Social Media in the Legal Industry
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Social media has transformed the way people communicate. However, the degree to which legal professionals have embraced social media remains unclear. Register to attend our free webinar for legal marketers. We'll explore the results of a recent study by LexisNexis and Vizibility, identifying the social media tools attorneys and firms use, and assess the levels of adoption.
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Social Media in the Legal Industry
- 1. Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 2. The Social Media Explosion 150 million 845 million 100 million 1995 2000 2003 2004 2006 2010 2012 First LinkedIn Twitter Today law firm launch launch • 845 million websites use Facebook Facebook • 150 million launch use LinkedIn • 100 million Source: Larry Bodine blog post, “Nearly All Small Firms Use Social Media in Legal Marketing” use Twitter 2 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 3. What Prospects Want and Social Media Delivers Prospects of business of consumers 78% decision-makers search for 65% begin lawyer search using search lawyers online.1 engines, websites and social media.2 Delivery • Identity (they know you exist) • Authority (they can see your capabilities) • Interaction (you can communicate directly) 1 Source: Greenfield/Belser, from Larry Bodine, “Executives Rely on Internet to Find Lawyers” 2 Source: New York State Bar Association Journal 9/09, from http://www.lexisnexis.com/law-firm-marketing/online-marketing-power/ 3 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 4. Small Law Firms are the Biggest Social Media Pros In small firms (1-5 lawyers) Percentage who: Plan to use social media 91% Rely on social media for new business 71% Say social media is extremely important 59% Source: Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” law firms with 1-5 lawyers, response to question 1 4 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 5. What Social Media Tools Do Small Firms Prefer? Social media tools preferred by small law firms Professional social networks (LinkedIn) 90% Blogs 88% Twitter 73% Consumer social networks (Facebook, Google+) 68% Video networks (YouTube, Vimeo) 51% Source: Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” law firms with 1-5 lawyers, response to question 4 5 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 6. How Are the Benefits Measured? How small law firms measure the benefits of social media programs 76% measure lead generation 71% measure new business 61% measure increased website traffic measure number of followers and 54% online connections Source: Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” law firms with 1-5 lawyers, response to question 5 6 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 7. Keep It Current! Percentage of lawyers with 100% up-to-date social media profiles Small firm lawyers All lawyers 58.5% LinkedIn 19% 44% Facebook 13% 41.5% Twitter 12% Source: Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” law firms with 1-5 lawyers, response to question 7 7 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 8. Spread The Word It’s not just about creating social media accounts. You need to help people discover your social media usage. Add social media links to email signatures and online bios Leverage content aggregators like JD Supra Add QR codes to printed bios and business cards 8 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 9. Five Things To Do Today! Here are five simple action items you can do right now Make sure LinkedIn profiles for your attorneys include one or 1 both of the words “attorney” and “lawyer” in the job title. Update contact info, firm name, experience and practice areas for 2 all your attorneys’ Martindale-Hubble and Lawyers.com profiles. Get others to recommend your attorneys on LinkedIn and initiate 3 peer reviews on Martindale-Hubble and Lawyers.com. Use QR codes to build digital bridges to social media, placing 4 them on business cards and printed bios. 5 Use the same photos on your website bio and all other online profiles, including a hi-res image on LinkedIn. 9 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 10. Benefits Far Outweigh Pitfalls Small firm naysayers: Small firm winners: Social media is too hard to Social media creates control, not enough visibility, interaction and resources, ROI not proven respect that pays off in engaged prospects and proven new business. 10 Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
- 11. Social Media in the Legal Industry March 7, 2012
Editor's Notes
- The first law firm websites were launched in the mid-1990s as nothing more than print brochures posted online. By the early 2000s individual lawyers had begun writing weblogs – blogs as we know them today – to discuss issues important to their practice. It took almost another decade to see the emergence of the social media and networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, which were launched in 2003 and 2004, respectively, and then Twitter in 2006. Early on, a handful of law firms and some individual lawyers grasped the potential of Web-based networking—and especially the reputation-building power of blogs. But there were only a few early adopters. Much of the legal industry opted to stick with newsletters, white papers, and client alerts and seminars. By doing so, they were choosing safer, more traditional modes of marketing, and avoiding the social media revolution. And today they risk becoming dinosaurs in light of the explosion of social media outlets and users. Prospective law firm clients don’t just want to be told what a lawyer or law firm does – they want to interact and create a dialog with them so they know if their needs can be met. This is the kind of interaction that social media provides, efficiently and cost effectively.
