podcasts are more of an informal conversation. They typically are more in-depth and last longer than the short informational and explainer videos. It makes sense to record your webinar or podcast and then post the video either on your website or on a hosting platform. Once this is done, they can be shared on social media. You can even release sections of the video as shorter clips.

The Content Marketing Institute gives the following tips for best practices:

  • Invest in the process, not just the product: the videos you post must be an integral pillar of your content marketing strategy, not a side-product. So, determine the role and goals of your video content, and plan your content strategy accordingly.
  • Keep your end goal in mind – and determine how you will know when you have reached it: what do you want to achieve with your video, and what do you want your viewers to do after watching the video?
  • Write a script your audience will want to follow. Use a conversational tone. Speak in short, concise sentences to emphasize key points. Avoid jargon. Do a “table read” test run where you read it out loud before recording to discover where the script may need tweaking.
  • Know when to host and when to post. You can post your videos on your own website, or you can host them on available platforms. For webinars and podcasts, you can consider live streaming platforms and apps. There are dedicated services, but most social media platforms also offer the option these days. And shorter videos can also be posted directly themselves on social media.
  • Set the right stage for social plays: you may have to perform several tests to determine what to post where and when. Some content will, e.g., work better on a platform like LinkedIn, while other content may work better on channels like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.
  • Include a transcript: search engines are not good at finding content in videos, and your viewers may want to quickly reread something that was said in the video.
  • Tag your work: if you want your video to be found by new viewers, add the relevant tags, titles and descriptions to your videos.
  • Push your videos to influencers, subscribers, fans, and followers to expand your viewer base.
  • Track attention span to identify optimization opportunities: “Engagement data and other key performance indicators can provide important insights on your audience’s preferences and behaviors, which you can use to refine and customize your video strategy. For example, if you notice that prospects are dropping off 10 seconds into your videos, your intros might need to be trimmed.”
  • Monitor viewer reactions to gain additional consumer insights: on a platform like Facebook, e.g., you can not only keep track of the number of engagements, but also of the type of engagement: did they share your video? Did they “like” it, or did they respond with “love”, “sad”, or “angry”? Access to this type of metadata can help you determine whether you are getting the desired response to your video.

Keeping these best practices and tips in mind will help you optimize the success of your videos.

 

Sources:

The 2020 Social Law Firm Index

As usual, some weeks ago Good2bSocial (www.good2bsocial.com) published its annual Social Law Firm Index. If you are not familiar with it, it is study of social media marketing adoption, use, and practices within the legal industry. It analyses each firm’s presence on the internet and across social media and evaluates their social usage to extend thought leadership content and to engage with clients and constituents. It measures social media reach, engagement, and marketing performance on platforms that include Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Based on this information, the report also publishes rankings of America’s Top 200 law firms for best social media achievement.

Due to the coronavirus, 2020 was a different year, and this shows in the findings of the report. Here are the key takeaways.

  1. Firms bulked up their digital marketing strategies during the pandemic: In the olden days, lawyers mainly relied on ‘social marketing’ to gather clients through, e.g., person to person interactions at social events, etc. Even in this digital age, it was a quite common and important way to reach potential new clients. But in 2020 the coronavirus made sure that no longer was a viable option. As law firms had to shift their entire practice online, they also were forced to embrace digital marketing strategies to extents never witnessed before. In 2020, “we saw firms embrace webinars, write and promote content, increase their social media advertising budgets and launch podcasts. Digital marketing is here to stay and it’s great watching firms embrace it and learn from best practices and opportunities to grow.” (Guy Alvarez, CEO Good2bSocial).
  2. The year of the webinars: In 2020, webinars became one of the most important tools for law firms to continue marketing and providing valuable content for their clients and potential clients. Where webinars have always been an effective digital marketing tool for law firms, in 2020 they became a necessity.
  3. The rise of podcasts: 2020 also was the year law firms started embracing podcasts. An unprecedented 38% of the top 200 US law firms are producing podcasts, and that percentage is expected to keep increasing in 2021. Podcasts allow law firms to tell their story, demonstrate their expertise and subject-matter authority, while potentially reaching brand-new audiences.
  4. Increased interest in SEO: in 2019, Google made some fundamental changes to its search algorithms. The underlying idea is that people are looking for answers to questions. So, the algorithms were adapted to prioritize web pages that provide the relevant information to answer those questions. In other words, the focus shifted from key word search to relevant content search. This forced many law firms to re-evaluate the content they were providing and to shift their SEO efforts to emphasize the most useful, relevant and targeted content they are providing.
  5. Paid LinkedIn goes mainstream: law firms noticed that their advertising on LinkedIn was far more effective than on other platforms. “The platform’s major selling point for marketers is its ability to target an audience by their industry, job title and work experience and more, not just their demographics.” As a result, paid advertising on LinkedIn has become the new normal for law firms.

