How to Integrate Social

Media into Your Firm’s

Marketing Strategy

by Julie Talenfeld

President, Boardroom Communications

Law firms find themselves in a much different marketplace than they did just a few years ago. Competition is keen. Rival firms seem to be exploiting every angle, network and connection.

 Add to this new marketing landscape the arrival of social media, and firms are challenged with integrating social media into existing marketing programs. Professional services firms today increasingly are relying on Websites, blogs and social media to help communicate their brand principles, key marketing messaging, and overall firm strengths. Social media, in combination with traditional marketing / publicity outreach, can heighten the firm’s profile, strengthen its outreach, and establish a solid and memorable brand among its target audience.

 Below are some of the social media elements professional services firms are using effectively…

 Weblogs or ‘Blogs’. Law firms that capitalize on Weblogs or “Blogs” heighten their online brand awareness, which can help establish the firm or its principals as leaders in the field. As a point of definition, blogs are content written and posted to the site on a recurring basis. This can be content written specifically for the blog, or content “repurposed” for the blog, like speeches, press releases, articles or other written material. Blogs accomplish several goals. First, blogs establish the firm’s and/or practitioners’ expertise and authority in a given practice area(s). Second, blogs heighten a site’s use of keywords and search terms, which raises its profile among search engines and consumers.

 Social Media / Networking. By creating LinkedIn, a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter feed or other social media services, the firm increases the “touch points” that reach its audience, heightens its presence across the Internet, and improves search results.

 Audio / Video Posting. A firm also can audio or audio / video record blog posts (as well as speeches or other presentations) for posting to the site, iTunes or YouTube as Podcasts, video broadcasts or other searchable social media.

 An experienced internal social media marketing expert or the right marketing firm can make the difference. The goal would be to supply a continuous stream of strong, keyword-rich, search-engine optimized content targeted specifically to the firm’s audience. Working in a collaborative environment, blogs are written and posted, fed to customized LinkedIn accounts, Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter feeds, and then spread virally to peers and prospects across the Web.

 What is newsworthy in the social media space? The same content found in traditional media. Every time the firm or an attorney earns a legal victory or achieves a professional milestone or award, the news is transmitted from consumer, business and trade media and reposted to the blog, social media and other online media services and destinations. The result: The news is distributed across all media – “traditional,” Web and social media – with each improving the overall impact and reach of the other.

 Julie Talenfeld is the founder and President of Boardroom Communications Inc., a South Florida-based public relations, marketing and social media firm with offices in Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Orlando.

Below is a post from Verbatim written by Joyce K. Smiley of JKS & Company  that discusses the basics of what it takes for law firms and lawyers to build their books of business.

Basically, gaining market share is dependent on satisfying your existing clients.  In Florida, attorneys and firms are finding it more and more challenging to find new clients with the back-drop of one of the worst recessions in Florida’s history.  There is no question that Florida had a one-year head start on the rest of the country with the summer, 2007 residential real estate meltdown.

I was speaking with a Miami lawyer last week at the Florida Bar Convention and he concurred that he is now seeing more and more competitors at business and charitable events.  “What are we going to do, sell life insurance to one another,” he asked?

That’s the point, 80% of new client referrals will come from existing clients and contacts.  Therefore, wouldn’t it be advisable to get an accurate fix on how you and your law firm are perceived by current clients first?    

  What You Need to Know to Gain Market Share 

“When they want our work, we have their complete attention,” said Elliott Miller, director of legal affairs of Denver-based Pendum LLC (www.pendum.com). “Once they have our work, they tend to rest on their laurels. Don’t take advantage,” Miller said of law firms, when he was on a panel of in-house counsel speaking to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association in May.Most marketing and business development professionals will spend time this summer exploring potential strategies to grow their firms’ market share next year, to prepare their 2011 budget requests. To grow market share, your clients must view your firm as the best value compared to your competitors, certainly not as one that has lost interest in them.  

Strategic Client Interviews are a cost-effective way to give your firm the advantage it needs to grasp onto more market share. These interviews reveal:  

• what clients want from your firm
• what problems you must address to strengthen and expand your client relationships
• how to enhance your relationships to keep clients loyal to your firm
• clients’ perceptions of your firm in the legal marketplace
• the opportunities that could increase your firm’s business with its clients  

In response to the question “What do general counsel want from outside counsel?” Miller summed up: “It’s very simple. Legal expertise is the bare minimum. We want outside counsel who also respect our budgets, deadlines and communication styles. We want outside counsel who know our businesses. We want outside counsel, in short, who define their success as our success.”