- When done right, by combining personalized observation with facts and insights, social networking is a living, detailed calling card that represents lawyers and the firm to the world. The social media world can seem so big that it’s intimidating, but if you focus on a few key tools you’ll find that social media delivers big results. Facebook allows you to converse directly with your firm’s “fans” and build a network of followers through their contacts.Twitter can optimize the search engine ranking of your firm’s website through brief, quick posts, keeping you in the public eye.LinkedIn is the most relevant online marketing tool for law firms because it is client-focused. If you want to market services to Realtors, for example, you can look at the users linked to you and to others and readily identify any number of potential contacts. This is networking without boundaries, a “one degree of separation” interaction.Blogging increases your search engine ranking and lets you build audiences around the practice skills you want to mention.
- Vizibility and Lexis/Nexis survey responses were gathered in the latter part of 2011.The companies sent invitations by email to the members of the Legal Marketing Association, surveyed more than two dozen LinkedIn message boards, shared with Twitter and Facebook followers of both companies and made posts on LexisNexis blogs – all to secure respondents to a groundbreaking survey on social media use.Although firms of all size responded, including from the AmLaw 100, 20% of respondents were from small firms with 1-5 lawyers. And these lawyers proved to be in the vanguard of social media use.Lawyers in small firms are actively sending updates, tweets and blog entries to promote their practices. In fact 91% of lawyers in small firms (one to five lawyers) plan to implement social media as part of their marketing programs. (Source cited above)This is a higher percentage than law firms in general, of which 81% said they plan to use social media marketing tools. (Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” master summary, response to question 1)When asked how important social media is in their firm’s overall marketing strategy, 59% of lawyers in small firms said it was extremely important. (Vizibility/LexisNexis Survey, “Use of Social Media in Legal Marketing,” law firms with 1-5 lawyers, response to question 3)Among small firms, almost 71% of participants in practices with five or fewer attorneys said that they rely on social media marketing to generate new business. In contrast, among respondents from big firms with 100 or more attorneys, only 37% measure social media success this way. (Blog post by Larry Bodine, “81% of Large Law Firms Use Social Media for Marketing,” http://blog.martindale.com/81-of-large-law-firms-use-social-media-for-marketing)
- It’s no secret why LinkedIn and blogging rank one and two. LinkedIn is the number one social media site for business professionals, where 150 million business owners, managers, executives and other lawyers have profiles. And LinkedIn’s presence among these users is growing, with Facebook-like tools, including a number of dynamic new plug-ins that can be integrated into a firm website. These include Sign In with LinkedIn, which makes it easier for users to authenticate or register for your site using their LinkedIn identityShare, a button which enables users to share your website with LinkedIn’s professional audienceMember Profile, which brings LinkedIn profiles to your siteFull Member Profile, which brings larger, more detailed LinkedIn profiles to your siteCompany Profile, which displays key company info at-a-glanceCompany Insider, which shows rich company data from several different viewsRecommend, a button that a button that enables users to recommend your products and drive traffic back to you(Larry Bodine blog post, “Nearly All Small Firms Use Social Media in Legal Marketing,” http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/portal/blogs/bodinelx/archive/2012/02/12/nearly-all-small-firms-use-social-media-in-legal-marketing.aspx; and “LinkedIn Debuts New Platform,” 4/11/11, http://www.therainmakerblog.com/2011/04/articles/law-firm-marketing-1/internet-marketing-for-attorneys-linkedin-debuts-new-platform/ )Blogging is just as important. The facts show that a prominent blog influences hiring of law firms. Law firms that blog have far better marketing results, specifically more web visitors, inbound links and indexed pages. More website visitors mean more people to convert to leads and sales. Blogging has other benefits too. Blogging in particular will increase the number of calls you receive from reporters, who are extensive searchers of blogs and other social media tools for sources. Blogging and other social media initiatives frequently lead to an increase in the number of speaking invitations attorneys receive. This important for one reason above all: visibility. The more that your target market sees your name and knows who you are, the more likely they are to call you.