Apart from these key takeaways, the report also contains several predictions for 2021:

Technology adoption will be at an all-time high: the adoption of technology by law firms was spectacularly accelerated by the pandemic. Because people could not meet in person, they met in cyberspace, and the legal profession followed suit: not only did lawyers start having virtual meetings with clients, but court cases too were handled online. As a result, law firms have relied on technology like never before and that is expected to continue in 2021. As they are getting familiar with all these new technologies, they will continue to reap more benefits from it. Law firms started embracing creativity and incorporating artificial intelligence, which also became a tool for data-driven marketing campaigns. It also allows to extract the right insights from the data they already have collected in their different software platforms. All of this is expected to contribute to increased operational efficiency, and better risk management.

Greater adoption of account-based marketing: one of the shifts we are witnessing is the new focus on account-based marketing. Account-based marketing is also known as key account marketing. The idea is to identify key accounts and then customize your marketing strategies for each one of them individually, rather than having one general marketing strategy for all accounts. It is more effective, and makes it easier to track and measure goals, and identify a clear ROI. As it focuses on the client’s journey and experience, it also results in a boost in client loyalty.

Increased use of social media advertising: the pandemic has led to an increase in social media advertising and this is expected to continue in 2021. LinkedIn saw its market share among law firm increase, and Facebook wants to remain competitive and is modifying its offerings. The result will be that it will be easier and more effective to use social media advertising than before.

Greater emphasis on website seo + cro: as attracting new clients online is becoming the new normal, more attention will be paid to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Where websites used to be online brochures, they are now full-fledged tools for acquiring new clients. The conversion rate is the percentage of your website visitors or leads that become actual clients, and CRO focuses on strategies and technologies to optimize those conversion rates. It is a step-by-step process that includes looking for ways to engage clients, including Calls to Action (CTA) on web pages, etc.

In previous years, the report also included a list of best and worst practices. This year’s report is slightly different in that it still contains a list with worst practices to avoid, but no longer contains a list of general best practices. Instead, those best practices are now analysed per specific platform, which falls beyond the scope of this article. We do have the time to go over the list of the worst practices that should be avoided.

Websites aren’t optimized for conversions: the primary function of a website should be to attract new clients, and for that reason the focus should be on conversions.

No true clarity on target audience or business goals: a website should not be a mere presence on the Internet, aimed at the public at large. Law firms need to identify their target audiences and ideal clients, and they need to clearly define what they want to accomplish with their website.

Not using data/ technology to evolve: to effectively use your website to attract new clients, you have to keep track and follow-up on all kinds of metrics: what works well, and what does not, when it comes to standing out, attracting the attention of potential clients and ultimately converting those leads to clients?

Only focusing on the top of the funnel: CRO strategies use the analogy of a funnel, where at the top of the funnel, you have all the potential new clients, and at the bottom of the funnel, you have those that become actual clients. The CRO strategies are aimed at guiding the leads through that funnel. Many law firms make the mistake of only focusing on the first step, or the top of the funnel. They also need to pay attention to the next steps, or the middle of the funnel. “Middle-of-funnel prospects are already in the buying funnel and are perfect candidates for targeted marketing campaigns. They need attention that is unique and relevant to them. When law firms build a collaborative relationship with the prospect, they can acquire more data about them to better understand their problems and needs and offer them the personalized approach to close the deal.”

That concludes the quick overview of the 2020 Social Law Firm Index. 2020 surely was an interesting year from a digital marketing point of view, where the pandemic became an unexpected catalyst for faster digital marketing adoption. That evolution is expected to continue in 2021.

 

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Social Media for Legal Research

We live in a connected, online world like never before. This opens up new opportunities that are not always obvious. Have you, as a lawyer, considered using social media for research? Sure, you can use social media to check out what your competitors are doing. But there is so much more that you can do. You can use social media very effectively to stay up to date with what is happening in your field of expertise. You can also perform research that pertains to a case that you are handling. And if you are a litigator, you can research your client’s opposing party, witnesses, jurors and even – when warranted – judges. As the example of the judge suggests, there also are ethical considerations to consider. Let us have a look at all of these.

