Ep. 24 - Which Social Media Should I Use?

In this episode, I dive into one of the most common questions I get from attorneys: “Which social media platforms should I be using to promote my law firm?” And my answer? It depends.

I know, I know.

As attorneys, we know that sometimes answers cannot be clear-cut. However, we all hate hearing "it depends".

But the truth is, your ideal clients aren’t all hanging out in the same digital spaces. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, or even Quora, each platform has its own strengths, quirks, and audience. I break down which ones are worth your time, which ones are worth your money, and how to tailor your strategy based on your firm’s goals and client personas.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the social media landscape or unsure where to start, this episode will help you cut through the noise and build a smart, sustainable strategy that fits your firm.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

John Rizvi 0:00

This is Pod Populi, podcast for the people. That's my name. Hi, and welcome. I'm John Rizvi, the Law Firm Growth Professor. And from new listeners, I'm pleased you came to join me today. For my returning listeners, it's always great to have you. Now in this podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me in growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over 10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters. As you can imagine, I get a lot of questions about internet marketing. One question I see quite a bit from attorneys is which social media outlets should I be using to promote my law firm? And I always have to give the same answer. It depends. As attorneys, we use these words a lot, often to the frustration of our clients. I always internally wince a little when I have to say them. Like anyone else, I don't want to hear it depends. I want concrete answers. If I do X, then Y should logically follow. So I hate having to say it depends because I firmly believe in the golden rule. But sometimes say it I must. And I do. And I can almost hear the other teeth of the other party clenching when I do that. In this case, it depends is nothing more than the simple truth. See, every law firm is different. You can take two firms with identical practice areas, client billing, and firm structure. Put one of them on LinkedIn and the other on Reddit. And the one on Reddit may do better. Why? Because the Reddit firm caters to millennials and Generation Z, while the LinkedIn firm primarily targets established professionals who may already have a legal team at their disposal and aren't really interested in shopping around for a lawyer. I'm not saying your firm is one or the other. In fact, it probably isn't. Like most law firms, yours is probably a hybrid that welcomes all comers as long as they can afford your retainer. There's nothing wrong with that. And I don't want uh to give anyone the impression that there is. But uh who your primary ideal clients are will necessarily shape the places where you look for them. Now here's a problem. An episode or two back, I mentioned that we'll spend an estimated $426 billion on advertising alone in 2025. But 90% of that spending will be wasted because of bad ad placement, saturation, or banner blindness. 90%. That's $383 billion just gone, wasted. We could have flushed it down the toilet or solved world hunger or taken back TV from the endless treadmill of reality shows like Real House Husbands that or no one cares. But what we're uh setting is is an answer on how you need to attract your ideal client. And you have to be careful about how you target your ad spend. A lot of uh people rely on the spray and pray method. Throw enough words and pictures into the ether, and sooner or later something's gonna stick somewhere. It's blind luck dressed up to look like the law of averages. But as any experienced marksman will tell you, spray and pray is no match for precise targeted fire. This isn't intended to start a debate on the Second Amendment. The point is that people who use spray and pray advertising are at the mercy of those who spend less but target their advertising more carefully. Tailoring your ads to your ideal clients and going where they are will inevitably yield better results than just flinging your ad up anywhere that it'll be visible for three seconds. So I'm going to run through the usual suspects you've probably already heard about, and then I'll drill into a couple you probably haven't even thought of. The best part of all of these is if you use them properly, you can market your firm effectively without spending a dime. I'm going to start with LinkedIn. After all, we're professionals, and that's where professional stuff goes. LinkedIn is like the button-down office of social media. I've got a profile on there. You probably have a profile there too. And if you don't, you really should. It's not really designed for barbecue pictures and what you did on your summer trip to Cancun. Think more along the lines of the company picnic, the firm softball team, and corporate retreats. