Busy entrepreneurs – including solo lawyers or small firms – don’t have a lot of time to spend on social media marketing. It pays to optimize the time they do have to get the best results.
The world we live in is ever changing and this is true for the labor market as well. There are more and more job profiles springing up each day, so it’s virtually impossible for the formal higher education system of any country to provide employees to perform these new jobs. One such example is digital marketing, that is, managing the content on social media. There are people who do this for a living but it is hard to expect every business, especially small ones like a lawyer’s office, to have a person employed solely on promoting the franchise on social media.
This is the reason is why entrepreneurs decide to manage social media profiles on their own and this is where the trouble starts. The business of making money leaves little time from cropping photos or writing up long Facebook statuses, so it is useful to know some tips and tricks on how to improve results and save time managing social media. There are innumerable hacks but we will list the topmost five pieces of advice that your business can benefit from.
Use analytics to your advantage
You probably know that a good business plan must include statistics and adjust to the market’s needs. Well, social media function in much the same way, as you need to check regularly whether your posts are engaging enough. This can be done by means of simply checking how many people have actually “clicked the link below” or counting the number of likes and reactions.
There are also specialized programs and online platforms that help you keep track of your profiles’ user engagement. What you are aiming for is to detect what kind of posts your potential clients prefer and to increase them in number. Posting unimportant stuff all the time could produce a negative effect and make people unfollow you on social media, deeming your posts and images as spam.
Go graphic
Text is nice and all but humans are really visual types. This becomes even more important on social media where people do not come to read novels but to engage in meaningful discussions and learn new things. A person looking to hire a lawyer for their malpractice lawsuit is not interested in reading a mile-long post of great your firm is, but they need tangible data. This is best presented in the form of a chart or a graph that they could read everything off instantly. If you are publishing any kind of figures, always make a pie chart and if you want to report something, use photos with a short textual explanation underneath. In this case, a picture truly is worth a thousand words!
Develop a unique style
Having understood the importance of visualization, you have to develop a style of your own that will make your business instantly recognizable. For instance, some online news websites fare better than others because they are visually more appealing and therefore easier to skim read. Your social media presence needs to have a style of its own that people will instantly associate your franchise with. Over time, they will learn to type your name in the search box whenever they need a service of product you offer. This sort of visual consistency ensures that you have returning customers who will spread the word offline that you are their go-to person.
Choose the platforms carefully
There are ever more social media networks popping up all the time but there exists a pool of those most popular, like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Caught in the hype to be present on as many platforms as possible, some bloggers make the mistake of creating so many accounts that their social media tab turns into a ribbon of icons that runs the length of the screen. This is unnecessary and confusing, so choose carefully how many social media accounts you want to manage. For instance, if you are presently not doing business in the Russian market, nor are you planning to, a VKontakte profile is just a waste of your precious time.
Be personal
Now, whichever social media platforms you decide on, a generic company profile is the wrong way to go. People are set off by logos and unknown people they might chat with, so it is best to go by your first and last name. Remember, these are social media we are talking about and there is nothing social about a company name that users cannot associate with a face. This is the main reason why big brands use famous people to advertise their brands because people can associate their face to the company’s logo. Use a personalized account that has your name and image to reply to people and engage in discussions on social media.
In the end, it’s all about uniqueness and focus. Create a presence on social media like no other and maintain a personal relationship with other users to both ensure positive results and save time.
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