The importance of social media in all marketing endeavors is now an established part of any professional services marketing strategy, including law firms in all practice areas. For the estate planning attorney, social media is a critical means of connecting with the next generation of clients as well as seniors.
You’d be surprised how fluent many seniors are in social media. It’s how they keep up with their grandchildren.
What about Tumblr, Instagram, Periscope and Pinterest? In addition to the fact that most of these sites skew younger than your average client, they are visual platforms. Unless your practice has a very strong visual component—you attend or host events on a weekly basis and your guests are comfortable being photographed, or if you have developed a visual theme for your practice—then we suggest focusing on Twitter, Linked In and Facebook.
Social media for estate planning attorneys has a dual purpose. You can use it to reach prospects, clients and referral sources, notably other attorneys. We know many attorneys who also use social media to gather competitive intelligence on other lawyers and law firms. What marketing activities are the estate planning attorneys in your area doing? Are they attending events that you aren’t aware of, or connected to people that you don’t know, but should?
We can’t think of a better way to keep up with the competition than through social media!
What should you post?
For Twitter, whenever something grabs your attention. See an article online? Share it. Something happening in your state’s legislative arena? Another reason to share. While it’s not likely you’ll post daily, a few times a week is a good goal.
On Facebook, remember to create a business page that is different than your personal page. Send invitations to colleagues’ business pages to connect on Facebook. Remember that “proof of life” concept: if someone visits your page and you haven’t posted in months, it’s a zombie page that isn’t doing you any good.
Linked In is where most professionals feel most comfortable. It’s a good place to post insights about problems that you solve for clients, issues in estate planning and information that demonstrates your knowledge.