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with professionals. It's more useful for building engagement, brand recognition, and cap and networking than capturing clients. But I've gotten a fair amount of client business from LinkedIn, so it's worth investing a little time in. It's also a good place to publish your thought pieces and commentaries on the breaking news in your practice area. If your firm is really B2B, it's worth advertising there, but I wouldn't commit much ad spend to it, say 10% of your budget max. Facebook is where the party is at. This is where you want to go if you're looking to capture client attention because this is where real people live. Sure, there are businesses on there. My own patent professor is there as well, but Facebook is more about people than anything. However, Facebook, like now called Meta, has their success leaning heavily on ad spend. I read somewhere that Facebook ads make up 97.5% of Meta's revenue. So you see a lot of ads. The obvious advantage here is that when you're looking for clients, you go where your clients are most likely to be. The only real problem you're likely to run into is you have to be really careful of how you frame your answers and include the usual disclaimers like I'm a lawyer, uh, but I'm not your lawyer, or this is not legal advice. As long as you keep your answers schematic, hypothetical, or rooted in legal theory rather than how it relates to this exact situation, you should be fine. Now, with no ad spend, Quora is a good place to build brand recognition and connection. Also, it's kind of fun just to surf there. You might even get into a chat with your favorite author or TV celebrity. Now, Reddit is a bit like Quora in that you can do AMAs or Ask Me Anything, but Reddit is well known to be a home for trolls. So if you do an AMA on Reddit, expect that you're going to have your knowledge challenged at the very least. Still, like Quora, it can be a useful branding tool. You can do targeted ads there, which is always a nice touch. And for some people, it may be worthwhile to spend up to 20% of your ad budget there. But if you're easily offended, you may want to steer clear. Now YouTube is and remains the reigning heavyweight champ for promotion. If you like to do vlogs or post a lot of videos, this is the place for you. Be sure to connect your accounts so your YouTube video also posts to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X at a minimum. You don't have to spend money there, but if you have a few extra dollars in your budget, it's worthwhile for brand building. Also, since YouTube is a Google product, at least for now, you can benefit from having Google's promotional reach for your firm. Basically, there's no wrong way to use social media to brand your firm. You can do it badly, of course. Getting into flame wars with Reddit trolleds isn't going to do you any favors, for example. But the best channels for your firm really depend on you, your personality, your firm's branding, your practice area, and where your ideal clients are likely to be. If you target a lot of millennials and Gen Z folks, for example, it's probably worthwhile to veer towards Instagram, X, and Quora. Generation X, you're going to do better with Reddit and LinkedIn with a grudging nod towards Facebook here. Anyone before Generation X is almost certainly going to be on Facebook. If all this is giving you analysis paralysis, don't worry. You don't have to run out and connect your law firm website to all the places right now. In fact, I suggest you do your own market research first to see where your firm's promotion would be the best fit. Remember, I've been harping on the idea of creating ideal client personas. So when you create your content, you're basically starting a conversation with that person. This is where you're going to uh where it's going to be coming to play heavily for you. Using those personas, see which of them are most heavily represented on certain platforms. This will help you decide whether your time and energy is best invested there, and it will give you more options for targeted outreach to your ideal clients on the right platforms. Now, what about TikTok? Some people think of TikTok as just a place to show off your dance moves or videos of you speed playing Super Mario Bros. 3. But TikTok seems also seems to be continuously facing legal challenges and then now you see it, now you don't threat of being banned. So the long game for TikTok is still a bit uncertain. The main thing to remember about all of these platforms and outlets is that you're going to have to tailor your approach to the platform. X, for example, is good for short bursts of information, while Quora or LinkedIn gives you the option to really drill down and get to the nitty-gritty of the topic that you're speaking about. YouTube and Instagram are obviously more visual and less text heavy. How you use these platforms is largely going to be dictated by their design, abilities, and the limitations. So you have to think hard about how you present information on each one. One thing I usually recommend is a twist on the elevator speech. Note that this only works if you're mostly working in text. For video, you'll need to make some tweaks, but for our purposes, we're going to pretend you're writing. Start by writing