Ongoing research – staying up to date

Social media provide an excellent way to stay up to date with what is happening in your field. Personally, I use Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and Quora for this constantly. In Twitter, you can follow the authors and publications that are active in your field. Look for key clients and service suppliers, thought leaders, industry heads, etc. I would recommend creating a list in Twitter that you add them to. That way, you just have to check your list to find the relevant tweets. Noteworthy, too, is that by default lists are public, which means you can follow other people’s lists.

You can do the same in LinkedIn. Even if a person or publisher is not a connection, you usually can follow them. And as is the case for Twitter, you can create custom lists that make it easy and convenient to quickly go through the relevant material. The same goes for Facebook, where you can follow people who are not friends, and you can create custom lists. Typically, though, LinkedIn and Twitter tend to provide more useful information, as lawyers tend to be less likely to put legally relevant articles on Facebook.

LinkedIn and Facebook both have a Group feature, where you can create your own group or join an existing group. Both have plenty of groups that are dedicated to legal topics or fields of expertise. Again, the LinkedIn groups generally outshine the ones of Facebook when it comes to the quality of the information that they are providing.

Quora is a social media platform that focuses on answering questions, but where authors can also publish links to relevant information. Quora has sections that are dedicated to legal topics, and you can configure the email notifications to receive notifications when new information or questions are available.

Medium largely is a blogging platform. Like Quora, it offers the possibility to subscribe to certain topics where you get notifications when new information is available.

Also of interest in this context is Pinterest. In Pinterest, users can create boards that they can ‘pin’ information or links to information on. You can also create sub-boards. If you are interested in legal technology, e.g., you could create a board legal tech, with possible sub-boards for artificial intelligence, office automation, social media, etc. What makes Pinterest even more interesting is that you can also follow other users and/or their boards. So, you can share the benefits of work others have done.

Legal research for a case

A second area where social media are useful is to look for relevant legal information for a specific case. One caveat is that a lot of social media content is not indexed by search engines. So, you may need to perform your research on each platform separately! Quora, Medium, and Pinterest are notable exceptions in that most search engines do index their content. So, for those, it is not necessary to perform separate searches. With LinkedIn, articles that are published on its platform typically do get indexed by search engines, but regular posts and the content of groups, e.g., are not.

Both Twitter and LinkedIn have advanced search features that allow you to perform focused keyword searches. In Twitter, one would typically use hashtags for that. In theory, it is possible to do the same on Facebook, but thus far in practice this has rarely yielded useful results.

Social media for litigation research

A third area where social media can be particularly useful is for research for litigation purposes, in several different ways.

A first way is that social media could be used for opinion mining, i.e. to measure the public opinion on a topic. This typically is useful in criminal cases, especially if a jury is involved. You may want to avoid basing a defence on a narrative that people respond negatively to.

Similarly, you can use social media for reputation research, either on your clients or on their opponents. Apart from profiling litigants and opposing counsel, you can also profile prospective jury pool members, as well as witnesses. Based on the information you find, you can excuse prospective jury members, or impeach witnesses.

You can also check whether the judge has any connections to the parties or their counsel. There have been several instances where a judge had to recuse him- or herself because they were Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections with one of the lawyers.

Furthermore, and importantly, social media are useful when gathering facts and evidence. People have e.g. been fired, lost insurance claims, and have been convicted or acquitted, based on evidence that was found on social media. When looking for facts and evidence, keep in mind that it can be spread over all platforms. You may have to spend some time going through accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, … There already are third party service providers who can do this for you.

Ethical considerations

Finally, there are ethical considerations to take into account. As a first rule of thumb, any information that is publicly available on the Internet for all to see can be used in court. As a second rule of thumb, it typically is not admissible to directly communicate with opposing parties or witnesses: do not send them friend requests, do not follow them or communicate with them on social media. It is wise to apply the same rule of thumb when it comes to judges, as it can result in their recusal or a ground for appeal.

In short, social media can be useful for research purposes in different ways. When researching facts and evidence for specific cases, they can offer a wealth of information, but there are ethical considerations to take into account. When in doubt, contact your local bar association.

 

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