- If you can’t measure your marketing efforts by specific number of contacts made, clients added and billable time gained, you’ll never know what you’ve done. Social media results are precisely measurable and they show you where to find your target market and how you can best reach them to let them know that what they need is within your scope of abilities. Lead generation and new business secured from those leads are the only valid measurements of whether social media marketing. Attracting more followers and online connections is worthwhile only if they lead to in-person meetings. Online marketing has to produce new files and new revenue or it’s not worth doing. Interestingly, nearly a quarter of the small firm respondents (24.4%) said that they measured increased client satisfaction as a result of social media activity. (Source cited above)In measuring benefits, cost has to be taken into account. For the most part, building an active presence on social networking sites does not require a large up-front investment. The main expenses may be such tools as blog hosting services and standard technical assistance and maintenance offered by outside providers of blog support. Of course there is also a lawyer time involvement, which makes measuring business gained even more important.
- This is a perfect illustration of why small firms are effective social media users. The number one rule for success in the social media sphere is to keep content current and update it frequently. The data shown here relate to lawyer profiles, but the same thing applies to blog and Twitter posts, firm profiles, and all other online content.There are other rules for keeping content current that increase social media visibility.Make your tools interact with each other – don’t build silos. Ensure that LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter content is consistent and feeds into both blogs and lawyer profiles on the firm’s website.Create LinkedIn profiles that link directly to website bios and are consistent with them.Create blog topics that demonstrate thought leadership and be prepared to update posts at least weekly, if not more often. Link to others so they’ll link to you. Register your blog with blog directories and legal blog lists to increase your exposure to potential clients.Make sure you follow basic search engine optimization best practices for social media. For instance, in the United States only 4% of legal titles on LinkedIn profiles contain the word “lawyer, compared to 23% with the word “counsel” and 73% with “attorney.” Yet, of the average monthly Google searches for these three keywords, nearly 40% contain the word “lawyer,” 58% contain “attorney” and only 3.5% contain “counsel.” To ensure placement in search results, make sure your social media profiles contain the keywords being used by the buyers of their services. (Blog post by Larry Bodine, “81% of Large Law Firms Use Social Media for Marketing,” http://blog.martindale.com/81-of-large-law-firms-use-social-media-for-marketing)
- It’s not just about creating social media accounts. You need to help people discover your social media usage.Add social media links to email signatures and online biosLeverage content aggregators like JD SupraAdd QR codes to printed bios and business cards
- Make sure LinkedIn profiles for your attorneys include one or both of the words “attorney” and “lawyer” in the job title.Update contact info, firm name, experience and practice areas for all your attorneys’ Martindale-Hubble and Lawyers.com profiles.Use the same photos on your website bio and all other online profiles. Use QR codes to create a digital bridge for clients and prospects, placing them on business cards and printed bios. Get others to recommend your attorneys on LinkedIn.
- Although the Vizibility/LexisNexis survey is unique in its findings about how important social media are to small law firms, several other surveys reinforce the growing overall importance that firms attach to a social media presence. A survey of all size law firms by American Lawyer Media found that almost 85%of law firms that responded reported that their lawyers make use of social media and networking tools such as LinkedIn, as well as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly half of respondents reported that blogging and social networking initiatives had helped produce leads for new matters or clients. And approximately 40 % said that those efforts had helped them to land new work. (American Lawyer Media, “Fans, Followers and Connections: Social Media ROI for Law Firms,” p. 4) The American Bar Association’s 2011 Legal Technology Survey of a wide cross-section of ABA members found that 42% of respondents said their firms maintain an online presence in social media, compared to 17% in 2010 – and 65% of individual respondents said that they personally have an online professional presence, obviously including a sizeable number who maintain such a presence even if their firms don’t. (“2011 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report,” pp. xii –xv). Such results confirm that the Internet generally, and social media in particular, are tools that allow the sole and small firm lawyer to compete with large firm lawyers. This has real economic impact. The Internet marketing efforts of small firm practitioners are typically designed to generate awareness and to get potential clients to initiate contact. When even the smallest of firms have informative web pages, and their lawyers can interact with worldwide users of blogs and social networking sites, the playing field is leveled. As social media is accepted even more, sole practitioners and small firms will cater to the 99% of the population that large firms do not target, mostly consumer-oriented clients, but also smaller companies that don’t fit the big firm culture. There is a lot of work available for those who are flexible enough in their cost structures and use of technology to be competitive – and who use social media to make prospects aware of how much they can do for them.