your blurb for X. Build that out to a paragraph or maybe two for Facebook. Then put the main meat of your content on your website's blog, Quora or LinkedIn. It's really important not to cross-post. Google will penalize you for that, even though it's your own intellectual property and your own creation. If it shows up in a dozen places at once, Google will notice and that will hurt your rankings. But John, do we even need social media at all? To put it bluntly, yes you do. See, in today's world, someone who doesn't have a Facebook, LinkedIn, and X account is given short shrift. People wonder what this person has to hide. The fact is, they may not have anything to hide and may just hate spending screen time trying to prop up a curated facade. I know a writer who feels this way. He's got a couple of social uh media accounts, but they're under deep cover and he's happy with that. But he says it's cost him some shots at dating and even a couple of jobs that rejected him because he wasn't on social media. But he's a private individual and can do what he likes. Your firm doesn't have that luxury. You have to be out in the public eye and getting your name out there. Uh social media is the best way to do that. You don't even have to spend much money on it. Hell, there are a few social media platforms I use for my law firm that I have that have never seen a dime of my money. But I pay for them regardless. I pay for my use of those platforms by generating content for them to host. I pay with my time and my energy and engagement. Remember, when something is given to you for free, there's always a catch. And ultimately, if it's free, then you are the product. So uh you don't have to pay to advertise on most social media if you don't want to, or if you feel that the ROI isn't there. But you're going to have to invest in it. Uh, like I said, with your content and your time and energy if you want the results, but maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Instead, think of it this way: I'm investing in my firm and its future success by spending my time and energy uh here, right now. It's not a hard investment. It doesn't show up on a balance sheet. Uh, you may be hard pressed to link your social media time to the clicks, uh, views, and client funnels from your website. Sure, you could put out a survey asking current and past clients how they heard about you, but that's always dicey and you can't really trust the results. And that's not the point anyway. What you're trying to do is build brand awareness and not onboard them into your latest associate slot. So it doesn't really matter. The point is, like so much of your marketing, uh, what you want to keep in mind that the ROI is going to come from what you put into it. Low effort and low value will get you low returns. High effort and high value will get you higher returns. Uh, but you can't forget about the actual practice and doing the actual job while you promote your firm's ability to do the job. You can get so bogged down in crafting the perfect blurb for X that you forget you've got a client meeting in 15 minutes and you haven't even cracked the cover on their file. My point is, don't get overwhelmed with social media. So take it slow and gradually. Do your homework. Pick your platforms based on whether your ideal clients are there, and don't try to do all the things right now. Get to know one platform, integrate it, then go to the next. Learn it, integrate it, wash, rinse, repeat until you've got the right mix of social media for your firm without stressing yourself out unnecessarily, or spending more time on your promotion than you do on your actual work. If you're spending more than two hours on your marketing for every eight hours you spend doing your job, you've lost the plot and you need to course connect correctly. Remember, uh our clients are the most important people uh in our firms. Without them, we don't exist. So everything we do needs to be tailored to getting them in the door and coming back for more. Now, before we call it a day, I'm curious to hear about your experiences with promoting your firm through social media. Have you found a winning strategy that you'd like to share? How about any mistakes or faux pas that you might have made? Uh, what do you do uh that you think helps perform uh and market your firm and which platform are you doing this in? The comments are open and I'm listening. So once again, I'm John Rizby, the law firm growth professor. Don't forget to tune in next time as I explain why the internet is only 90 seconds old and what that means for our marketing. Uh, but before you leave, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe so you don't miss anything, and please share this with your colleagues and friends who might find this podcast uh enjoyable and helpful in growing their practice. Thanks for joining me today. So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name. I'm a law school professor. An engineer too. I think math is fun and patent. If the patent officer says your idea's not new, that's just red tape that will cut right through. So when a new idea pops into your brain, call the patent professor. That's my name. That is our cool.