Advice For law Firm Marketers: How Social Media Can Level The Playing Field

Kevin Quinlan, law firm marketing guru, explains how social networking sites like Facebook can help marketers of law firms compensate for smaller budgets.

/lawyermarketing101.com/Kevin Quinlan/ 07/23/2010

Many law firm marketers wonder how they can contend with the major legal advertisers that they compete with for clients in their geographic area of influence. While their smaller advertising budgets may never be large enough to compete for dominance on the radio, in outdoor advertising or TV, social media can really level the playing field.

 

Law firms with smaller budgets are finding that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can give them a leg-up in marketing their firms. In addition to the fact that setting up a page is free, every Facebook or Twitter page is more or less identical, regardless of how substantial the law firm launching the page. Pages can be customized, but having a great Facebook page for your law firm does not require the same level of skill as would be required for development of high production value TV spots.

 

According to the New York Times, "Facebook, the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos)." What greater way to reach so many potential clients in your geographic area. Many of the users mentioned above are businesses that rely on Facebook to update their fans to changes within their companies. Using Facebook to market your firm is like having free PR with the added value of word-of-mouth. Have there been changes in the law, new attorneys added to the firm or have you had a recent success? All of these updates can be transmitted quickly and interactively with Facebook. And it's a dialogue not a monologue.

 

Many law firms have found that they have been generating new clients because prospects have contacted individual attorneys through their personal pages, prompting them to create a page for their firm. Social media has expanded beyond a point where it can be considered a flash-in-the-pan or fad.

 

When combined with a blog or lawyer newsroom that transmits all of your current articles firm announcements and press releases to the Internet and automatically posts the articles to your Facebook and headlines to your Twitter page, you will have created a marketing machine for your law firm.

 

Cepac lawyer marketing has developed an online lawyer newsroom that does exactly that. Smart News Technology offers a direct connection to the World Wide Web without the need for a press release distribution service and provides the ability for law firms to have their news carried on a large, continuously growing array of newswire partners, including Google news and other major Internet wire services. This powerful tool creates high visibility for your law firm and helps improve site rankings. Posts can be automatically added to your customized Facebook page, giving your firm an extra boost and an easy way to create more content in addition to your normal Facebook posts.

 

For more information on Smart News Technology, customized Facebook pages for law firms or other lawyer marketing strategies contact Kevin Quinlan.

 

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